LEAVING home and entering the real world is certainly an eye-opener for many young teenagers, and then learning to cook ... well that's just another story!

Growing up was easy when it came to the food department as it was always in the pantry, or Mum and Dad always had something cooked.

My first three week block in Sydney before Christmas in 2008 truly made me realise how good I had it growing up, because the reality was I didn't know how to cook anything other than two-minute noodles.

But then I lived with Kieren Jack and Daniel Currie in my first year and that made it easier as both of them had a few meals up their sleeves and showed me how to cook up a storm.

Kieren always made a lot more sense by keeping the meals basic and explaining it all as we went along. Daniel on the other hand loves his cooking and can also be quite worried about his skinfolds from time to time. He goes to the extent of weighing his butter and rinsing his mince to make sure he can keep dinner as fat free as possible.

As for me, I struggled at the start by over-cooking chicken a number of times, and then the opposite by not enough. Over time I've slowly worked out what is right and wrong.

Nick Smith was my housemate in my second year, and he is also quite handy in the kitchen. We both have very different diets - he can eat as much carbohydrate as he likes while I can’t because I blow up like a balloon - which wasn't very helpful when it came to dinner. But he helped me out with so much last year.

While I'm not quite up to Masterchef standard yet, I've learnt how to cook stir frys, lasagne, pastas and Shepherds pie just to name a few. I also experimented a lot more with various foods in my second year and tried cooking a few different things. Some of the meals worked out and some didn't, but the same as footy, only practice will make perfect

Having found a weight that I need to be at, I now have to make sure I eat the right portions during the week and do not eat as many carbohydrates earlier in the week.

The club has also set up lunches after each training session throughout the current pre-season. This has not only helped us because we don’t have to cook as often, but it also supplies us with various types of foods so we can determine which foods will be better for our recovery. Proper diet is a huge part of being a professional athlete, and it has been a huge factor for me over the past two years.

 Dieting has been essential whilst I've tried to get my body to a good weight, and also to ensure I have good energy stores to help me play out a full game. As athletes, we need to make sure we are eating all the right foods before and after games to help with our recovery, and thankfully we have our dietician, Lorraine, at the club to help us all out with that.
I have done a number of cooking classes at the club with Lorraine, and Ryan O'Keefe has also shown me a few tricks in the kitchen which has helped me so much.

Each time I go home to South Australia, I try and cook something different so I have a new meal to bring back to Sydney with me. Now that I'm living with Campbell Heath and Ben Haren, who are both in massive stuggletown when it comes to the kitchen, I need as many meals as possible so we don't eat the same food every night!

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