My two are:
Making sourdough. I personally always heard like this weird almost mysticism around making it. But I bought a $7 starter from a bakery store, and using just stuff in my kitchen and cheap bread flour I’ve been eating fresh sourdough every day and been super happy with it. Some loafs aren’t super consistent because I don’t have like temperature controlled box or anything. But they’ve all been tasty.
Drawing. I’m by no means an artist, but I always felt like people who were good at drawing were like on a different level. But I buckled down and every day for a month I tried drawing my favorite anime character following an online guide. So just 30 minutes every day. The first one was so bad I almost gave up, but I was in love with the last one and made me realize that like… yeah it really is just practice. Years and years of it to be good at drawing things consistently, quickly, and a variety of things. But I had fun and got something I enjoyed much faster than I expected. So if you want to learn to draw, I would recommend just trying to draw something you really like following a guide and just try it once a day until you are happy with the result.
I agree with sourdough, I didn’t even buy a starter just made one from unbleached white flour and water, it been going strong or more than 15 years now. Other home fermentation projects too, many don’t really involve any special equipment. But the secret people don’t realize about sourdough is its EASIER to work with, than commercial yeast. Less fussy, less sticky, more robust, just slower. And slower is easier.
Gardening there was some cost involved for me but I have been consistently shocked because I used to kill plants but the food garden is doing great. Not idyllic, sometimes bugs eat all of something, or birds do, or this year my dogs are the late season watermelon (bitches!) but in general it doesn’t take a lot of knowledge, I look for sturdy heat tolerant hybrids or plants native to hot wet places, and have gotten fennel, broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, okra, collard greens, mustard greens, jalapenos, different lettuces, a few other veggies and the watermelon all this food for not much cost beyond what we are already paying to have a house with a backyard.
Yeah I tried making a sour dough starter twice from scratch and it didn’t have any oomph to it.
So I just bought one and suddenly boom, perfect XD