Are you the person I see at the grocery store buying 14 microwaveable meals and two boxes of cereal every week?
Does heating up some chicken fingers and cooking a box of mac n’ cheese (with ketchup!) count as cooking a meal to you?
Are you in the target demographic for those salad kits that consist of some choped lettuce, carrots, and cabbage, and a little packet of dressing?
This poll is for you.
I’m not knocking your preferences - they’re not mine, but they’re no skin off my nose. I recently realized that someone who I admire, respect, and like immensely has similar preferences to you - when they ordered breaded chicken with rice and vegetables, hold the vegetables, at quite possibly the best Japanese place in town.
I’m curious to know whether your relationship to food growing up has had any influence on your food choices as an adult. Please elaborate as you deem necessary.
If you don’t fit the profile, please don’t post about how much more sophisticated and urbane your palate is. I’m sure you’re the second coming of Anthony Bourdain. I’m genuinely curious here, so please don’t be a jerk.
I was raised by people who thought hot dogs and canned beans was a fine meal, but I cook practically everything I eat, from scratch. As in, really scratch, because I grow most of the raw ingredients, including the meat, myself.
you say you’re not knocking them, then say how much you respect them, then complain about what they eat. if you don’t want to knock them and respect them, then why ask the question?
I voted I was pretty much raised that way. Two working parents, low income meant that food had to be cheap and quick. So lots of meals of Mac & Cheese, pancakes, chicken nuggets. At this point in my life, any meal that requires more than 2 steps outside of ‘open box’ really is pushing it for me.
It’s not that I don’t cook. I do. but not very often, mostly because I work 2nd shift and my wife works normal hours. So when she gets home she cooks for herself, and i eat her leftovers when I get home.
That being said, I would rather go out to eat than cook, budget willing. Both my parents worked growing up and we would go out to eat a lot. Even now, they are retired, but they still go out to eat TWICE A DAY. When they had their house built after I moved out (I was the youngest of 2) they didn’t even buy/install an oven. That’s how little they cooked.
Defensive much? I don’t recall complaining about what they ordered. I simply stated that they ordered it. It’s not what I would have ordered (and I didn’t), but they didn’t make me eat it.
My mother, who did the cooking at home, was darned good at it. Maybe not the epicure’s choice, but very good indeed. We had a lot of very, very good meals, wholesome, hearty, with a lot of variation, clever side-dishes, etc.
Somehow, the gene didn’t get passed on. I can just barely microwave stuff.
I cook once a week. I’ll make a big something on Sunday and eat leftovers for the next two days. On Wednesday, I’ll pop in a frozen pizza and eat the leftovers on Thursday. On Friday and Saturday, I get take-out.
I was raised my two parents who both cooked and “cooked”. My father can fry a mean porkchop. He is a master on the grill. He makes the best chicken noodles. But for many meals he served us kids, he just “cooked”. He’d stop by the grocery story and pick up some Checker’s hamburgers, which he’d serve up with canned spinach and canned soup. Or he’d boil some hotdogs and serve them up with take-out shrimp fried rice (with canned spinach). Blue soda and cinnamon toast were common fixtures when he was doing dinner duty.
My mother can throw down in the kitchen too. She’d save her signature dinners for Sunday, but sometimes she’d whip them out on a random weekday when she wasn’t too tired. But she wasn’t averse to “cooking” either. Frozen chicken pot pies were her mainstay.
Why don’t I cook more? Because I live alone. I don’t mind eating leftovers. I happen to really like frozen pizza. Getting take-out at different places keeps me from getting bored. I also don’t really enjoy complicated cooking–like the stuff that involves a long list of ingredients and lots of steps. That’s the last thing I feel like I doing when I get home from work. But I do enough in the kitchen to feel sufficiently grown-up.
My mom and dad could both cook and were pretty good at it. They could both make tasty meals from scratch. My dad loved to make stews. He’d steam meat in a pressure cooker until it was tender, and add vegetables and let it simmer. However, we also had our share of cheap easy meals, too. Things like hot dogs wrapped in crescent rolls with a slice of Velveeta, macaroni and cheese, and Chef Boyardee pizza kits. I go for quick and easy myself, mostly heating frozen dinners in the microwave.
My mom made dinner every weeknight at least and sometimes on weekends. She was a good cook but did make what she knew we liked – meat and potatoes, pasta, hot dogs. Usually a meat protein, a starch and a vegetable (which was sometimes a starchy vegetable). We had to eat a certain amount of the vegetables, even the ones we didn’t like, and a certain amount of the protein if it wasn’t one we liked (chicken liver, I’m looking at you). My father was frugal so Mom had to shop on a budget and again, mostly got things we would enjoy.
When they had company over, then she could flex her culinary muscle and make fancier foods with tastes we wouldn’t enjoy.
I do know how to bake and will put money and effort into that, but savory foods I don’t cook on my own as a rule. I enjoy prepared or frozen foods and I wouldn’t enjoy the effort of cooking and clean-up for two of us. Around Christmas and Easter I make a couple of full meals and that’s about it for the year.
I have a complicated relationship with food and because I need it to be safe and reliable, I wouldn’t go out on a limb and try foods that I’m not sure I will like. That’s less about what Mom cooked and more about it being the only enjoyable thing about dinner – my father was a black cloud when he got home from work and sat down to eat.
We ate out a lot. Plus, I was a finicky eater, and that was 100% indulged. (Parents: please do not do this. I am forcing myself to do better, but it’s a slow and arduous process.) I almost never ate with my parents, except when we’d go out for Chinese food. We ate a lot of pizza; by a lot, I mean I had it for at least one meal a day 7 days a week throughout my childhood. When I was little, that was just cheese and bread for the pizza, just fried rice for Chinese food, and just plain tortillas with butter for Mexican. It’s a wonder I’m not the size of a malnourished house.
I like cooking, and will do it occasionally, but I can’t seem to build the habit of plan + shop + cook. It gets to mealtime, and I feel hungry and start to panic, and it becomes “eat out” or “whatever’s in the cupboard.” Having an irregular work schedule doesn’t help. I rely on Mr. Mallard to do 95% of the planning, 80% of the shopping, and 60% of the cooking.
At my very best, I was able to cook twice a week (making six meals’ worth of dinners).
Additionally, almost all of my financial woes are down to these bad habits.
Some of these people know how to cook, but have disabilities preventing them from standing in the kitchen and cooking (though it may be easier to walk through a supermarket, using the cart as a walker).
I cook. I’m also in the target demographic for “people who can’t be arsed buy several kinds of lettuce but who are perfectly happy to buy a package of pre-chopped-up multiple kinds of lettuce”.
I just can’t help but see a large excluded middle here. You seem to equate home cooking with gourmet cooking.
Plenty of people who cook all their own meals eat nothing but the most pedestrian of food. And plenty of people love eating exotic cuisine without having any desire to cook it.
I somewhat resemble those remarks - but… I think you’re conflating not cooking and picky eating. I fall in both camps, but there’s different stuff behind each.
I tend to not cook because it’s a PITA to cook for one person and I don’t really enjoy cooking. I have no problems making food (even baking) from scratch, when I really want to. I can follow recipes and know how to make food without a recipe. I just don’t really want to a lot. I hate cleaning up (I do not find that cleaning as I go along makes that chore faster or less unpleasant). Also, most recipes serve 4-8 which is a lot of leftovers, I don’t want to eat the same thing every day for lunch and dinner for a week and even if I did, not everything freezes well. Cooking can lead to a lot of waste. That I’m a picky eater really isn’t a reason why I don’t cook a lot.
Growing up, both of my parents could cook, but it was usually my mother who did the cooking. Again, usually from scratch (we almost never ate out of boxes or cans or what I’ve heard called “fake food”). We didn’t go out a lot. But because my parents both have pretty adventurous palates - they would make almost anything. There was a lot of variety from a lot cuisines.
As far as bagged salad is concerned - I don’t like prepping vegetables. Salad in a bag is right up there with sliced bread for me.
I love food, I just don’t care at all for cooking. My mom was a ‘meh’ cook, mostly from boxes and/or cans, but we ate in most of the time when I was growing up. Now she cooks very little and mostly eats at restaurants. My grandmother was a fantastic southern cook and made everything from scratch. She rarely ate a meal out, preferring to cook instead. I can prepare a meal, from simple to gourmet, if necessary and it will taste fine. I don’t enjoy doing it, though.
I’m with Dr. Jackson on this one. Love food, love eating interesting food, and normal food, and everything in between. I just don’t care for the work and time involved in cooking/cleaning up. I can go get good food any night of the week with very little effort and a nice atmosphere. My wife is a very good cook, and she’ll prepare several meals per week. Otherwise, we’re going out or picking up a pizza.