I was raised by a mother who was a good cook and had a master’s in nutrition. She cooked tasty and healthful meals and insisted that I by god eat every bite or no TV, no dessert, and maybe she’d serve it to me for breakfast if I didn’t finish it at dinner.
So. I’m not a foodie. Don’t like to eat, don’t like to cook. I WILL cook, and I’m good at it, I just find it tedious, but so is making beds, and so is half the stuff I do at work, and life is infinite tedium, right?
Also grew up without either a TV or a dessert habit. But now I can throw 3/4 of my food down the disposal if I want instead of trying to feed it to my cat (who BTW was a real trouper and helped me out a lot) or hide it in my pockets.
I am getting the easiest thing and the thing with the most calories so I don’t have to cook much or eat much.
Baby steps; you didn’t one day jump out of your cradle and run a marathon, did you? What recipes are you trying, omelettes or quiches? Omelettes are easy; it’s really difficult to screw one up. Quiches are one of the traditional examples of something where you have to do things exactly and precisely just so or they come out inedible.
The first times you’re not shooting for perfection, you’re shooting for “ok, that was good”. Cooking some pasta (time should be listed in the package) and pouring shop-bought sauce on it is a step up from frozen lasagna; it’s cooking. It’s not “gourmet”? OK, so? Neither is my homemade sauce, pasta with tomato sauce isn’t considered a gourmet dish period You would need deconstructed sauce for that, and my eyes just tried to roll under the desk when I typed that.
Most recipes can be ratiod down to one or two portions. I live alone and I usually prep two portions of whatever, but I’m happy eating the same dish twice in a week. Any of those things could be cooked for one. It’s basic math: you need a smaller pot, the same temperatures, similar times, but ratio the amounts.
Years after their divorce my father observed that my mother’s idea of cooking was to open a can of something and toss it in a saucepan. Which was pretty much true. I hated what I thought was Chinese food for years because of that canned Chun King Chow Mein crap with slimy bean sprouts and noodles that she used to serve.
Mom was orphaned at five and raised by her grandparents, the distaff half of which was a pretty good cook. But mom was rebellious, resented what she viewed as their attempts to remake her in her late mother’s image, and learned as little from them as possible. To this day she doesn’t cook (even in sauce pans) and she doesn’t do dishes either. Everything that is heated becomes so in either a microwave oven or a toaster, and everything is eaten on paper plates with plastic knives and forks, all of which go immediately into the trash afterward. She’s sweet and I love her, but a domestic goddess she ain’t.
I never really considered myself as someone who doesn’t cook, but I guess I don’t by some of the definitions here. I just don’t like the time it takes to make anything fancy, and I don’t like washing pans.
I love my little deep fryer now, since it’s next to no work to use.
My mother would and still does cook dinner every night… I didn’t turn on a stove until I was 25… my total times using the stove… One. I go out to dinner relatively often because I like to try new things and enjoy inviting my SO to participate in these new things. I am looking to do meal prep for health/financial reasons but I guess the main reason is…
Like sleep, or birthdays, or driving, any of the myriad things that come along with living… Food to me is just there, sure some food tastes great and some food tastes awful but all food is a chore… If I could just get nutrients intravenously once a day and never eat again I would do it in a heartbeat.
When I was a kid, my mother cooked very plain simple food, and those were the days when people sat down to dinner every night. We never had food fights, and I was never made to clean my plate. She never “taught me to cook.”
When I got older, I discovered the world of food and now like to cook and will eat anything (except cilantro).
Personally, I don’t cook much beyond following detailed recipes because I don’t have a good sense of how to season or spice dishes. I envy people who can, in the middle of cooking something, determine that some herb or spice is needed. I can barely tell whether the salt level is enough. (When my parents cooked, they’d call me over, have me taste it and ask my opinion. Really they were wasting their time asking me. But what they cooked was usually great. And my cooking now as an adult is mostly trying to reproduce what my mother made.)
And besides knowing how to season stuff, I have a hard time judging doneness, particularly of meat dishes (so I don’t often cook them).
I was raised in a family that cooked and prepared meals. My great grandma in fact even grew her own scratch items, everything was home made right down to the jam and jellies. She started breakfast everyday at 4am and served it by 6 or 7am…that was some seriously good eating even though today I don’t consider the taste or quality of food to be of any importance…rather feeling full is.
I however, do not cook. The closest I come to cooking is mac n cheese. I replace some meals throughout the week with nutrition shakes so I don’t get fat. I just don’t put much priority on flavor, I just eat to survive so I choose foods based on nutritional needs most of the time.
You would need deconstructed sauce for that, and my eyes just tried to roll under the desk when I typed that.