# Can't cook? Really? What do you eat? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 28, 2005, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-cook-really-what-do-you-eat/328289 "2005-10-28T08:40:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Bites\_When\_Provoked](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bites_when_provoked/32/18073_2.png) [@Bites\_When\_Provoked](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bites_When_Provoked)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2005, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-cook-really-what-do-you-eat/328289/61 "2005-11-01T14:31:38Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > Neither my husband nor I cook although we _can_. The oven went out several years ago. We use it for storage. > > We eat when we are hungry and never sit down to eat together unless we have food delivered. Even then, we eat in front of the TV. The dining room table is used for sorting mail, beading, and paying bills. > > We eat take-out food, microwavable dinners, sandwiches, chips, dips, cheese, prepared food from the market, snacks, cereal, and sweets. Sometimes we get salads in a bag. They taste strange and wonderful. Eerie 🙂 My oven went out years ago too, and we use it for storage…and our dining table is used as a storage surface for paper-related things; mail, bills, newspapers. Generally we eat from a tin or a box most nights - frozen chicken kiev, fish fillets, any kind of easy meal. We have a convection microwave so we can still ‘oven bake’ sufficiently well for our humble needs. There’s only the two of us to feed. 🙂 But I never eat salad if I can avoid it. At least, not salad composed of lettuce or cabbage - I’ll go a pasta or rice salad from time to time. My vegetable intake is generally restricted to microwaved potatos or frozen veggies. Tonight I actually did cook and did a nice fry-up of smoked bacon cut into pieces, with creamy pesto sauce (from a jar) stirred through and served the lot of it mixed into pasta. Looked pretty good and tasted better. That’s about as extreme as my cooking gets as a general rule though. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2005, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-cook-really-what-do-you-eat/328289/62 "2005-11-01T15:01:59Z")
Our oven finally gave up the ghost several years ago, and we responded by tearing the whole kitchen out and putting in a bigger oven. No way could we live without one. Pepper Mill and I couldn’t live without one. Thinking about it now, we extemporize more than I’d realized – especially her. She’ll frequently pull out something for dinner with no idea how she’s going to prepare it, then try different seasonings and marinades, which is how we ended up with orange spicy chicken one night. ---
**Author:** ![Stonebow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Stonebow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stonebow)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2005, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-cook-really-what-do-you-eat/328289/63 "2005-11-01T15:16:06Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > Neither my husband nor I cook although we _can_. The oven went out several years ago. We use it for storage. > > We eat when we are hungry and never sit down to eat together unless we have food delivered. Even then, we eat in front of the TV. The dining room table is used for sorting mail, beading, and paying bills. > > We eat take-out food, microwavable dinners, sandwiches, chips, dips, cheese, prepared food from the market, snacks, cereal, and sweets. Sometimes we get salads in a bag. They taste strange and wonderful. I think this is the single saddest thing I’ve ever read on the boards. _hugs for Zoe_ - stonebow, epicurean extraordinaire [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-cook-really-what-do-you-eat/328289.md?page=3)