Since we’re hijacking, Athelas, answer this for me. How is it a flip-flop to say you’ll fight for the retention of something that you’ve always fought against the non-retention of?
Alright, I’ll fess up. I cook. I don’t eat fast food, frozen pizzas, ramen noodles or Lean Cuisine. Nothing particularly fancy, but I cook proper meals with fresh ingredients. I’m fussy about having vegetables with all my meals; I take cooked pasta or noodle dishes to work so I don’t have to eat sandwiches; I’m particular about how my steak is cooked (seared! and rare!); and I’m choosy about the wine and beer that I buy.
And in my earlier years, when I had the free time, I occasionally baked. :eek:
So I fit the stereotype, but the truth is I only cook because I like eating. I’m fairly active and I need the fuel–I lose weight and feel like crap if I’m not eating well.
My boyfriend, OTOH, can hardly boil water without burning something. He’ll happily chow down on pre-made frozen meals or takeaway. (Although, he plays rugby, doesn’t wear labels, doesn’t own hair product and can’t dance, so possibly I’m simply going out with a closeted straight man. 
)
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Evil Death, I think there was a Pit thread on that matter last week.
I’m hetero, currently single, and I love to cook for myself or my friends. I bake my own sourdough bread, reserve Saturdays or Sundays for stock-making, whip up a meal from scratch almost every day. Got an herb garden going, and even started making my own cheese. Thing is, I hate most prepared food: it’s too salty and too chemically tasting. Same with most restaurants. The restaurants I like, I usually can only afford once in a blue moon. Not to say I won’t grab a hot dog or hamburger here and there – sometimes we need a fast food break. I will eat anything, but, given the choice and some time, I’d rather do it myself.
Hmm… interesting set of responses. It seems that if anything the straight guys on this board are more creative cooks than the gay guys.
Pop culture says you’re supposed to be a lot more fabulous than this, but other than the sexuality thing you gay guys aren’t very fabo at all! You’re like regular guys who just happen to do guys. What a letdown.
I think you’ve hit upon exactly why people might think that gay men would tend to be better cooks than straight men. But if I remember correctly, people are getting married later (on average) now than in my parents’ generation. (Sorry, no cite.) These days, if a guy likes to eat well, he generally learns to cook once he’s moved out on his own.
Now, as far as cooking habits go, I think you’ll find a vastly greater disparity between those of us who are single and those who have a significant other, as opposed to any separation along lines of gay/straight. I cook quite well, and I’m straight, but I generally don’t bother cooking anything elaborate for myself. My new house is great for entertaining, though, so it’s not unknown to put on a spread for friends from time to time.
[hijack] You have stubble, astro? Bah! Real manly men have beards. And have since they were 17. [/hijack]
This gay man eats like a straight man. I cannot cook, I seriously burn water. I am into high colestoral fast food if I am hungry, or subway if I am concerned about my intake.
If I want a delicious healthy home cooked meal that one sees in TV. I visit my mother.
Actually, the weird thing is – and I was discussing this with a female friend recently sho shared the same observation-- is that these days most of the people I know who cook for themselves are men, not women. I would say that in my peer group men who can cook outnumber women who can about two to one. Odd.
That’s pretty much exactly it. I as a single guy am a pretty good cook. 1. I am a food snob, nobody else makes food right(i.e. the way my mommy made it:))2. I don’t really have any delusions about ever getting into a relationship serious enough for someone to cook for me regularly. Therefore if I want the food I like I had to learn to cook it myself.
On the other hand I don’t cook every day, it gets to expensive to cook for one person, the ingrediatns don’t come in a proportion for one serving, so lot’s of things end up wasted, which is too damn expensive. I kind of rotate between a good cooked home meal, a basic cooked home meal, fast food, prepared food, and real restaurants.
Part of the stereotype that I always see on TV is the Gay dudes having dinner parties and the like. I don’t know if they really do, but I don’t know of any straight guy who does. And I’m curious to find out how common it is. For me and my straight friends who can who can cook, the thought process is “I really feel like chicken marsala , I will make it and then eat it while watching TV alone”. There is absolutly no social aspect to it it’s about the food you want to eat, no more no less(1). I know women tend to think of the social aspect of it, and there is the sterotype of gay dudes likeing the social aspect of it, so that may be why people assume they cook more, because people find out they can cook. None of my friends have any idea I can cook until they show up one day in the middle of my dinner. Most of my single straight friends who can cook I only found out by accident also.
For example, thanksgiving meals. I would rather stay home and cook my own little turkey, and stuffing, gravy and fixings that is good, then go to my friends house where they serve crappy leatheresque turkey in brown paste.
(1) Obviously there are the social aspects of certain straight guy cooking. Grilling ,barbecuing, crab boils and the like. It’s just that a fettucini carbonara type meals isn’t a social food to most single straight guys.
And oh yeah, I’ve had my beard since 16 
Another gay men with bad eating habits, checking in. I’ve had way too much cheap, fast food for my own good.
As my roommate frequently says about himself, “I need queer eye for the queer guy.”
Or at least, happen to want to do guys.
It’s almost enough to make you wonder why people go on about how shows like “Queer Eye” and “Will and Grace” are such “positive portrayals of homosexuals in the media.” To me, they just seem like “The Jeffersons” and “Sanford and Son” were in the late 70’s.
I’m a straight male, and I’ll have you know that I’m a pretty darned good cook. However, I live by myself, and cooking is a whole lot of bother for just one person. My freezer’s small, too, so I can’t even do the casserole-for-a-week’s-worth-of-meals thing, like I’d like to. So usually, I have Ramen or hot dogs or something similarly simple for dinner. But I do host a dinner party once a year (at Easter, so I can make Gramma’s traditional recipes), and I tend to get elaborate for potlucks.
Now, gay men in a relationship don’t have the problem of cooking for one, so they might cook “real” food more often than I. But then, the same could be said of straight men in a relationship. And I suppose that if gay men have friends over for dinner more often, they’d cook more, but I don’t have any reason to suppose that they would.
See - proof that gay men are unnatural, and should set aside their deviant ways to embrace women! Convert to heterosexuality! Convert to the joys of good cooking in the marital home! Convert! Convert!
(You’ll just have to imagine the didactic fingerwaving, as they don’t do a smiley for it.)
I refute your hijack, sirrah. I didn’t need to shave at all until I was in my twenties, and nobody’s ever accused me of unmanliness.
One wonders how much more progressive our culture would be if more people understood this.
I enjoy “Queer Eye,” but I’ve said more than once that “Will & Grace” strikes me as hardly better than a minstrel show.
Last night I ate top ramen. But I added some rice vinegar and some chili oil to make it taste a little less, well, shelfy.
The night before I had Chinese takeout: mushu pork and pot stickas.
The night before I had two martinis with anchovy-stuffed olives, and an apple.
The night before I had triscuits and cottage cheese.
The night before I had pasta with a sauce I made from fresh Roma tomatoes; fresh basil, oregano, and rosemary from my garden; fresh garlic; and pine nuts browned in a little bacon fat. And a martini with chipotle-stuffed olives.
Recently, I’ve had such things for supper as Burger King, rice-and-lentils, slow-cooked chicken stuffed with garlic cloves, and a whole jar of pickled okra.
Today at lunch I went to Pike Place Market and bought some halibut cheeks and fresh plant materials, so I’m going to saute the 'but cheeks in butter with dill and diced garlic flowers and squeeze a meyer lemon over them. I’ll eat them with the pattypan squash I bought, which I will brown slightly in butter, and broccoli-rabe, which I will wilt in hot olive oil and splash with black rice vinegar. I’ll probably have a martooni or tee, maybe with spicy Thai pickled garlic.
I have two chickens and some turkey backs in my freezer, so I may either make some turkey broth this weekend, or try another slow-cook thingy with a chicken. Thinking of tossing in some ginger, garlic, and basil, with maybe some coconut milk, and slowcooking a bird that way, see how it turns out.
Or I may eat cold baked beans out of a can over the sink.
In reply to a post by Captain Amazing,
He’d better be a man. Because I’m a man.
Lemme explain that.
Half the time when I come into a thread, and see something I want to post a specific reply to, and then scroll down to see that someone has already posted what I wanted to post – more often than not, the poster who posted that post will have been Captain Amazing.
It’s eerie. I suspect I may have unwittingly stepped into a mental cloning machine years ago. (Or maybe C.A. did, and I’m his mental clone.)
Naw, the gay guys who cook are just too busy whipping up fabulous yummies to post to the board 
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OMG, I spent years eating prepackaged Romanoff noodles. I was partial to the Lipton Noodle variety. I don’t know why you can’t find Romanoff noodles anymore; did the nation have some sort of huge taste shift? Anyway, what a cool link; I’ll have to try those recipes.
You have to be fucking kidding me.
My singular culinary achievement is that I make a mean Spanish tortilla, and that I’m currently trying to ensure that my diet isn’t entirely packaged and includes at least the occasional vegetable. That’s about all you can expect from me.
I also dress badly, while we’re examining that.
Sigh, I’m repeating myself from here, but I’d say to a limited degree gay men on the whole tend to be more aware of their diets, for the simple reason that on the whole appearance matters more to men than it does to women. So I’d say there’s more obsessing about low-fat, low-sugar eating.
And, of course, there will be lots of exceptions, many represented in this thread. But I do believe it’s a valid generalization, as generalizations go.