Do you like to cook? If yes, why? If not, why not?

In My Humble Opinion
41

I love cooking. I’d do a lot more of it if I had the time.

A big reason is that I like to eat. And I don’t mean that facetiously. There are two types of people in the world: people for whom food is interesting and exciting, and to whom the difference between a good meal and a bad meal is a very big deal; and people for whom food is just fuel, and who don’t seem to noticed the difference between microwaved ramen and a perfectly-seasoned steak. I am in the former camp, and the other type baffle me. There are lots of them in my extended family, and they make me sad. I think a lot of times I cook to show my love for my family, and some of them are completely oblivious to what that means.

Anyway, 90% of the time, when I eat out or buy fancy little treats, my first thought is “I could cook this better than this.” There are very few sources of food in my (very rural) area that are both better than what I make and not astronomically expensive.

I also enjoy the challenge of tackling something I’ve always thought of as “too hard” and managing to make it successfully.

42

:eek: Yeeaaaahhh. . .that’s called mis en place, better known as “cooking”.

43

I like the idea of cooking.

I like when I actually try something and it works and tastes good.

I like looking at recipes and trying to figure out if I’ll like them and my husband will like them (we’re both picky, and our picky runs in divergent areas).

But I can’t say that I like the process.

I’m not confident about my cooking( this recipe calls for onions, but we don’t like onions, but I don’t know what will happen if I just leave them out… ) , I don’t know enough to recognize if things are going well or badly (are the calzones supposed to brown on top while they’re cooking?), I don’t understand the general principles very well (last time I broiled something I set the oven on fire…) and I handle failure poorly (and the waste of food/time/resources drives me batty).

All of that means that the actual process of cooking (unless it’s something that I’ve mastered already) is really stressful.

I have this feeling that if pot were legal, I’d be a much better cook, because I’d be a lot more relaxed about the whole process.

44

I love cooking, I enjoy the process, the planning to make things all come together at the same time. What I don’t like is having to do it every night. I also dislike having to decide on the menus every. single. night.

45

I don’t even like eating.

46

At our house, the first step is, “Put the wine in the fridge.”

47

I enjoy cooking.

I think what I like so much is that it combines the artistic and the practical all in one. It’s got the potential be either an individual or a group activity. And it’s a great way to save money on the bottom line.

If there’s anything I don’t like, it’s when cooking requires multi-tasking on a tight time schedule. I couldn’t even consider working in a professional kitchen.

48

Love to cook. Love to shop for groceries. Love to feed people I care for. Love to take a recipe and make it my own as it’s really the only way in which I am creative. Only part of cooking I don’t enjoy and will not do is bake. It requires too much precision and not enough room for improvisation.

49

I hate it. I hate shopping for the ingredients, I hate all the chopping, dicing and slicing. I hate standing at the stove, stirring because if I leave for a minute, it’ll stick and/or burn. I hate the cleaning up afterwards. I hate having to decide what to cook. I’m no good at it and because I hate it, I do as little cooking as possible so I’ve never really got any better.

Unfortunately, I love to eat. So I have to cook. I’ve always said if I ever have a big lottery win, I’ll never cook again.

50

I enjoy it now, but came to it rather late. We both worked in service for years, often scarfing bar food, or ‘order in’, at 2am. There was no structure or routine to how we ate whatsoever. When we would occasionally cook, we’d have to shop first, and clean up a big mess after, always. It was a production. We also ate out a lot as our friends all worked in restaurants too! And we traveled lots and ate tons of street food in third world backwaters.

We bought this house 12yrs ago to take on caregiving for our last surviving parent following a paralyzingly stroke that left them fully bed ridden. And boyo did life change! Suddenly, in addition to an enormous load of caregiving, I needed to produce three squares, each day, everyday. At 45 I had to suddenly transform into Suzy Freaking Homemaker! Sheesh! Of course it was all just chaos and reeling for the first several months and then we started to find our feet.

The boredom of cooking the same half dozen things, coupled with all that street food I’d watched go together, and of course all those kitchens/chefs I’d had access to, all started to come together! I was pretty much housebound with caregiving so hubby took on the marketing, now he’s the master shopper, knows the deals, how to select fruits etc, very impressive to see.

Now I’m a wicked cook, my friends love coming over to eat. We never eat out, restaurants largely having lost their appeal. We have friends who invite us to their woodland cabin every year, when I ask what they want me to bring, what they like, crave or want, they always insist on leaving it entirely to my imagination!

I never quite understood those fifties style housewives I knew growing up, never happy until they were feeding someone food they made. But now I’m always feeding my single friends and young people, mostly because it was such a struggle for me during those years. When my niece moved to town to take a masters degree, my BFF was humorously miffed that all the leftovers were now going out the door with her! Especially the Asian street food!

Now it’s like nothing, here, let me whip you up some food! No struggle, the shopping, the deciding, the doing, the clean up, repeat. I feel a little sheepish for all those years I blew tons of money on not great food! I find it enjoyable, relaxing and rewarding now, what a turn around!

51

I LOVED to cook. It’s somewhat cathartic and relaxing in a Zen-like way to me because I come from the Iron Chef school of cooking (original Japanese, not American knock-off). I like starting off with a base ingredient such as chicken or pork and seeing what I can do with it based on what I have handy. I’ve had misses, and hits (more of those, thankfully), with the proviso that if it IS a huge success, I’ll likely never be able to exactly duplicate it because I rarely measure.

That said, I can always pull off a recipe if given the directions and measurements, and I’ve never understood anyone who says/thinks cooking is hard, because… well, the directions are RIGHT THERE.

My fiancé and I spent a good two hours the other night sitting on the sofa while “Goldeneye” played in the background, going through cookbooks from the 50’s thru 70’s and just marking things that sounded good/fun to make. I doubt we’ll ever try more that 1/100 of the things we chose.

It was a great evening.

52

I hate cooking because i hate cleaning. I will only cook if the other person promises to clean. When i don’t have to clean, i enjoy cooking because of the smells and as the op said, you get it the way you like it. Nobody but me can cook a steak the way i like it. If i don’t cook it, i usually feel like im choking it down rather than enjoying it.

53

I love cooking for many of the reasons already mentioned: conformance to preferences, cost savings, satisfaction of a success and/or review of a less-success, relaxation and general enjoyment. I also know how healthy my food is so that I’m not scarfing 3000mg sodium or 6 tablespoons of butter without realizing it.

Shopping is fun, too. I really enjoy heading to the grocery store (and I have many great ones to choose from) and just seeing what lands in the cart.

54

While not a massive fan of cleaning, I’m the opposite. I hate, hate, HATE cooking and have come to an arrangement with my son that he cooks Christmas dinner. He gets to choose the menu, I buy, pay for and clean up afterwards. Anything so that I don’t have to actually do the cooking.

55

:slight_smile: Thou’rt a gentleman and a scholar.

56

My SO loves cooking like some of you do. I like food, but I admit there have been times I wish he just wouldn’t. I don’t always need an elaborately prepared meal. If left to myself I would probably just microwave something. I don’t like the process of eating, I feel like it’s a big fat waste of time, sitting down to dinner together all formal-like. I know I’m probably weird in this, but I just want to get eating over with.

But he cooks with so much love that I do appreciate it.

57

I adore cooking and have been responsible for cooking in my household (whether living single, with a girlfriend, or, now, with my wife) since pretty much I became an adult. I dabbled plenty in college, but cooking never really became a part of my everyday routine until I moved out on my own.

I love it. And I’ve always loved it. It’s relaxing to me. It’s a creative endeavor, which I need. I get to learn and taste new things (which I adore). I can prepare food exactly the way I like it. And with friends and family around you (along with some adult beverages of choice), I really can’t think of a more perfect way to spend a day. I would purposely visit my own home-away-from-home in Budapest during Thanksgiving just so I could prepare the feast and be with my friends. Those are among my most perfect memories, where everything in the world was just right.

There’s nothing about cooking itself that I don’t like. The clean-up is another story, though.

58

:eek:

Okay, what do you mean by “formal-like”? To me that conjures up images of Downton Abbey, with everybody dressing up for dinner and
and
This past Sunday I made chicken casserole, spaghetti, lemon broccoli, corn bread, and no-bake cheesecake for dinner. It was just me, my wife, the baby, and my work wife and her girlfriend. Everything was served from serving dishes, but otherwise we were pretty casual as I mean it: nobody served anybody else (except, obviously, the baby), nobody was wearing anything unusual, and the work wife’s GF took off her shoes. Would that have been too formal for your taste?

Also, food tastes better the more you work at it. Says so in The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe. Are you calling Mrs. Beaver a liar?

You know how I feel about feelings. ::shiver ::

Wikipedia says it’s mise en place, but I thank you mightily for introducing me to this word. You get the fourth piece of fairy cake.

59

I enjoy cooking, but I’m not nearly as good a cook as Madame Pepperwinkle is, so I usually end up sous-cheffing, which is not nearly as fun. Come the holidays I will get to make fudge, and that’s a good time for all and sundry.

60

Hate cooking. I do it, because we have to eat and I’m not made of money, but specific aspects I hate:

  1. shopping
  2. having to carve out the time from other things I’d rather be doing
  3. related to #2, it has to be specific time, it can’t be when I happen to have some time available, as there’s no point in making breakfast at 11 PM
  4. I have yet to master how to make everything come out even, so it seems like there is always a lot of waste (and with a lot of things, even the smallest possible size is too big for our needs) and this drives me crazy
  5. despite doing it for many years, I’m not good enough to make really spectacular food so it always seems like a lot of work to get B+ meals at best
  6. cleaning up after

Sorry, I maintain that baking is different, and I like that a lot and am actually really good at it. Baking feels like both science and art to me, while cooking regular meals seems like a BIG STUPID HASSLE.