My roommate and I take turns cooking. We have no microwave. Sometimes we’ll cook every night for a week; other times we’ll have take-out three nights in a row, depending on how busy we are. Both of us do enjoy cooking, though.
I always eat out (cleaned out and switched off my refrigerator in May of 2006). I ascribe part of my weight gain when I got obese to pigging out before the TV at night as a way to wind down from work stress. Now I have lost some 30 kg and want to stay that way, so I have got a list of favourite restaurants where I have “the usual” - my canonical, not-too-expensive, defined-portion evening meal.
I used to cook a lot before I got a job so far away from home. Now I tend to eat out more and do more of the instant meal kind of thing. It also is kind of a pain to cook because I am single and my roommate is incredibly picky so she doesn’t eat a lot of what I make. For instance, last week I had 4 chicken breasts that I made on Friday. That night we had chicken and bowtie pasta and veggies. The next night we did chicken quesadillas. The night after we had bbq chicken sandwiches. and we STILL have more chicken left to use. Tonight I think I am going to do the left over chicken with some pasta and veggies again or perhaps it will be turned into chicken pizza, but I will be damned if I eat chicken again for at least two weeks. If that had been a casserole or something more difficult to dress up as different meals it would have gone bad and been thrown out because I simply cannot bring myself to eat the same thing every day for 4 or 5 days. Also since I live in Manhattan I have no dishwasher so cooking creates a huge amount of dishes even if you occasionally use disposeable plates and flatware. In prep for Thanksgiving I have purchased disposeable pans for the turkey and the ham and premade pie crusts in the pan to help cut down on prep and cleaning but it is still going to be a lot of time and effort for a week or two of leftovers.
I eat one meal a day and I no NOT prepare it myself in any way shape or form. The hospital cafeteria is offensively inedible so I smoke and drink diet coke and then go out to dinner with the BF at night. We’ve got about a million restaurants in walking distance. About six months ago I tried to make pad thai which I learned is a very difficult thing to just make from scratch especially if its the first thing you’ve cooked…EVER. Needless to say it was AWFUL. I also couldn’t find any tamarind paste at whole foods and I didn’t want to go to the Indian grocery across town. Someday I’ll try again.
I do have a rice maker and can make my own sushi when I feel like dropping some bones on fresh fish at the asian grocer. But I rarely do this anymore. I come from a long lineage of being raised by delightful southern african american nannies which in turn means you are raised lacking certain life skills you are supposed to get from your mom.
I realize I didn’t really answer the question.
We ‘don’t cook’ by that definition only a few times a month. 3-4, on average.
We have a few frozen items we’ll pull out if we’re really not inclined to cook but don’t want to wait for delivery (chicken fingers, though we’ve found a recipe we want to try to make ourselves), or soups (I don’t often make soup, and when I do it makes way more than we really would eat even when we freeze it) or such. Us getting delivery has dropped considerably since it generally involves an hour to two hour wait (that’s an average night, a busy night or one with inclement weather we’ve been quoted 3-4 hours once… no joke) and takeout is a big hassle since the closest to home is limited in selection and I haven’t a car to drive further out.
I really love cooking but almost never do it. I probably cook an actual meal 5 times a year.
Let’s see…Saturday is usually a pizza or something like that. Sunday is usually a cooked meal. Monday…either a cooked meal or soup/sandwich day. Tuesday, Wednesday, usually cooked. Thursday is Date Night, so that’s a meal out. Friday can either be cooked meal, take-out or soup/sandwich. So I’d say an average or 3-4 times a week I cook dinner. And I’m a good cook, female and 41.
I’m a cook in a restaraunt. So excluding my energy bar in the mornings or my Wheat Thin/Cream Cheese fix, about 2/3 of the food I eat is prepared by me. I love to make food because the results are instantaneous. In fact, it’s lunch time. Omelet, here I come.
I haven’t cooked in twenty years, unless you count toast.
I heat things up in pot, but only food that was already cooked, like canned beans or hash.
As often as possible. There are very few things I’m less interested in than eating, and one of them is cooking. Another one is eating someone else’s home cooking. Not that I eat out all the time. I sort of graze all day at work and don’t usually eat dinner. My oven could be broken for six months before I’d realize it.
I cook about 3 times a week average.
On sunday I’ll make Big-ass meals(crock-pot stews and chilis, roasts, buckets’o’stir-fry etc.) that I’ll eat For Sunday, Monday and Wednesday(usually cold sandwich or microwave reheated.
Usually I cook something different tuesday then thursday. Friday is grab a pizza or a Wendy’s baconator day. Saturday then ends up as grill or barbecue for friends during college football season, or any other Saturday with a big game, otherwise go out for a meal.
I’ll happily cook everyday when I between jobs, but it’s just to much to work, cook, and cleanup every damn day 
Same here. Partly it’s because I hate cleaning up more than I love cooking, and partly it’s because I live alone and it’s just a helluva lot easier (albeit more expensive) to eat out or get take-out.
Depends on my schedule, my mood, and my finances. If I’m lazy, the dishes are all dirty, and I have the money, I’ll walk down to the Indian place and get some take-out. But I love to cook, so as long as I’m not really depressed and staring at an overflowing sink, I’ll usually cook.
I luuuuurve cooking. Although, when I’m single I don’t cook as often, or invite friends over, because what I really enjoy about cooking is cooking for someone else. I’m taken now, and my BF loves to eat, so I probably cook about 5 or 6 nights a week. Although some of that is sprucing up leftovers into a similar, but slightly new meal.
How often do I not cook?
As often as possible.
I don’t find anything about the cooking process particularly fun, and the cleaning up process is unpleasant. I never make anything by adding water, though, I think I’m pretty lucky because I live in an area where ready-to-eat food is varied, plentiful, and of good quality. A typical dinner at home might be along the lines of a good antipasto, with olives, cheese, meats, smoked fish, nuts and whatever.
I do like to bake and I’m good at it, but that’s a special occasion sort of thing.
I am single and earn a good wage. I eat out often.
On the weekdays we usually end up ordering in or eating leftovers, just due to work schedules and coming home and being exhausted. However, on the weekends we’ll usually make breakfast on Sunday, and dinner on either Sunday or Saturday night. Last Sunday’s dinner was a pork shoulder braised in beer with butter cream mashed potatoes, stuffing, and a pan sauce; and this Saturday’s meal is probably going to be a pork tenderloin with garlic confit wrapped in bacon.
I don’t enjoy cooking and almost never do so: TV dinners are easy, portion-controlled, and really pretty cheap if you buy whatever brand is on sale. My husband cooks on the weekend. I don’t doubt that there can be joy in cooking, but I have a job I love that leads to 10-12 hour days and after that I don’t want good food, I want quick food.
I cook most nights - sometimes that involves up to four separate meals because of conflicting schedules and tastes. If I do cook something which is large, half goes in the freezer for next time, so even though I’ve only heated a meal up in the microwave, I’ve previously cooked it from scratch.
On the days when I feel lazy, we buy a cooked chicken and chips or sushi for dinner.
It depends on whether I answer for me, personally or us.
I actually cook something a couple of times a year, tops - I find it more effort than it’s worth. I’d happily eat out every night, and it’s only for cost and health reasons that I don’t permit myself to.
My wife cooks 2-3 nights a week, depending on our schedules. She’s fairly skilled in the kitchen, but like me often finds the amount of effort involved burdensome. She almost always cooks dinner on Sunday nights, and usually on Tuesdays.
On Mondays this time of year we both go to her parents’ house and eat there while watching Monday Night Football. Dinner is either delivered pizza or something home-cooked, depending on her mother’s whim that day. (Her mother is an excellent cook.)
On Thursdays I meet a friend for dinner before my concert band rehearsal - I don’t get home until after 10:00. My wife has dinner with one of her friends - usually at the friend’s house.
For the past several months, we have had an arrangement with our loves-to-cook next door neighbor: She cooks us dinner on Wednesday and Friday nights, and we pay her for her troubles. This concept was initially voiced as a joke, and after thinking about it for a moment she and my wife both decided it might not be so silly after all. I pooh-poohed it when it was first mentioned to me, but I must admit it has worked out very well. We can afford it; we’d probably be eating out most of those nights were this arrangement not in place; it’s healthier; the neighbor is a damn good cook. I still laugh when I think about it, but all parties involved are very happy.
On Saturdays neither of us is in any mood at all to spend time in the kitchen.
If our oven or stove quit working, I’m not sure I’d notice until my wife told me about it. The microwave dying would be much more serious…
I cook almost all my meals myself. I am 36 and single. It’s just too expensive to eat out. If I eat out once every couple of weeks, I end up feeling guilty afterwards when I know full well I have a kitchen fully stocked at home. I do not make single servings; I make large batches and freeze the extra for later meals.
I eat out less and less as time goes by, because I have gradually been building up my collection of cooking tools. A few months ago I bought a Kitchenaid Artisan mixer, which means I do not have to ever buy delivery pizza again. And in fact I haven’t since I got it. I already knew how to make homemade pizza, as I co-owned a pizza restaurant several years ago. But making it by hand is tedious, and it never fully develops the gluten when you make it that way.
Anyway, my goal is to eventually learn to make literally any food that I have ever craved so that I never have to eat out again. Right now I am working on mastering my wok skills for Chinese cooking.