Come on it isn't THAT hard to do

[Muriel Heslop]

Yes, but you're assuming you'd be cooking. We know Michelle doesn't. If she did, she could get the middle kids to help. They probably shouldn't handle knives, but they can stir things, measure things, etc. Since the middle kids are boys, they could even use that as a FU Internets moment.

I just can't even with having kids help cook for 21 people. It would take all damn day! :lol:

[church_of_dog]

And I did not say any of that. What I said is that people have the perception that it is difficult. And the foodie culture is not helping dispel that, and I think at times makes that perception seem even more valid to those that hold it. A friend of mine was asked by someone to show him some basic cooking skills and, being a sort of foodie wannabe, informed him that before he could make basic dishes he had to grow his own herbs in pots at his house. He decided to stick to frozen food. If someone doesn't know how to boil noodles, you can't get them interested in cooking by starting with how to grow your own cilantro nor does the Slate "you're doing it wrong" approach work.

Thumbs up to all the recent posts in this thread. I feel like I am a perfect example of this.

The cooking in my childhood household was boring but not horrible. I didn't learn much in the way of kitchen skills (although we also managed to avoid much junk food, casseroles, cream-of soups, etc.).

For most of my young adult life, cooking was a bother, something that got in the way of whatever else I was focusing on.

Now, in my middle age, I really want to focus on it, but have tried a few times and mostly failed, which is discouraging. I have some underlying principles I try to follow (ie I'm aiming for simple vs complicated, healthy, etc) and sometimes I have gotten caught in the "start by growing your own herbs" level of confusion that just sets up more failure.

I also have learned a bit over the past decade about how my brain works. How I learn things. And I see that sometimes things that work for other people just don't work for me. I have a VERY hard time learning anything "part-way" -- it's all or nothing in my brain, not just around food but in general in life. I need "step by step" and "start from the beginning" more than most folks do. Once I know something well, I can run with it in terms of improvising and inventing beyond that level. But I need to go with "rules" farther than most folks, I guess, otherwise I get lost, or have too many failed attempts which gets too discouraging.

So now I am going to take that knowledge and find an approach to cooking that truly works for me, something that takes me beyond my current comfort zones (I'm not a zero cook nor am I a horrible cook, I just have a very small repertoire and I struggle with the "too much bother, I'll just revert to my three easy staples" mentality at mealtime.

I think I'll design a winter project ( I never feel like cooking when it's hot) to develop an additional ten or so "go-to" meals that I can do without much effort -- soups, riceybeany pots, etc. And a couple of oven dishes, maybe. Thanks to this thread for the motivation! :dance:

[mlady]

I've only used "cream of..." a couple times in my life. Cream of mushroom soup, for example, was reserved for the famous Betty Crocker Chicken over Rice recipe that is the closest thing to a casserole I've ever actually made. I was more the stir fry/pasta/tacos kind of cook with the occasional meat/side dish thrown in. Lot's of salads and sandwiches too. Since dinner was really the only meal I spent time on I could also get away with "breakfast for dinner" with eggs, pancakes, etc. since the usual breakfast in my house was toast or cereal.

I remember our poor, fish stick years too...lol.

[Ariel]

I have to say, though, that often for me it IS too hard. I'm veggie and live by myself, and although I have good intentions most veggie cooking is too labor intensive, or makes too much food, so if I'm not making something the rest of the family (lives close) wants, I wind up plopping in front of the TV, not cooking, at the end of the day. If it weren't that I live near a Trader Joes and lots of ethnic places, I'd probably be living on yogurt, fruit cups and cheese sandwiches for weeks at a time.

I live alone too and cooking for one isn't great. Unfortunately, recipes tend to take the same amount of time whether you're making one serving or four. I find it very frustrating to spend more than 30 minutes after work trying to make dinner, especially at the beginning of the school year when I'm extra exhausted and tend to pass out by 8:30. I try to do all my cooking on Sundays and reheat throughout the week but I always have 2 back up frozen meals in case :) Frozen lasagna is my savior.

I found a cookbook 'One Pan, Two Plates' that I was very excited about. It seemed perfect for people living alone or in twos. Most of the recipes seem a bit over my budget though so I may have to wait to try them out.

[Arete]

One thing I could not recommend enough for anyone who wants to branch out their cooking--Youtube videos. What makes them so helpful is that you can see what the food is supposed to look like during various stages of preparation and cooking. A lot of people are visual learners, so while a written recipe is always good, being able to track your food's visual progress is even better.

Yeah, pay no attention to the people behind the curtain who start waxing lyrical about herb growing and cooking as if you can't do one without the other. The thing about cooking is that it starts as a skill anyone can acquire and can evolve into a high art form for certain people. Nutritious, tasty food is at the level of skill anyone can acquire.

[Ariel]

I just remembered something!

The best goddamned cook book I've ever had is "Just 5 Things" by Reader's Digest. As the name states, every recipe has only 5 ingredients. The majority of the food takes 45 minutes or less and everything I've made is so fucking delicious. Some of the recipes call for expensive ingredients, but most are simple, cheap, and easily accessible. I cannot recommend this cook book enough.

There are a ton of recipes, including vegetarian, and almost every recipe ha a picture. Also, it's less than $10.

http://www.amazon.com/Just-Things-Gourm ... B003XU7W4Q

[jenny_islander]

I also have learned a bit over the past decade about how my brain works. How I learn things. And I see that sometimes things that work for other people just don't work for me. I have a VERY hard time learning anything "part-way" -- it's all or nothing in my brain, not just around food but in general in life. I need "step by step" and "start from the beginning" more than most folks do. Once I know something well, I can run with it in terms of improvising and inventing beyond that level. But I need to go with "rules" farther than most folks, I guess, otherwise I get lost, or have too many failed attempts which gets too discouraging.

So now I am going to take that knowledge and find an approach to cooking that truly works for me, something that takes me beyond my current comfort zones (I'm not a zero cook nor am I a horrible cook, I just have a very small repertoire and I struggle with the "too much bother, I'll just revert to my three easy staples" mentality at mealtime.

Check out something by Marion Cunningham and see if her approach suits you. She teaches American plain cooking to total non-cooks. Her lessons cover things like which dishes need to be soaked immediately after using, why the size of cut-up food matters, etc.

[OkToBeTakei]

Many and sincere apologies for being late to this thread. I'm on holiday, so just checking in ....anyway

You are welcome :D

[JesusFightClub]

Interesting thread!

I'm not a cook, I really can't be bothered. I eat my breakfast from the work canteen, my lunch from the work canteen, and my tea is either a takeaway or cheese toasties and baked beans. Or I go round to my mum's house. She has some basic meals she likes:

Fried chicken with boiled potatoes and broccoli/salad/asparagus

Roast chicken with roast potatoes, broccoli/asparagus and peas

Fried salmon with boiled potatoes and salad

Pizza (a ready meal)

Steak or beefburgers with boiled potatoes and broccoli

She's a great cook so all of those meals are super tasty (aside from the pizza. We disagree about this. She likes it burnt to a crisp, I like it a bit oozy).

We keep sweet stuff to a minimum, so dessert at her house is either non-existent or a mini cupcake. As for "cream of" soups, she has a total repugnance to them and so do I. I can handle cream of tomato but that's it, she can't even do that.

(Once I was on Guide camp and I saw what cream of mushroom looks like in its natural state - a giant quivering lump of mushroom jelly with dents in it which matched the sides of the can. It gave me the dry boak and I was not eating that shit for anything.)

[tinuviel]

I really got into cooking around middle school when home and cooking channels started getting big. Seeing everything, hearing tips, and getting a sense of what flavor combinations show up regularly was great.

I still find recipes somewhat overwhelming as I'm really not patient enough to use exact measurements. Lots of recipes are just so loooong and detailed. I got some good skills from watching and can now read recipes for the general idea and just do it (or something similar)K, but yup. Count me among the group that wouldn't have done great with a stack of cookbooks!

Of course fundies would have to find a Titus2 woman....wouldn't want to use YouTube unsupervised or defraud anyone with Giada Di Laurentis or scandalize them with Ina Gartens endless supply of fabulous gay friends. ;-P

Edited because phone.

[treehugger]

Thanks OKTBK

I should know better than to read FJ while eating breakfast.

[Arete]

OK, how many times is she allowed to do that before getting sent to the prayer closet?

[formergothardite]

I hate you. OKTBT

:lol:

[church_of_dog]

Check out something by Marion Cunningham and see if her approach suits you. She teaches American plain cooking to total non-cooks. Her lessons cover things like which dishes need to be soaked immediately after using, why the size of cut-up food matters, etc.

Mrs. C?

:lol: :lol:

Seriously, I will definitely check her out, thank you!

[bookiewookie]

They actually sell canned whole chickens? *shudder*

[bookiewookie]

They actually sell canned whole chickens? *shudder*

Oh, wow, you can also buy cheeseburgers in a can too:

buzzfeed.com/thefalafel/this-is-what-a-canned-cheeseburger-looks-like-4x8q

[salex]

I think the truth is that a lot of people perceive it as hard whether it really is or not. And, as wtlycf said so well, if you don't enjoy cooking, it is a chore and the faster the better. So many people lack even basic food prep skills. On another forum I read, a woman is asking for "recipes" for things like mashed potatoes, boiling pasta, and making a hamburger. I kind of laughed at the whole thread--but the reality is if you need a "recipe" to boil macaroni, you aren't going to be making cream sauces from scratch any time soon. I also think that when the very food-oriented among us begin to tell people "that shortcut your taking is disgusting" and "you're doing it wrong" (the Slate cooking feature with that title irritates me to no end!), we just contribute to intimidating them right out of the kitchen. My mother-in-law doesn't even bother with the cream soup recipes, she mostly just heats frozen casseroles from Costco. (The upside of that is that I can put the simplest dish on the table and my husband loves it!). The way to teach people to do something new and different is never to tell them what they are already doing is wrong, but to actively show them a better way. All good teachers know you cannot berate someone into learning. When I made a simple spaghetti carbonara in front of my mother-in-law and served it to them, she was intrigued by the fact that the whole thing was not complicated as she would have imagined and decided to try it herself.

My brother in law's second wife was from a family that didn't cook much. They were all thin, but had all been raised on hot dogs and sandwiches. The first time we went to inlaw's house for dinner while they were living together she served individually wrapped twinkies from a bread basket with a napkin over it. When they hosted a holiday dinner, they used instant mashed potatoes and gravy from a jar. Cakes and pies were always purchased, by her, by her mother and by her grandmother.

She was educated, had been married a couple of times before--but her family had zero history of cooking. Brother in law was from a family who cooked, so he started doing a bit more when people were coming over, and they went out a lot. He gained weight and she didn't (genes) so they backed off on that. But a cream soup recipe would have been a huge step for this woman, and one she never took that I knew of.

[Mary C Doates]

Oh, wow, you can also buy cheeseburgers in a can too:

buzzfeed.com/thefalafel/this-is-what-a-canned-cheeseburger-looks-like-4x8q

Thank you for not posting a photo (as opposed to some people who just have to share).

I don't think we'll be having chicken in my house for some time to come.

Bleecchh

[Conuly]

Yes, but you're assuming you'd be cooking. We know Michelle doesn't. If she did, she could get the middle kids to help. They probably shouldn't handle knives, but they can stir things, measure things, etc. Since the middle kids are boys, they could even use that as a FU Internets moment.

There really is no reason a typically developing school-aged child, with some supervision, can't use a knife to chop things.

Here, take a look at this picture:

http://books.google.com/books?id=HSkaQ3FTsLIC&pg=PA6

It took me forever to find that link, too! I should bookmark the article I got it from.

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/ ... ingle.html

(One more, for good measure: http://www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_o ... _kids.html)

[Lainey]

What did we ever do to you, OKTBT? I agree with whoever said that picture should be among the things we all just agree to never talk about...that, and the roast sitter lady.

:shifty-kitty:

[bookiewookie]

There really is no reason a typically developing school-aged child, with some supervision, can't use a knife to chop things.

Here, take a look at this picture:

http://books.google.com/books?id=HSkaQ3FTsLIC&pg=PA6

It took me forever to find that link, too! I should bookmark the article I got it from.

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/ ... ingle.html

(One more, for good measure: http://www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_o ... _kids.html)

I think my mom let me start helping her cut things like veggies when I was around 5-7 or so...nowhere near as young as the baby in the photo, but definitely younger than quite a number of the middle/younger Duggars. There's enough people in the Duggar family to at least spread out the cooking so that it doesn't ALWAYS fall to the J'Slaves.

When I was living in a house with 26 or so other people, we all took turns cooking. 3-4 people would help with meal prep and cooking, with one person in the group being "in charge" regarding menu planning and telling people what needed to be done. It worked pretty well and we were able to get healthy, delicious food on the table pretty quickly.

[OkToBeTakei]

What did we ever do to you, OKTBT? I agree with whoever said that picture should be among the things we all just agree to never talk about...that, and the roast sitter lady.

:shifty-kitty:

I am FEELING the love :P

Don't tempt me to make it my avatar again. I'm really feeling the urge :D

[Arete]

Where did I lay that plumbing line? :confusion-scratchheadblue:

[OkToBeTakei]

Where did I lay that plumbing line? :confusion-scratchheadblue:

You gave it to Zsu so she can reinvent drying your clothes as most folk do. Like toast :D

[LadyBlue]

And ranks right up there with the canned whole chicken...NASTY!

How about this

? Gotta love the Japanese