The average person spends two hours per day cooking

[2xx1xy1JD]

I remember having to eat a liquid diet at the hospital after my c-sections. Typical meal was clear chicken broth, apple juice and Jello. I got SO jealous watching my husband eat normal food, esp. when his family brought in a birthday cake for him. [Yes, I had a planned c-section on my husband's birthday, and he hasn't had a hissy fit about it.]

[OkToBeTakei]

Not quite.

Junket: milk, sugar, rennet

Blancmange: milk, sugar, gelatin, sometimes cornflour

Custard: milk, sugar, egg or egg and cornflour or cornflour

UK custard= US pudding

UK jelly= US jell-o

UK jam or jelly= US jam or jelly

UK distinction between powdered dessert jelly and jarred preserve jelly is by flavor (mint, red currant= jar, strawberry etc = powdered mix), but like US, there are no bits in jelly, and there are in jam.

It's confusing indeed! If you spread it on bread its jam if it wobbles it jelly :lol:

Junket sounds fascinating, I don't think I've ever had it.

Pudding is a term we use for dessert . Custard is just custard. So many things are something pudding, that must be confusing?

Eve's pudding, jam pudding, Yorkshire pudding! Etc.

Mind you thinking about it, proper custard when baked I've heard called baked custard pudding.... Mind explodes :lol:

[salsa]

If you count cook-time where I'm not even in the kitchen, you can say I'm cooking 2-3 hours a day. If you count only time I'm in the kitchen, maybe half an hour. I don't count the time the chicken is in the oven while I'm in the shower.

Also I doubt that in the past, the average wife cooked 4+ hours. If the average in the 50's or so is more than that 2 hours, then there are a lot of hours wives have to make up for the husbands who didn't cook.

It isn't surprising more eating now isn't homemade. If you work 1.5 jobs, you may have things to do at home you can't compromise on, so through the drive thru you go so you can spend your precious minutes doing laundry or helping with homework. Having an at-home parent isn't the usual anymore.

I'm a child of the 60's - 70's and I promise you that my mom, though she was a homemaker, never spent that much time cooking. Biscuits were Pillsbury, cakes were mixes, until we had a microwave and there was a type where you mixed water in the box and nuked it, vegetables were canned, and meat was well done. Sure, there were iceberg lettuce salads, and big breakfasts on Saturday, but our breakfasts were Pop Tarts, kid cereal, and stuff like that. Our snacks were packaged....

I just hate all this implication that homemakers were so much more dedicated in the past. I have a career and I spend more time in the kitchen than my mom, the homemaker ever did.* I see it as being akin to one of these faux wars on something-or-other: "OH NOOOO! Women are spending less time cooking!!! There's a war on homemaking!!" It's sounding an alarm implying that our society is falling apart.

I'm more concerned with what people are eating instead (based on what we grew up eating, it's a wonder we didn't glow in the dark), with obesity being such a problem these days. I've seen a couple documentaries about food insecurity and the politics involved in it (and how that relates to the rise of obesity) and it's quite a complicated issue. Impoverished people (especially the working poor) rely on things like inexpensive canned pasta, because after standing on your feet all day in a low-level job that makes you physically hurt, who wants to bother whipping up a sauce? Canned meals are also provided at food pantries (though, as I volunteer at a food pantry, I can attest that the clients ask for things like Spam and sugary cereal).

*qualifier: but my mom's house still is so clean you can wear a pair of white socks in it all day and they won't even look dirty. *MY* house, on the other hand - well.... I don't call it dust; it's a matte veneer... Different priorities; my mom doesn't really like cooking and since we could afford easier stuff, she bought it, and she likes things to be neat and clean.

[salex]

That sounds revolting. I knew about potato flakes, because I had a recipe which used them for supposedly super soft rolls. I was never brave enough to make "mashed" potato out of them.

A sister in law (husband's brother's wife) invited us to thanksgiving one year. We had a boxed turkey roll of some kind (Pressed and formed and frozen) instant mashed potatoes, gravy from a jar, a box of stovetop and I think her husband made greenbean casserole and she bought pies. She really never learned to cook, but over the years, more things were available to just buy already cooked.

[SpeshulTaterTot]

My grandmother worked, had four kids, baked her own bread, and didn't have a washing machine until my mother was almost a teenager. I very much doubt she had the time to cook for two hours a day.

I eat most of my meals at home and cook from scratch, and I most definitely do not spend two hours a day cooking.

[2xx1xy1JD]

My husband's late grandmother did spend hours cooking each day - but she was working with a tiny kitchen that consisted of a minifridge, a single sink and 2 burners. I also suspect that some cultures used time-consuming techniques as a way of combatting food poisoning and/or food-borne illnesses, so any raw food was avoided. His nana would be in tears, crying out "why does Mom work? Who will cook?", because life as she knew it consisted of getting up at 5 a.m. to start preparing food. Her stuff was delicious, but there's no way I am going to recreate that.

ETA: Found an interesting study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3639863/

I think that a major focus will need to be on how to get nutrient-rich foods in shorter time, because there is resistance to spending time cooking. You can have healthier prepared foods - for example, pre-cut veggies that can be taken for lunch.

[HereticHick]

One of my sisters-in-law does not cook at all. Her husband does the cooking in their family.

My headship does most of the cooking; he's better at it & enjoys it more. I do the shopping & cleaning (because I'm better at both). Because he's not a SOTDRT graduate, he can puzzle his way through a Minute Rice recipe. :lol:

[EmmieJ]

I definitely don't spend two hours per day cooking. For one thing, I don't cook breakfast. I cut up some fruit for myself and my son, which takes at most 5 minutes. Then I stop on my way to work and grab a cup of coffee.

Lunch is either leftovers (so no cooking involved as it's already made), or purchased at the grocery store, as I often do grocery shopping on my lunch hour.

I make a crockpot meal once a week, so the only cooking time is putting it in the crock pot and turning it on. Side dishes consist of salad (5 to 10 minutes to prepare), pasta (10 minutes), steamed veggies (well under 10 minutes), fresh fruit, or potatoes of some kind. I don't bake potatoes in the oven anymore, ever since my sister gave me a fabric microwave bag. The potatoes turn out wonderfully well in about 6 minutes.

I will spend more time cooking on Sundays, when I prepare a big breakfast of eggs, bacon or sausage, fruit, etc. Still, that really doesn't take much time. I also do my baking on the week-ends, like banana nut bread, or carrot/zucchini muffins.

I had to laugh at how many people hate doing dishes and love their dishwashers. I don't know why, but I'm the opposite. Maybe because it's just me and my son, but I've always preferred doing the dishes by hand and rarely use my dishwasher.

[2xx1xy1JD]

I don't love doing dishes my hand, but I'll prefer it to having dishes go through the dishwasher without getting clean.

I seem to the be only one in the family capable of loading a dishwasher properly. I don't care what any ad says - you cannot jam plates together with no space in between, and leave half of the meal still on the plate, and expect to find that the dishes will be cleaned. Also, my MIL - who is a total saint who willingly cleans everything when she eats dinner at our place - does put sharp knives in the dishwasher. Blade side up. Ouch!

[thoughtful]

It's confusing indeed! If you spread it on bread its jam if it wobbles it jelly :lol:

I don't eat either, but, typically, I know a song about it!

[bBvideo 560,340:2fx4r2te]

[/bBvideo]

[bBvideo 560,340:2fx4r2te]

[/bBvideo]

[polecat]

Well, I spent at least two hours today cooking and now have no desire whatsoever to mess with dinner.

First, breakfast -- omelettes. That didn't take long.

But then the lunches ... the kids have specific things they like eating throughout the week, and while I could buy them, I prefer making them because then I know what's in them (also, often cheaper) ... so I started off with homemade "hot pockets," with a parmesan-oregano crust, marinara sauce, two types of cheese, turkey pepperoni and freshly mixed Italian sausage from the farmer's market. I made another batch with ham, swiss, red pepper strips and onions. Then I made black bean burritos -- homemade tortillas, refried black beans, onions, and cheese. These are all easy to freeze and easy to pop in the microwave for a fast lunch. Then I made some veggie wraps with the remaining tortillas. I haven't tried to freeze those yet because we usually eat them cold. Anyway, I'm pooped.

So dinner? I think I'm going to have the kids make something while I sit back and relax. I've earned it. :P

[OkToBeTakei]

Reading August' s junket last night I was unable to search it, I did at home- sounds palatable, is it like panacotta in texture?

For one awful moment I thought it might be like calf's foot jelly! Don't google that unless you have a strong tummy!

Add me to the list of no great joy with dishwashers.