For those of you that are non-cooks

[DisneyBeagle]

I have read several threads lately where people say that they are non-cooks. I was wondering if you don't enjoy cooking or if you don't believe that you have the skills for cooking? Have you had a bad cooking experience in the past?

Myself I love to cook, but it's the cleaning up part that I hate so I don't cook as often as I would like.

 

[ilovepcot]

I was wondering about this as well. For those who have children, where on earth does all your food come from? Do you eat out *every* meal every day of your lives forever and ever and ever?

 

[C.Ann]

I have always loved to bake - and although I "could" cook (regular meals) I could never get too experimental about it because of my late DH's preferences..

Being alone most of the time now I can try pretty much anything I want.. I'll admit that I'm not into the ultra fancy things, but I'm a little puzzled as to how someone can mess up a recipe.. It's all right there - written out - so unless it's a stove issue or something like that, I'm just not sure how anyone can go "wrong".. (Not meant to criticize anyone who has had difficulties, as I will admit that even I still have a problem with pie crusts..)

I'll be interested to read the replies..

 

[PigletsPal2]

I cooked (and well, I might add!) til my kids were 6 and 12 and we started living overseas, where I always had a cook. After 17 years overseas gov't service, crazy work hours, and inherent laziness, I got out of the habit of real cooking. When necessary, I PREPARED food, not really cooked, but DD#2 loves to cook and when DH is up north working, she stays w/me and cooks up a storm! I also have a neurological disease which makes it dangerous to let me hold a knife LOL!

 

[jen0610]

I can answer this for my friend. She is a mom to 3, but does not call herself a cook.

She has never made spagetti. She buys the jared sauce with meat, heats it while she cooks the noodles. The garlic bread is the frozen stuff. When they come to our house and get spagetti, she knows that there is 2-3 lbs of meat, onion, garlic, seasons in the sauce that has simmered all day. The garlic bread is italian loaves with melted butter infused with garlic.

Pot Roast - the pre-cooked meal you find in the meat section or the packaged meal that you put in a pot and cook. She wouldn't know what type of meat to buy to make the roast. She wouldn't think to cut up potatoes, onions, carrots, and celery. She wouldn't know what seasons to put in with the meat.

Meatballs - come straight out of the bag from the frozen section.

The examples go on and on. She came from a single parent home. Her mom worked 3 jobs and most nights my friend was opening cans of soap to eat. Or ceral. Tv dinners and pot pies were for when her mom was home for dinner.

She readily admits, she should learn how to "cook", but she doesn't...why she doesn't . Her girls love to come to our house and fix food with me and my kids. She has asked how I came up with some of the dishes I make and I always tell her, either family or friends showed me or I jsut threw it together and tweaked it til it tasted right.

 

[Prose]

OK, I am not too proud to represent the non cooks....

First of all, DH is a fabulous cook and loves it. He cooks almost every evening, unless it is 'sandwich night.' I don't mind doing dishes...in fact, I find it one of the more relaxing parts of housework. It is very satisfying to go to bed with a clean kitchen. We both work full time and he gets home earlier than I do so it works out well.

So what do I hate about cooking? 1. figuring out what to make. 2. figuring out the timing - how to get everything to be done at the right time. 3. knowing the right techniques and seasonings...I just plain never LEARNED how to cook (mom hated it, too...), so I have no idea how long meat should cook on each side, what the right setting is on a burner so I won't blacken something, how to adjust if something goes wrong, etc. I find the whole process tedious, kind of like crafting and scrapping, which I also hate. (This in no way is a statement against those who love to scrap, cook or craft, it's just not my thing....DD is a passionate crafter).

Left to my own devices, it would be Lean Cuisines, salad bars and cereal. Thank God I have DH to save me!

 

[VickiVM]

OK, I am not too proud to represent the non cooks....

First of all, DH is a fabulous cook and loves it. He cooks almost every evening, unless it is 'sandwich night.' I don't mind doing dishes...in fact, I find it one of the more relaxing parts of housework. It is very satisfying to go to bed with a clean kitchen. We both work full time and he gets home earlier than I do so it works out well.

So what do I hate about cooking? 1. figuring out what to make. 2. figuring out the timing - how to get everything to be done at the right time. 3. knowing the right techniques and seasonings...I just plain never LEARNED how to cook (mom hated it, too...), so I have no idea how long meat should cook on each side, what the right setting is on a burner so I won't blacken something, how to adjust if something goes wrong, etc. I find the whole process tedious, kind of like crafting and scrapping, which I also hate. (This in no way is a statement against those who love to scrap, cook or craft, it's just not my thing....DD is a passionate crafter).

Left to my own devices, it would be Lean Cuisines, salad bars and cereal. Thank God I have DH to save me!

Our husbands must have been cut from the same cloth!! My husband cooks and grills. I've always said that he's the sexiest when he smells like smoke from our grill!

I bake, but don't cook. Like someone said before, I can prepare a meal and cook a few things from scratch. I don't need to cook for our family as long as I stay married to my husband. He enjoys cooking and has the patience for it. He's very creative.

I tell my daughters to marry a man who can cook.

 

[Christine]

I can cook when pressed but consider myself a non-cook because I hate it. I do it and can do just about anything but because there is no joy for me, I rush through it and don't always use the best techniques.

I find it tedious to prep my ingredients (chopping, measuring).

I hate the actually sauteeing, stirring, etc.

I hate cleaning up.

I do it because I love to it but I am pretty miserable through the whole process.

But I do have decent enough kitchen skills and can do just about anything I set my mind too. I guess I'm not really a non-cook in the sense of some of the people on the boards who really can't navigate around the kitchen.

 

[RadioNate]

I'm a non cooker. I can & do prepare food for my family. Shockingly, lots of time they like what I make. But I certainly don't enjoy it. The faster I can get it done the better.

Sure I can make spaghetti and pot roast. Anything that I can throw a bunch of stuff in the crock pot and not have to deal with it is a WIN for me.

If I can throw frozen chicken in the oven surrounded with some veggies, etc I'm ALL for it.

But things that require more work, forget about it. It isn't fun, it's a CHORE. I can think of 100 things I'd rather be doing that standing over a stove for hours making something. Browning this, stirring that, chopping whatever...no thanks.

I wish I could go out to eat every night or have a cook. That would be awesome.

I'm also with Prose. My mother wasn't a cook (neither was her mother) and a single mom so it isn't like she had all day to work around the kitchen. I never learned cooking with her, we didn't spend afternoons in the kitchen. I too hate deciding what to make. Nothing ever sounds good but a restaurant. I can't read a recipe and even imagine if it'll be good or not. I'm not picky but I can't decide if I like something based on a list of ingredients only. I have no idea what spices etc goes with what so I can't experiment or make things on the fly. And I have no interest in learning.

I'm a happy non-cooker. I'd rather do the laundry.

 

[mrsxsparrow]

I can cook things in a crock pot, oven, microwave, toaster oven... just don't make me use the stove (except for pasta, soup, or grilled cheese)!

I was making a stir-fry once and the oil caught on fire. The flame was HUGE I literally thought it would catch the whole house on fire

Plus, I always tend to burn stuff on the stove.

I do make a MEAN turkey meatloaf in the oven though

 

[wgwtgb]

It's both for me. I work and then I tutor after work so when I get home I'm tired and I still have other household duties to tend to. My mother did not cook very often, so I don't really have any cooking experiences. I more prepare a meal once every few days so that we aren't eating out daily. I love to try new things when I have the time, but they don't always come out exactly as they should I think.

 

[Mkrop]

I can answer this for my friend. She is a mom to 3, but does not call herself a cook.

She has never made spagetti. She buys the jared sauce with meat, heats it while she cooks the noodles. The garlic bread is the frozen stuff. When they come to our house and get spagetti, she knows that there is 2-3 lbs of meat, onion, garlic, seasons in the sauce that has simmered all day. The garlic bread is italian loaves with melted butter infused with garlic.

Pot Roast - the pre-cooked meal you find in the meat section or the packaged meal that you put in a pot and cook. She wouldn't know what type of meat to buy to make the roast. She wouldn't think to cut up potatoes, onions, carrots, and celery. She wouldn't know what seasons to put in with the meat.

Meatballs - come straight out of the bag from the frozen section.

The examples go on and on. She came from a single parent home. Her mom worked 3 jobs and most nights my friend was opening cans of soap to eat. Or ceral. Tv dinners and pot pies were for when her mom was home for dinner.

She readily admits, she should learn how to "cook", but she doesn't...why she doesn't . Her girls love to come to our house and fix food with me and my kids. She has asked how I came up with some of the dishes I make and I always tell her, either family or friends showed me or I jsut threw it together and tweaked it til it tasted right.

OK, I am not too proud to represent the non cooks....

First of all, DH is a fabulous cook and loves it. He cooks almost every evening, unless it is 'sandwich night.' I don't mind doing dishes...in fact, I find it one of the more relaxing parts of housework. It is very satisfying to go to bed with a clean kitchen. We both work full time and he gets home earlier than I do so it works out well.

So what do I hate about cooking? 1. figuring out what to make. 2. figuring out the timing - how to get everything to be done at the right time. 3. knowing the right techniques and seasonings...I just plain never LEARNED how to cook (mom hated it, too...), so I have no idea how long meat should cook on each side, what the right setting is on a burner so I won't blacken something, how to adjust if something goes wrong, etc. I find the whole process tedious, kind of like crafting and scrapping, which I also hate. (This in no way is a statement against those who love to scrap, cook or craft, it's just not my thing....DD is a passionate crafter).

Left to my own devices, it would be Lean Cuisines, salad bars and cereal. Thank God I have DH to save me!

This is me. I dont enjoy cooking, I am not even that adventurous an eater. I also get distracted so easy in the kitchen, anywhere else I am focused but in the kitchen I think of a bunch of other things and I cook something too long.

I have gotten better, I am a better cook than my mom. I just get no joy from cooking, to me it is a chore, I do it to survive and feed my family.

 

[RadioNate]

I can cook when pressed but consider myself a non-cook because I hate it. I do it and can do just about anything but because there is no joy for me, I rush through it and don't always use the best techniques.

I find it tedious to prep my ingredients (chopping, measuring).

I hate the actually sauteeing, stirring, etc.

I hate cleaning up.

I do it because I love to it but I am pretty miserable through the whole process.

But I do have decent enough kitchen skills and can do just about anything I set my mind too. I guess I'm not really a non-cook in the sense of some of the people on the boards who really can't navigate around the kitchen.

Well I should have just quoted this before posting. lol. All that.

I can do it. I'm not an idiot when it comes to the kitchen but there is no joy in it for me. None.

 

[MushyMushy]

I just really don't like to cook at all. I hate the prep. I hate standing over a stove. I hate cleaning up. Someone else used the word tedious and that's a perfect way to describe how I feel about it. I take the easy way out as often as possible -- jarred sauces, seasoning mixes, boxed/prepared foods. My husband is really good at whipping things up from scratch and actually enjoys cooking, so he'll help out at meals a lot.

I do have a few dishes that I am good at and can do pretty quickly that my family likes. But I just don't like to really learn new things.

 

[ilovejack02]

In my early years of marriage, cooking was a chore , no fun. I didn't do it well , didn't care to do it well. We ate lots of jar spaghetti sauce and hamburger helper.
Somehow I stumbled on a dish or two I did well after a few years and realized my husband and kids think Im a freaking rock star . I saw how happy it made them when Mom cooked up something yummy . 14 years later I have mastered tons of dishes and try new ones constantly .

It made me happy to see them happy and also my husband thinking I am a domestic diva isn't bad either LOL.

Now if I could just master baking pies, cakes from scratch and fancy breads ... NAHHHHH, that ain't happening LOL !!!!

 

[rszdtrvl]

I love to bake, but cannot cook very many things.

I just as never taught how to cook. Growing up, we were poor, and both mom & dad worked. Dinner was spaghetti, hamburger helper, etc.

I would love to learn to cook. Simple, but good stuff.

I do a great spaghetti, with jarred sauce, by adding other stuff to it. I can make homemade pizza, and other somewhat easy items.

I can prepare a Thanksgiving dinner with no problem.

I wish I knew how to make stuff my family would eat that requires more than opening the freezer or a can. There just are not cooking classes anywhere near my small city. Otherwise, I would take one in a minute!

 

[Pikester]

I didn't realize that being a cook meant not using jarred or boxed stuff. I thought when I was cooking a spaghetti dinner for my family and using jarred sauce that I was "cooking".

I'm not much of a cook. I find that I don't have the correct cookwear for the recipe or you have to buy a huge amount of an ingrediant only to use a little bit.

I can bake stuff pretty well though. Cookies, cakes, etc.

 

[maslex]

Ya know, I have a million cookbooks (I LOOOOVE me some Taste of Home cookbooks) and I love to look through them, all the time. But with a picky husband and a picky son (my oldest son will TRY almost anything so he's not the problem, but my youngest??? that's another story) It's really hard to just open the book and point to a recipe and make it for dinner that night. There are so many recipes that I see that I would LOVE to make, but I know nobody would eat it except me and DS15.

I have the usual 6-7 dishes that I make all the time. I get so sick and tired of it and so does DS15. But it's really hard to make new stuff when DS13 won't try new things and when DH doesn't like soups, stews, casseroles, seafood, onions, peppers, seasonings, etc.

So I do actually like to cook, but when it's the same ole stuff over & over, it's gets to be a chore and not fun. But I do like to bake and will bake till the cows come home. EVERYONE gives me rave reviews about my baking!!! LOL

 

[scottishduffy]

My mother never cooked when I was a child. Dinner every evening cycled between a small range of items: Kid Cuisine Chicken Nugget Dinner, McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Spaghetti, Chef Boyardee. It was pretty much fast food or frozen food every night.

My father is actually a great cook but worked long hours as a physicain and was never home at dinner time. He would cook a big breakfast for us every Sunday morning, and also kept us stocked up on hame made jams/jellies. But outside of that no cooing in my home.

Upon getting to college I decided I wanted to learn how to cook. So I started with simple recipes and gave it a shot. Great things about living in the dorms was that I always had plenty of willing taste-testers hanging around. I stayed away from sweets and baking at first because I knew the real skill I would need is how to cook meals. I got pretty good at cooking!

By my 3rd year of college my DH (who was an RA) at that time had me host a cooking program for his residents to teach basic cooking skills. I had my Roomies on the 'Duff Meal Plan'. Meaning if they contributed to the grocery bill equally I would promise them home cooked meals at least 5 days a week. I swear my best bud K and I lived off my Mini-Meat loaf for an entire semester once because we liked it so much. Heck, I did a full thanksgiving one year for those of us not able to get home for the Holiday. Even now K still likes my cooking. When she got sick recently and had to have a couple surgeries I went to her apartment one weekend and stocked her freezer with soups, meat Loaf, chimichangas, and mini lasagnas. Fed her for a couple months until she felt better.

Nowadays I have a reputation as a bit of a cook. I enjoy it but still wouldn't consider myself great. I keep a stash of simple recipes I cook well. I also have about 5-6 desserts and appetizers I can do very well and pull those out as needed. I am now trying to get back into the habit of cooking! For the past year I have been in a residency where I am at the hospital for 5 days per week, 12 hour days. I pretty much stopped cooking daily at that point out of sheer exhaustion. Now I am down to 3 days a week and trying to get back into the habit of daily cooking and bulk cooking. I do many simple recipes that use short cuts and other products to make.

I am so out of the practice it is somewhat slow going. Especially since we are moving in 4 weeks and I dont want to fill the apartment with food we cant finish. I am getting better though! I think Tonight I will be making my Curry Mustard Sauce Chicken and Rice. DH is out of town, and since I love this dish and he doesn't care for it, this is the ideal time to make some up....

P.S I only learned to cook sweets when I worked as a nanny. Their parents would go on a 2 week vacation each year and the girls desperately looked forward to it because that was our 'secret' cooking time. I would bring over my cookbooks and let them each pick out a sweet recipe and we would make them. All the sugar coated death they could never eat when Mom or Dad were home. Those are some of the best memories I have of them was teaching them how to cook! We would also do little home made pizzas and other kid friendly dinners during that time. Busy little hands are well behaved little hands....

 

[jen0610]

I do a great spaghetti, with jarred sauce, by adding other stuff to it. I can make homemade pizza, and other somewhat easy items.

This is what my friend can't wrap her head around - the doctoring things up.

Yes, there are times when I use jarred sauce that is all dr'd up and simmered all day on the weekend. There are other times, when I feel like doing fresh sauce. Both are ok. She sees a jar that say it has meat in it and her mind doesn't think to the next step of adding more meat to it or add some onions and garlic and other spices. You want sgetti with meat, you buy the jar of sause that comes with meat, you want sgetti with plain sauce, you buy the traditional sauce.

When we are in the mood for pizza, but don't feel like shelling out the money for carryout or delivery, we'll do the boxed pizza kit. But we add bacon, hamburger, onion, mushrooms, green peppers, extra cheese to it. She admits, she never thought to add anything like that to it.

She has been know to call and ask, if I buy this kit, what can I add to it. But it is usually when one of her girls has seen me using it and knows that I dr'd it up.