An anecdote here. Last evening we were supposed to go out to dinner with a neighbor but life interfered and he couldn’t make it. We rescheduled so we weren’t really interested in going out without him. Not really anything we could make into a ‘real’ dinner but I made a sandwich that might almost qualify. Sour rye toast with poached chicken, slow roasted grape tomatoes, avocado and arugula. So decently healthy and certainly quick.
The women who created this: http://www.chopchopmag.org/ were on the radio today. The recipes are simple, aimed at getting children and parents to prepare meals as a family activity.
I think they do mainly take out and delivery, so yeah, not the healthiest of foods. She’s not running to the local Burger King I don’t think, but as you noted, the casual restaurant or neighborhood restaurant isn’t great for every meal either. When she said that they both didn’t cook for their child, she did look at me sheepishly, so she knows she’s not making a good choice there.
i have stopped cooking for the most part after 35 plus years of marriage and family. There was a time when i cooked for my family, and my dad . I cooked approx 5 nights per week and on Saturday my husband cooked.Were these always gourmet meals? no. But i tried to serve a balanced meal with in an hour of getting home from work at six. Now i have health problems . I drop everything. I have burned myself with hot water . I have broken countess dishes and mugs .
I cannot carry a bowl of salad to the table .i cannot stand up and take food from my overhead microwave without a great deal of commotion. My husband tries to make dinner , he over seasons and over cooks everything. I can barely carry a dirty plate to the sink or dishwasher .
I have suggested we have simple salads . I can sit at the table and cut vegetables . I will guide him in preparing some meals but he takes offense at my suggestions .Therefore we mostly eat salads , and sandwiches in the summer, stews and chicken cutlets in the winter . We always have fresh fruit in the house for breakfast and dessert . We might eat scrambled eggs or hard boiled eggs for dinner . He gets tired of the responsibility of food shopping cooking and dish washing, he is exhausted .So we go put for lunch once a week and dinner once a week to relieve the burden on him i can see the fatigue on his face …So no ,we hardly cook. We have all the time in the world as we are retired but we do not have all the energy in the world anymore .Tonight for the first time in a longtime i made a chocolate dessert and he helped , it went smoothly. This normally does not happen .Normally there are snide remarks about who is not doing their share . I never ever thought that two young healthy energetic people would turn into two grouchy clumsy old people and have such a problem at our age . Do not judge what happens in other houses.I am finally seeing how my mother in law wasn’t lazy , she was worn out at the same age i am now.
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Good website- Thanks for posting this!
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Physical constraints can be a real problem. I got this wonderful book out of the library. If you can get hold of it, you might find it useful. “Salad Love” by David Bez
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Thank you so much for you suggestion.I am currently hospitalized , will look into it later. Pictures look appetizing
Hmm, I get home from work close to 7pm. If I’m not well stocked with ingredients I have to either go to the supermarket or get really creative with what I do have. For me, at the end of a long and stressful work/commute day, I no longer have the brain power or energy for much creativity. By the time I get my act together dinner is ready at 9pm which I think you will agree is a bit late. Yes I could be more organized and plan it all out over the weekend. But that rarely happens - too much else going on. And honestly while I love to cook, I do not love to cook after a long day when it’s already 7-8pm. And I don’t even have kids! If I had a 15 minute commute things might be different. But my 50 minute commute is not at all unusual in NYC.
So, clearly you can see that you must “accept the consequences of [your] choices.”
If by choices you mean my need to support myself then I guess yeah, I accept the consequences.
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Wow, that was powerful. I can’t imagine the courage it took to share. I am usually “rah, rah, everyone can cook if they really wanted to”, but I feel like the Windows in my brain crashed and is showing a blue screen.
My parents are cooking less and less now. They absolutely spoiled us when we were younger, and I wonder how much of a toll that took on their health and love for food. I fed my family day-old roti (flatbread) today. My mother wouldn’t feed us breakfast roti at lunchtime.
Cooking is my most enjoyable activity, even more than eating, so my problem is to stop when I’m too tired. I’m standing up way too much, so I’ve begun transitioning to doing tasks sitting down. It’s hard to retrain my muscles. I haven’t yet figured out how to knead or whisk sitting down.
I know how you feel. This is still somewhat of a problem for me, but the last job had me leaving work at 7pm most nights and I wouldn’t get home 'til 8pm. I had to cook anything that would be 30 mins or less, and often it meant cooking one thing or one pot. It wasn’t the most balanced meal, and it clearly had an affect on my overall health and energy. It was also a stressful job, so it wasn’t one thing, but it’s forced me to draw a stronger line in the sand about leaving at a reasonable time now to allow for cooking. It’s made a world of a difference for me in terms of overall feelings of better balance, health, and way less fatigue and sluggishness. I have the “luxury” of walking out by 6 or 6:30pm now, but that would not have been feasible at the other company.
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all of this. there is a not-so-surprising amount of privilege when judging many folks who don’t cook.
imagine working 2-3 jobs and having to use public transport because you don’t have a car? imagine living in a neighborhood where small corner grocers are your only convenient option to shop for food? the produce is usually terrible, limited and prices are much higher than in a big-box store. imagine having grown up in a chaotic unstable household where nobody cooked and there wasn’t enough money for food all month? or your parents were disabled so nobody cooked?
however, i am judgey about somebody like kobuta’s co-worker though who knows she is making poor choices for her child and has the means to do better. scrambled eggs or a tuna sandwich for dinner would be better than take-away every night, sheesh.
i am single, but there are some days work has me out of the house 12-15 hours. nfw am i cooking when i get home.
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The virtues of home cooking explained
While I agree with the overall message in this video, the last line is VERY misleading: “Eat anything you want, just cook it yourself.” I have NO trouble making food at home that is just as deleterious to my health as anything I might find at a restaurant, and it doesn’t even really take that long.
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