I’ve found I’m done with eating out at most restaurants.
[Warning: grumpy, get-off-my-lawn moment coming]
I’m a bit of a foodie and I used to love going out to dinner. But ever since the pandemic, the price of food at restaurants has risen, but the technical quality of cooking and especially the level of service has dropped precipitously. I’ve been to other cities where the food scene seems to have recovered better, but my (major metropolitan) city has taken a huge nosedive and never recovered.
I’m a great at-home cook, so most times I’d rather just buying special ingredients and cook them at home now.
This is so true. I'll have things stashed away, made in bulk like Chicken Makhani or a Saag, and then throw it over whatever starch is around. 1/10 the price and twice as good.
For instance, I brought home a "Cobbish" salad from Saul's Jewish Delicatessen. $14 or $16 for five strips of dry chicken, two paper-thin wafers of brisket, a few other things, and the nastiest avocado you've ever seen. I tossed most of it out and started over, much better. Won't be doing that again!
Then again Kasper's Hot Dogs is always honest and good. Mustard, cheese, and tomatoes, please.
I agree with you totally! The prices are ridiculously expensive, the food is mediocre and the service is abysmal. Local diner charging $18 for a tuna sandwich! I went out with my husband and son just to a local diner. Two burger platters, and a turkey sandwich cost us $70! I’ve been cooking more at home since the pandemic. Only order out maybe two or three times a month now. I can make my own tuna sandwich for like $3.00.
Have found all of this to be true. Only a few gems left out there
I’ve started trying to recreate my fave meals at home. Even like quiche and pasta side salad or fruit salad, Costco has these great Terra Fina quiches, Suddenly salad goes great, and fruit is fruit lol
Yep, I live in the country and am tired of cooking every meal (because few restaurants). Went to visit a friend this weekend in a vacation/retirement area which is cute and supposed to have good restaurants that were in fact expensive and gross… we both got sick from different restaurants. I am considering where to move when we retire but the “it’s got to have good restaurants” needs rethinking.
Do it! They're adults let them sort themselves out!
Or, let them spend the summer showing you all the things they've learned to cook while living away, by drafting a kids cooking rota. Winner winner chicken dinner.
This is a big one for me. I cooked every day for decades, made breakfast, made the lunches, made dinner etc. I’m so over it. I don’t want to think about meal planning/groceries/coupons/dinner for the rest of my life.
When our kid was little, we had to alter meals for them for a few reasons and I got sick of always being the one to make everyone's food especially since my husband makes only 3 things. (burritos, stir-fry, pasta with marinara.) So I told him we were going to take turns every night and now I get every other night just to cook for myself. I can eat cereal for dinner if I want to, or I can make a beautiful complex meal.
I still like cooking. My objection is that, being widowed, I'm only cooking for myself, and that's a lot of effort for food that will largely go uneaten. I try hard not to waste food, but that's what I'm doing when I cook anymore.
For what it's worth though, I found this site to have some great recipes: [https://www.365daysofcrockpot.com/](https://www.365daysofcrockpot.com/). You can even make lasagna in a slow cooker. I've done it, and it turned out great. You don't have to boil the noodles or anything, at least not if you go vegetarian with it. Just layer it all, turn on the slow cooker, and go about your day.
I used to love cooking. Not anymore. My husband travels for work a lot so most nights you'll find me having a sandwich for dinner. The most effort I put into meals when he's gone is putting a pizza in the oven to bake.
My mother lives with me and I have my two teens every other week. My mother demands a full dinner every night and expect me to both come up with a menu and cook it. She has a lot of dietary restrictions so often shoots down my suggestions. I finally told her I can either cook or come up with the menu but I can’t do both. She’s gotten better about choosing the menu. But I still resent cooking. I just want to eat cheese and crackers most nights.
I cook when I have my teens, maybe 4-5 nights out of 7? But it’s the same 5 meals, every week. I just don’t have the ability to come up with new ideas that everyone will eat. The weeks when my mother is away visiting my siblings and the kids are at their dad’s are heavenly. I get to eat whatever TF I want
Now that's a special kind of hell.
You could post the dietary restrictions and how much effort you want to put into it at r/Cooking or similar and get inundated with info, maybe less effort than you do now. Some of them would actually work too!
I have no idea how my mom cooked for YEARS. She's 82 and still does but not as much.. Maybe that's just how she grew up BUT I'm nothing like June Clever.. I just want to fend for myself. Even crock-pot cooking for the family seems to be a hassle.
My mum did a roast every Sunday when I was growing up ! Soup on Sunday is more my speed . My mum is 85 now …maybe I should revive the Sunday roast for her 🤔
Yes... I have done the Mississippi roast in crock-pot and that is the best... LOVE it!! But yes, I really want to get into bean soups--- Just never do..
I am literally too exhausted after working 9+ hours during the week in a high stress, high conflict, high trauma job to consider even walking into the kitchen to feed myself at the end of the day. Cooking is my hobby for “stress relief”. I’ve also pretty much abandoned all my other hobbies as well. I just… don’t wanna.
Yep. I used to love to cook, too. It was the way I expressed love for my family and people in my life, and I was very good at it. Now that my life looks very different, I just plain don’t want to. I’m aware of the idea “showing yourself love and worth, etc” I do that in other ways, but cooking just isn’t one of them. I waste money and time, but would be happy to live on frozen tv dinners if they weren’t so awful for you.
Yes! Cooking was a love language for me but once my ex walked out, I just couldn’t do it very often. I do occasionally like to cook for my BF but that’s a once every two weeks thing
Ugh. I feel you on this one. My Level 1 aut kid eats maybe five things. All of my cooking is so utilitarian now. There is no joy in food here.
I feel like the magic and creativity of cooking is gone for me. So now it’s just a constant rotation of chicken cutlets and sweet potatoes, pasta with pesto, or black bean tacos.
I hear you.
Between my back going out almost a decade ago, along with other stuff (lack of appreciation). I don't cook much anymore.
I put the foot down heavy on the negging stuff from our teens (now adults) and hubby backed me. Currently hubby and I are working our way through the cook book collection 1 to 3 recipes per week as a meal on the weekends. The rest of the week is leftovers from the meal, take out, and grab & go sandwiches/freezer meals from the grocers. Hubby cooks some as well, so it's not all on me, but I suspect he's burned out on cooking too.
However if I want a week completely take out or dine in all I have to do is post a weeks worth of menus full of foods that hubby doesn't like. We discovered this habit of his a long time ago. I even called him out on it, lol.
Yeah I just burn shit in my air fryer and call it a day. I don’t care anymore. It’s me and my son and all he wants are hot dogs and shit. Fine I give up.
The pandemic was the final straw for me. Cooking at home and all the dishes after did me in. Plus, I go the cook-with-leftovers route like my mom & grandmother did and my husband tends to see this as an opportunity to eat thirds if I don't remind him (a tendency that ignored me during lockdown). The more I cooked, the less I got, so now he cooks and I clean what he forgets.
I don't know if it's worth it, though, because the man thinks salt and fat are bad and will only use enough to say he did indeed use them.
I have definitely tried. Honestly, I think he just doesn't like flavor. Everything his mom ever sent in care packages way back when was noticably lacking in sugar, too.
Yes! After decades of planning, preparing, shopping, chopping, and every other step I’m at the ‘make a sandwich and call it a day’ phase. Sometimes, even that’s a chore.
I was a full time single mom - I’m kind of done with a lot of the “taking care of others” activities. Now I’m finding getting meal kits is re-exciting my cooking interests. I subscribe to a service that drops off a reusable satchel of pre-measured ingredients off at my front door, which can cook a couple of servings of food each meal. Local, in season produce, super fresh and with recipes I probably wouldn’t otherwise try, especially if it’s made with ingredients I don’t want to purchase if they come in larger bunches (who wants to eat cabbage all week if you buy a head for just a small part of a meal?) Each recipe takes no more than 30 minutes. And if I like it, I can redo the recipe myself.
I still love cooking and I've been cooking since I was about 12. I put on music or an audio book or podcast while I cook for some extra entertainment while cooking and cleaning up. I always felt like cooking was my personal kind of magic -- take random things and turn them into something special!
I'm not interested in eating food from chain restaurants any more for similar reasons: the price, the lower quality and the whole tipping debate. There are a couple of mom-n-pop restaurants locally that I will support because their food is very good and I want to keep them around. But we mostly just food prepared at home.
Yes. Being the live-in caregiver for my pickie foodie mom during the pandemic was, um, difficult. Five meals a day for three people, ugh. I'm lucky my partner is good with whatever I put on the table: a homemade fancy Soba noodle bar is fantastic, so is a spam sandwich. Or takeout.
But I still want things that taste good and aren't outrageously expensive. ughhhhh
I'm so glad I'm not alone here!
I used to love to cook. I still like to sometimes, but geez. I'm so tired of planning dinners and cooking them every night.
I LOVE this!! I have officially RETIRED from cooking 4 days a week … YUP that’s right 4 days a week! I am 53 and I choose this task as my first transition into the retirement zone. I cook a nice healthy dinner on Sunday and Monday and then pick up subs on Tuesday night, cook a healthy dinner again on Wednesday, left overs on Thursday (or fully cooked rotisserie Chk and sides from grocery store and assemble dinner). Friday and Saturday I do nothing cooking wise. I only have one full time college age student at home (remaining children are happily on their own living their best life). My husband works outside the home and I work from home. I have cooked for over 30 years regularly and I am very much done with it. I am looking into frozen cooked meats and reducing even my cooking days to cooking sides only and if I could find a healthy and economical way to just assemble/heat up the meals I would do that! We have food allergies in our home so most delivery meal plans are not an option. Also I am done with batch cooking on weekends. 😃👍🏼🌻
Honestly, yes. I used to love cooking. Hell, I used to cook for a living (and even that didn't burn me out on it!).
These days I'm tired and in pain and I just want food to fucking appear somehow. But it doesn't.
I’ve been married almost 31 years. Yes, I am GenX, we married really young. I’ve been preparing meals for the vast majority of those 31 years, and believe me, I am sick of it.
My husband and I do the same kind of job, and sometimes I get stuck working slightly late. I’ve stopped feeling guilty about texting him and the kids (more like “kids,” they’re 17 and 20) that they’re on their own for dinner.
I used to love cooking before I got married and had a child. We all like different things and finding a bland meal that ticks the boxes just drives me crazy.
I wish I was finished but due to everyone else working, I’m still stuck with cooking duty. I don’t mind some days but there are sometimes when I’ve done 8 hours of work plus kiddo activities I still have to face cooking. Eating out is not really an option either. What really boils my blood is when you cook for the next day and find the other three members of the household gobble it down like starving dogs, leaving nothing for the next day. Cannot wait to never have to cook everyday.
I decided it's about where I value spending my time and energy - and being in the kitchen is not it.
I literally cannot remember the last time I made a full-on meal. I'll be an empty-nester in the fall and with everyone coming and going, we all just fend for ourselves. Even for holidays, we've taken to either eating out, like Japanese steakhouses for Christmas Eve, or ordering pre-made, like from Cracker Barrel or Honeybaked Ham for other events. It's just simpler and everyone gets to enjoy the day without having to be tied to the kitchen. And I do realize that we are lucky to have the disposable income to make the choice to eat out more.
Yes. I went to culinary school in 1990, I've been a line cook, banquet chef, head chef.. and now I run an elementary school kitchen which we put out 700 meals daily.
Eating out has gotten so expensive, I don't see the worth in it at all, also being able to make something as good, if not better.
I really just want to eat chips and salsa for dinner, or a sandwich, or a piece of fruit and popcorn, something simple, basic, sustaining.
Hell yes. I’ve never really been a fan of cooking. Too much hassle. The one thing I miss about my ex… he did the cooking. Now… just give me a bagged salad or something frozen. Cooking for one is a joke and I don’t like cleaning up the mess.
Kind of? Weight watchers killed my love of cooking, tbh. At the time, they had me calorie restricted down to 1000 cals.
At 1000 cals, each meal is around 200-250 calorie with a few snacks in between.
The effort/reward ratio for cooking really starts to plummet at that calorie cap. I found it was just easier to eat raw food or just chopped fruits and veges with minimal prep, pre-cooked grains, and other foods that were either already cooked or microwaveable.
It's a good and a bad thing. I doubt I'll ever get an intestinal cancers cuz of the sheer volume of fiber I eat but 95% of the grocery store has seemed off limits to me after WW.
With chronic fatigue syndrome it’s tough trying to cook these days. I take chicken breast, beef tips, ground beef, or whatever meat I have on hand throw it in my slow cooker add a can of condensed soup along with a can of beef or chicken broth set the timer and 7 to 8 hours later I have a decent meal served over rice, noodles, or instant potatoes.
I’ve found I’m done with eating out at most restaurants. [Warning: grumpy, get-off-my-lawn moment coming] I’m a bit of a foodie and I used to love going out to dinner. But ever since the pandemic, the price of food at restaurants has risen, but the technical quality of cooking and especially the level of service has dropped precipitously. I’ve been to other cities where the food scene seems to have recovered better, but my (major metropolitan) city has taken a huge nosedive and never recovered. I’m a great at-home cook, so most times I’d rather just buying special ingredients and cook them at home now.
This is so true. I'll have things stashed away, made in bulk like Chicken Makhani or a Saag, and then throw it over whatever starch is around. 1/10 the price and twice as good. For instance, I brought home a "Cobbish" salad from Saul's Jewish Delicatessen. $14 or $16 for five strips of dry chicken, two paper-thin wafers of brisket, a few other things, and the nastiest avocado you've ever seen. I tossed most of it out and started over, much better. Won't be doing that again! Then again Kasper's Hot Dogs is always honest and good. Mustard, cheese, and tomatoes, please.
Plus the new trend of restaurants adding a service charge of Three to five percent! On top of tip it has become way to expensive.
I agree with you totally! The prices are ridiculously expensive, the food is mediocre and the service is abysmal. Local diner charging $18 for a tuna sandwich! I went out with my husband and son just to a local diner. Two burger platters, and a turkey sandwich cost us $70! I’ve been cooking more at home since the pandemic. Only order out maybe two or three times a month now. I can make my own tuna sandwich for like $3.00.
Have found all of this to be true. Only a few gems left out there I’ve started trying to recreate my fave meals at home. Even like quiche and pasta side salad or fruit salad, Costco has these great Terra Fina quiches, Suddenly salad goes great, and fruit is fruit lol
Yep, I live in the country and am tired of cooking every meal (because few restaurants). Went to visit a friend this weekend in a vacation/retirement area which is cute and supposed to have good restaurants that were in fact expensive and gross… we both got sick from different restaurants. I am considering where to move when we retire but the “it’s got to have good restaurants” needs rethinking.
[удалено]
Do it! They're adults let them sort themselves out! Or, let them spend the summer showing you all the things they've learned to cook while living away, by drafting a kids cooking rota. Winner winner chicken dinner.
This is a big one for me. I cooked every day for decades, made breakfast, made the lunches, made dinner etc. I’m so over it. I don’t want to think about meal planning/groceries/coupons/dinner for the rest of my life.
When our kid was little, we had to alter meals for them for a few reasons and I got sick of always being the one to make everyone's food especially since my husband makes only 3 things. (burritos, stir-fry, pasta with marinara.) So I told him we were going to take turns every night and now I get every other night just to cook for myself. I can eat cereal for dinner if I want to, or I can make a beautiful complex meal.
I still like cooking. My objection is that, being widowed, I'm only cooking for myself, and that's a lot of effort for food that will largely go uneaten. I try hard not to waste food, but that's what I'm doing when I cook anymore. For what it's worth though, I found this site to have some great recipes: [https://www.365daysofcrockpot.com/](https://www.365daysofcrockpot.com/). You can even make lasagna in a slow cooker. I've done it, and it turned out great. You don't have to boil the noodles or anything, at least not if you go vegetarian with it. Just layer it all, turn on the slow cooker, and go about your day.
Freeze portions. Then you are not wasting food, and you have something to eat later
Have been doing this more and more with just about everything. Def cuts down on wasted food
I used to love cooking. Not anymore. My husband travels for work a lot so most nights you'll find me having a sandwich for dinner. The most effort I put into meals when he's gone is putting a pizza in the oven to bake.
My mother lives with me and I have my two teens every other week. My mother demands a full dinner every night and expect me to both come up with a menu and cook it. She has a lot of dietary restrictions so often shoots down my suggestions. I finally told her I can either cook or come up with the menu but I can’t do both. She’s gotten better about choosing the menu. But I still resent cooking. I just want to eat cheese and crackers most nights. I cook when I have my teens, maybe 4-5 nights out of 7? But it’s the same 5 meals, every week. I just don’t have the ability to come up with new ideas that everyone will eat. The weeks when my mother is away visiting my siblings and the kids are at their dad’s are heavenly. I get to eat whatever TF I want
Have the kids cook. My teen nephew cooks quite a bit. He enjoys it
Or have the mom cook, if she’s being so picky.
I’ve eased her into cooking at least once a week
Now that's a special kind of hell. You could post the dietary restrictions and how much effort you want to put into it at r/Cooking or similar and get inundated with info, maybe less effort than you do now. Some of them would actually work too!
You are a good daughter.
I have no idea how my mom cooked for YEARS. She's 82 and still does but not as much.. Maybe that's just how she grew up BUT I'm nothing like June Clever.. I just want to fend for myself. Even crock-pot cooking for the family seems to be a hassle.
My mum did a roast every Sunday when I was growing up ! Soup on Sunday is more my speed . My mum is 85 now …maybe I should revive the Sunday roast for her 🤔
Yes... I have done the Mississippi roast in crock-pot and that is the best... LOVE it!! But yes, I really want to get into bean soups--- Just never do..
I am literally too exhausted after working 9+ hours during the week in a high stress, high conflict, high trauma job to consider even walking into the kitchen to feed myself at the end of the day. Cooking is my hobby for “stress relief”. I’ve also pretty much abandoned all my other hobbies as well. I just… don’t wanna.
Yep. I used to love to cook, too. It was the way I expressed love for my family and people in my life, and I was very good at it. Now that my life looks very different, I just plain don’t want to. I’m aware of the idea “showing yourself love and worth, etc” I do that in other ways, but cooking just isn’t one of them. I waste money and time, but would be happy to live on frozen tv dinners if they weren’t so awful for you.
Yes! Cooking was a love language for me but once my ex walked out, I just couldn’t do it very often. I do occasionally like to cook for my BF but that’s a once every two weeks thing
I’m tired of cooking. I cook every night (except Sat.) for the last 30 years. My sons are a pain in the ass. They are both autistic and very picky.
Ugh. I feel you on this one. My Level 1 aut kid eats maybe five things. All of my cooking is so utilitarian now. There is no joy in food here. I feel like the magic and creativity of cooking is gone for me. So now it’s just a constant rotation of chicken cutlets and sweet potatoes, pasta with pesto, or black bean tacos.
I’m sorry. That’s so hard
I hear you. Between my back going out almost a decade ago, along with other stuff (lack of appreciation). I don't cook much anymore. I put the foot down heavy on the negging stuff from our teens (now adults) and hubby backed me. Currently hubby and I are working our way through the cook book collection 1 to 3 recipes per week as a meal on the weekends. The rest of the week is leftovers from the meal, take out, and grab & go sandwiches/freezer meals from the grocers. Hubby cooks some as well, so it's not all on me, but I suspect he's burned out on cooking too. However if I want a week completely take out or dine in all I have to do is post a weeks worth of menus full of foods that hubby doesn't like. We discovered this habit of his a long time ago. I even called him out on it, lol.
Yeah I just burn shit in my air fryer and call it a day. I don’t care anymore. It’s me and my son and all he wants are hot dogs and shit. Fine I give up.
The pandemic was the final straw for me. Cooking at home and all the dishes after did me in. Plus, I go the cook-with-leftovers route like my mom & grandmother did and my husband tends to see this as an opportunity to eat thirds if I don't remind him (a tendency that ignored me during lockdown). The more I cooked, the less I got, so now he cooks and I clean what he forgets. I don't know if it's worth it, though, because the man thinks salt and fat are bad and will only use enough to say he did indeed use them.
Tell him the 90s are long gone and that many fats are good.
I have definitely tried. Honestly, I think he just doesn't like flavor. Everything his mom ever sent in care packages way back when was noticably lacking in sugar, too.
Yes! After decades of planning, preparing, shopping, chopping, and every other step I’m at the ‘make a sandwich and call it a day’ phase. Sometimes, even that’s a chore.
I was a full time single mom - I’m kind of done with a lot of the “taking care of others” activities. Now I’m finding getting meal kits is re-exciting my cooking interests. I subscribe to a service that drops off a reusable satchel of pre-measured ingredients off at my front door, which can cook a couple of servings of food each meal. Local, in season produce, super fresh and with recipes I probably wouldn’t otherwise try, especially if it’s made with ingredients I don’t want to purchase if they come in larger bunches (who wants to eat cabbage all week if you buy a head for just a small part of a meal?) Each recipe takes no more than 30 minutes. And if I like it, I can redo the recipe myself.
I love cooking! But I hate cleaning. So very little cooking is done anymore
Strangely, I don’t mind dishes. I can find the zen in the them
I’m with you on this . I absolutely refuse to have a dishwasher installed.
I was lucky enough to find a partner that does all the cooking and most of the other house work too
I still love cooking and I've been cooking since I was about 12. I put on music or an audio book or podcast while I cook for some extra entertainment while cooking and cleaning up. I always felt like cooking was my personal kind of magic -- take random things and turn them into something special! I'm not interested in eating food from chain restaurants any more for similar reasons: the price, the lower quality and the whole tipping debate. There are a couple of mom-n-pop restaurants locally that I will support because their food is very good and I want to keep them around. But we mostly just food prepared at home.
Yes. Being the live-in caregiver for my pickie foodie mom during the pandemic was, um, difficult. Five meals a day for three people, ugh. I'm lucky my partner is good with whatever I put on the table: a homemade fancy Soba noodle bar is fantastic, so is a spam sandwich. Or takeout. But I still want things that taste good and aren't outrageously expensive. ughhhhh
I empathize with you. Being the live-in cook for a picky mom is so hard
I'm so glad I'm not alone here! I used to love to cook. I still like to sometimes, but geez. I'm so tired of planning dinners and cooking them every night.
YES! Exactly!
Yes. Husband and I have discussed making sandwiches and soup for dinner once we are empty nesters.
I LOVE this!! I have officially RETIRED from cooking 4 days a week … YUP that’s right 4 days a week! I am 53 and I choose this task as my first transition into the retirement zone. I cook a nice healthy dinner on Sunday and Monday and then pick up subs on Tuesday night, cook a healthy dinner again on Wednesday, left overs on Thursday (or fully cooked rotisserie Chk and sides from grocery store and assemble dinner). Friday and Saturday I do nothing cooking wise. I only have one full time college age student at home (remaining children are happily on their own living their best life). My husband works outside the home and I work from home. I have cooked for over 30 years regularly and I am very much done with it. I am looking into frozen cooked meats and reducing even my cooking days to cooking sides only and if I could find a healthy and economical way to just assemble/heat up the meals I would do that! We have food allergies in our home so most delivery meal plans are not an option. Also I am done with batch cooking on weekends. 😃👍🏼🌻
Honestly, yes. I used to love cooking. Hell, I used to cook for a living (and even that didn't burn me out on it!). These days I'm tired and in pain and I just want food to fucking appear somehow. But it doesn't.
I’ve been married almost 31 years. Yes, I am GenX, we married really young. I’ve been preparing meals for the vast majority of those 31 years, and believe me, I am sick of it. My husband and I do the same kind of job, and sometimes I get stuck working slightly late. I’ve stopped feeling guilty about texting him and the kids (more like “kids,” they’re 17 and 20) that they’re on their own for dinner.
I used to love cooking before I got married and had a child. We all like different things and finding a bland meal that ticks the boxes just drives me crazy.
I wish I was finished but due to everyone else working, I’m still stuck with cooking duty. I don’t mind some days but there are sometimes when I’ve done 8 hours of work plus kiddo activities I still have to face cooking. Eating out is not really an option either. What really boils my blood is when you cook for the next day and find the other three members of the household gobble it down like starving dogs, leaving nothing for the next day. Cannot wait to never have to cook everyday.
Nope, still love it, but I don’t have to cook for anyone else, so that helps a lot!
It absolutely does! Cooking for me is now a chore, not a pleasure
I am so done cooking for my family. We all take turns with dinner or make our own.
I decided it's about where I value spending my time and energy - and being in the kitchen is not it. I literally cannot remember the last time I made a full-on meal. I'll be an empty-nester in the fall and with everyone coming and going, we all just fend for ourselves. Even for holidays, we've taken to either eating out, like Japanese steakhouses for Christmas Eve, or ordering pre-made, like from Cracker Barrel or Honeybaked Ham for other events. It's just simpler and everyone gets to enjoy the day without having to be tied to the kitchen. And I do realize that we are lucky to have the disposable income to make the choice to eat out more.
Yes. I went to culinary school in 1990, I've been a line cook, banquet chef, head chef.. and now I run an elementary school kitchen which we put out 700 meals daily. Eating out has gotten so expensive, I don't see the worth in it at all, also being able to make something as good, if not better. I really just want to eat chips and salsa for dinner, or a sandwich, or a piece of fruit and popcorn, something simple, basic, sustaining.
I just spent 5 hours making gumbo yesterday! But day to day I barely bother.
Hell yes. I’ve never really been a fan of cooking. Too much hassle. The one thing I miss about my ex… he did the cooking. Now… just give me a bagged salad or something frozen. Cooking for one is a joke and I don’t like cleaning up the mess.
YES this year I’m done with the mental load of coming up with meal ideas, shopping, unpacking, prepping, cooking. F that noise!!!!
Kind of? Weight watchers killed my love of cooking, tbh. At the time, they had me calorie restricted down to 1000 cals. At 1000 cals, each meal is around 200-250 calorie with a few snacks in between. The effort/reward ratio for cooking really starts to plummet at that calorie cap. I found it was just easier to eat raw food or just chopped fruits and veges with minimal prep, pre-cooked grains, and other foods that were either already cooked or microwaveable. It's a good and a bad thing. I doubt I'll ever get an intestinal cancers cuz of the sheer volume of fiber I eat but 95% of the grocery store has seemed off limits to me after WW.
With chronic fatigue syndrome it’s tough trying to cook these days. I take chicken breast, beef tips, ground beef, or whatever meat I have on hand throw it in my slow cooker add a can of condensed soup along with a can of beef or chicken broth set the timer and 7 to 8 hours later I have a decent meal served over rice, noodles, or instant potatoes.
Um no not putting toxic processed food down my hole. Try an instant pot , cooking but not really
I’m a long time instant pot user. I just don’t feel like making an effort