Just a drizzle of olive oil

>Especially in relation to food, where those who frequently cook almost can't tolerate food cooked by others.

OMG, this was definitely SO true of my grandma when she was alive. She would frequently go gambling and the casino gave her free food and she wouldn't eat it. She'd claim she didn't like it, all of it, couldn't stomach it, not even a bite. So she'd pack a lunch.

It kinda bothered me because as far as I'm concerned if food is free as long as it's not rotten/unsanitary or meat (I'm a vegetarian) and I'm hungry, I'll happily eat it, even if it doesn't taste good.

(The casino's food is/was just fine, btw)

> where those who frequently cook almost can't tolerate food cooked by others.

I suspect this is because people have a small repertoire of food which is largely designed specifically for their palette. I know that I have a very strong preference for the way I cook foods. But I also can't handle certain foods, notably olives, mushrooms, and raw tomatoes.

> Further on the food front, people who cook seem to be more heavily affected by fasting, or less willing to tolerate it.

This has not been my experience, but N=1 because I'm the only person I know who regularly fasts. I'm fine cooking for others while fasting too.

I think a lot of people frequently cook 1. because they know what really tasty food is made off 2. They know is cheaper/they are trying to save.

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

This, so much. Saying this in earnest, I've stopped tying my identity with my work and it feels liberating. I'm not bothered by people who think I "can do so much more". May be but I'm happier.

I have thought about this a lot while cooking, and I also think it comes down to the fact that cooking is both very creative but also very destructive (fire, oil, cutting, smashing, boiling, melting! such fun).

It satisfies those two core urges we all have to some degree.

> There is something about cooking, doing things with your hands that is fundamental to the human experience.

I agree that doing more has plenty of avantage, but is there something specifically about cooking?

Have you ever sew piece of clothes that you regularly wear? Most people never did... yet for something that will be used for hundreds of hours, we pay 20$+ for it instead of taking a few hours to do it. Why are we arguing about cooking ourself but not sewing our own clothes?

Cooking our own food is simply a tradition that stayed with us, nothing else. It doesn't make more sense to do it ourself, than making our own clothes.

Scrolling hacker news...

I had to wait in line at a bank a few months ago (how quaint). It made me realise how little 'off' time we have compared to my parents' generation. It was peaceful.

Sure, websites and phones save us so much time but there's always another thing to do. If we're not doing something we are wasting time aren't we? The opportunity cost gets higher every time technology becomes more efficient. Some of us aren't even safe from the constant feed in the toilet.

>But what are people actually doing with that freed up time?

Vomiting their ideology upon strangers on the internet and watching youtube (or some other video platform).

Interesting! Please link or name the podcast, thanks.

Which podcast is that?

Yeah, seems very weird to judge someone so harshly for simply not wanting to cook and then go on to accuse them of being miserable. I mean, does someone who's spouse does the shopping and cooking get the same judgement? Absolutely not! Neither do people who hire a landscaper instead of doing their own yardwork. Nor do people who drive a mile to the store instead of walking or biking there. Nor do couples who have multiple cars when one of them doesn't work (or they both work in the same direction)

Anyways, these people I'm talking about upthread still go to work everyday, do their own laundry, clean their houses, scrub their toilets, do their yardwork, do their taxes, work out regularly, run errands, and probably hundreds of other things that cause minor inconvenience. It's not like they are doing nothing but sitting on the couch poking at their phones.

It's not my kinda thing, personally. Mostly because food in general just isn't at all important to me.

The atrophy of personal cooking in the United States is a broad and pretty well documented phenomenon: "The percentage of daily energy consumed from home food sources and time spent in food preparation decreased significantly for all socioeconomic groups between 1965–1966 and 2007–2008" [1]

* https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/10/work-its-... * https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/05/the-s... * https://hbr.org/2017/09/the-grocery-industry-confronts-a-new... * [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3639863/

How do you measure return? Not doubting your approach - just curious how you measure the return of various unrelated tasks (e.g. cooking vs. spending that time working)

This is why I used to hate cooking.

But one day I was watching Gordon Ramsey work with a home cook and the home cook was trying to keep up with Ramsey.

It was amazing because Ramsey kept his whole cooking area so clean and organized, and the home cook's area looked like a tornado passed through. At that point I had an epiphany and started trying to keep organized like Ramsey.

Pretty quickly I became very efficient and clean in the kitchen. This is a skill that takes practice and experience and is as integral to cooking as the actual cooking.

Now I think about the order I do things, the order I use my tools, tool placement, tool cleanup, and surface cleanup as I cook. The result is that very rarely do I have more than a single pan (or two) to wash after cooking, and the kitchen is usually cleaner when the meal is done than when I started.

I put this to the test, last Thanksgiving when I cooked a large meal for 5 people over the course of several hours and when I was done I did not have a single dirty dish (other than those being used for serving/eating) and my dishwasher was empty. It felt good because just a year prior I would have had a destroyed kitchen with a sink full of pots and pans and dirty counters.

I call it "kitchen craft" (like field craft) and if you work to practice it, it gets better every time you cook. And it makes cooking so much easier. For instance, making something like tortillas from scratch used to be a huge endeavor because I'd have such a big mess to cleanup afterword. It seemed daunting. Now I will make tortillas on a whim because I wan't a breakfast burrito and my kitchen will be clean before the pan is even hot enough to cook the tortillas.

Theres two approaches to solving this. If there is more than one of you, or you have kids, then the person who cooks doesn't clean. The other (more sensible approach) is once you enter the kitchen, you don't leave it until the meal is done. If a meal takes 30 minutes from prep to plate, chances are a lot of that time is waiting. Cleaning during that time is how you minimise that cost. I cook every other night (and we have leftovers in between) and we have food on the table, with everything but serving dishes within an hour from when I get home most evenings.

i think the term is called eustress

I don't understand it, but I can eat the same thing at home for breakfast every day of every week for years and not get bored of it. If I ate at the same restaurant every morning, I'd be sick of it before the end of the week.

Sure, but now you're eating the same thing for a week. I lived that way in college, it was great for saving money. Now i can afford to do a combination of delivery and blueapron style box'o'ingredients and enjoy the increased variety with less mental overhead (buying, prepping, and storing multiple servings for one has its own issues).

The trade off here is that now you're eating the same meal for 10 meals straight. Most people would rather not do that if they could afford not to.

It doesn't particularly bother me to eat the same thing everyday, but some people absolutely hate it. I am good friends with someone who absolutely refuses to eat leftovers, ever.