For those who "don't cook"

[Anonymous]

I don't particularly enjoy cooking, but I think it is important to do once you have children so that they learn eating healthy habits, see mom and dad in the kitchen, and learn that take out is a treat instead of the norm. We have an obesity epidemic in this country. Cooking can be quite easy - like making a veggie omlette, epecially if you just use egg whites. Put the omlette in a whole wheat wrap, stteam some veggies and you have a great simple meal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People don't seem to realize that for THOSE WHO DON'T COOK -- you instructions that we "marinade this," "parboil that," "whip up a healthy omelette" are UTTERLY MEANINGLESS -- we have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. If you don't cook, you have absolutely no way of doing this. I don't even know what this means and don't have the slightest clue how.

How did you get through life?

Can you even read directions?

all of that fried fast food destroying a few brain cells?

Of course I can read directions. Did the post include directions? No. So what the hell are you going on about, asshat?

[Anonymous]

It said Those who DON'T cook NOT Those who CAN'T cook. Two entirely different things.

[Anonymous]

"It said Those who DON'T cook NOT Those who CAN'T cook. Two entirely different things."

Absolutely!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I disagree, in a sense, with the "just because it's from scratch doesn't mean it's healthy." True, from scratch can be full of fat, etc. but I think the root of a lot of our health problems is that we eat too much processed foods. A lean cuisine may help you lose weight but it's food from a box and not healthy to do every night, yet much of America doesn't know that or doesn't care. My mom used to cook more beef and potatoes but at least it was REAL food and not the stuff McDonald's tries to serve.

I'm not huge into cooking, but fortunately a ton of healthy stuff doesn't need to be cooked! We always have a ton of fresh fruits and vegetables in the house plus plenty of frozen vegetables and I love frozen berries in the winter. Yogurt and cheese are healthy snacks and so are raw nuts, seeds, etc.

For dinners, pretty much every night we have a vegetable - either salad, steamed veggie, or raw vegetables with hummus. We try to cook one or two big meals during the weekend and that can equal four dinners. There are plenty of other quick but healthy things you can throw together after work to go with a salad or vegetable - we do turkey tacos (basically brown the turkey with some seasoning, cut up some avocado and tomato, and it's done), veggie omelettes, grilled cheese with no butter, quick stir fries, and we bake chicken or fish in the oven a lot.

In the nicer weather DH likes to grill vegetables and chicken outside.

One of my goals as a mom is to make more baked goods from scratch when my kids get older - we bought some oreos several weeks ago and had them in a cookie jar. I pulled them out last night because I wanted something sweet, and thought, these must be stale. Nope, perfectly fine. I was delighted and grossed out!

I think dessert is fine in moderation but I would rather my kids have fresh baked stuff and not all that processed crap.

I disagree with your logic that processed is inherently bad and "scratch" is inherently good. The previous generation had a lot of heart attacks from clogged arteries.

I agree wholeheartedly on the subject of the fresh fruits and vegetables, and you illustrate one of the best reasons to cook, which is that if you want you can choose to make things that are low in fat, calories, and salt.

But I differ on your categorical rejection of processed foods. There is no magic ingredient in "processed" food that makes it bad. The same rules apply to home cooking as any other food. The amount and type of of fat, salt, and the amount and type of carbohydrates still define the major dietary risks for modern society. If you have clogged arteries, real beef and potatoes is probably a lot worse for you than a lean cuisine chicken dinner, provided that the sodium content of that lean cuisine is reasonable. And it includes a vegetable in proportion to the size of the protein. A McDonald's hamburger and fries does not fail because it is processed. The key negatives are its size, the fact that hamburger is fatty red meat, cheese is high fat for its nutritional content, and french fries are starch, fat, and salt. You can make it at home and it will be essentially the same thing. You can bake the fries but you can also buy those in a bag. You can make a turkey burger but you can buy that or a veggie burger in a box.

I am not advocating an all-prepared foods diet. But I think it is important to be accurate about the source of our dietary problems regardless of what food we eat. One good source of information is the Center for Science in the Public Interest. They evaluate foods of all types for their nutritional value in a newsletter called Nutrition Action. They do not prejudge foods based on a certain type. They look at each item based on its nutritional content and that is very helpful. So they won't tell you to avoid chinese restaurants, but they will tell you which dishes are scary and which are reasonably healthy. Likewise, they will not tell you that all snack foods are bad but they will show you which ones are healthier and which ones are bad for you.

[Anonymous]

"It said Those who DON'T cook NOT Those who CAN'T cook. Two entirely different things."

Absolutely!

Now I'm confused. Are you saying that those of you who "don't" cook just don't want to and you have no desire to learn how to cook anything?

I guess I read the posts about "we don't know what marinate means" as saying we don't cook because it sounds complicated and we don't know how, not because we just don't want to. But maybe that's just me projecting b/c I like to cook and I think everyone would want to be able to prepare at least a few things. But I can accept that there are people who don't ever want to cook anything. To each his own.

[Anonymous]

I'm not a "cook" but my family definitely sits down for a warm meal every night together. Some processed, always a veggie, fairly simple things.

I sincerely think some people worry so much about every % of sodium, ingredients and what "from scratch" means that you're more likely to have a heart attack than me and my non-organic red meat habits.

We continue to try to instill better eating habits for ourselves and our children, it's a work in progress. But my goodness, sometimes the small things are not worth stressing about. Ironically enough my kid is the one that loves veggies compared to her friends.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People don't seem to realize that for THOSE WHO DON'T COOK -- you instructions that we "marinade this," "parboil that," "whip up a healthy omelette" are UTTERLY MEANINGLESS -- we have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. If you don't cook, you have absolutely no way of doing this. I don't even know what this means and don't have the slightest clue how.

I am OP here and I agree - all this advice is actually stressing me out. I either cook straight from a recipe, following it to the letter, or order out, no in-between - because I don't have enough skill to "whip something up" like that. But the more I cook from recipes, the more general concepts I am figuring out. DH actually has general culinary skill, so at least I can depend on him to cook if I want to wait til he gets home to get started on dinner. After reading all these posts, I think it's actually easier for me to just find recipes I like and follow them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People don't seem to realize that for THOSE WHO DON'T COOK -- you instructions that we "marinade this," "parboil that," "whip up a healthy omelette" are UTTERLY MEANINGLESS -- we have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. If you don't cook, you have absolutely no way of doing this. I don't even know what this means and don't have the slightest clue how.

How did you get through life?

Can you even read directions?

all of that fried fast food destroying a few brain cells?

What a ridiculous comment. I could ask you how you got through life without learning manners.

The earlier poster has a legitimate comment, and I think it points out that cooking is not just an isolated act of getting a recipe and putting in the effort to make it. Cooking is a skill. You need to learn techniques, which range in difficulty: boil, bake, roast, deglaze, saute, reduce, fold, mix, rest, chop, dice, mince, julienne, broil, braise, stew, simmer, wilt, whip, sift, separate, de-fat, trim, tie, debone, skin, butterfly, pound, brown, thicken, bloom, sweat, ... gosh, what else? Each of these words is shorthand for a task, and over time you learn to do them but more importantly you know what they look like when they are done. If you haven't seen the outcome before, it's hard to make headway. This takes practice, practice, practice. The good part is that you only have to learn a few at a time. And then eventually you build more and more. Soon you can handle just about any recipe with only occasional research.

I think beginning cooks need to start simple and build. This is the approach I suggest to get there:

Commit that every meal has an entree, a vegetable, and a salad. You can add a starch if you like.

Entrees: Get your entree recipes from one of those quick and easy recipe books or web sites.

Veggies: Plan the very simplest veggies at first, like steamed or boiled broccoli, carrots, asparagus, nuked frozen corn, etc. Make sure the veggies are fast to cook and take practically zero attention. Your goal is to get a veggie on the table and not be picky about it. That means you want to know to start nuking/steaming/boiling X minutes from when your entree is ready so everything is done at the same time, and that's all you want to do. If you are tossing broccolini in a saute pan while watching your pork chops brown in another skillet, one or the other is going to get burned or be done too early.

Salad: Make it before or after, it doesn't matter. The key is to make it so simple that getting the third dish on the table is a snap. To do this, buy two kinds of bag salad every week (maybe one can be baby spinach), keep stocked with croutons, nuts, cherry tomatoes, maybe dried fruit like dried cranberries, and some crumbled cheese if you want that in your salad. And buy (yes buy) four or five bottles of salad dressing. Sure, store bought can be bad, but you can find decent ones. And if all you have to do is throw salad in a bowl, shake some croutons on, sprinkle some pine nuts or a bit of crumbled cheese, and then mix in a small amount of salad dressing, you have dish #3 on the table in 2-3 minutes tops.

Now all you really have to concentrate on is those entrees. Learn some basic ones, then when you get bored try some substitutions or variations to flex your skills. Later on (maybe sooner!) you will get bored with all those bland veggies and you can look to some recipes to spice them up a bit. Maybe you make a little glaze for the carrots or add a little lemon butter on the asparagus. When you are really moving, then you can try juggling a more complicated side dish along with the entree. Once you are done with that, go for a more adventurous entree recipe. By now even your children know how to make the salad, and I recommend putting them to work as soon as they are old enough to not douse the salad in dressing.

I think these are basic steps that allow you to put a full meal on the table while learning to cook. If you do that and every time you are in a rut, try to learn something new, you should be a pretty capable cook in no time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I disagree, in a sense, with the "just because it's from scratch doesn't mean it's healthy." True, from scratch can be full of fat, etc. but I think the root of a lot of our health problems is that we eat too much processed foods. A lean cuisine may help you lose weight but it's food from a box and not healthy to do every night, yet much of America doesn't know that or doesn't care. My mom used to cook more beef and potatoes but at least it was REAL food and not the stuff McDonald's tries to serve.

I'm not huge into cooking, but fortunately a ton of healthy stuff doesn't need to be cooked! We always have a ton of fresh fruits and vegetables in the house plus plenty of frozen vegetables and I love frozen berries in the winter. Yogurt and cheese are healthy snacks and so are raw nuts, seeds, etc.

For dinners, pretty much every night we have a vegetable - either salad, steamed veggie, or raw vegetables with hummus. We try to cook one or two big meals during the weekend and that can equal four dinners. There are plenty of other quick but healthy things you can throw together after work to go with a salad or vegetable - we do turkey tacos (basically brown the turkey with some seasoning, cut up some avocado and tomato, and it's done), veggie omelettes, grilled cheese with no butter, quick stir fries, and we bake chicken or fish in the oven a lot.

In the nicer weather DH likes to grill vegetables and chicken outside.

One of my goals as a mom is to make more baked goods from scratch when my kids get older - we bought some oreos several weeks ago and had them in a cookie jar. I pulled them out last night because I wanted something sweet, and thought, these must be stale. Nope, perfectly fine. I was delighted and grossed out!

I think dessert is fine in moderation but I would rather my kids have fresh baked stuff and not all that processed crap.

I disagree with your logic that processed is inherently bad and "scratch" is inherently good. The previous generation had a lot of heart attacks from clogged arteries.

I agree wholeheartedly on the subject of the fresh fruits and vegetables, and you illustrate one of the best reasons to cook, which is that if you want you can choose to make things that are low in fat, calories, and salt.

But I differ on your categorical rejection of processed foods. There is no magic ingredient in "processed" food that makes it bad. The same rules apply to home cooking as any other food. The amount and type of of fat, salt, and the amount and type of carbohydrates still define the major dietary risks for modern society. If you have clogged arteries, real beef and potatoes is probably a lot worse for you than a lean cuisine chicken dinner, provided that the sodium content of that lean cuisine is reasonable. And it includes a vegetable in proportion to the size of the protein. A McDonald's hamburger and fries does not fail because it is processed. The key negatives are its size, the fact that hamburger is fatty red meat, cheese is high fat for its nutritional content, and french fries are starch, fat, and salt. You can make it at home and it will be essentially the same thing. You can bake the fries but you can also buy those in a bag. You can make a turkey burger but you can buy that or a veggie burger in a box.

I am not advocating an all-prepared foods diet. But I think it is important to be accurate about the source of our dietary problems regardless of what food we eat. One good source of information is the Center for Science in the Public Interest. They evaluate foods of all types for their nutritional value in a newsletter called Nutrition Action. They do not prejudge foods based on a certain type. They look at each item based on its nutritional content and that is very helpful. So they won't tell you to avoid chinese restaurants, but they will tell you which dishes are scary and which are reasonably healthy. Likewise, they will not tell you that all snack foods are bad but they will show you which ones are healthier and which ones are bad for you.

I wasn't categorically rejecting processed foods - did you miss the part about the Oreos in my cabinet?

There is some compelling research on the effects of the fake crap that we eat - artificial sweeteners, etc., that might change your mind. I'm a nutritionist by training so I'm not saying go out and eat foods high in fat and salt. But we tend to cook with a lot less salt than what processed foods have, and trans fat was something man-made, and it turned out to be a lot worse than saturated fat, which it was invented to avoid.

We really don't know the long term effects of artificial sweeteners - what will it do to a person who drinks diet coke and uses packets in their coffee every day, and then eats the "lite" yogurt that has it to reduce calories? Maybe nothing. We really don't know.

I prefer to have my family eat more natural wholesome foods, and I think this country has gotten away from that. Kids today are growing up thinking dinner comes out of a box. I bought the Oreos, and enjoyed them, so everything in moderation, but our reliance on processed food is definitely contributing to the obesity epidemic, according to research. Some of these foods do things to our natural inflammatory process - there is an NIH researcher who is doing some really interesting work on this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People don't seem to realize that for THOSE WHO DON'T COOK -- you instructions that we "marinade this," "parboil that," "whip up a healthy omelette" are UTTERLY MEANINGLESS -- we have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. If you don't cook, you have absolutely no way of doing this. I don't even know what this means and don't have the slightest clue how.

LOL. As a mom just learning to truly "cook," I find it funny when people give me advice I don't understand. One that serves my memory was for mac and cheese - just make a roux (probably mispelling). Luckily the poster was kind enough to explain. And - if anyone out there is trying to learn to cook - I did find the Scramble service to be helpful in that she often explains what she means if she uses any "big" cooking term.

Now, I must go google "parbroil."

[/quote

I can appreciate this - my sister doesn't cook. I cook a lot. So I would never tell her to prepare a "roux." What I would say to her is, "Combine equal amounts - like, two tablespoons each - of butter and flour." I'm very conscious of simplifying instructions and not using cooking terms like "roux" and "parboil."

[Anonymous]

I either cook straight from a recipe, following it to the letter, or order out, no in-between - because I don't have enough skill to "whip something up" like that.

Get yer hands on a copy of "How to Cook without a Book" -- it will tell you what you've been figuring out on your own, that is, the basic principles of cooking. Not that you couldn't keep on the way you have been, but this is faster and easier, and you'll be improvising before you know it.

[Anonymous]

I don't cook nor do I like to cook. We get 'fresh fruits and vegetables"by having A LOT on hand at home for snacks. It isn't rocket science. lol I may do a crockpot meal or a casserole, but really don't even like doing that. We used to eat out a lot at restaurants or take out from there. We also decided on a personal chef. They grocery shop and make the food for you a week in advance if you want. So warming up is much easier than doing the entire meal from scratch. I don't like seeing them everyday so it works out best for us. You can have them work daily though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People don't seem to realize that for THOSE WHO DON'T COOK -- you instructions that we "marinade this," "parboil that," "whip up a healthy omelette" are UTTERLY MEANINGLESS -- we have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. If you don't cook, you have absolutely no way of doing this. I don't even know what this means and don't have the slightest clue how.

if it's this bad, you need to make an effort to learn, instead of being proud of your ignorance.[/quote]

if your manners are this bad, you need to make an effort to learn some decency, instead of being proud of being obnoxious.

[Anonymous]

"I don't particularly enjoy cooking, but I think it is important to do once you have children so that they learn eating healthy habits, see mom and dad in the kitchen, and learn that take out is a treat instead of the norm. We have an obesity epidemic in this country. Cooking can be quite easy - like making a veggie omlette, epecially if you just use egg whites. Put the omlette in a whole wheat wrap, stteam some veggies and you have a great simple meal."

Exactly. Some people are too lazy.