Home ec. or lessons for scratch cooking

[redrhodie]

It's not bewildering at all. Shopping takes time; if you have a busy or unpredictable schedule, keeping fresh food on hand isn't practical. I love to cook, but when I was working long hours, commuting an hour each way, doing volunteer work and taking night classes, I didn't cook much.

The grim misery of fulfilling a moral mandate that one "must" cook or eat a certain way undoubtedly wipes out any health benefits the food might have.

Pam

I almost never cooked when I lived in NYC. It was easier to eat really good ethnic food than to try to prepare anything with no counter space, and often cheaper, too. Here, it's pretty necessary to cook. We don't have the restaurant choices, and eating out is definitely a lot more expensive than cooking.

[ny biker]

I almost never cooked when I lived in NYC. It was easier to eat really good ethnic food than to try to prepare anything with no counter space, and often cheaper, too. Here, it's pretty necessary to cook. We don't have the restaurant choices, and eating out is definitely a lot more expensive than cooking.

I barely had a kitchen when I lived in NYC. It was a combination kitchen/foyer. Four gas burners on top of a half-refrigerator (no freezer). I was always afraid I'd set my hair on fire if I bent over to get something out of the fridge while I was cooking something. Very old dirty oven that I was afraid to use. I prepared all food that wasn't take-out in either a toaster oven or a microwave.

[redrhodie]

I barely had a kitchen when I lived in NYC. It was a combination kitchen/foyer. Four gas burners on top of a half-refrigerator (no freezer). I was always afraid I'd set my hair on fire if I bent over to get something out of the fridge while I was cooking something. Very old dirty oven that I was afraid to use. I prepared all food that wasn't take-out in either a toaster oven or a microwave.

So much better to get take out, than risk setting your hair ablaze, don't you think? I'd often get lunch delivered to work, and have enough left over for dinner. Super cheap, really good food. It's what I miss most about NY (other than my friends )!

I really, really miss Burmese food most of all (even more than the friends ). Cafe Mingala was my main place. I haven't come across anything like around here.

[PamNY]

It's amazing how people adapt to tiny NYC kitchens, including folks who are food professionals. The best food I've ever eaten came from a tiny kitchen which included a shower. There was, literally, no counter space, but they managed to be brilliant.

I actually cook more here because access to ingredients is so inspiring.

I love Burmese food. My favorite was in Chinatown and it's gone now.

Pam

[ZenSojourner]

I started cooking and sewing when I was 6. By the time "Home Ec" rolled around, it was a ridiculous waste of time for me. In cooking, the teacher made a big deal about NEVER CHANGING INGREDIENTS in a recipe. So I just lied, and said the recipe called for whatever ingredients I felt like using. Turned out fine. In fact, the only failure I had in that class was a recipe I followed slavishly (for cake, turned out to be from a WW2 cookbook that was skimping on eggs, sugar and butter because of war time shortages).

Sewing was pretty much the same - total waste of time for me. I picked an easy pattern with some challenging details and the teacher tried to talk me out of it (reversible poncho with some fancy embellishments you had to do by hand - yeah, it was the 70's). Again, it turned out fine and I spent most of the class period working on my macrame because I finished my "difficult" project early.

You should have heard the screaming when I put my foot down the next year - 8th grade - and insisted I wanted to take SHOP. After fighting and the intervention of my dad, they "let" me take photography.

Can you imagine a world where "photography" would be considered solely a male occupation? I was the first girl ever to take that class.

PS - They DO make oven cleaner, you know. Given the chemicals in that stuff (rubber gloves are de rigeur) I guarantee there's no oven scurf scary enough to live up to them. And I've seen scary ovens - before I whupped 'em into shape.

Even if it did take 3 cans of Easy Off.

[GLC1968]

You know, I don't think I ever took 'home ec'. I did take a cooking class in highschool, but that was mostly because it fit my schedule and sounded like fun. By then, I had already learned from my mom the golden rule "if you can read, you can cook".

Funny, same thing applied to sewing for me, too. And aparently, milking a goat and delivering it's babies when they come out wrong...

My mom was always teaching my brother how to cook things because he was always asking. Me, not so much. I lived on my own for so long after college that I learned to cook by trial and error. I did eat an awful lot of cereal for dinner until I got the hang of it.

Now I can't say that I really enjoy cooking, but I do enjoy eating home cooked food, so that means cooking now and again.