Growing up, the only things I knew how to\u00a0cook were boxed mac & cheese and what we called \u201ccasserole\u201d:\u00a0 noodles, peas, tuna, and cream of mushroom soup (we didn\u2019t even bake it, just mixed it in a pot).\u00a0 I don\u2019t really even remember what my mom cooked for dinners, except for spaghetti, plus vague memories of liver and onions.\u00a0 And Sunday night was waffle night (Dad cooked).\u00a0 <\/p>\n
College was dorm living and cafeteria eating, for the most part.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
When I got to grad school, I acquired the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book.\u00a0 I made a lot of their chicken dishes (chicken legs \u2014 the chicken breast, at the time, was much more expensive), and a lot of Hamburger Helper.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
And after leaving grad school and getting married, Hamburger Helper remained a mainstay, along with chili-mac (yes, boxed mac & cheese with a can of chili), and boxed noodle dishes with peas and maybe a can of chicken or tuna.\u00a0 After we had kids, and they started eating real food, I wasn\u2019t above making a plate of chicken nuggets to go with the boxed noodles, or with mac & cheese as a side.<\/p>\n
During our stint in Germany, they didn\u2019t have Hamburger Helper, and the mac & cheese was imported and triple the price,\u00a0but they had, even better, sauce packets of all kinds \u2014 just add noodles and meat, and a few other ingredients.\u00a0 Large quantities of the meals I made came from these packets.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not that I couldn\u2019t cook.\u00a0 It\u2019s that I didn\u2019t have a feel for what kinds of things I could actually make (along with the limitations of a baby or toddler and the time limit that maybe one episode of Bob the Builder is fine to get dinner ready, but not a second one).<\/p>\n
Oh, and for quite some time, there was a Boston Market on the way home from work, a convenient solution to mealtime woes.<\/p>\n
So finally, upon returning back from Germany six years ago, I got into the practice of going to the library, checking out cookbooks, photocopying the recipes that looked good, and trying out such appliances as the crock-pot (not too many things that truly cook all day, but useful when I worked at home or could prep something during the baby\u2019s nap), the Foreman grill (very convenient for tossing some marinated-the-night-before meat on for a quick dinner), the rice cooker, etc.<\/p>\n
And \u2014 well, I do OK.\u00a0 It helps that my husband isn\u2019t a gourmand; the aforementioned crock-pot round steak with mushroom gravy (cut the steak into pieces, add a packet of dry onion soup mix and a can of cream of mushroom soup and a 1\/2 cup water, crock for something like 8+ hours, serve over mashed potatoes) is one of his favorites.\u00a0 The kids are picky, but that\u2019s their own tough luck.\u00a0 And most of our meals center around \u201cwhat meat do I have in the freezer, and how can I prepare it?\u201d with vegetables a bare afterthought.\u00a0 I try to have a meal plan in mind when I go grocery shopping, but sometimes I just make it up as\u00a0I go along during the week, and there\u2019s always pasta with smoked sausage and frozen veggies with jarred cheese sauce as a back-up.\u00a0 But in any case, I\u2019ve gotten to the point where I can put something reasonable on the table, reasonably fast.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
So \u2014 see, now I\u2019m finally getting to my point! \u2014 when I read about families where they simply don\u2019t eat at home, or depend on carry-out, this is what I think:<\/p>\n
1)\u00a0 Come on \u2014 are there really substantial numbers of non-cooking families out there?<\/p>\n
2)\u00a0 Cooking isn\u2019t that hard.\u00a0 Really, it\u2019s not, if your standards aren\u2019t too high and you\u2019re willing to eat the flops that happen every now and again, or, in the case of something really awful, pull the chicken nuggets out of the freezer.<\/p>\n
3)\u00a0 On the other hand, it took me quite a long time to progress beyond Hamburger Helper.\u00a0 (And my husband freely admits that, if he were in charge of the cooking, he\u2019d be getting Chinese takeout a lot more frequently.\u00a0 Yes, we have ended up with the same division-of-labor that we rejected pre-children.)<\/p>\n
4)\u00a0 Learning to cook ought to happen as a child\/teenager.\u00a0 But I admit that I\u2019m afraid to let my middle son anywhere near a knife, even though he\u2019s interested.\u00a0 (Maybe it\u2019s the scar I still have from when my mom taught me to cut up an apple at about his age.)\u00a0 My oldest is entering high school next year, so in principle that ought to be the right age.\u00a0 But then, for a typical middle-class kid, it\u2019s off to college, land of cafeterias and ramen noodles \u2014 until the next generation repeats the same mid-adulthood self-teaching.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
5)\u00a0 But, let\u2019s face it, this 21st-century business of marrying and starting a family late, if at all, and having a long gap in-between where a young person is removed from family life, is hardly conducive to being able to cook \u2014 and cooking for a family is quite different than cooking for oneself, as I can see with my unmarried sister.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Growing up, the only things I knew how to\u00a0cook were boxed mac & cheese and what we called \u201ccasserole\u201d:\u00a0 noodles, peas, tuna, and cream of mushroom soup (we didn\u2019t even bake it, just mixed it in a pot).\u00a0 I don\u2019t really even remember what my mom cooked for dinners, except for spaghetti, plus vague memories […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[68,160],"class_list":["post-761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cookingbaking","tag-recipes"],"yoast_head":"\n