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It's the guy thing. Give them a grill or a cast iron pan and they can produce some edible food. Minus that, you could starve waiting the next meal.
Eh? Eh? What? That's a vicious lie.
I grilled up a couple of nice fat filet mignons for supper last night (with the outside temp at just about zero, which made things just a little tricky.
For sides- baby peas with pearl onions and mushrooms (for the Mrs., plain for me), baby carrots with a brown sugar/cinnamon glaze, and mashed potatoes with onions, sage, savory, garlic, parsley, and pepper. Oh, and a fresh raspberry reduction with just a hint of chili pepper as a sauce for the steaks.
And, no, none of it was 'nuke & eat'.
Actually, I started learning to cook when I took 'Home Ec' in jr. high, in the 1970s when I was about 11. Hey, where else was a young computer/electronics geek/nerd going to be able to get himself together with the chicks? The jocks all laughed at a boy taking home ec back then, but the joke was on them...
I started cooking when I was a child. One of the first things I learned to make was pork chops, browned and layered with sliced potatoes, onions, and creamed corn. (Nebraskan food.) I helped bake cookies and cinnamon rolls and pies. When I was a teenager, I made dinner a few nights a week while my mom was in dance class. I started collecting cookbooks and trying new things. I got a job after high school, spent my own money on groceries, and made things like bouillabaise and paella. I married a man who made concoctions like "spaghetti eggs" ... hork.
There's a lot more to cooking than reading a recipe. I've been cooking for more than 30 years. I am adept now at timing everything to finish at once (difficult to do with multiple dishes going) and figuring out how to make a big Thanksgiving meal by myself with one oven. I use my sense of smell a lot, from seasoning a dish to knowing when it's done. Most of what I make now doesn't come from a recipe, and I can't always remember how I made it because I created it just then. How much basil did I add? Until it smelled right. How long did I cook it? Until it was done.
And I rarely use salt. Let your taste buds readjust to what food tastes like. You only think it needs salt because you are used to salty food. Same with sugar.
I find this thread fascinating, but haven't had time to read all of it yet. I'll just add to it to say that cooking is an art. When I got married I knew pretty much zero about cooking. My mom never let me in the kitchen as a teen, even though I had seen my grandparents and others cooking real food as a child (never allowed to help them). My mom was a phenomenal cook but for some reason (she claimed I was just never interested, which isn't true) she never taught me to cook. So fast when I went to college, first I lived in a dorm, and then when I moved off-campus to an apartment I just bought heat and eat stuff. My roommate and I cooked maybe three or four times in a year, and it was practically a weekend event for some basic recipe. We just were clueless - and our priorities weren't in the kitchen. Then I moved back home (again, nowhere to cook as my mom wouldn't let me mess around in her kitchen) and little time between working and school and life.
When I got married, in the year before we had kids I started trying to cook a few things for my traditional husband - who wanted to be cooked FOR, but didn't know how to do it. I was pretty clueless, but I slowly started learning. We had to adjust our palates - HIS mother never cooked either and he had to get used to home cooked food instead of fast food or takeout. But he appreciated my efforts and we figured it out. When the kids were born, I wasn't working out of the home and pretty much cooked to a) save money and b) kill time. I'd give the toddlers some easy kitchen task and it would kill a few hours of the day. Then my older child developed food allergies and I had to learn about cooking with no processed food at all, which brought me right back around to watching my grandmother cook back in the day.
And somewhere along the line, I became a decent cook. It took a lot of trial and error. It took a lot of money invested in failed experiments, equipment, etc. (I don't have fancy tools, but good knives, pots, etc. cost a bit.) It took a LOT of time that I wouldn't have had if I was working out of the home full time. It took a lot of motivation that I might not have had my husband not encouraged me at first, or we hadn't been trying to save money, or whatever.
I still mess up sometimes, but for example today we barely had any food in the house due to the snowstorms, and I looked in the fridge and made up a Puerco pipian, Spanish rice, and refried beans, and coleslaw from scratch. My husband was dumbfounded because when he had looked in the fridge/pantry he had just seen a few random ingredients and not a meal. My daughter helped cook and I hope when she grows up, it'll just come naturally to her, and she won't have to discover it all for herself the way I had to. (Same thing with my son too; he loves to cook with me as well, and the older they more fun it gets for me, as I can make them do the boring stuff!) But they won't be clueless, even if they choose not to cook themselves. (DS says that when he grows up he's going to be rich and eat in a restaurant every night. My dad did that and was perfectly content with his life. So be it, if that happens. But if push comes to shove, he'll at least know how to cook a dinner for a date!)
It's the guy thing. Give them a grill or a cast iron pan and they can produce some edible food. Minus that, you could starve waiting the next meal.
How about a guy who can cook just about anything and doesn't need a recipe (excluding baking)? A guy who can go to a restaurant, order a dish, then make that same dish at home. A guy who can identify that flavor you just can't put your finger on.
Oh, that same guy can cook BBQ (not grilled meat) and sides for a group of forty. He can also cook a perfect Cochon de lait.
I love cooking and learning new recipes and getting them to taste just right and watch people enjoy them.
My sister-in-laws idea of deviled eggs is to boil them, cut them in half and put them on a plate. She doesn't even put salt and pepper on them. Another sister-in-law doesn't add salt (or any seasoning) to her dishes when she cooks. As food cooks, it needs salt and other seasonings throughout the process or else the flavors don't develop. I end up over-salting her food and it just tastes like salty bland food.
These guys make me look like Julia Childs. Or maybe they are just smart; being purposefully bad cooks they are never asked to prepare anything.
How sad! I have an EX husband that cooks like that because of high BP issues and I will tell you, he ruins EVERY Thanksgiving for our family (unless I cook and bring 'supplementals' so there is something tasty for us). I have tried to tell him, tactfully, that he could use some of the 'Dash' products in place of the salt he can't have, but he ignores that and continues to cook EVERY Thanksgiving dinner. I just send our son the past 3 yrs., as he eats anything he doesn't have to cook (he knows how to cook, but is a young 20-something).
I do have a sister, 10 yrs younger, who can't cook much. She grew up living on Cheetos to stay thin and by the time my Ma had her, she was too tired to cook so she and my Dad and sister did take out 5-7 days a week (the other 3 kids all gone). I have seen my sister learning to BAKE since she has kids of her own now, by using recipes and watching YouTube, Pinterest. I have not eaten any of her cooking only because I live 1000 miles away, but what she cooks looks good.
I grew up cooking with my GMa since age 4. She was an NY born woman who married a Cuban immigrant that had moved to the States in the early 1920s. When they married, she learned to speak Spanish and to cook all the Cuban native foods by flying with him to Cuba several times a year. I have always cooked the same foods and have my son cooking most of them now.
It is a sad thing to see young people who cook as you described above. It just isn't taught the past 2 generations, as we don't sit down and eat as a family any longer.
I see the same issues with sewing not being taught (or handed down) to young people any longer. It is a shame, but what can you do? I have taken to searching on Craigslist for a seamstress when I can't find cute clothing for Seniors. It's been an eye-opener, too. The ones who answer are either my age and busy doing weddings and proms OR they are young people who have been to some kind of design school and think they can charge me $200. for a casual dress or coulottes....Nah! wrong lady, here! Saddest is, I have sewn with a machine my whole life and made all my clothes in HS. Now I am blind in one eye, cannot see well out of the other, so having the machine (in a nice cabinet) is moot. I sew better by hand, but an not gonna make a dress by hand.
It is a sad thing to see young people who cook as you described above. It just isn't taught the past 2 generations, as we don't sit down and eat as a family any longer.
Maybe not in your family, but my family always sat and ate dinner together at the table. And that is not something that I plan on changing anytime soon.
Although I don't really know what that has to do with the OP's sister in laws not being good at making deviled eggs. I don't know how to make deviled eggs, its just not something I've ever been interested in making. Has nothing to do with how my family ate dinners growing up.
I guess it has to do with a whole culture of food, eating, etc. It's hard to work up the desire to cook a nice meal for your family, experiment with food etc if your family members grab a plate and go off in their own directions, to watch TV or whatever. (Unless cooking is your special hobby, or something.) If that's your family dynamic, quick and easy is probably the way to go.
Back when I was in junior high (and we had to walk to school 3 miles up hill both ways) we were taught basic cooking and sewing skills. We had to DO it -- it wasn't theoretical. At the end of the term, we held a party where we cooked the menu and our parents came to class to eat what we had made.
Then the next term we learned sewing skills. And yeah -- embroidery.
All this stuff was cut. It's old fashioned to cook, and sew and embroider... all things I love to do.... and did before I had to learn them in school.
I liked Home Economics. I can't say that I learned anything about food that I didn't already know, but sewing was a different matter. In eighth grade, my year end project was a pair of lined, wool pants with a stitched crease and cuffs. What was I thinking? They turned out beautifully! The teacher was so proud that she had me put them on and took me to the other Home Ec teacher and to the teacher's lounge show them off. I remember having to learn how to sew on buttons a dozen different ways. I was going through a box of junk last week and found my button sampler. LOL!
My parents were divorced and my mom was a single mother who worked as nurse and was always picking up extra shifts so she didn't really teach me much. I learned through trial and error. My family loves my cooking, for the most part. I am pretty proud of soups that I can whip out, turning a basic pot of water into something yummy!
WTH does that even mean? I elevate the food I prepare to the best it can be - it will look great and taste great.
Who wants to be presented with an insipid, uninspiring boiled chicken breast on a paper plate?
Well, for me personally, I find that elevating the importance of food too much leads to mental, physical and spiritual weakness. I think you can look around and see the results of people placing way too much importance on food and eating!
And I am just speaking for MYSELF. I am not judging others, I am not on some high horse...........I have been a piggish glutton most of my life.
I know this is not the religion-forum......but I believe The Holy Bible has very, VERY important guidance on keeping things like food in perspective.
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