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is home cooking going into decline?

furcalchick

furcalchick

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Dec 19, 2006
2,426
5
South Florida
it's been something i've been thinking about for a while, but i'm wondering if it's true or not. it seems like nowadays, today's young people don't really know how to cook all that much, but instead they eat out at restaurants almost every night, and when faced with the challenge of cooking, more times than not, they reach for a tv dinner. back when my parents were growing up, home cooked meals were the norm, and eating out was usually just once or twice a week and people really knew how to cook. i also read something from nick saban that said that he wasn't really into south florida lifestyle because he didn't eat out alot, and instead ate his wife's cooking. and also on alot of condo ads, they promote the lifestyle of eating out all the time, even though they have these fancy kitchens that my parents would kill over back in their day. i'm just trying to figure out if home cooking is no longer the norm and eating out is, or am i rushing to judgement? thoughts?
 
Not in my house its not.

We 'go out' once in a blue moon, and 7/8 times out of ten my Mam cooks our meals. Only when she is at work (Works shifts) do we have none home cooked, or frozen food.

Go my mam! :D
 
furcalchick said:
it's been something i've been thinking about for a while, but i'm wondering if it's true or not. it seems like nowadays, today's young people don't really know how to cook all that much, but instead they eat out at restaurants almost every night, and when faced with the challenge of cooking, more times than not, they reach for a tv dinner. back when my parents were growing up, home cooked meals were the norm, and eating out was usually just once or twice a week and people really knew how to cook. i also read something from nick saban that said that he wasn't really into south florida lifestyle because he didn't eat out alot, and instead ate his wife's cooking. and also on alot of condo ads, they promote the lifestyle of eating out all the time, even though they have these fancy kitchens that my parents would kill over back in their day. i'm just trying to figure out if home cooking is no longer the norm and eating out is, or am i rushing to judgement? thoughts?
Click to expand...

In my house my parents/grandma cook for us normally 5 days a week, I usualy eat out on weekends with friends, but thats because I am the exception in my family. . . We have ATLEAST 1 home cooked meal a day.
 
The younger generation doesn't have time to cook for themselves. They don't have the patience for it.
 
The ease and availability of pre-made food, rising incomes, need to have two incomes, and the sorry state of kids today have all contributed.

Damn, I can't wait to be an even grumpier old man.
 
i can cook for myself, but i want to learn some more cooking techniques to become an expert, so i can cook almost every meal under the sun instead of relying on everyone else to cook my food.

my brother on the other hand, can't cook to save his life...:(
 
I cook virtually all of my meals because I need to watch the ingredients.
SO even simple things like soup stock I have to make from scratch.
I find cooking enjoyable when I have the time to do it. My freezer is full of premade mealt that either need warming up or 30-45 min baking time to be ready. I basically do the come home, toss the mealk in oven and then relax routine. by the time I am done washing up, putting away my stuff and checking email the food is done.
 
Both my parents use to cook everyday but now both are working 80-90 hours each a week (plus I'm in college so that's why they are working). I try to cook myself but sometimes have no time so I stock up on some frozen dinners/order pizza cause it's really cheap.
 
My mum used to cook every night - so it rubbed off, and i love to cook.

I have noticed that americans seem to be particularly bad - cooking infrequently and eating out often.
 
My parents (well, mostly my mom) did the cooking when I grew up, we ate out maybe three times a month. I pretty much follow this model - as a poor graduate student, I don't have the money required to eat out that much - it's much cheaper to get some staple ingredients and make some simple meals. I don't consider myself a good cook, but I can make simple, fairly healthy meals that are fairly easy and cheap.

However, I think home cooking in general is declining. A number of people that I know eat out all of the time. A few of them probably wouldn't even know how to boil water to make macaroni - if it's not microwaveable, they'd be totally lost.
 
Well, i'm 16 and I love to cook. I make dinner maybe once a week, even though it's usually just easy stuff like casserole-type dishes and maybe some pasta or something. Cooking isn't bad if you know what you're doing and make things that don't require too much effort when you're busy. It's a lot healthier and tastier to cook for yourself, too!
 
I haven't eaten anything but a home-cooked meal with fresh ingredients in 30 years except when occasionally eating out. Both my kids cook virtually all their own food as well.
 
I can't cook my way out of a paper bag. Never bothered to learn.

But I'm beginning to realize that I need to cook, so I don't have to have my significant other do all the cooking. So I'm gonna take a cooking course this summer.

Hurray for equal sharing of responsibilities!
 
Raven VII said:
Hurray for equal sharing of responsibilities!
Click to expand...
I like the way my ex and I did it-- he cooked, I did the dishes.

I can't cook. And I don't intend on changing it all that much. Just waiting for someone special who'd love to cook for me. :eek:
 
My mom cooked a lot. My woman cooks 90% of all meals, I take her and the boys out once a week or so. Leftovers for lunch and dinner. When do eat out, usually try to eat at a non-chain, like a mom-and-pop diner or such. I used to cook, back in college and wasn't too shabby at it, but now after working 10-14 hours a day I've no time nor energy to cook, so its good to come home to a meal. On rare/special occasions, or when cooking venison or other game, I will split those duties w/ the wench. ;) Do notice that many restaurants do quite the busy business in many areas, even on work nights.
 
Not here.

My parents drove good eating habits into us. Big sunday tea, whole family in the dining room eating good food (from local farms too). All jolly nice. Weekdays it's always home cooked but family usually eats different things at different times. Carbonara, pasta bolognese. Potatoes n milk (with a pinch of garlic salt) seems to be popular here at the moment. Can't believe I'm only 9 stone too :D

I've tried going to fastfood/easy route. Whenever my folks go away or I look after my aunts place I live off microwave food and chippies. Horrible. I feel so disgusting inside. Always eat out for birthdays though, usually chinese. Yum Yums in the Printworks is pretty good :D
 
I guess in cities there are far more double-income families, as well as more singletons - all of whom are time poor. Cooking doesn't make sense if you can buy almost-made or ready-made meals for not much more than the cost of making it yourself in the first place.

Before you didn't have the choice of ready made foods that you do now. You don't have to go to a restaurant to pick something up ready to eat.

I'm single and my eating habits are very variable. Sometimes if I'm working on a project I'll even dig out an MRE to munch so that I don't have to go out. I'm not a bad cook - once I even spent time with a Sushi master - but I rarely have the time to bother. When I'm picking up something ready made I try to buy stuff which isn't overtly unhealthy. I could just as well go out to eat but in a restaurant you don't have that level of control.

That, and when I do go out to eat, I don't just want sustenance... I would like an occasion.
 
oh, where do I start...

I am trying to educate parents in my neighborhood on how to cook. I give cooking lessons and I'm astonished at what complete crap people feed their kids.

We have all of these convenient products that are suppose to make our lives easier and free up our time. They do. But what are we doing with all of the free time that was once spent on cooking and sitting down to a family meal? We work more and spend LESS time with our families. Once upon a time, we use to prepare meals out of real ingredients and a lot of times we were spending time with family to prepare the meals, and sit and eat together.

EDIT:I'm also working on a cooking website. Hopefully it will be ready in a few weeks, it will be CookingHacks.com but I'm so bad at altering wordpress themes, I may just put my site up with a standard template.
 
C'mon they can't write without a computer, cannot add without a calculator, cannot form an opinion on a subject without a tv, etc.

And you expect them to cook without a meal in a box and a microwave?
 
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