NOM

Thoughtful wrote: ↑Fri Jun 29, 2018 9:39 am I hate meal planning.

However, do children outside the church grow up confused about how to get food on their table? This is something that you figure out because you gotta eat.

If cooking interests you, you'll do it. If not, you'll find something else to eat. No?

My non LDS friends share more recipes and tutorials online than LDS. My LDS friends brag about their cooking, but they really mean they inherited great recipes and can follow them. Most are time consuming and not overly practical for a modern lifestyle, but if mom is home all day and you don't mind a lot of starchy meals (potatoes, rolls, casseroles, jello) they can be tasty. Not many LDS children actually learn to problem solve and cook without a stop by step guide. However, the are LDS parents who don't let their girls go to college until they can perfectly duplicate grandma's pie recipe.

I'm better than fair at cooking because I did 4h, my grandma taught me some principles of how to make a recipe yourself or modify one. In YW we did stupid "meals" like taco salad in a dorito bag.

I've always enjoyed cooking, so kids have picked up bits and pieces along the way. They're all a little experimental in the kitchen. My 17yo son started working at an actual restaurant (with an actual trained chef) recently, so he's been bringing recipes home and trying his hand at those. Last night was fettuccine with a tarragon cream sauce. It was pretty good, but he learned that white wine vinegar is not a substitute for white wine.

IT_Veteran wrote: ↑Thu Jun 28, 2018 8:34 pm

glass shelf wrote: ↑Thu Jun 28, 2018 8:05 pm

IT_Veteran wrote: ↑Wed Jun 27, 2018 6:59 pm

100% agree, and we have our kids assist with planning and shopping from time to time. If they’d done it as a combined activity I wouldn’t have a problem with it. My problem is that stuff like this is *usually* only done with the YW and it’s because that’s seen as their role.

That is the problem for sure. As the wife of a grown man who still claims h can't pick out produce, I find it gender roles really, really irritating at times. Yes, I'm that mom in the store making her kids take turns thumping the watermelons. #sorrynotsorry

To be entirely fair, despite grocery shopping for decades with my wife and on my own, I still hate trying to figure out which watermelon is ripe.

Sadly, it's all produce not just watermelons.

He's happy to go to the store, but since produce is the most frequently purchased item, it's not that helpful sometimes.

Personally I'm glad that both me my wife are accomplished cooks. It is nice to know that one of us won't be relegated to living off ramen if one of us had to disappear for a while for some reason. This isn't to say one of us wouldn't be living off ramen and frozen burritos but it would be due to laziness not a lack of ability to make something from scratch.

I give her the edge in cooking and I kick her butt in baking (if it's not a box of brownies she doesn't attempt it).

moksha wrote: ↑Wed Jun 27, 2018 10:01 pm Absolutely. Mom did all that stuff when I was growing up and did not want anyone underfoot in the kitchen. When I left home it hit me like a ton of bricks that I did not know this essential skill. Fortunately, there were cookbooks and now there are many how-to variations of major international cuisine to be found on internet videos. BTW, the YouTube channel Strictly Dumpling is a treasure trove of yumminess.

One thing I've learned is that many recipes assume a certain level of competence in the kitchen. Listen to two accomplished cooks share a recipe and you'll note that a lot of the little details or basic techniques are just assumed and not laid out. For someone who is a complete and utter noob in the kitchen it can leave them lost, when talking food I do my best to take into account the cooking skills of the person I'm talking to but it is easy to misjudge (and it is rather embarrassing if you accidentally misjudge their skills on the low side). Of course at some point someone sitting there staring dumbly at the instruction to "sweat the onions" wants to be confused given how easy it is to Google cooking techniques or find demonstrations on YouTube.

Dravin wrote: ↑Sat Jun 30, 2018 7:05 am One thing I've learned is that many recipes assume a certain level of competence in the kitchen. Listen to two accomplished cooks share a recipe and you'll note that a lot of the little details or basic techniques are just assumed and not laid out. For someone who is a complete and utter noob in the kitchen, it can leave them lost.

Amen to that! Can you imagine watching Julia Child on TV way back when and hearing her say, "Start with a basic roux." You think to yourself "Roo!" How am I going to find an Australian market to get some roo?