Did you leave home knowing how to cook?

[lemorella]

I left home so unprepared for adulthood.

I arrived at uni and thought it was perfectly fine to live off peanut butter. I didn't start cooking properly until I met my DH in my mid 20s and was trying to impress him. I just taught myself through a bit of trial and error and the bbc good food website. I love cooking now and do most of it as it's my way to unwind. I was never involved with any cooking when I lived at home and was never asked to contribute to the household in any way chores-wise.

I also had no idea how to manage money, I could set up and pay bills just fine but constantly lived in my overdraft despite having a job through uni and a good loan, then subsequently an okay paying job. It wasn't until I started saving for a house that I learned to budget.

I don't blame my parents at all for my hopelessness but I can't believe they let me be so lazy and contribute so little to the household when I lived there and then let me leave home never having cooked a meal! (We were quite poor not that that makes a difference, always had food in the house).

Did anyone else leave home the same way or did you have parents who instilled the life skills needed in you?

No I could only do basic things like pasta, beans on toast. I gradually taught myself from recipe books

When I was about 14 my mum declared that I would be making dinner every sunday until she told me I could stop. Recipe and ingredients were provided, and I was always told to start mid afternoon because chopping veg took me forever. After this I felt very confident leaving home, but having to do my own meal planning, and get home at 7, then start cooking, on an electric hob, properly threw me. I got my confidence back before too long though. Cleaning on the other hand I got one very quick tutorial and have been muddling through ever since. Financial advice basically came down to 'avoid credit like the plague', which has served me reasonably well. To this day my only debt is the mortgage (which you absolutely can get without a credit card whatever they tell you, just have a good regular savings record).

Yes, I learnt when I was 14, my mum was BF my much younger sister so when she was cluster feeding I cooked dinner for the family. My grandma's taught me to bake when I was very little so I could do a Greta cake before that.

Glumy I should do more of that sort of thing tbh.

@OldRailer

I heard of a kid in halls who didn't know how to cook his packet of pasta. Maybe it was an urban myth?

There was a mature (in his 40s) Italian student in my halls who didn't know how to cook pasta. He'd never lifted a finger at home in his life.

Yes. My mum taught me how to make a basic mince sauce, white sauce, roast dinner, and staples like pasta bake in my early to mid teens and by the time I was in 6th form I could cook quite competently.

Yes. My mum was a fantastic and adventurous cook. She was Cordon Bleu qualified. She encouraged our interest in food and cooking. I took Home Economics for O and A level, and was quite an accomplished cook by the time I moved into a flat at 19.

Resources for learning to cook are so much better these days that there is absolutely no excuse for not being able to cook by the time you leave home (unless there are disabilities or other issues).

I wasn’t terrible at cooking and could follow recipes but for me the problem was that I didn’t know what to cook. I grew up having meat and three veg for every meal. Very boring and the same meals over and over so I didn’t really know how to cook lovely meals from scratch. I could put sausages on and cook mash potato or a roast no problem but would have no idea how to make a curry or anything more complicated than simple frying with boiled Vegs. No wonder I didn’t like many veg and labelled fussy as their was no variety and I still hate plain over cooked boiled veg today. But love those veggies in stews, stir fry and curries.

Left home at 19 to go to university and didn't really have many cooking skills. Lived off sandwiches and canteen food for a few weeks and then got bored and started to learn to cook. Not sure why I didn't pick it up at home - both my parents did cook so i guess there was always someone around who could make a decent meal.

Thing is if I didn't need to cook, would I?
I like eating..

Yes, I had been cooking for my family a few times a week since I was about 11/12 because my mum worked full time. Started off as bung in oven type meals but after a while I was able to make a nice lasagne and bake cakes and so on. I could do quite a lot of jobs too; we were not allowed to shirk in our house and as the eldest I got lumped with a lot of the chores.

Knew some basics, not much, did have to teach another 1st year in my halls how to make a cup of tea and use the washing machine...
still stumped with cleaning and finance. Totally agree life skills esp finance and cooking should be taught more at school so that everyone is sure to benefit.

No, and I still don't know how to cook. Neither of my parents had any interest in cooking.

Yes I could cook and enjoy it. One thing I am not good at is tidying, I didn't have chores or anything to do, my parents are very tidy. I am making an effort to start DS off at a young age with the ability to cook, tidy and clean, later will be budgeting. I don't think parents do their children any favors by doing everything for them and not teaching them to live independently.

I left for uni right after turning 16. I’d never cooked anything other than a fried egg because I hated helping win the kitchen so my mum never made me. I was always in charge of cleaning and laundry.

So no, I didn’t know how to cook specific meals, but what I did know was how to plan a varied diet, how to prepare ingredients and tell when they’re cooked. I was perfectly capable of following a recipe, meal planning, reading laundry labels etc.

Knowing how to manage money was the most important thing my parents taught me. Salaries, mortgage and bills were discussed openly in our house, with exact figures. They were poor but hid nothing from us. We would be told each time a loan was taken out, I grew up knowing how credit and interest worked. My dad was self employed and from the age of 12-14 we’d help with his accounts. Very simple things such as inputting some expenses on a spreadsheet, but that’s how I learnt to manage money.

I plan on doing the same with my children. Finances should be discussed openly in the home as much as possible, they’re part of daily life and they should be aware of why sometimes a £600 Christmas present is not an option, unless you put it on a credit card, which is money you don’t actually have.

When I started uni I was given a 3 months food allowance, student grant went into my bank account and that was it. I was left to figure it out on my own and my parents have never touched my accounts since. I was financially independent by Christmas of first year. Student finance and uni paperwork was also my responsibility, which included finding an official translator as I was coming from outside the UK. That was my parents’ condition for me to go to uni - I had to sort it out (they obviously helped with what I couldn’t do - eg their tax returns).

I hate cooking even to this day, but I still love ironing, cleaning and doing my accounts

I learned at school. It was a good introduction to cooking. I was also taught how to wire a plug.

To a point. The only things my mum cooked were basically of the "meat and 2 veg" varieties, so I knew how to prepare veg and follow a recipe. Those sorts of meals are hopeless for a student on their own though so most of my cooking was learnt from cooking with friends at university - who also introduced me to meals I'd never had before. Plus I think once you have the confidence to cook a few things well, it's easier to try new things.

I also left home with no life skills, my mum didn't have them to teach. She's still useless with money and she doesn't cook, to be honest she's quite fussy and will only eat certain foods, which has worsened as she's gotten older. My dad taught me how to make a spaghetti Bolognese but I only went once a week and we ate the same thing most weekends.
I learned to manage money when I was knee deep in debt with collectors knocking on the door all the time at just 20 years old. I learned to cook after I had DS at 22 and I didn't want to feed him ready made food. I now love cooking.
I think the generation before mine were introduced to the revelation that was processed food and they never moved on from it. Apart from a Sunday roast of course where the meat has to be burnt to a crisp and vegetables boiled to within an inch of their life!

I left home at 19 perfectly capable of putting a basic meal together.

Pasta dishes
Roast dinner / meat & two veg / fry up
Basic curries
etc.

I rarely actually DID cook, though, as I was a lazy, hedonistic little mare who preferred to live off fags, booze and crisps .

I learned to properly cook when I had children and realised we all needed to be eating healthily and a bit more adventurously.

I was cooking for myself from 16 as my mum decided that vegetarian food was too much faff. My mum did (and still does) hate cooking and I think that comes across in all her meals.

Living by myself at 18 I could cook very well but it wasn't until I met my DH that I started getting more adventurous with cooking. There's not many things I won't try apart from deep frying.

I love cooking and thankfully DD has inherited that love. I'm still working on DS who just sees food as fuel!

I should also add I did food technology at GCSE level and that didn't teach me how to cook either. My entire qualification was about designing and mass manufacturing a biscuit.

I left home at 22 and didn't know how to cook.
I wasn't allowed to cook at home incase I burnt something, burnt myself or made a mistake.
Being treated like a child is one of the reasons I left. They didn't like it when I made a slice of toast even as they threw the toaster out and put the bread under the grill.
I finally learnt to cook around 30 years old.

I could do basic British cooking, and we had four years of cookery classes at school, covering all the different kinds of pastry, sauces, etc.
But when I went to uni and met DH, he introduced me to much more interesting foreign cooking. His Dutch mum grew up in Indonesia and the family lived in India for several years, so DH was a dab hand at various Asian cuisines.
He and I always cooked from scratch, and shared the cooking 50/50. Although when I was a junior doctor working continuous 80 hour shifts on call, he did all the cooking for those three nights and four days, in the doctors residence kitchen.

Wow. I was born late 60s and I learned the basics of 'fun cooking' before I started school, along with hoovering, ironing and dusting. I learned how to measure ingredients (without scales) and to cream, fold and mix, and suchlike as I grew older. I knew how to make tea, coffee, cheese on toast, cheese sauce, and the like. Even things I was not allowed to do I learned by watching and my mother narrating. The only thing I didn't learn was meat cookery - but I ended up vego, so that's no loss!

Yes I did, we had cookery lessons at school, I did home economics at GCSE and I've loved cooking since I was about 10 (courtesy of a Brownie badge)

And eating well and healthily has always been important to me.