to not like cooking?

[hipposaurus]

I don't like cooking and never have done. Don't get me wrong, dc is well fed and I'm interested in nutrition, however I don't feel you have to spend an hour preparing dinner every night to be healthy and well fed. Given the opportunity I would eat mainly m&s ready meals, salads, sandwiches and easy to rustle up pasta etc.

My dh and all his family (pil) think cooking is very important and love nothing more than spending hours making time consuming meals that tastes less good than my m&s ready meals

Dh keeps wanting me to cook 'properly' more. Aibu to feed the family healthy meals that involve minimal cooking?

Whilst I'm at it, please could all the celebrity chefs and cooking programmes be cut. You're not helping my cause ;)

YANBU. I don't enjoy cooking either.

Have you checked out the additives and salt in those M&S ready meals.

If you can cook something as time consuming as lasagne why can't you fry off a few ounces of smoked bacon, bung in some baby onions or an onion chopped, add 500g of cubed casserole steak, a generous glass of wine, bunch of herbs, mug of stock with half a stock cube, pinch of salt and pepper and bung it in the oven for two hours to cook slowly along with some baked potatoes.

OR

500g lamb neck fillet, four or five carrots, chopped onion, handful of rosemary, salt and pepper, mug of lamb stock topped with sliced spuds in the oven for 90mins with the lid on and take the lid off for 1/2 hour after that.

That way you know what goes in it, where the meat comes from and its quality.

OR

packet of chicken thighs browned, cup of chicken stock, juice of a lemon, chopped small onion, spoon of curry powder, salt and pepper, stir in half a pot of creme fraiche and emtpy in a bag of washed spinach - serve with boil in the bag rice if you have to.

My MIL doesn't cook - her husband dropped dead from furred up arteries. She still doesn't cook. If DH goes there for a long weekend of packet food and shop bought cake his blood sugar (type 2 diabetes) is going through the roof by the time he gets back.

Not cooking is fine if it includes fresh, good quality simple ingredients. It is not fine if it includes ready meals, shop bought cakes and puddings and processed food.

There's nothing wrong with a ready meal every ten days or so when life is busy btw.

I was just thinking this today as I burnt a pasta bake (sauce from a jar) and have had to send dh out for chips and gravy (I made ds scrambled egg on toast for supper).

I am ashamed to say that there are some nights I don't eat tea at all because there is nothing I can (or want to) cook. Ds is always fed of course.

Does anyone know if you can get something that chops up veg for you? I really hate the chopping up part, it takes me forever and I get bored.

Ready meals aren't healthy and don't taste good. I genuinely think they're addictive. Good food shouldn't take hours.

But if your DH wants to have a certain type of food, he can cook it!

I buy the ready to steam (in the microwave) veg from the supermarket. It isnt even that much more expensive than buying fresh either if you get the 3 for £5 stuff.

Birds Eye fish pie is lovely though.

I think that's the only ready meal I actually eat as I don't like any others.

Do jars of cooking sauces/powdered mixes count as ready meals or do I get "I can (almost) cook" points for using those in everything?

Marriedinwhite, I like the sound of the last recipe. I shall be trying that out soon. Thanks!

YANBU to not like cooking. Isn't for everyone. Also not for wanting to cook healthy meals not M&S food with minimal effort. There are plenty of quick, healthy, delicious recipes out there.

But do tell your DP that if he is going to complain, then he can show you how it's done whilst you pretend to pay notice whilst drinking a glass of wine

Magneto:

3/4lb white haddock
3/4lb smoked haddock
gently poach in 3/4 pint milk
Drain the fish and keep the milk
Make a white sauce with 1oz flour and 1oz butter (melt the butter, add the flour, keep stirring and add the milk - give it a whisk if it goes lumpy.
add finely chopped bunch of parsley (snip it with scissors)
add 1/2lb prawns
1tbs capers
juice of a lemon and/or small glass dry white
salt and pepper
fold in the fish

Let it cool and put in the fridge

Boil and mash about 1-1/2 -2lb spuds (best mash - use an electric hand whisk, slosh of milk and knob of butter). Once the fish is cool it's easy to spread the mash on top. Bung it in the oven for 40mins and serve with a green vegetable.

There are a million quick recipes that take less than twenty minutes to prepare.

Look on the BBC recipe website for some good ones.

I personally enjoy cooking, but that's my choice. If your husband DARES to tell you to cook more, how about gently reminding him it's the 21st century.

But as other posters have said, I think you already are doing a fair amount of cooking. I find lasagne one of the most time-consuming meals going, so kudos for managing it. If you can make the tomato/meat sauce for lasagne, then you can also make spaghetti bolagnaise, and chilli con carne (just add chilli powder and kidney beans). And by the way, spaghetti carbonara is even quicker to make than spaghetti bolagnaise.

A roast is fairly time-consuming too.

'My dh and all his family (pil) think cooking is very important and love nothing more than spending hours making time consuming meals that tastes less good than my m&s ready meals

Dh keeps wanting me to cook 'properly' more.'

Weeeelllllll....... I'd put the ball in dh's court and get him to spend the hours cooking the meals.
(I did this years ago and haven't looked back. Haven't cooked a proper meal since 1989!)

Yanbu to not like cooking. If your husband wants more variety he can cook it himself!

I bloody love cooking and we don't really eat the same thing more than every once a month or so - I'm constantly trying out new recipes. My boyfriend does not enjoy cooking and sticks to the same few recipes. I'll be honest; if it were entirely up to me I wouldn't cook most of what he makes but it's what he cooks so I eat it. If I wanted fancy food every night I could cook everything myself, but we've chosen to split the cooking 50/50 so that means I eat what he chooses. I'd never dream of complaining to him.

If you want however you could check out some quick and easy recipes if you wanted to expand your repertoire. BBC Food is good, as is Jamie Oliver and Nigella Express.

YANBU to not like cooking. I happen to really enjoy it, but if I didn't and DP didn't like what he was being served, well he knows where the kitchen is and the fridge is well stocked.

That said, your repetoire does sound a little dull. Variety is almost as important as nutritional content, and there are so many dishes you can cook in less than 20 minutes with fairly minimal effort. If you resent the amount of time spent in the kitchen, but accept that some time spent is necessary, cut corners and buy pre-prepared convenience ingredients to save time. Don't brown meat for casseroles, it's fine to go straight in. Buy ready cleaned and prepared veg that only needs to be cooked. Buy nice new potatoes so you don't need to peel them, just cook them in the skin. And where possible, cook double and freeze half, which doesn't cost any extra time but means that when you really can't be arsed you can just pull something out of the freezer and reheat it.

Yanbu.

Cooking is boring. I've managed to escape most of my life without doing it too. Readymeals and sandwiches here too. I just wasn't raised to be interested in it, life is too short.

I can't understand the mentality of spending more time preparing something than eating it. It's perfectly possible to go through life without having to cook.

"I think to love cooking you really have to love two things: good food, and feeding people. (You also need an appreciative and, er, "discerning" set of consumers, or it's very dispiriting.)"

Spot on Banders. I'm inclined to think that people who don't cook aren't really bothered about what they eat. They eat to live whereas I live to eat. I like good food and can't afford to eat out all the time, so if I want to eat well I will jolly well have to cook it myself.

I do buy ready meals now and again and am constantly disappointed at the quality, so, again, I agree that if anyone's home cooking doesn't taste as good then they can't be a very good cook.

I also agree that cooking can be boring at times, but I would find a diet of ready meals and sandwiches desperately dull. I get the impression that meals are just an interruption to whatever you are doing scarlet instead of something to be savoured and enjoyed. I find that depressing.

YABU to think that good food takes an hour to make. All kinds of nice dishes can be thrown together in sub 30 minutes.

A caveat to the "I can cook this in 30 minutes" rule is that the first time you make anything, especially if you are not familiar with the techniques involved, it will take a lot longer. Don't give up because it took longer the first time, you will get quicker at chopping and braver at turning the heat up but not burning things and better at judging what you need to do at the beginning and what you can slot in while other things are doing.

Meals are definitely an interruption to what I'm doing. Thats why I choose what to eat based on how quickly it can be ready rather than anything else. I am constantly suprised at the amount of time people - -waste-- spend making meals, meals which take longer to make than to eat....

Recipes that 'only' take 20 or 30 minutes....i don't have that kind of patience!

I have the Jamie Oliver 30 Minute Meals book. It's very good but I can't afford the ingredients all the time. Jamie needs to make a book for budget cookers!

I'm with you, OP. DF cooks mostly and while I can cook I don't like to. If I had the money I'd eat like you do but our budget means cooking from scratch a lot :(

I can cook but don't like doing it very much

I do cook mostly from scratch, but my family have simple tastes and we tend to stick to sausage and mash, fish pie, toad in the hole, chicken pie type meals, so spending hours slaving over something that would get eyed suspiciously before being fed to the dog is a waste of time, effort and money.

If I'm cooking for visitors I make an effort, but there's only so many times you can scrape your lovingly prepared meals into the bin/dog before you give it up as a bad job

Jamie's Ministry is the budget book!

I agree with Banders and Bunbaker too, you have to love good food I think to enjoy cooking.
It possibly depends on where you live too, and what's available. I'm in a small Scottish town, and while we have a brilliant butcher, fishmonger, deli, greengrocer, if I want a proper Indian curry, or Vietnamese food, or the kind of stuff Valentine Warner makes, I have to cook it myself.
The only decent place to eat for miles around, is michelin starred and I've only been once, couldn't afford it more than once a year for the set lunch special!

I do want to eat well though, and am very adventurous so to me it's worth spending time and money cooking.

The trouble with living on ready meals is that they tend to be high in carbohydrate and meat and the portions of veg are low or non-existent compared to they equivalent dish you would cook at home. That is before you start thinking about the high salt, sugar, oil and preservative levels, the lack of freshness of the vegetables, and the low quality of the meat.

YANBU not to like cooking, but don't kid yourself that you are providing yourself and your family with as good nutrition as you can be. If your DH likes cooking, why doesn't he take over more of it? Or you cook together? Both of you doing the prep and chopping together will make cooking from scratch much quicker.

Even if you are not particularly interested in cooking, investing in a few quick and easy recipe books and adding a few new quick dishes to your repertoire will make it seem less of a chore to cook from scratch more often.

One quick dish I really like is couscous with roast veg.

Chop a selection of veg - eg tomato, onion, mushroom, courgette, pepper aubergine - whatever you fancy from these. Put them in a roasting dish with a little olive oil and some herbs if you fancy and stick it in the oven for about 30 mins. You can add chicken thighs, sausages, or chorizo if you want meat. Halloumi works well too. Then make the couscous according to instructions - usually by putting it in a bowl, covering with about 1 cm of boiling water, then cover the bowl with a tea towel for about 10 mins. You can add a stock cube or a knob of butter if you want to boost the flavour.

Tasty dinner with about 10-15 mins prep, max.

Hipposaurus - we got Fay Ripley's family food recently and have used it quite a few times. Good for all the family.