to be annoyed by grown adults who say they can't cook?

[Mintyy]

I don't think I am.

It just makes me think that the person saying as much is a little bit useless.

you just coat the cooked pasta in it off the heat (to avoid scrambled egg scenarios)

OH I SEE OK will try that next time thank you

What if all you non-cookers went to live in a country which only sold foodstuff in their basic state.

I dont use ready meals often we would survive it would be spag bol and eggy cabronara though

Well it ain't hard for you, clearly, but for me it's a nightmare.

I deal well with exact and certain things...I like things to be predictable, followable, static if you like.

So I'm great with maps, with instructions (talking about DIY stuff here, not recipes which DO involve artistic license usually) and copying things, from real life.

I can do an ace portrait but cannot draw from my imagination or make up a story. I can do super neat and accurate stuff but not stuff that requires 'flair' or flamboyance or personal judgment, so much.

I cannot just 'throw things in' till it looks right, that idea scares me.

I mean for me, a lot ofthings are easy, that others might find terrifying, but the stuff other people are great at is terrifying to me.

It's called being different to other people and I don't get what is wrong with it. If we could all cook as well as each other, tile as well as each other, play music as well as each other...it would be so dull.

Smugmum, exactly! I have two friends who 'can't' cook. One still feeds her family really healthy assembled stuff and is always trying to learn. She made her first adorably wonky and slightly burned chicken pie with ready pastry and cooked chicken a few weeks ago and we all teared up like it was the X-factor.

The other? Badge of honour I'm a princess isn't it cute thing. I find it annoying and affected.

I don't do that, Plants. I'm ashamed of it rather than proud of it. I had a thread on here once about asking for help with basic cookery. Most people were really, really decent and kind and helped me out big time.

I still find it very hard but I can do a few very simple things, I can boil pasta, roast a chicken (well once a year) and make mashed potato, do sausages and so on in the oven, most of the things we eat though are pretty much ready made or ready to cook.

I hate being in the kitchen.

YABU and mannerless to call anyone useless just because they can't cook unless they are expecting you to cook for them.

There are million reasons why some people can't or won't cook. I don't see how someone else's inability to do something should bother you unless their inability impacts on your life?

. No dh is cooking tonight. Roast chicken, chipolatas, roast potatoes, parsnips, broccoli, carrots, peas and gravy and a shop-bought apple tart for pudding. Yum.

Everyone can cook. It just depends how complex the thing you're cooking is.

Sometimes I make my own pesto for example, sometimes I don't. Whatever's easiest/affordable at the time.

Well I could cook something like that. I thought you meant proper cooking.

I count that stuff as proper cooking mara!

What do you mean "proper cooking"?

I count that as proper cooking too!

I agree that cooking has been fetishised to a silly level in the past few years. People try to score points with their food knowledge. I just like good food.

Well I thought you meant intuitive cooking, or cooking that involves more (sorry) skill - not just peeling some veg and putting it in the oven, sort of thing.

If you asked me to roast some things like that, I could do it. But confront me with a demand for lasagne or a stew or something, and it all becomes much more, er, variable iyswim. I don't understand the principles involved.

I suppose it's different for everyone but I can do 'oven' stuff, not anything that requires mixing or preparation or judgment. Peeling and putting in oven is not beyond me

Rooney, that sounds like cooking to me!

Ohh....well maybe I can cook then! But only a bit. I didn't mean to diss your H, Minty. As I said it's only once a year I'll bother to do cooking like that, as I hate being in the kitchen full stop.

and it sounds nice.

But most of the time it's just so much effort - and also, the kids would get fed up with roast stuff every day. They need a micorwave rice sachet every other day once in a while.

Me too. I keep jars of pasta sauce and pesto in the cupboard for the days when there's no energy to do anything more complex. And I wolf it down just as greedily as home cooked pie or pasta or roast or whatever

and now I sound arrogant like it's just too boring, but that's not it - roasting stuff is just one thing, there are so many things I genuinely cannot cook, I wouldn't know where to begin.

Recipes really scare me.

I think the vast majority of people could learn to cook well enough to feed their families on the budget available, if they felt they needed to.

Take my DH for example. He had never cooked anything in his life when he moved to a country which did not have ready meals available to buy in the supermarkets. Afer a while, he got tired of eating takeaways twice a day - and he learnt to cook. Started small - now he can cater a three course meal for 40 people.

But in the UK, people on the whole don't need to, so they have the option not to bother.

People who look down on jars of sauce-what do you use for a bolognese base for example?

I use tinned tomatoes-surely a jar of sauce isn´t so far from that?

Can't cook. Can't drive. I can swim though.

To paraphrase Meatloaf, one outta three ain't bad.

I call that cooking. None of this Heston nonsense with his giant eggs and mud and shit!

And shop bought jars come in handy sometimes. When you are dog tired.

Haha - right at the moment we have home-made tinned tomatoes!

(Courtesy of a tomato glut in the greenhouse)

Ha ha! There's always one innit!