'I can't even cook cheese on toast'

[NaughtyLittlePassport]

Prepared to be told IABU.
Having coffee with a relatively new friend, I said something about making Christmas dinner, she then said that she 'couldn't even make cheese on toast'. I was visibly gobsmacked and as it turns out she really can't cook anything!
She was really offended that I was so surprised, and told me she'd always been too busy to learn. I've offered to help her with some basics but she's ignored my message and cancelled our DS's playing together
To not drip feed I was really shocked, going 'what not even. ....' and questioning what her kids eat probably a bit too much.
But really, wouldn't you be shocked if a 40 year old couldn't cook anything at all?

How the fuck does someone get to 40 without being able to make toast? I could grill toast from about 8.

I'm not a good cook and I don't enjoy cooking either but I do it for my family, you could probably get by with not cooking, you often hear about these raw food extremists, and it's easily enough to nip to Asda's to buy a pre roasted chicken etc. as posters have said fruit and most veg don't have to be cooked. But I would be shocked if a 40 year old with a child said she couldn't cook but I wouldn't go all comically over the top and patronizing and suggest bloody cooking lessons, I understand it was intending in a nice way but I think it sounded as though it was done in a tactless manner!

Cheese on toast is about my limit - in theory I can cook but i don't!

Cooking is so boring, I'm quite happy with pasta and pesto and stuff like that. I get fed up of catering for everyone's fussy needs and I hate it if I've got to cook two lots of food!

Actually I would be just as ar a man unable to cook.

Sorry but people talk about swimming being a life skill or riding a bike.
Well I really think that knowing how to cook is much more helpful and o portant than to ride a bike TBH. Men or women.

A relative of mine is in his 60s and boasts about not being able to cook. Occasionally the cleaner or his partner cook for him (they don't live together and partner is disabled). Other than that it's takeaways and microwave meals. He is morbidly obese and prediabetic with high BP. He genuinely doesn't see the connection and thinks not being able to cook is supercool.

Men who can't cook (including dads) are often seen as charming and hopeless - or that they must be doing/have their minds on more important things.

Women are negligent towards their family and inadequate in general.

Fuck this. Really.

I can't cook. My partner can - but also my kids eat avocados, carrots, bananas blah de blah.

I have read and written a lot of books in the time I would have been cooking, I have played and painted and nurtured my kids in that time. Food is enormously important to a lot of people. To others - beyond health and nutrition - it's really not.

OP had this all done and dusted at 14.10 today and a bunch of women are still trying to out-cook and needle each other some three hours later...

You'd never see men wasting their time on this!

I'm far more fed up with men who can't cook than with women, actually. Women who can't cook I see the point of. Men, I just feel are taking advantage of social assumptions about their hopelessness.

(And I do like cooking, quite a lot of the time. The rest of the time I hate it.)

I can cook, swim and sew on a button.
I can't drive though. Nobody's perfect.

I would expect both parents to be able to cook some basic meals at least. What if the main parent who used to only cook was taken ill for ages? Kids needs food cooked at some point
Nothing gourmet, but I would expect all adults regardless of sex or age to be able to provide basic meals like some eggs of some sort, pasta and sauce, how to cook some sausages and basic vegetables etc.

I can cook (i'm actually quite good and i love it) but my kids don't like any of it. So even basic cooking ability is wasted on them and it would make no difference if i couldn't cook anything. They wouldn't touch anything apart from sausages (which you can buy cooked) on your list Art.

Sometimes, even when you have children, being able to cook is not necessary.

Exactly witch imagine Would Madonna would say if some bored patronising mumsnetter berated her for not knowing how to cook cheese toastie. Sure she'd feel proper inadequate

Just RTFT, fair play OP for apologising and fixing things with your friend, glad it's all sorted now.
Judgy pants out in force I see. Ugh. And yes I can cook, so can DP. I just don't see the need for judging other people, especially comparing a poor diet to a smack addiction.

especially comparing a poor diet to a smack addiction.

You clearly didn't read the full thread as there was no comparison ever made.

There was a whole argument about people saying folk who feed their kids processed food are making poor choices for their kids just like a family who killed their kid by giving them smack. So yes, there was.

That was me - I used the smack example of when a family feel happy making choices for their kid which are actually totally inappropriate it is not OK. It was in response to a posters comment that if families are happy with the choices they are making, everything is fine. Actually families can make shit choices for their children and still do it happily (sadly). No comparison between the lady in the OP and the smack addict at all.

And like most things when exampling, I used the extreme (actually was the first thing that came into my head as I'd just read the news article).

This was explained several times in the following posts - which had you RTFT you would have read.

I would expect a man who said they couldn't cook anything to be the subject of a mumsnet execution!

If a new friend of mine said they couldn't use a computer or smartphone I would offer to show them. If they said they'd never used our lives transport and wouldn't know how I would offer to go with them somewhere. How is cooking any different?

If a new friend offered to teach me how to use make up I would take them up on it or say that I'm not into it, depending on if it is something I'd like to learn. I wouldn't be offended, but then I wouldn't say I can't do it - more I'm crap at it and not interested enough to get better.

It was still a stupid post hoops, I don't understand why you don't just hold your hands up to that one

To be fair it was a ridiculous example, and extremely judgemental.

Hoops, you used a BAD analogy and that's why posters have picked you up on it. You don't need 'big guns' to prove a point if it's a worthwhile point. Yours wasn't.

I have RTFT and I cringed for you because I knew how your comment was going to be taken.

====

Wolverbampton, Yep, I think Madonna would be able to shrug it off somehow.

First of all, I've never cooked cheese on toast in my life. I imagine I could figure it out, but frankly I detest using the grill so the likelihood of me making it is zero. Not to mention that I can't eat the bread, ds1 won't eat the cheese, and ds2 wouldn't eat it (ex made it once and ds2 refused to eat it). So I can't say the lack of cheese on toast is an issue in our house.

Secondly, I actually can cook and bake a wide variety of things, but I can sometimes go awhile without cooking. Not a long time, but a couple days here and there. My children are well fed and eat mostly healthy food (although we'll ignore those smarties they had from the elf this morning). We don't cook very much in the summer either.

The OP states that the woman heats up food left by her DW in the microwave, so clearly she is capable of some cooking (or heating up of food).

And if she doesn't do any cooking, so what? There's loads of things you can make without actually cooking, plus you add in meals at restaurants, maybe a family meal at a parent's house once a week, they probably have hot meals at school every day.

And FFS no, do NOT get her a cookbook for Christmas.

So much for tolerance and support. "MN - by parents for parents... unless you can't cook, in which case we'll set on you like a bloody pack of hyenas." Sounds about right.

Wolverbamptonwanderer Madonna probably does feel quite inadequate, seeing she lost custody of her DC. Whether or not the ability to rustle up a cheese toastie came into it, we don't know.

Mrs - well they are basic foods most children eat. If yours eat very different then I would expect both their parents to be able to cater for them if one was away. Even more important surely one can cook at least one thing they will eat as harder to give ready made stuff if fussy

What has this got to do with gender? When I met my now husband he couldn't cook and I was appalled. It is a basic life skill he has now. My sons will learn to. Not being able to manage basic meals as an adult is pathetic.