To be shocked that Annabel Karmel's 18yr old son can't cook?

[Bucketsofdynomite]

In Saturday's Guardian magazine Annabel Karmel apperared shocked to find her 18yr old son couldn't actually cook and had never seen a wok. He lives away at university. How would you not notice something like that? How, as a food writer, do you not remember to teach your child to cook? Can only assume she's a total control freak in the kitchen and wouldn't want her kids making a mess.
Do you intend to teach your kids how to cook? Are you a non-cook yourself? How did that happen (or not happen)?

highly unlikely the article is inaccurate, tige. the way they're done (i know this cos i write a similar thing) is you interview both people (not necessarily at the same time but mostly) and then just transcribe the tape. you might shuffle things around a bit for sense but basically you can rest assured that those words came out of their mouths.

Horrified as I was by all the stuff about food, I was even more horrified by his blithe confession that he runs home to mummy every weekend. Oedipus, Schmoedipus! I feel deeeeeeply sorry for any poor girl who falls into the Karmel lair

It's the fact that your child is going to be hugely in debt for many many years in order to go to university. Basic cooking skills will save him so much money (to be spent in the bar, natch .)

PS In support of Xenia she did say 'Children of working mothers are often better at cooking because...' SAHMs can be control freaks just as much as super ambitious career mums.

I was HORRIFIED by the "wife" quote

Just depressed and horrified

How can mothers STILL be saying things like that to their sons?

it defies belief

Must say that my mum, a superb cook, was v good at getting us all into the kitchen, and all was going well with me able to do at least part of breadbaking, basic cake and grill own toast-based meals etc, until my sister got seriously into cooking and that was IT - she couldn't stand having anybody else in the kitchen with her. Cue ten-year string of fantastic meals emerging from unknown kitchen area by either sis or mum and me putting my feet up. Stuff happens.

A lot of people still think like that but it seems odd that you're talking about your son's future wife (bet he cringed when he read that) when he should be having fun at uni with loads of girls .

Able to cook or no.

but yes the 'wife' thing. remember watching a documentary about an intake of graduate medical students at st george's a few years ago, not long. 'man' in his early 20s seen cooking something not too complicated, saying 'oh this is dull i can't wait to get married and never do it again'

ARRRRGH emoticon

... and perhaps he's gay and isn't going to have a wife? This doesn't seem to have even occurred to AK.

My mother was (and stil is on a good day despite her increasing frailty) a fantastic cook yet I left home very lacking in the cooking skils department. My mother certainly let me help out in the kitchen and tried to teach me. In fact some of the time I remmeber best with my mother were making home-made ravioli, gnocchi and cakes etc

The things conspiring aginst me learning to be a good cook at that point were.

1 My mother (bless her) was (and still isn't) a very good teacher. She really can't 'let go' and let someone else do it. She really does want it done 'her way' and in the kitchen this trait was magnified a hundredfold

2 I am a terrible student if I can't do something very well from the beginning (bad trait I know) but mix this with a real stubborness on my part and my mother's overcontrolling nature in the kitchen and my mum and I would argue if I tried to do much more than just assist (chop, mix etc under her direction).

3 Despite loving the 'eating' part of food , I find the rest of it pretty dull. I just don't have the patience to cook really well - I just want it to be ready so I can eat it. I just don't have the flair for it.

Although I could do the very basics when I left home I was continually disappointed that the stuff I made just didn't taste as good as it did at home. It didn't seem worth the effort so I really didn't bother cooking much (lived on take-aways etc)

In many ways as a student coming from a home where good quality well-cooked food was the norm made want to eat that (and miss it) but my natural dinclination to be interested in cooking meant I didn't do it much.

When I had ds I made the effort for his sake and would say I am a competent reasonably good cook now. However as soon as he is old enough to fend for himself I know I will go back to eating more ready meals and take-aways . I find cooking a real chore and just do not enjoy it - never have.

i have it on word from a friend who had relatives at her (private ?) school that her children are also junk eaters.

yes, i will be cooking with my son at some stage. my mum did this with my sister and I, as a result we are all, including my brother very good cooks and have good taste in food. how else do they learn unless they become prof. chefs ?

"Children of working mothers are often better at cooking"

that must be myth of the century surely, Xenia ?

...and how the feck did the working mum/SAH mum debate get into this one ?

ah...and the only think i was taught at my private school in Home Economics (don't you love the name ?) was how to chop an onion and how to make an apple crumble, the rest was a waste of time !

Lazycow, you and I are the same person. That sounds just like my cooking experience with my mother, except that she used to even take over the chopping of veg if I wasn't quick enough or doing it the "wrong way". I also make more effort now I have ds, but will probably slip backwards in future.

Xenia - that was just silly, SAHMs are generally a hell of a lot less servile than WOHMs and the people they employ to do domestic work IME.

My stepsons (full-time working mother) are waited on hand and foot by a paid slave and it is a nightmare trying to get them to do anything domestic. My sister's children (full-time SAHM) are brilliant around the house. And my daughter (2.5) is already busy copying me.

anna - oh no - we will be getting into that "paid slave" debate again ?

Let's hope not, but what kind of world is Anna living in where all WOHMs have slaves at home to look after their children?

goodness me Anna & Xenia both live in a fine world. Where they think that working society pays domestic staff.

The onloy people with domestic staff i have ever heard of are on mumsnet.

I think you are both to wrapped up in your own situations to even consider that there is a world out there that resembles NOT your respective worlds.

you are self absorbed and obsessed the pair of you. Reducing almost all discussions you both appear on to a will of WOHM V's SAHM

Both of you are too bloody minded to realise that actually most of society functions like neither of you. you bring your arguments down to the subjective which is completely unhelpful as you present them as though the world is played on a stage of Xenia or Anna. Both of you have many choices that many parents do not have.

Where I live (Paris) it is quite normal to have a full-time domestic servant - in fact, people think it very peculiar that I don't want one. Since these people are tax deductible, they ork out at about EUR 450 (£300) a month all told.

anna - £300 a MONTH for someone who wipes your child's bottom and cleans and cooks, sounds like slavery to me. god some people are immoral !

i do all that for NOTHING, lol

Anna do these slaves receive accomadation aswell?

£300 pounds a month? I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I paid someone such a miserly wage.

didn't she say that after fiddling about with tax it costs the employer £300? the member of staff is paid more, surely?

ah but paula, only those without a conscience get slaves and pay them shit money or no money at all, that is why they sleep well a night ! of course the other reason they sleep well is because it is the under-paid help that gets up in the middle of the night to feed/soothe baby, toddler, not the parents

there was a doc. sometime ago about people in London employing immigrants (some illegal) and NOT paying them at all. they just get a room and food. they interviewd one poor Asian woman who said she had been promised a day off every week, but she wasn't even getting that, so she had a 24/7 job with no pay and no rest. lovely !

bran, I could have written your post - my mum is a fab fab cook and baker, and never let us into the kitchen - I really don't like cooking much - never have. Trying harder since I"ve had kids though