I'm going to say about 97% of people can't cook.

[ShrikeAttack]

I read threads on here about food all the time & even people who claim 'to 'cook', as in 'make stuff hot and eat it', have no idea about food. How to make delicious things, how to treat ingredients, what goes together.

It honestly makes me a bit sad.

The majority of people probably eat really rubbish food.

I really want people to understand food and eat better, not because I'm a dick, but because it would make their lives more pleasurable.

Ok..just saw someone put your menu plan up. From that list I'd say you're quite greedy, and also well in line for high cholesterol in time to come.

Actually thinking about it most of my close friends are like me (2nd gen immigrants) we don't cook as well as our parents.

How unhealthy your meals are, I’d never give my kids sausage and black pudding for breakfast.

You promoting a cookbook @ShrikeAttack

I find that the English use a lot of different cuisines from different cultures and sometimes get it right but don't seem to have a particular cuisine so to speak.

Wouldn't English dinner be roast dinners, shepherds pie, english breakfast, toad in the hole, fish & chips, bangers & mash, pie & lots of good puddings? Not great for a diet but pretty tasty.

My favourite foods to eat are those cooked by natives in their region. So fish on the islands off of Spain etc.
Pizza in Italy or pasta.

What we don't do well here is side salads with meals. We eat humongous portions which an Italian for e.g. would faint at the sight of.

We're a very busy hard-working class so to speak. Most marriages involve both parents working full-time. Cooking is an added chore on an already busy day. Too damned tired most people I think!

I’m not a veggie op but your menu seems very heavy on meat.
I wouldn’t want the brunch. We used to keep ducks and their eggs are too creamy for me, make good cakes though.
We eat a mixture of simple meals and heavier casseroles in winter.
My menu is more likely to be coq au vin, boeuf bourgignon, veggie lasagne, endives with ham baked in a cheese sauce.
And lots of roast veg. Only the prep takes a little time.
On Tuesdays we get take out pizza .

What matters is the balance of different food groups and that the family will eat it. You can cook a cordon blue meal but if nobody likes it then it’s a waste.

If I was single I would probably eat like @Sniv.

To answer your question a bit better op. I can cook, very well too. I've won competitions . In fact dp entered me in masterchef years ago ( didn't proceed though as I don't cope with that sort of surprise / stress😆) but
Since the whole first lock down last year I have lost about 95% of my interest in cooking. I still cook meals for the family but very basic stuff like pasta with sauce, fish, veg, roast chicken etc
I would just rather eat an apple and ham sandwich..... or a tin of tomato soup.

Coming from the Mediterranean and having cooked since I was 3 yo, mashing tomatoes for sauces, I can tell you you menu is shit. Too carb heavy (potatoes, potatoes, potatoes doesn’t matter if you call them rosti or hasselback) and you eat far too much meat. Meat every day.
So you might claim you know how to cook, and your menu sounds like the shopping list of a deli in Marylebone, but your diet is meh.

@wonderup

I find that the English use a lot of different cuisines from different cultures and sometimes get it right but don't seem to have a particular cuisine so to speak.

Wouldn't English dinner be roast dinners, shepherds pie, english breakfast, toad in the hole, fish & chips, bangers & mash, pie & lots of good puddings? Not great for a diet but pretty tasty.

Yup - that's sort of my point lol.

In my opinion

People could cook if they wanted to but many choose not to cook & rely on ready made

Okay - I've read your menu.

Big deal. You are a dick and eat lots of rich food. Whatever - no one gives a shit.

Sorry that you feel 'a little bit sad' that we're not all as great as you!

@ShrikeAttack

think the only bit from that I'd enjoy eating would be the ciabatta, cheese and green salad or the rice and guacamole. So roughly 97% of your menu I'd say "sounds terrible" but again that's sounds terribleto me.

I'm not asking you to eat it.

You don’t see the irony here at all?

Your menu sounded awful to me. I can cook but I really don’t enjoy it. I also don’t have the time. I have a 6yo who needs home schooling and 3mo who doesn’t understand that Mummy is just cooking a gourmet meal so she’ll need to wait for food. DH works until 5 everyday and I really struggle with energy levels in the evening. Before my maternity leave, I didn’t get home from work until 6:30 so had no interest in cooking.

I like ‘home’ food. Bolognese, chilli and rice, macaroni cheese, stuffed peppers, meat (my vegetarian equivalent), two veg and mash, pizza, pie...

I don’t enjoy most restaurant foods. The food I like to refer to as ‘arty farty faffy food’. Food that spends so much time being pretentious and expensive that it forgot it was meant to taste good.

@Henrysmycat

Coming from the Mediterranean and having cooked since I was 3 yo, mashing tomatoes for sauces, I can tell you you menu is shit. Too carb heavy (potatoes, potatoes, potatoes doesn’t matter if you call them rosti or hasselback) and you eat far too much meat. Meat every day. So you might claim you know how to cook, and your menu sounds like the shopping list of a deli in Marylebone, but your diet is meh.

Nicely played

If 97% if the population can’t cook then why was there a shortage of flour in the first lockdown? Was that caused by 3% of the population? didn’t you know? They were buying it to make home-made playdough.

Cooking is all subjective. I don’t consider putting a ready meal in the oven as “being able to cook,” and neither do I understand how anyone can live on ready meals or takeaways, but equally every meal doesn’t have to be like something out of the master chef kitchen e.g. pheasant with duck egg - fine as a one off but a bit pretentious if you expect everyone to eat like that all the time.

There is and should be middle ground. I do cook everything from scratch because it’s how I’ve always been, and more latterly I have a serious heart condition which means I have to be careful about my salt intake, and the more processed a food is, the more preservatives and chemicals it contains.

But equally the jar made sauce has a place, e.g. stir-fry sauces. I make my own teriyaki but I have the time to do it. But not everyone does. Making your own sauce in that instance is the difference between coming home, having to make the sauce and only then starting the dinner, and coming home and having dinner on the table in 10 minutes.

And maybe some people actually enjoy certain processed foods, I buy the young’s chip shop fillets because I actually like them. I make my own oven chips, but I’m damned if I’m going to mess about with batter and hot oil and deep frying when I can stick a couple of fillets on a baking tray in the oven.

Just because you don’t like certain curries doesn’t make you wrong. Avocado makes me want to throw up, that’s before I take into account the fact that it’s contra-indicated with one of my meds. But if I started a thread saying “I think that people who eat avocado are incredibly sad because they don’t realise how horrible it really tastes,” I would look like a judgemental twat.

Eat what you eat. Enjoy it, and let other people do the same.

And if you have to admit you’re a twat in real life perhaps you should work on that.

Personally I think it’s sad that anyone can be quite so condescending, in fact that’s worse than not being able to cook, because if you’re not careful your attitude will mean you’re left eating that lovely cooked food on your own.

@ShrikeAttack

Ok my food for the next week (including lunches as we're all at home).

Sunday- Brunch: Bacon, sausage and duck eggs. Rosti using the leftover potatoes from last night. Roast tomatoes and mushrooms. Black pudding.

Dinner; Roast pheasant. Roast potatoes. Braised red cabbage. Roast parsnips. Port gravy.

Monday: Jerusalem artichoke soup for lunch with hm bread.

Dinner; Roast beetroot with smoked mackerel, potatoes with soured cream and dill, cucumber salad.

Tuesday; Lunch: Ribollita, ciabatta, cheese, green salad.

Dinner; slow-cooked brisket. Rice. Soured cream. Hm guacamole. Pico de gallo. Hm tacos.

To me, this menu doesn't sound appealing.

I regularly cook roast chicken and I make my own stuffing. We have it with roast potatoes, and a mix of fresh vegetables.

I don’t get why cooking pheasant makes the OP a better cook. She’s just being goady.

I'm just wondering why there are 12 pages of this when the OP posted at midnight.

Do people not go to sleep at night?

Like many others on here, I need to cook after working/entertaining DC all day, and cook a meal that DC will eat. Consequently while I would love to do a proper slow roast leg of lamb on a Sunday afternoon and read the papers, I invariably produce a carbonara or lasagne or something instead, as it is quick and gets eaten every time. Having had a couple of very depressing meals when fillet steak was rejected, I now cook their meat v differently to mine (blue). Day to day I cant be bothered with this. I want us to sit down together and eat the same thing, and I won’t feed things I won’t eat myself, which is a further limit. (Fish fingers being sole exception)

Pre DC, I ate very differently. I would skip meals, eat out more, sometimes just have cheese on toast for dinner etc. Now DC at school (ordinarily), I feel the need to cook a ‘proper’ meal in the evening so I know they have had at least one a day, as while I know what is on the menu at lunch time, I don’t know how much they ate.

I used to say I enjoyed cooking. Now I see it as a massive chore.

Life is too short for me to eat dill, frankly. Horrible stuff to my taste buds. You can't tell me that I am wrong on what tastes good. I love coriander and parsley, but some people can't bear them right? Everyone has different taste! Life is also too short for me to eat black pudding.

I do agree that slow cookers are not great in terms of flavour but they can be so useful with a new baby in the house though.

Irish black pudding is a different thing entirely to English black pudding.

Ok my food for the next week (including lunches as we're all at home).

Sunday- Brunch: Bacon, sausage and duck eggs. Rosti using the leftover potatoes from last night. Roast tomatoes and mushrooms. Black pudding.

Dinner; Roast pheasant. Roast potatoes. Braised red cabbage. Roast parsnips. Port gravy.

Monday: Jerusalem artichoke soup for lunch with hm bread.

Dinner; Roast beetroot with smoked mackerel, potatoes with soured cream and dill, cucumber salad.

Tuesday; Lunch: Ribollita, ciabatta, cheese, green salad.

Dinner; slow-cooked brisket. Rice. Soured cream. Hm guacamole. Pico de gallo. Hm tacos.
**
Just too much food IMO @ShrikeAttack

Your 'brunch' would feed me for the whole day - I'd not need a roast dinner as well!

You are eating far too much meat- sausage and bacon (think of all the fat and nitrates) and too many carbs with all those roast veg.

Not much sign of green vegetables or fruit.

Do people not go to sleep at night?

Not everywhere is night at the same time, people wake and sleep at different times & lockdown changes things

Your menu is way too meat-heavy, old fashioned and stodgy for my tastes, OP.
Black pudding l? Never, ever would that grace my plate. Pheasant made me laugh, too.