4 ms·

Why couldn't you just make some food?

rgrieselhuber 4y ago
There were usually never any other ingredients in the house and we'd never learned how to cook. YouTube wasn't a thing yet.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  Before youtube was invented there were these things called "books". Also, most things come with some sort of cooking instructions, like pasta or rice or whatever. Is it unusual that my parents (and pretty much all my friend's parents) made sure we grew up knowing how to cook and eat really good food? Maybe it's a UK vs US thing, maybe it's because the nearest "convenience stores" were a couple of hundred miles away.
  - cratermoon 4y ago
    In the US, girls learned how to cook, starting with Easy-Bake™ Ovens. Boys learning to cook? Sissy stuff. Boys learned to heat up pizza rolls and play CoD.
    - Gordonjcp 4y ago
      Dude how are you going to get a girlfriend if you can't invite her over and make her dinner?
      - ashwagary 4y ago
        Girls can eat pizza rolls.
      - cratermoon 4y ago
        That's why nice sit-down restaurants with tables for two exist.
    - ROTMetro 4y ago
      Huh? I did my own laundry starting from like 10, and cooking the family dinners most nights (until I reached high school and football practice got in the way). Not sure what 'US' you are talking about, maybe the generation before the 80s?
      - cratermoon 4y ago
        > maybe the generation before the 80s? Yeah, I overstated the reality for rhetorical effect, but it also would depend on what part of the US. Gender roles have changed in some places, but not so much in others. > until I reached high school and football practice got in the way That says a lot about US culture right there.
    - at_a_remove 4y ago
      I got a lot of flak for wanting an Easy-Bake Oven as a boy. My mom was a habitual Burner of Things. Never could quite figure that out. I just wanted to make a brownie that wasn't rock hard crust, you know? I received similar pushback for taking both Home Ec classes. It was really the only way out of the latchkey kid diet, which, yes, was primarily sandwiches, Steak-Umms, and so on.
      - Gordonjcp 4y ago
        Oh yeah me too, I wanted to do Home Ec at school. "But you'd be the only boy in the class, everyone else in the class is a girl!" was the general objection from the staff doing the timetables. Yes. That is rather the point, isn't it? Anyway I did Technical Drawing instead because either they couldn't see what the plan was, or they could see it all too well.
        at_a_remove 4y ago
        I ended up doing drafting as well as woodshop on top of it. It wasn't really a "reclaim my masculinity" thing so much as wanting to be well-rounded and trying things that I wasn't already good at. When I had to do some photography on appointment and sometimes videography, well, nervous people can mess up their clothes. A number of women were surprised when I whipped out a needle and matching thread to briefly repair a tear in their clothing when time was tight. I felt pretty annoyed at having to defend these kinds of choices, and a surprising amount of the pushback came not from boys my own age, but girls and women.
    - no_wizard 4y ago
      My dad was a 30 year army reserve veteran (served in both the Gulf War and Afghanistan) I would consider him to be a typical American "mans man" and definitely made a point about my brother and I learning how to cook, because its how you make a good impression on the in laws and girls you care about (his words, more or less). I credit this with why I know how to cook as well as I do. We grew up poor by most standards in the US, but my uncle was a butcher, both grandparents were farmers, so the one thing we had access to was fruits, vegetables and good meats. Its also why I think i never learned good portion control as a child and still have trouble maintaining a healthy weight (among other reasons I won't get into here), we made very good savory food all the time because its what we had. We had to cook, as take out wasn't an option, and frozen foods weren't cost effective the same way for us (due to familial professions, we had access to things most people don't in this way). That's the irony. I feel like I grew up with blander foods I'd be less inclined to eat them so much growing up, feeding a long habit of food being comfort.
      - Gordonjcp 4y ago
        My mate's grandad was an army cook. He told me that he was an excellent cook, made amazing meals, but never - after being demobbed - got his head around making not-army sized batches. So my mate would go round to his grandparents and find his grandad stirring a pot of chilli and a pot of stew and a pot of curry each roughly the size of a dustbin, and be greeted with "Oh hello, young lad, I wish I'd known you were coming, I'd have made you some dinner!"
  - kjkjadksj 4y ago
    You can be watching tv while the microwave is running though
  - toast0 4y ago
    Try reading a cookbook without knowing how to cook. Wtf does medium heat mean? How about simmer? They're great if you've got a basic understanding of cooking, but not for getting that basic understanding.
    - Gordonjcp 4y ago
      There's a glossary of terms in the back. If you're functionally literate, you can figure it out in no time.
      - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > a glossary of terms in the back No classic cookbook describes how to listen for medium versus high heat.
        Gordonjcp 4y ago
        Here's the secret - you don't need to! "Medium heat" is when the ring is half-way up. "High heat" is when the ring is all the way up. I knew shit like this when I was nine years old, because I knew what words like "medium" and "high" and "heat" meant. This whole thread is just reinforcing the impression I have that Americans are just permanent children, forever eating scaled-up versions of the children's menu.
        majormajor 4y ago
        Hah, "medium" - based on if the recipe ends up where it should - has been in a different place on the ring on pretty much every brand of stove I've ever had. Sure you can hack around and get something ok regardless, but... > maybe it's because the nearest "convenience stores" were a couple of hundred miles away Gosh, what a wild idea that that would lead to a difference! Combine that with parents without enough free time to be home much in the first place, the rapid availability of processed food that lasts longer and is ready faster, and advertising campaigns that innundated people with these and didn't mention the downsides of the new shit... why are you being so smug about just happening to grow up in a different environment?
  - artimaeis 4y ago
    I don’t think most of us who identify as “latchkey” kids had a ton of parental guidance around the house. Often there wasn’t anyone around to teach us to cook anything outside of the relatively child-proof microwave.
    - ethbr0 4y ago
      My wife's kids love the toaster oven, because she taught them it was almost impossible to burn the house down with, so they felt safe. Which is weird, because I never used one as a kid. Toaster, yes. Toaster-oven, no.
  - ROTMetro 4y ago
    As a male American latch key kid in the 80s I learned to cook and made dinner for my parents and myself most nights. There was a ton of cooking shows on PBS to learn from. You can only watch so much Robotech/Voltron and play so many Commodore games. All of my friends made good food too.
    - Gordonjcp 4y ago
      Remember when "youtube" only came on that big glass thing in the corner and only had a few dozen things on it, and you had to wait for the right thing to come round? Sure, I know you do...
  - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
    If someone had been there to tell my eleven year old self to just buy a cookbook, I suppose my problems would have been solved!
  - dustymcp 4y ago
    coming from uk "really good food" means heating the beans and browning your toast without burning it :)
    - Gordonjcp 4y ago
      No-one eats "beans on toast", it's a made-up thing.
      - twic 4y ago
        I eat beans on toast.
        jhbadger 4y ago
        Sir Clive Sinclair claimed he was a fan of it.
    - ethbr0 4y ago
      Why do British hate food? Some of the recipes remind me of the matpakke video. "But not too exciting or tasty!" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JlNmeVK_zLg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JlNmeVK_zLg
      - Gordonjcp 4y ago
        Well, we like food that tastes of food, and not just salt, sugar, and fat. Americans are scared of flavour.
  - thrashh 4y ago
    People who cook were exposed to it. People who like soccer were exposed to it. People who like working on electronics were exposed to it. Rarely does anyone do stuff independently. You saw someone else do it and that’s what got you into it. It has never mattered that libraries existed. Libraries are mostly for researching something that you’ve already taken an interest in. A library is literally massive. If you and your parents emphasized cooking, then that’s good. But you know, a really rich family would expose their kid to everything while a poor one wouldn’t. And what you get exposed to determines your life’s path, so that’s how the cookie crumbles.
    - ethbr0 4y ago
      There's also the point that as an early grade-school aged child, you haven't learned how to learn. We look back and say "I'd just go find a book, read it, and then try some practice runs." To an 8 year old, that sequence of events in response to not knowing something is completely alien.
cratermoon 4y ago
Too time consuming. With the microwave, you can have pizza rolls in 5 minutes. Less, if you don't mind the experience of alternating between still almost frozen and mouth-burning hot.
astura 4y ago
With what ingredients? My parents didn't keep non-frozen and non-boxed food in the house.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  I can't understand the mentality of that. Do Americans just not like food, or something?
schwartzworld 4y ago
I was a latchkey kid at an age where I wouldn't have been allowed to use the stove or oven, let alone whip up a meal. I could have made a salad, but not many 8 year olds would choose those over bagel bites.

There were usually never any other ingredients in the house and we'd never learned how to cook. YouTube wasn't a thing yet.

Gordonjcp 4y ago
Before youtube was invented there were these things called "books". Also, most things come with some sort of cooking instructions, like pasta or rice or whatever. Is it unusual that my parents (and pretty much all my friend's parents) made sure we grew up knowing how to cook and eat really good food? Maybe it's a UK vs US thing, maybe it's because the nearest "convenience stores" were a couple of hundred miles away.
- cratermoon 4y ago
  In the US, girls learned how to cook, starting with Easy-Bake™ Ovens. Boys learning to cook? Sissy stuff. Boys learned to heat up pizza rolls and play CoD.
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    Dude how are you going to get a girlfriend if you can't invite her over and make her dinner?
    - ashwagary 4y ago
      Girls can eat pizza rolls.
    - cratermoon 4y ago
      That's why nice sit-down restaurants with tables for two exist.
  - ROTMetro 4y ago
    Huh? I did my own laundry starting from like 10, and cooking the family dinners most nights (until I reached high school and football practice got in the way). Not sure what 'US' you are talking about, maybe the generation before the 80s?
    - cratermoon 4y ago
      > maybe the generation before the 80s? Yeah, I overstated the reality for rhetorical effect, but it also would depend on what part of the US. Gender roles have changed in some places, but not so much in others. > until I reached high school and football practice got in the way That says a lot about US culture right there.
  - at_a_remove 4y ago
    I got a lot of flak for wanting an Easy-Bake Oven as a boy. My mom was a habitual Burner of Things. Never could quite figure that out. I just wanted to make a brownie that wasn't rock hard crust, you know? I received similar pushback for taking both Home Ec classes. It was really the only way out of the latchkey kid diet, which, yes, was primarily sandwiches, Steak-Umms, and so on.
    - Gordonjcp 4y ago
      Oh yeah me too, I wanted to do Home Ec at school. "But you'd be the only boy in the class, everyone else in the class is a girl!" was the general objection from the staff doing the timetables. Yes. That is rather the point, isn't it? Anyway I did Technical Drawing instead because either they couldn't see what the plan was, or they could see it all too well.
      - at_a_remove 4y ago
        I ended up doing drafting as well as woodshop on top of it. It wasn't really a "reclaim my masculinity" thing so much as wanting to be well-rounded and trying things that I wasn't already good at. When I had to do some photography on appointment and sometimes videography, well, nervous people can mess up their clothes. A number of women were surprised when I whipped out a needle and matching thread to briefly repair a tear in their clothing when time was tight. I felt pretty annoyed at having to defend these kinds of choices, and a surprising amount of the pushback came not from boys my own age, but girls and women.
  - no_wizard 4y ago
    My dad was a 30 year army reserve veteran (served in both the Gulf War and Afghanistan) I would consider him to be a typical American "mans man" and definitely made a point about my brother and I learning how to cook, because its how you make a good impression on the in laws and girls you care about (his words, more or less). I credit this with why I know how to cook as well as I do. We grew up poor by most standards in the US, but my uncle was a butcher, both grandparents were farmers, so the one thing we had access to was fruits, vegetables and good meats. Its also why I think i never learned good portion control as a child and still have trouble maintaining a healthy weight (among other reasons I won't get into here), we made very good savory food all the time because its what we had. We had to cook, as take out wasn't an option, and frozen foods weren't cost effective the same way for us (due to familial professions, we had access to things most people don't in this way). That's the irony. I feel like I grew up with blander foods I'd be less inclined to eat them so much growing up, feeding a long habit of food being comfort.
    - Gordonjcp 4y ago
      My mate's grandad was an army cook. He told me that he was an excellent cook, made amazing meals, but never - after being demobbed - got his head around making not-army sized batches. So my mate would go round to his grandparents and find his grandad stirring a pot of chilli and a pot of stew and a pot of curry each roughly the size of a dustbin, and be greeted with "Oh hello, young lad, I wish I'd known you were coming, I'd have made you some dinner!"
- kjkjadksj 4y ago
  You can be watching tv while the microwave is running though
- toast0 4y ago
  Try reading a cookbook without knowing how to cook. Wtf does medium heat mean? How about simmer? They're great if you've got a basic understanding of cooking, but not for getting that basic understanding.
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    There's a glossary of terms in the back. If you're functionally literate, you can figure it out in no time.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > a glossary of terms in the back No classic cookbook describes how to listen for medium versus high heat.
      - Gordonjcp 4y ago
        Here's the secret - you don't need to! "Medium heat" is when the ring is half-way up. "High heat" is when the ring is all the way up. I knew shit like this when I was nine years old, because I knew what words like "medium" and "high" and "heat" meant. This whole thread is just reinforcing the impression I have that Americans are just permanent children, forever eating scaled-up versions of the children's menu.
        majormajor 4y ago
        Hah, "medium" - based on if the recipe ends up where it should - has been in a different place on the ring on pretty much every brand of stove I've ever had. Sure you can hack around and get something ok regardless, but... > maybe it's because the nearest "convenience stores" were a couple of hundred miles away Gosh, what a wild idea that that would lead to a difference! Combine that with parents without enough free time to be home much in the first place, the rapid availability of processed food that lasts longer and is ready faster, and advertising campaigns that innundated people with these and didn't mention the downsides of the new shit... why are you being so smug about just happening to grow up in a different environment?
- artimaeis 4y ago
  I don’t think most of us who identify as “latchkey” kids had a ton of parental guidance around the house. Often there wasn’t anyone around to teach us to cook anything outside of the relatively child-proof microwave.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    My wife's kids love the toaster oven, because she taught them it was almost impossible to burn the house down with, so they felt safe. Which is weird, because I never used one as a kid. Toaster, yes. Toaster-oven, no.
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  As a male American latch key kid in the 80s I learned to cook and made dinner for my parents and myself most nights. There was a ton of cooking shows on PBS to learn from. You can only watch so much Robotech/Voltron and play so many Commodore games. All of my friends made good food too.
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    Remember when "youtube" only came on that big glass thing in the corner and only had a few dozen things on it, and you had to wait for the right thing to come round? Sure, I know you do...
- rgrieselhuber 4y ago
  If someone had been there to tell my eleven year old self to just buy a cookbook, I suppose my problems would have been solved!
- dustymcp 4y ago
  coming from uk "really good food" means heating the beans and browning your toast without burning it :)
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    No-one eats "beans on toast", it's a made-up thing.
    - twic 4y ago
      I eat beans on toast.
      - jhbadger 4y ago
        Sir Clive Sinclair claimed he was a fan of it.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    Why do British hate food? Some of the recipes remind me of the matpakke video. "But not too exciting or tasty!" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JlNmeVK_zLg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JlNmeVK_zLg
    - Gordonjcp 4y ago
      Well, we like food that tastes of food, and not just salt, sugar, and fat. Americans are scared of flavour.
- thrashh 4y ago
  People who cook were exposed to it. People who like soccer were exposed to it. People who like working on electronics were exposed to it. Rarely does anyone do stuff independently. You saw someone else do it and that’s what got you into it. It has never mattered that libraries existed. Libraries are mostly for researching something that you’ve already taken an interest in. A library is literally massive. If you and your parents emphasized cooking, then that’s good. But you know, a really rich family would expose their kid to everything while a poor one wouldn’t. And what you get exposed to determines your life’s path, so that’s how the cookie crumbles.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    There's also the point that as an early grade-school aged child, you haven't learned how to learn. We look back and say "I'd just go find a book, read it, and then try some practice runs." To an 8 year old, that sequence of events in response to not knowing something is completely alien.

cratermoon 4y ago

Too time consuming. With the microwave, you can have pizza rolls in 5 minutes. Less, if you don't mind the experience of alternating between still almost frozen and mouth-burning hot.

astura 4y ago

With what ingredients? My parents didn't keep non-frozen and non-boxed food in the house.

Gordonjcp 4y ago
I can't understand the mentality of that. Do Americans just not like food, or something?

schwartzworld 4y ago

I was a latchkey kid at an age where I wouldn't have been allowed to use the stove or oven, let alone whip up a meal. I could have made a salad, but not many 8 year olds would choose those over bagel bites.