> You realistically need electricity and refrigeration I'm pretty sure people were cooking for quite some time before electricity and refrigeration came along.

> You realistically need electricity and refrigeration I'm pretty sure people were cooking for quite some time before electricity and refrigeration came along. > Beans take hours to cook without even considering soaking time. You do understand that you don't actually have to stand over the pot the entire time they're cooking, right? And that crock pots are a thing that exists (and which can also be had very cheaply from thrift stores)? What you apparently think of as "cooking" is "making the latest frou-frou trendy recipe". Old-school peasant cooking (from any peasant society you care to name) is cheap, easy, and consumes very little time.