> For years now, cooking has been marketed as a waste of time and effort like hand-washing clothes (think fast food advertising).

Maybe that's the marketing message that hits some demographics, but there's also plenty of marketing push in the other direction: All the food channels on cable & youtube, amateur cooking competitions, prosumer kitchen renovations, gourmet grocery stores, dozens of cooking magazines and thousands of cookbooks. Not to mention emphasis that cooking skills are desirable for those in the dating scene.

(Now I'm looking forward to a competitive clothes-washing show... no, that's too absurd. Maybe competitive tailoring.)