> Firstly cooking from scratch is absolutely a life skill and nominally cheaper.
> But food is also a class issue.
If we put these two beliefs together (and I think we're of similar minds), I think we should amend the first to be "meal planning and preparation is a life skill". Unfortunately the cooking craze over the past few decades has done nothing to improve, let alone restore, that life skill.
> I mean Gordon bloody Ramsey does not prepare food the way he tells you to in his cookbooks - it's too slow and inefficient.
Here I disagree. Someone like Gordon Ramsey possesses incredible knife and other preparatory and cooking skills. To use an analogy, he may not run a sub 4 minute mile every time he goes for a run, but even his leisurely runs would exhibit abilities that would seem extraordinary yet appear effortless on his part to most people.
That said, as a successful restaurateur Ramsey likely has meal planning skills at least as impeccable as his culinary skills. And meal planning is the most critical aspect to successful, economical home cooking. People seem to think the reason for failure is difficulty in preparation and cooking, thus the popularity of slow cookers, instant pots, etc. But such gadgets address the wrong set of problems. (The emphasis on recipes is misplaced for similar reasons.)
FWIW, I have horrible meal planning skills. Developing a good sense for how to mix and match ingredients is one important aspect; among other reasons, so you can reuse ingredients across multiple meals in a week. Relatedly, learning specific styles of cuisines and their rules also helps--French, Spanish, and Italian cooking all commonly use what in Spanish-influenced cuisine is called a sofrito. But there are many other dimensions to meal planning.
On that note, anyone know of good meal planning books or resources?