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Comment by Galanwe | Hacker News Reader

I think you forget the fixed investment in time you have to make so that cooking becomes a pleasure. Really, I envy you.

On my end, having never really cooked, everything is an effort. I have no inspiration on what to buy, no inspiration on what to cook from what I bought, and whenever I actually do the cooking, everything has to be a mental focus. I can't just "bake" stuff, because I have to focus on checking it's baking okay, turning it, shaking it.

Now I have no doubt all of this can be much smoother and enjoyable, but only if you invest enough time that each step is no requiring you to spend hours checking recipes ideas, baking tutorials, etc.

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Like others said, there are some basics. I don't know about baking, it does seem somewhat more involved than what I do. But one example of something simple, which allows for variations and is pretty hard to screw up: eggs.

Melt some butter in a skillet, whisk some eggs in a bowl, drop them in the melted butter, wait for them to become hard, throw some cheese, bacon / ham / mushrooms and onions on top, fold in two. Voilà: yummy omelet.

Plenty of variations to be had with eggs: scramble them, boil them, try different kinds of cheeses, maybe add some peppers.

There is some basics in cooking that is not too complicated to learn and master through practice (given we eat at least 7 to 21 times a week).

Like heat, seasoning (salt, pepper), fats etc

There really is the same notions at the base of every recipe. There is a lot of books and videos that cover those basics. In a month of time through observation you can start to develop a skill that will be useful literally for the rest of your life in a most direct and enjoyable way.

Given we are exactly what we eat, it can be so rewarding that it’s really worth the effort. The challenge of learning how all those chemical notions fit together is almost on par on the challenges of learning in IT in some way.

Please take the time to learn the roots, you will be able to cook without thinking really simple and amazing things in a small amount of time, you will never regret it.

The cooking part has never been the stress source for me. It's the cleaning and prep time. Those stress me out hilariously badly; and, even if I use the dish washer (which is wonderful and I do use), I'm only one person, cooking for one person. I don't have the discipline, focus, etc, to meal-prep; and, I don't make enough of a mess to run the dishwasher every day - .. though arguably it would *still* take less water than manually washing.

Cook a huge stew and put 14 portions in the freezer?

This is how you never eat stew again. I’m a decent home cook, I do all the cooking for our household. About 10 years ago I made a delicious, but enormous daal. I ate it for 3 days, froze probably 10 portions if not more. Every time I opened the freezer, I saw daal. Every time I wanted a convenience meal for a month, daal. It felt like I ate nothing but daal for a month. I love daal. But I’ve not eaten it since

I think people have very different tolerances for low variety in food.

Do you want to change this? Honest question. If you do, it is changeable. Start small. Grilled cheese, or pasta with jarred sauce. Once a week. It gets easier. But no shade if you are happy how things are

I understand and it happens to many people including myself. Maybe set yourself to do a nice easy meal once a week just for the pleasure and see how it builds up from that.

I dont, I factor this time as investment into my mental and physical well-being. After a while I dont sweat over recipes anymore, my grocery list and route in the supermarket is highly stable, I can whip up anything from italian to indian to chineese at any time

Get meal kits delivered. You still do >80% of the cooking but it takes out all of the planning and shopping.

I was lucky(?) to grow up with a great cook and gardener for a mum, so I'm not even really sure how you exist without doing this at least. Pardon my naivety, but what do you eat...? Is everything unwrapped from plastic or from the local takeaway joint?

> Pardon my naivety, but what do you eat...? Is everything unwrapped from plastic or from the local takeaway joint?

As a student, money was always a struggle, so I would mainly eat stupid simple meals. [Pasta|potatoes puree|green beans] with [olive oil|tomato sauce|frozen steaks].

Once I started working, yes, a lot of pre-made meals. That eventually gave me some deficiencies and led to teeth issues.

I then increasingly had more income, so I switched to food delivery (deliveroo|foodpanda|uber eat), which is close to "eating at a restaurant every day". Not really healthy though since most restaurant food, at least in Europe, is tailored for occasional meals, not everyday meals, so it's often fatty and not well balanced.

I'm married since then, and luckily my partner took on her to do the cooking, while I do the prep/cleaning. I don't mind doing the grunt work, it's definitely not a pleasure, but at least it's not stressful, and the food is much healthier.

One of the really neat things about the meal kits is it teaches you the skills and takes some of the pressure off. Those skills are directly transferable - at some point you might decide to buy the ingredients for the recipe card yourself. Or that the steps for a chilli are almost the same as a ragu

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