Going a step further, I cook multiple times a day. Although now that I'm going to the office, I mealprep so I cook meals in advance. But I'm still cooking at least once a day.
If I had to guess, I'd say the reason Americans think cooking is hard is because they leave home at 7am so they can be at work by 9am. Then work until 5pm, and make it home by 7pm. And cooking, while not hard, does take time. Not much time in that schedule.
They also hold this weird notion that you can't have dinner at 9pm, which is when I usually have it at.
But really what matters most is that they just don't value it as much.
Even with my relatively slacker-ish schedule of up at 7, work by 730, leave at 430, pick up son at daycare, home by 515, it can be fairly challenging to cook some days. Especially if you haven't planned things out in advance.
That said, it's crazy expensive to eat out all the time. We probably cut our yearly budget by a healthy $2500 just by cutting down on takeout. And there is some true joy that comes from knowing that you are the reason your wife and child have smiles on their faces at the dinner table. Even if you did it with a meal kit rather than shopping for ingredients yourself, who am I to pooh pooh that.
> Especially if you haven't planned things out in advance.
That's why on non-special days I have a limited set of things that I will cook. Or a limited set of combinations, if you will. I don't come home thinking "Oh what do I have, what can I make with this, let's find a recipe". I look at the fridge and it's like "Ah, I have ingredients for X, I'll make X". Then on another day it's "Ah yes, today it's going to be Y" and I just cook the same things all the time.
Helps with a lot of things. I always know what groceries to buy, I know how much nutrients my meals will have in advance, I know which of my staple meals fits a particular day's type of activities etc. Limiting your choices makes life a lot easier.
Think like a line cook, not a chef. Leave the chef stuff for weekends and special occasions.
I agree, mealprepping really helps a lot and I do it too.
I think, as you and justwannasing already mentioned, part of the problem is really a lack of time. We went from spending a large part of our time sourcing food (hunting), to growing it (agriculture), then dramatically reduced this when we moved to mass produced and widely available food in supermarkets.
What's this led to? More free time to...work. But if work becomes more decentralized and people work from home then it could lead to more of us cooking.
If I had to guess, I'd say the reason Americans think cooking is hard is because they leave home at 7am so they can be at work by 9am. Then work until 5pm, and make it home by 7pm. And cooking, while not hard, does take time. Not much time in that schedule.
They also hold this weird notion that you can't have dinner at 9pm, which is when I usually have it at.
But really what matters most is that they just don't value it as much.