Everyone is focused on the cooking time and not the punchline, which is still needing to do the dishes.
Making a meal falls into three parts: prep, cook, and clean. I used to hate the ‘boring, standing on my aching feet’ prep bit, so I’d try to fit the prep into the little gaps in cooking. Of course, 8 couldn’t do it and I had to keep adjusting things - taking something off heat/down heat, whatever - to finish the prep for the next stage. The constant adjustments made the food not as good, the cooking unnecessarily stressful, and left me exhausted with a sink full of dishes at the end.
Nowadays, I sit in front of the tv. I do my prep there, all the peeling and chopping and slicing and dicing. When I cook, everything is ready for me to add to the dish, so the food tastes better and cooking itself is much less stressful. And I use the little bits of spare time during cooking to rinse the dishes and put them in the dishwasher. When I’m done cooking, I only have the last handful of things to put in the dishwasher, plus whatever plates from the meal itself.
My life is much easier, all because I now watch TV.
Ah. So, I get a farm share every week. ‘Planning’ is looking at the list of what I’m getting and figuring out what I can make from it - although I’ve been doing this long enough that I actually have a selection of recipes that I re-use year to year, so I spend more time digging the recipe out then I do actually ‘planning’.
The weekly shopping is usually about 5 ‘missing’ ingredients that I need for my chosen dishes, plus whatever staples I’ve run out of. I usually go shortly before the store closes for the night, and it takes about 15 minutes.
Honestly, meal kits are clutch for this since they provide everything and the most effort needed by me is putting them away. 2 nights a week it makes my job of figuring out what to eat and how to make it a lot easier.
Well yeah. Unless you’re using disposable plates, you’re going to still have to do dishes. Fewer, but still.
But you can reduce that with things like a slow cooker, and one pot meals.
- Dump ingredients straight on the countertop.
- Use a Boring Company™ Not A Flamethrower™ to roast/flambe.
- Lick the finished meal off the countertop.
- …
- No dishes!
That’s why I get take-outs, don’t have to do the dishes.
Also, can we take a moment to talk about how great the performance of whomever that woman in the meme is? Looks like an Oscar worthy performance to me.
Just don’t think about dying and all the dishes get cleaned and put away in your dream house magically somehow.
But the whole point of the story is that choosing to be human in the real world, instead of being an everlasting symbol in a fantasy world, is to accept everything that comes with being human in life: dying, doing dishes, but more importantly, the ability to choose your own path in your story.
I used to feel this way about cooking. I started trying to find joy in the repetitive parts of life, so they didn’t seem so annoying. It’s definitely a journey, but if you keep at it, you get to a point where cooking feels like a creative outlet. Once you have enough experience to create something new from your pantry and quit following recipes verbatim you’ll have fun. It took me a few years to get there, but you’re going to have to cook your entire life anyway, might as well get something out of it.
We absolutely hit a specific age where the annoying parts of life, like cleaning and tidying, suddenly become one of the most satisfying parts of life.
Do you have a tip for enjoying scrubbing the shower, the toilet, and behind the toilet? Everything else is ok, but I hate those. As a result, I try to keep them as clean as possible in day to day use (squeegee the shower after every use, use toilet cleaner, etc) but I still have to dedicate time to cleaning them occasionally and tbh I’m considering paying someone else to do it.
You are both cooking too slowly and eating too fast
Yeah, honestly. It’s a crap meme. Maybe it feels like 2 hours because its boring for you. If you cook for 2 hours likely one part of it is putting something into the oven for 1 1/2 hours.
Not everyday can be a Rachael Ray 30 minute meal.
I make chicken pot pie weekly. Mirepoix, peel dice potatoes, constantly stir so roux doesn’t clump. It’s 90 minutes of non stop cooking and 30 minutes of oven.
Is that the only option everyday? A whole fucking chicken? People are ridiculous.
No but you commented that they were cooking for too long with no idea of what was being cooked.
I have an example of what needs a longer cooking time.
The ridiculousness comes from you commenting without having any idea what OP was cooking and not providing advice of things that can be cooked quickly.
Take 10 minutes to spatchcock your bird and it will cook in 40 minutes
Wash up whilst it cooks
Or just use a convection oven. They’re super fast. 6 drumsticks or 4 thighs in 20 minutes.
What are you cooking that takes 2 hours every day? I cook most of my own meals and i don’t often go over an hour of cooking and most of that is just waiting.
Even if it does take 2 hours start to finish, I have to imagine there’s at least SOME part of the recipe that involves waiting for something to cook. That’s dishwashing time right there.
I once made Coq au Vin, it took around 2 hours, and I never felt like cooking that again.
At least it was really tasty.
