Sounds like my one friend growing up. They had a McMansion which his Mom was obsessive about keeping immaculate. But they ordered takeout basically every night. His dad was entrepreneurial and taught him that it’s economically rational not to cook for yourself if you’re a high earner. He’s now a well paid programmer and he lives off of TV dinners so he can spend an even more excessive time playing video games.
When I was younger I thought that, I came from a family of bad cooks and thought I just wanted to make enough where I wouldn’t have to cook. Well, I kind of make enough for that, and I do love going out - but really I just had to cook better. Now dinner at home isn’t depressing but actually kind of nice.
Nice food is one of life’s most basic and universal pleasures
I genuinely can’t wrap my head around people not being arsed about it at all.
Those guys that just eat Huel 3 meals a day just make me feel sad for what they’re missing out on
On the one hand, people like what they like, and if they don’t care about food, why should it bother me?
On the other hand, though, I feel like eating food is such a universal human experience that meeting somebody who doesn’t care what their food tastes like is akin to meeting somebody who doesn’t like music. It just gives me an automatic “WTF” reaction.
To be fair there’s a big difference between not liking music and not being into music. I know some people who aren’t big on music but still enjoy it.
Places I stayed in Japan and China had no kitchens (or pathetic, unusable kitchens). I consider myself a good cook and I like to prepare nice meals for people around the world when I stay with them, but honestly, there are places all over that is a challenge.
So you most likely chose cheapest options to stay and are somehow amazed they are cheap and had barely usable kitchen?
Did you think to ask beforehand that you wanted a 5 star kitchen?
I’ll take “dumb takes due to bad reading comprehension” for $200
Something may have been lost in translation. The general topic here is about people cooking food for themselves and I was contributing the point of view that isn’t always a feasible reality. I do still often make people nice, home cooked meals working with whatever we have, but I get why some usually don’t.
Like, they don’t eat a lot? Or they just don’t care about good food?
They eat nothing but “original” flavored Soylent, sometimes banana flavor if they’re feeling frisky.
But green is too exotic for them.
In my culture we hate food, never party, don’t drink, and don’t respect our elders!
I mean, have you SEEN elders these days?
Ice floes for the lot of them, I say!
(Jk, in case there’s any doubt)
(Jk, in case there’s any doubt)
Of course, we don’t have enough pristine ice left to waste it on them!
I feel the opposite. That makes them interesting.
My family is all very very obesity prone and acts psychotic about it. Everyone. They (try to) eat low-cal well-seasoned food. Mom will barely lose weight at 1000 cal/day unless she’s doing cardio (she won’t) the family dinner table looks pitiful. I mean, they make it look nice visually, but if all four of us are staying healthy it looks like a salad and baked chicken. Nobody is forced to eat healthy or shamed.
Almost always salad or raw/boiled vegetables and a protein. Boiled cheesy broccoli is a treat there. Eggs for breakfast. Yogurt and fruit for lunch. It’s almost unreal sometimes. I lucked out as I just do 2-3000 cal a day and keep an eye on it and I’m set. 1500 if I’m overweight and 4000 if I fall under but I think that the lifestyle they maintain has permanently marred the way I look at food.
All this to say we both are and aren’t food people in my family.
If she is making good tasting low calorie food, that’s actually quite an advanced trick. But your mom should (sorry for the should) work out if she’s able bodied and her TDEE is 1,000 kcal. How can an adult woman even get enough nutrition on that? I thought 1,200 was the bare minimum and took some wrangling. I am moderately active (vinyasa yoga 4x a week and electric bike not car) and at least 2,000 a day to maintain at 57 years old. It does keep me at weight not underweight like when I was 20-45 but how idle is she? That can’t be good.
Not sure how the food science works out but she’s a remarkably small woman so I always figured that meant less food to meet caloric needs. I’ve had many conversations with her about her lifestyle and unfortunately I think it’s a lost cause. She absolutely HATES exerting herself. Most of her excercise comes from running errands and shopping.
I suspect you’re aware; but if she’s undereating, that may be why she hates exercising - she may have less energy than she should, making it an even bigger effort for her to do anything than it would be if she were overweight.
Sounds right.
I think as long as you’re eating food that tastes good within what you’re able to eat then you’re doing just fine and people shouldn’t judge you. It’s people that could eat whatever and choose to be flavourless that suck.
lots of rice, but never watermelon
Show up with the blue ribbon zucchini that’s the size of a 4 year old, give them a good scare
Rice and watermelon sounds like an odd combo, tbh.
Honestly this probably kinda describes my family, depending on how you interpret it.
My brother and I, and my dad’s wife are all really into cooking now though
Can you elaborate what about your family could be interpreted as “not a big food family”? I just have so many ideas but none feel like how I’d immediately describe it. Because ultimately it sounds like a family that takes no pleasure or joy from a meal. Even sharing or preparing one together.
Sorry for the essay lol:
My dad was a workaholic and really only made much time for church, scouts, and Netflix nights with my brother and I when I was little, and my mom doesn’t like and isn’t particularly good at cooking (with a couple exceptions for certain dishes) plus she also worked full time, and as a kid I had an undiagnosed eating disorder that made me picky and food averse to a point of being a health risk (I was 5th percentile in weight at various points)
When we ate at home I ate very poorly because neither of them were great at cooking, so with both my parents being busy and wanting me to eat well, we ate out a ton, often tex-mex, cause that’s what I’d consistently eat a reasonable amount of and we all liked it (my brother would happily eat just about anything lol).
We ate SO much moes lol. The people there all knew us, the manager was a sweetheart and would come chat with us at our table. My dad really liked shouting “welcome to moes!!!” With them when we walked through the door, and if they forgot or were quiet or whatever he’d give them a hard time about it lol. And then ask them for a veritable mountain of cilantro on his burrito 😅
Food just wasn’t a huge part of my family life as a kid. My dad has gotten into grilling now that I’m an adult and makes amazing pulled pork, and his wife loves cooking. My mom is starting to get interested in cooking as she’s now dating someone who for the first time (after my dad) doesn’t cook as a huge pastime/hobby (her last couple boyfriends loved cooking and always wanted to cook for her). She recently even asked if she could borrow my copy of Salt Fat Acid Heat.
But as a kid, cooking and eating was a thing we needed to do but not a big shared experience that brought the family together. Especially once my parents separated when I was in middle-school- they were kinda dealing with their own shit and more or less just left my brother and I to figure out food for ourselves a lot of the time
But that’s when I started learning how to cook myself, which ended up being the single biggest thing I could do to manage and work on my eating disorder, so it ultimately worked out okay :)
Food is much more relevant now to disparate members of my family, but it’s individual interests now moreso than a shared family thing outside of holidays.
Hope this explains what I mean :)
(Not the original commenter)
I mean yeah that’s pretty much it. My dad’s cooking is unseasoned cucumber in a pan with some grocery-store veggie balls, which is not enough for 2-3 people. My mom’s cooking is much better, but it’s cooked more out of expectation than enjoyment. Eating together is expected but not enjoyed for its own merits afaik.
Desserts are the exception usually. Still, it messed up with my relationship to food, made it a lot worse than it could have been. Eating full meals with someone makes me gag, I have trouble eating normal quantities.
