The FastDay Forum

As above, are we all foodies? Or more precisely can we all cook? Another post made the connection between being overweight and eating crap convenience food because the person being talked about couldn't cook, or couldn't judge that the food they were eating wasn't fresh and wholesome.

Now this is a common misconception about fat people, that we can't cook. Yet most of my working life was spent in the catering industry, 15 years of it as a chef. I CAN cook and love freshly prepared foods. I also have the lowest shopping bills of my real life friends because I don't buy convenience foods. If we want crisps (chips for the Americans) we peel a potato and fry them. Today's lunch was the left overs from yesterdays roast dinner turned into a paprika beef and vegetable soup.

So how many of you can't cook and how many can?
There isn't enough room on each line for the whole sentence to be spelled out for the poll. So here are the full sentences.

I consider myself to be a Good cook and do without convenience foods as much as possible

I consider myself to be a good cook but buy convenience foods because of life and work constraints.

Good cook but don't like cooking so buy convenience

Spouse or partner does the cooking tick the box that applies to their style of cooking as well.

Poor cook and buy convenience foods because of life and work constraints

Poor cook and learning. so buy convenience foods (liven up meals, experiment etc)

I consider convenience food to be cheaper for a family/ single person/ retired person etc.

I buy convenience foods for the kids snacks and lunch boxes

Please also discuss as well.

I originally ticked option 3 til I read that it meant I buy convenience foods, which I don't do. My husband thinks I'm a good cook but I hate cooking whereas he loves doing it so I leave it to him. He is a definite foodie but I have a very limited palate, he lives to eat whereas I eat to live.

Ballerina x

[Betsysgr8]

I buy lots of fresh stuff and cook from scratch 95% of the time. I do occasionally buy a frozen package of something but ALWAYS add more vegetables to it because it never seems to have enough.

Hi Julie,

I find this quite interesting. I absolutely love to cook and cook most evenings as I feel it signifies the end of the working day and transition to my time! My freezer contains nothing but butcher meat as I just don't like convenience foods and don't really see the point.

I have always cooked, though I know that I have not always cooked healthily (there was a period where I used A LOT of cream). I think portion control has a big impact on weight, regardless of home cooked or convenience. I found that when I started to measure things, carbs in particular, I was eating a huge amount. I now weight rice/pasta whenever I use it rather than guesstimating. I think it's the reliance on carbohydrates that is a big draw back for people. My diet used to consist of two slices of wholegrain toast for breakfast, two slices of wholegrain toast and homemade soup for lunch, then dinner with a large pile of pasta, potatoes or rice. Knowing what I know now I was eating far more carbs in a day than my 5ft frame needs, however I wasn't particularly eating 'unhealthily'.

I hope I'm making some sense!

I ticked # 3 , but now I'm not sure after reading your explanation. I don't use much convenience food even though, after more than 50 years, I'm tired of cooking. If OH wants to go out to eat, or bring home Thai, Chinese or pizza, I don't say no.

On the other hand, when I was talking at work one day years ago about the difficulty of making gravy and mashed potatoes and all the other last-minute dishes come out at the same time (and hot!) at Thanksgiving, I was shocked and horrified when a colleague suggested using canned gravy I note that other hosts don't seem to worry whether or not the sliced turkey cools on the platters while the other dishes are tended to--maybe my standards were too high back then?

[janeg]

I really enjoy cooking and usually cook when we're at home. When we're on site it's a different matter though. If I'm still home based and have time , I'll take food with me, but if we're at a hotel then I really don't have much choice. Usually after a few days, I'm desperate for some home cooked plain food! Beloved is the same and will regularly come back craving something like scrambled eggs and toast!
Still managing to shift the beef though!

I will amend the polls to include hubby/partners doing the cooking.

Personally I am a 2. As I prefer frozen veg to canned when I can't them fresh, plus I have prepared fish (fish fingers etc) and ice cream in the freezer. But I don't rely on ready meals.

I also agree that it was the carbs that caused my weight problem.
Cereals with milk and/ or toast for breakfast.

Sandwich, soup and bread, pasta, burger in its bun, rice, all sorts of carb laden lunch.

Dinner would be a bit more balanced, but again it had some form of carbs, potatoes being British, pasta, rice, sometimes with bread as well. Then an occasional pudding.

Snacks were always heavy carb loaded foods, fruit, biscuits, cakes, crisps.

It all added up to a very heavy carb loading, without the advantages in vitamin and mineral loading the same amount of food in the form of vegetables would have given me. Yet I was being told constantly that it was healthy, the way to control weight.

I don't really like everyday cooking but enjoy trying new dishes, some are tasty and others a complete disaster. When I cook for myself it's usually OK but when we have visitors everything goes wrong.

I like to read through recipes and I enthusiastically buy the unusual ingredients needed - then get bored with the idea or lose the recipe. I always have cupboards full of stuff which I'm never going to use and have a clear out when several get past their use by date.

So I can be a good cook sometimes but on the whole I don't like cooking - but I rarely buy convenience food.

I ticked 3

I ticked the poor cook/ convenience box - I'm assuming that total laziness comes under "life constraints"!! I also ticked the OH cooks box - he relies heavily on ready meals but considers that to be gourmet cooking, bless him. If it arrives on my plate ready to eat, that's gourmet enough for me.

I might get back in the habit one day - but at the moment, ready meals really tick my box. Supplemented by lots of veggies popped in the microwave. I love my microwave oven, and in fact we have two of them in our kitchen. They have ruined me for normal cooking though. If I do put something on the hob, I tend to get distracted and do something else, expecting it to ping and then wait patiently, and then I come back to find it overcooked/burnt etc. Though we do use the oven occasionally - the microwave isn't good at frozen pizza

I don't think convenience food causes overweight. OH hasn't had proper home cooking in 40 years, and is naturally thin. I got fat on home cooking, stayed fat while cooking/not cooking at various times, and am now slim on ready meals.

My husband doesn't cook and we don't really do take aways so if I want a night off convenience food it is, neither of us has a problem with this.If I go out for lunch I will often feed a ready meal to my OH as well!

I love cooking, I spend a lot of my free time thinking about what I am going to cook and looking at recipes, I love it when I go to other peoples houses and I get to look through their recipe books!
I don't always enjoy cooking on weekday evenings, but I just about never have any convienience food in the house, partly because it's expensive but also because I never find anything I want. I try to eat vegan food as much as possible so I make my own veggie burgers, sausages, 'meat'balls etc and freeze them to have things on hand for when I don't have time to cook, but if I had nothing in and no time to cook I would rather go out to eat than eat a ready meal!
I would say my biggest reason for gaining weight is too much snacking, I love baking so we always have cake etc in the house, and the fact that my husband insists on eating a three course meal every day, so the temptation to eat dessert is great!

I am between 1 and 2 for daily cooking in the sense that I prepare everything fresh but still buy some convenience food as treats, although I try to limit them.
For my kids I buy cookies and chips and some easy to prepare stuff for their lunches but most of the time they get leftovers in a thermos and fresh fruit.
I think in my case I gain weight when I start eating convenience foods, especially cookies, breads, chips because once I start I can't stop.

I can't help drawing a comaprison wiith this thread and the one where the poster said she was fed up with the 5;2 diet.

Guys, food is fuel to enable us to carry out our every day lives. I suppose the subject is media driven (as indeed) a lot of subjects are (I'm afraid) with glossy images of food products being displayed round every turn.

I sometimes think we should turn the clocks back 100 yaers and think back to how our forefathers lived; even during the War years people excercised more (no cars then) and ate what there was..... check out your family photos....no one was over-weight then.

I digress.

I live on my own and (try to) eat raw veg most of the time. I'm trying to get balance between 2x veggies and a small amout of protein eaten in small portions through the day (so as to avoid a sugar spike).

Whether this makes me a "foodie" .....I don't know.