Cooking a lost art?

[NicoleLJ]

mmmmmm my house smells of chocolate cake. I am making a sour cream chocolate cake with sour cream chocolate icing from scratch. Amazing any batter got into the pans. I wanted to eat it all it was so good and I am not a huge fan of batter. Later tonight I am making a cheesy tuna casserole. My fiance's favorite dish. Yesterday I made 2 huge batchs of turkey soup to freeze from a turkey I roasted the night before and the day before that I made a hamburger soup to freeze.

My fiance is always bragging to his friends and family about how I cook everything from scratch and rarely use recipes. They all seem to have the same comments about it. One they love to enjoy my cooking and baking. Two they wish their spouses cooked or enjoyed cooking.

This always leads to a huge discussion that more and more people are chosing to either eat out, get take out, get premade meals from the super market or preboxed meals. Even baking is mainly done from box kits now. His family and friends say it is becoming a lost art when it comes to cooking anything from scratch. People are prefering to choose the quick and easy. I was wondering if others had the same impression.

Personally I do almost all my cooking from scratch. I find cooking to be a stress reliever. I love to experiment and I love watching people enjoy my food. Is this really becoming a rareity in the every day home now?

[caseysmom]

I still enjoy cooking, unfortunately I also enjoy eating. I am not a very good baker though.

Its a shame how much people go out to eat, it is so much healthier to cook at home most of the time.

[NicoleLJ]

Cheaper too. And I find much tastier. My fiance works at a department store and on lunch break everyone goes to fast food places. He heats frozen meals that I made him. When he is heating it everyone is begging him for some. He says he much prefers the meals I make and freeze over fast food any day.

[Grace]

I don't do baking - and I don't buy bakery products at the store.

I do love to cook from scratch though. I love doing Baked Beans - baking them all day. The house smells so good. Most of my cooking is from scratch.

I do buy some frozen dinners - for those nights when we are on-our-own without leftovers. I'll have a salad - he has a frozen dinner.

[Karen]

I think it is just as much that time is a lost item these days, as cooking does take some planning ahead - one needs to have ingredients on hand, and some time to accomplish! When both parents in a couple work, for example, by the time everyone gets home, there's not time to make much in the way of food, or energy, if one has not done the shopping and prep ahead of time.

[Freedom]

I love to cook, most of my friends find it "intriguing," lol. Yup, the ready made supermarket meals are a big thing.

A year or so back, there was an email, you sent a recipe to the last person on the list, deleted that name, added your name to the top of the list, and sent it on to 10 people. Idea was, you would receive recipes from folk you didn't know, so most likely the recipes would be new to you. I was SO excited!

I got replies from all 10 people, they don't cook, they had no recipes, were not sending it on, and what did I think this was the 1950's?
******

Funny, I made a chocolate cake tonight as well! I managed to do something I have never done - poured batter into the first cake pan and then proceeded to drop the bowl into it! SPLASH! (or should it be splat?) Batter over me, the counter, the coffee maker, the tile backsplash, man, I haven't made a mess like that in YEARS! He he. We still had a 2 layer cake; but it was a lot lower than normal.

[carole]

I really enjoy baking, and the more you do it the better you get at it, i have some wonderful recipes, some that always turn out great, and i stick with those, again i love to eat it too, so as i am always watching what and how much i eat, don't do it too often, but i do make my Weight Watcher breakfast muffins once a week, they are delicious with currants and sunflower seeds in them,yum think i might go and make some today.
One thing i am not is a gourmet cook, just a plain everyday home baker.

I also enjoy watching cooking programmes, we have NZ celebrity chef on and NZ home baker which i prefer to watch on at the moment, and they have some divine every day recipes on them.