If parents cannot teach their children to read and write, then why assume they can teach cooking?

[Boojatta]

Poll question: If parents cannot teach their children to read and write, then why assume they can teach cooking?

[Fumesucker]

1. How hard can it be?

Take it out of the freezer, unwrap it and stick it in the microwave until it starts smoking..

[gkhouston]

3. You'd be surprised. I've learned to empty my mouth and my bladder before listening

to my oldest sister recount her latest visit to her in-law's house. Cooks they are not. :rofl:

[Fumesucker]

7. My ex wife's sister went to bake a cake once..

The recipe on the box called for an egg in the mix..

She hard boiled an egg, chopped it up finely and added it to the mix before baking it all..

My brother got a microwave back when they were called "Radar Range".. He hard "boiled" about half a dozen eggs as the first thing he cooked, didn't put them in water, just stuck 'em in the microwave and gave it about five minutes.. When he opened the door the eggs went off like miniature hand grenades and coated him and his entire kitchen with a thin layer of semi cooked egg..

[Shell Beau]

10. When my sister in law first started cooking, she made instant

potatoes. It called for a 1/4 of salt. She put in a 1/4 of a cup!!! Needless to say, they were some kind of nasty, or so says my brother. I can only imagine.

[no limit]

4. I got an easier method

pull up to drive through window, place order, drive off with your delicious food.

I didn't need no stinkin edumication to learn that.

[Fumesucker]

8. The five basic food groups..

Instant, microwave, frozen, delivery and take out..

[CrispyQ]

12. And thank goodness for those picture menus!

;)

[no limit]

22. Yeah, as long as the numbers don't go over 10 I'm good

[JackintheGreen]

24. Ah! But where did you learn to drive? n/t

[gkhouston]

2. Some of them haven't learned cooking, whether or not I "assumed" it.

Either that orange powder dribbling down their chins and shirts was meant to make mac 'n' cheese sauce or some people eat a lot of Cheetos... }(

[FarCenter]

5. Once they can read, they can follow the directions on the package

[gkhouston]

9. see post 7. Swallow first, if you value your monitor.

And actually, it's not just a matter of reading and writing. I often bake things to take to church. People fall on my baked goods as if they were laced with cocaine, yet they're rarely anything more than doctored up mixes or recipes off the back of chip packages, etc. It's stuff that anyone could make, if they'd simply follow the instructions and measure with care.

[hughee99]

6. People who can't read and write have been cooking for thousands of years...

Some well, some not so well. Yes, reading and writing would certainly help greatly, but it's not a prerequisite to learn how to cook, is it?

On the flip side, people who can teach their children to read and write may not be able to teach their children to cook. Take my mother for example.

[Kali]

11. why can't parents teach their children to read and write?

:shrug:
or were you referring some specific example(s)?

[Iggo]

13. 'Cause they gotta eat. (n/t)

[cali]

14. from a cook's point of view, this thread is a riot

cooking stories always make me fondly remember my dad. My mom is an incredible cook, and my dad was certainly appreciative and knew about excellent food, but the guy could not cook. Brilliant man, just couldn't cook and seemed incapable of following a recipe. One thanksgiving when we were pretty little, my mom was sick, so dad decided he'd make the turkey. He stuffed it with raw everything, raw giblets, raw onion and celery, etc. He then cooked the thing for some 12 hours or so. Unbelievable, the turkey was cooked to petrification but the stuffing was still partially raw. An

[Fumesucker]

19. That's hilarious..

I can just imagine the looks at the Thanksgiving dinner table..

Thanksgiving before last my son in law and I deep fried two turkeys, I'm not sure what happened but one of them came out fine while the other was just slightly short of pure carbon..

I didn't think we were *that* drunk..

[Zoeisright]

15. Schools are cutting home ec.

Kids are NOT being taught how to cook. And this country is not better off for it. What a stupid way to 'save' money. I can thank the asshole governor of my state, Timmy 'Weasel' Pawlenty for that. What a fucking moron.

[Ozymanithrax]

16. Because you don't have to conjugate a cucumber to eat it.

[Boojatta]

17. Do children learn to conjugate a cucumber in sex ed class?

[Ozymanithrax]

18. No, but the conjugate verbs in English class.

[Boojatta]

20. Do people conjugate verbs when they write, but not when they speak?

[dmallind]

21. Other - "hey it's a nonsensical Boojatta poll that's nothing to do with metaphysics for a change!"

1) Why the hell are these propositions even related to each other? Is there some proposal to make teaching of cooking illegal?
2) Even if 1) has some connection I can't think of right now, why is it not perfectly feasible that some parents can or will teach cooking who can't or won't teach reading and writing, or vice versa?. I am a terrible cook who can just about make an acceptable stir fry, chilli, and breakfast, but I have taught a few hundred adults (mostly prisoners) how to read and write. Is it not conceivable that there are inverses of me out there - people who cannot read but who can cook and teach others how?

[jmowreader]

23. Trust me: they cannot

Never, EVER eat my wife's cooking. Some of her atrocities:

At Christmas this year she attempted to make turkey stuffing. All they had at her house growing up is cornbread stuffing. Cornbread stuffing did not exist in the Northwest before the Southerners fleeing the shit wages Southern employers pride themselves on started bringing their evil cooking skills north. My mother tells me you can get grits at every supermarket up there now. That's just wrong. Anyway, I gave my wife a very detailed recipe for making bread dressing: tear up bread, put it in a bowl, and stir in a mixture of turkey giblets, onions and celery that have been sauteed in butter. After you do that, you add three or four eggs, sage, garlic, salt and pepper (plus Italian seasoning, but that goes in everything that doesn't contain sugar) and stir them in. And finally, you add just enough turkey stock to get the bread moist, then put it in the oven to bake. And I told her I would be MORE than happy to make it. Nope, she had to do it: tear up a loaf of bread, dump a whole quart of turkey stock on it and throw it in the oven. It was as vile as it sounds.

I was stupid enough to bring home a London Broil and tell her what it was. "It's kind of a cross between a roast and a steak." She turned it into a POT ROAST! I was going to grill this thing! (Lesson learned: when planning to grill the London broil, buy it the same day you're going to cook it so she can't pot roast the little fucker.)

Worse atrocity: $22 rolled oven roast. Beautiful cut of meat. Perfect for au jus, horseradish sauce, all that. She thought it was perfect to put in the fucking crock pot and cover with potatoes and carrots.

One fine day I made an oven roast...when I came back to check it, it was in a covered pan with potatoes and carrots around it. She found the oven roast and turned it into a pot roast!

And she wonders why I don't want roast anymore!

When I cook it's like feeding George Bush: there are certain things she will eat but God help you if you stray outside of that. For instance, when I was a kid we used to have what my mom called Poor Boy sandwiches. She'd get a French bread, cut it in half like you'd cut a sub roll. lay the two halves next to each other, cover 'em with meatloaf mix, bake it until it was done, then put cheese on it and let it melt. She likes meatloaf with cheese, so I figured she'd like this, right? I made up a batch on real nice French rolls--and she wouldn't eat it until I had put the top half of another French roll on hers.

Last week I made some fucking KILLER ramyon. This was ramyon from the gods, I'm here to tell ya: I took chicken stock, thickened it, added a little onion and garlic, and simmered it for a few minutes to make sure it was nice and rich...then added ramyon noodles and simmered them for 30 minutes so the flavor infused the noodles. And then I put cheese on it. It wasn't exactly like Top Ramen out of the package--so she didn't eat but about two bites.

It's hard to live like this; you never know what state she's going to be in.

[mitchum]

25. I'm a special ed teacher who teaches my students how to cook

it is a life skill

[Boojatta]

26. Kick to encourage voting and commenting.