When I was in college, I had a roommate who was blown away by the fact that I could cook things...on the stove! Without a box and directions! Apparently, her family had never done that. She had grown up on Tuna Helper, boil in the bag rice, and canned soup. I remember the first time I amazed her.
*cue flashback music...set the scene- cramped studio dorm room....very small kitchen...two young ladies studying away..*
Me: I think I'll make some popcorn. Would you like some?
Sara: That sounds great! *gets up, goes to the closet, and says* Oh- wait, we're out of microwave popcorn. I'm ready for a break. I could go pick some up!
Me: Don't worry about it. I have some that my dad gave me. I'll just make some on the stove.
Sara: You have those cute stove ones? I loved watching to foil rise when I was a kid!
Me: No, just some...popcorn. That I'll make in a pan. On the stove.
Sara: You can DO that?!?!? *Watches in amazement as I make popcorn*
She about fainted the time I made my own pizza crust- and I was even using a Jiffy crust mix, as we did not have the room to store flour in our mini fridge. (The dorm had mice, so I liked to store food in the fridge if at all possible.)
She told me that it really never occurred to her that you could make things from scratch, and that she considered Hamburger Helper and canned soup homemade, because you heated it up at home.
Because of this mentality, it's really easy to amaze people with the most basic of cooking skills. But I also find it sad because home cooking seems to have gotten the reputation of being hard. Canned soup is our cooking salvation! I've found that, for the most part, basic cooking is not much harder, and does not really take much more time. I even cooked this way when I was a full time grad student and a teacher, so I know what it is like to have no time.
If you know that scratch cooking is not hard and does not take much more time, and choose to eat packaged foods, that's fine. You have the skills to fall back on if you need to. I just worry about people who have never cooked and won't try, because it has a bad reputation. This makes life considerably more expensive for a lot of people who are trying to save money. Soup in a can is 50 cents, so it's a bargain, right? But I know how to make a whole huge pot of soup for that amount, and just about anybody can do it. I think we need more free basic cooking classes for the public!
Sara, wherever you are- I made my own yogurt! I'll show you how, if you want to learn.
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