Would you rather cook or do delivery/take-out/eating out? *money and nutrition aside*

This is also a hugely regional question. Pretty much every big city has better take-away food than I could cook myself but quality drops off enormously once you say get outside of London

london take-away is pretty shit in my experience, but i live in the wrong place for it probably. not sure it's great generally though.

Even the thought of eating out in Montreal is limited to a handful of options, otherwise I'd rather take 20 minutes and do it myself

Also I like wearing aprons

I am confused tho I have several friends who're cooking from Mastering The Art of Chinese Cooking, which is imo some Last Frontier of home cooking-- so many cities' quality of life being defined, for me, by the deliciousness of their Chinese takeaway.

lol chinese takeaway is pretty uniform imo

hopefully they're learning about stuff beyond what you can actually get from chinese takeout

xp I'm talking about the entire restaurant experience of London which includes some of the best Indian and Vietnamese food I've ever eaten in my life and at least two fancy restaurants I'd visit every meal if I could afford it

takeaway is prob the least attractive and certainly least healthy of your non-cooking options. i think i get one...about once every 2-3 months? and only when i'm hungover and NEED a meal like that

it's entirely about natural flair/instinct/touch

Natural ability helps a LOT, but it's much more about learning.

My drawing professor went on a lot about how it's accepted as fact that some people can draw and others cannot, but that is as utterly wrong as saying some people can write and others can't. Unless you have a disability, you can learn to write, and likewise, you can learn to draw and you can learn to cook. A few people will quickly master those skills, a few will struggle but be able to do them at a basic level.

It's possible that you, Lex, have an intellectual/motor coordination disability that affects your ability to cook, but OTOH, you seem to promote your inability, which isn't helpful.

NOT THAT YOU SHOULD COOK! Like you, I HATE the idea of cooking being a virtuous activity, and I want to slap passing space cadet's ex.

dayo that is an interesting statement that I don't understand. Really? I feel that Chinese restaurants offer the highest highs and grossest grosses

what kind of chinese takeout are you getting?? I will judge you

Unless you have a disability, you can learn to write, and likewise, you can learn to draw and you can learn to cook

Absolutely. So easy to make the mistake that someone who has been practising something for their whole life has a 'natural' talent.

I like to cook when I feel like cooking. This happens maybe once a week. If I had a lot more time and lived closer to a grocery store, I would probably cook more. Takeout is great on nights when cooking/washing up feels about as realistic as climbing a mountain, but I get takeout major fatigue after awhile. I know that nutrition isn't supposed to play into this, but eating night after night of takeout/restaurant meals (like when we're moving and have packed the kitchen or if we're on vacation) makes me feel really unwell. Plus our weeknight meals tend towards the very simple (baked potato, soup and cheese toast) both due to time/energy but also because that's all we feel like eating, and ordering those things via takeout seem silly.

So basically I voted that I would always get takeout, but now I think that I would rather have the time to cook more. OR really, actually, what I would really prefer is a personal chef who will make me a baked potatoes and cheese toast for dinner.

xp When I'm in NYC (and usually staying in Chinatown) I'll divide my low-to-mid price eating-out desires between Nice Green Bow and Mother's DUMPLINGS!

hahahahhahahahahhaa omg what?

I did not intentionally shout the name of that Chinese restaurant

everyone can write, but some people have beautiful handwriting and some people have ugly, indecipherable spider trails. everyone can cook in the sense that even i can make, say, sloppy pasta and dump some pesto on top, but i don't actually believe i'm capable of cooking a meal to the standard of my friends/bf who really love cooking and do it properly, no matter how much i practice.

o i have not been to new green bo but the photos look okay on yelp

i think you must have mother's DUMPLINGS! confused with some other chinatown joint!

Yes I do! Mother's Dumpl1ngs is in Toronto and is excellent. In NYC I got to Vanessa's.

ah

you pass my test........... but barely

many xposts, but

the pinnacle of "enjoying life" - like the one aspect of high-flying oligarch-rich lifestyles i genuinely envy - to me is the ability to eat at restaurants all the time. i fucking love eating good, interesting food and it's a super-interesting topic as well

― flamenco drop (lex pretend), Tuesday, 19 March 2013 15:07 (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is gonna sound kind of assumptive (and apologies if I've got you all wrong on this one), but this seems to reflect something about your overall personality and tastes when it comes to things like music as well. Would I be right in thinking that (on the whole) the processes that go into creating something that you enjoy are of little concern to you and that it's really the finished results that you are ultimately interested in? The fact you obviously enjoy good food and yet have trouble discerning leeks and potatoes etc strikes me as pretty unique.

That's not to say that one can't enjoy food without being a good cook, which would be ridiculous and the same as saying you can't be a music fan without being a musician. But I'd have thought that for a majority of people who enjoy food, that they would take a degree of interest in the process by which it's made.

That said, I suppose if I eat a steak in a restaurant, I'm generally not too concerned about what farm the cow was raised on, only that I hope it was raised in an ethical way. So I guess I'm pontificating on the various levels of interest one takes in such processes vs what the finished results end up like.

feel free to peruse my thread and tell me if your friends are cooking anything like the stuff I posted!!! thread of pictures of real chinese food

We'd eat at a friend's house once a week. Best of both worlds. Cook most nights, 30 mins does most things we frequently bother with, unless its a stew or etc which'll do two nights and involves two hours of waiting for ten mins chopping come to fruition

i really can't get chinese takeaway ever because it's so terrible compared to the food i ate growing up

thai, indian etc all fine & dandy though

Would I be right in thinking that (on the whole) the processes that go into creating something that you enjoy are of little concern to you and that it's really the finished results that you are ultimately interested in?

not really. i have little interest in replicating those processes myself but i actually find recipes really fascinating reads, particularly those that involve something unexpected or esoteric, and will often peruse them from a purely abstract perspective

and when it comes to things i can actually do and understand, like writing (and to a much lesser extent music) i'm all about breaking down that technique nerdily

xp to dayo, thanks for the link, that looks fucking delicious and I wish there was a restaurant that did that in Toronto or Montreal (there are but they are $$$$$ so fuck that)

Ennh I just want to talk about delicious NYC food I wish I could be eating now

I really want to visit two Filipino restaurants next time I'm in town, one is this established house of delicious that is unfortunately in Ditmas (Purple Yam) and the other is an East Village yuppie version of Filipino food at Maharlika that looks completely great.

Anyway the one thing I think you should always eat in a restaurant is a dessert. I am not making you a molten chocolate thing or a foam or whatever. I will roast you a chicken and then have a nightcap and a tart around the corner? Perfect evening

My dad and his entire side of the family are all chefs and I really love to cook. That said, I am often tired/lazy and just would rather not. I try to cook a lot on the weekends and freeze stuff for the week ahead but that doesn't always happen. I feel exceptionally gross when I get takeout/eat out too often. Lately I have been trying to cook really simple, quick and healthy things that are good but don't require much prep time or effort. If I'm being totally honest though and solely because I am a lazy asshole, yeah, if money and nutrition were not factors I would mostly likely have everything prepared for me most days and only cook when I felt to it which would probably amount to like 2x a week.

omggggg the homemade desserts i have eaten this weekend

chocolate fondant, lime & coconut cake, banana & cardamom cake and chocolate & chilli cake all in one 24hr period

and i got to bring some of all the last three home with me!!!!!

I try to cook a lot on the weekends and freeze stuff for the week ahead but that doesn't always happen.

Me too! About 75% of my actual cooking (as opposed to microwaving) is bulk. I mean like Costco-level bulk. I recently made a stock pot full of stew that's lasted me for a couple months. Also, I routinely bake 3+ lbs of chicken and then freeze it so I can have pre-cooked chicken to throw into pasta or a sandwich or whatever. Or I'll make and freeze several pounds of hummus or a big batch of scrambled eggs.

Scrambled eggs? They are so easy to make and I can't imagine they are any good after being frozen and thawed.

x-post - Yeah, I do similar things. I feel pretty awesome when I do this too because it makes me feel productive and I know I'll have good healthy things to eat all week and won't have to cook when I get in from work. It just doesn't happen as often as I'd like it to.

and they're only truly delicious within like a minute of coming off the pan

xp

I actually gagged a little at the thought of frozen scrambled eggs

i really can't get chinese takeaway ever because it's so terrible compared to the food i ate growing up

chinese takeeaway is so bad in london, like even for european take on chinese it's just awful. for some reason the chinese takeaway seems to be basically a lower than any normal dive fast food place. i guess nobody uses them and so they decline. in dublin there would be non authentic chinese that at least felt well prepared and like it used some fair amount of edible meat.

even if salty/gungy etc.

oddly enough lex, and I am not ~actually~ having this discussion with you again, but I think you'd surprise yourself at how well you could bake a cake as all the directions are specific and the ingredients plainly labelled and you seem to be interested in cake. But why bake a cake? An hour-plus of preparation and floury cleanup when there are professionals to do it for you. I do pastries for fun but only if I'm staying in a place with a dishwasher

x-post Chinese takeout is so so so gross at most average places here. At least in the UK you can get noodles and chips and curry sauce from a Chinese take away and then put them all on the same plate and OMG SO GOOD. Yes, I am gross.

i like to cook because i look at a screen for 12 hours a day, and cooking is an hour where i don't have to do that.

otm

Chinese takeaway is often a bad idea 'cause it wants to be eaten right after it was cooked. Dim sum is notoriously bad and noodles like fun are gummy by the time you get them home.

I am not an evangelical cook. I did vote that I would prefer to cook than get takeout, for 2 reasons

1) most days I find that whatever little prep work I do for nightly meals gives me something menial to focus on so I can get out of 'work brain'

2) I only ever seem to eat takeout when I feel really shitty and it never really makes me feel any less shitty, it just puts a punctuation on the fact that I feel like crap.

Lex, I'm going to circument the entire usual line of conversation and say something I've wanted to say for ages; I'm so glad you have a lovely boy who enjoys cooking for you and likes to try to get you somewhat involved in the process, regardless of the results. I think that's really great. And I still one day hope to make good on my offer to cook for you also :)

circumVent

I have a terrible inability to cook multiple batches ahead like a sensible person.

Put the lid back on the half-eaten takeaway, congratulate yourself on having a free meal for tomorrow night? Sure! Approach the pan of freshly-cooked dinner with the intention of putting it in a bowl in the fridge or a tub in the freezer and something goes "ping" in my brain and I'm having seconds instead and then there isn't enough left to be "worth" keeping and basically I'm a terrible person.

So yeah, I would like a free magical robot chef in my kitchen, and on the rare occasions I do cook I'd like the robot chef to take it away and hide it in the fridge after my first plateful, without me having to look at it again and test my willpower.

(I would also like some more willpower but that's even further outside the scope of this poll)

VG otm, that's pretty much how most people feel despite vague accusations of "morals"

I like my own cooking and would still eat it often even if the magic takeaway existed but if I could click my fingers and have it ready in one second I totally would.

I love cooking but I think my ideal would be that guy's Soylent drink for breakfast & weekday lunches, eating out for dinner and/or lunch twice a week on say friday and saturday, professionally cooked dinners made for me at home on weeknights, then on Sunday night I would cook something new that I haven't cooked before or try some technique that I want to learn, and somebody would purchase all of the ingredients for me beforehand and clean the kitchen after.

There are def better cooks in the world than I am, so I suppose that if I lived in some ideal world, where I have a staff of personal world-class chefs at my beck and call, whose only concern in life is learning my likes and dislikes and knocking my sox off meal after meal, and this expense is as nothing to me, with my only involvement being sitting down to one fabulous meal after another, then I'd be an idiot to turn my back on this opportunity and insist on cooking all my own meals.

Nice dream. So not gonna happen.

Even the most favorable reality I could fahion out of the restaurant choices within ten miles of my house would eventually pall on me. And most definnitely nutrition would become a concern almost at once. That's just how 99% of restaurants operate.

wk otm

for me the problem with eating out at restaurants every day is not so much money or nutrition but I think I would just get bored of it. but if I had a magical button that could transport me to a different restaurant each day that had a great atmosphere, great food, and interesting company, then I might eat out every day. eating at the same handful of restaurants with the same people every day and having to deal with occasional bad service or a bad meal would get old really fast.

i don't really like the experience of being in a restaurant even tho i like restaurant food