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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   23389 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024

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Grown adults who don't know how to cook proper meals and eat fast/convenience food for every meal should feel ashamed, even if they aren't.

Division of labor and specialization.

Maybe this isn't quite the same because I actually know how to cook quite a few dishes well, but I've chosen to do so less and less over the years as my net worth has increased. The value I place upon my leisure time has been increasingly, highly non-zero. After spending a large part of my day/week wagecucking, or at least salarycucking, the last thing I want to do in my spare time is more work.

Cooking is rather time intensive—not just the act of cooking itself, but moreso the cleaning afterward. Just like you pay a Person of Hookery not for the sex, but rather to go away.

I could spend hundreds of USD a year having my slop delivered to me, or picking it up, and it's barely a drop in the bucket compared to the impact of a typical day's market movement on my portfolio. When I do have my slop delivered, it's multiple entrees (saving the rest for later days) so I at least get some economies of scale relative to the relatively fixed costs of delivery fees and tipping.

Thus, I don't feel ashamed at all. The situation might be different if I were the stereotypical urban young person making low six figures (the first digit closer to being a 9 than a 2) in a VHCOL area with little saved/invested, having my avocado toast or whatever delivered to me one meal at a time for 30 USD a pop.

I mean, my grandpa has massive gaps in his culinary knowledge. He will admit that he probably should know how to cook many things he doesn’t, but that he’s older and never really had much reason to learn.

Grown adults who can’t cook isn’t new. When he was my age his wife cooked, his wife still cooks, and in the unlikely event she passes before him(she’s younger in addition to the tendency for men to die earlier), he’ll eat fast food or be cooked for by his children or live in a nursing home.

Food delivery isn't very good specialization. There is a major agency problem. Restaurants are incentivized to make food cheap and tasty, but health and nutrition are opaque to you. You have no control over portion sizes. Everything is premixed which makes reheating leftovers in a satisfying way difficult. It's also kind of an all-or-nothing thing; if you get food delivered regualrly, you don't gain the skills to cook well, and ingredients become difficult to use in time since you don't cook often enough.

I'm saying this as someone who did this myself; it may have saved some time, but in retrospect, I think learning to cook is important even for people who can afford delivery regularly. The exception is if you're actually rich enough to pay someone to cook for you; the rich man with a personal chef has none of these problems. But subsisting on slop from grubhub is sort of an awkward in-between.

I don't think personally cooking one's own meals was ever the standard for men living in cities. Or women with money, running a moderate household. I'm not sure how meaningful it is that they would hire a cook directly, rather than a courier. But Freddie, at least, is a communist, and probably opposed to the ways of wealthy households.

I don't know about all flavors of communism, but Soviet Union ideal was that everyone eat at canteens.

I wouldn't think to judge a millionaire for indulging in the screamingly bad deal that is food delivery but.... what about the other parts? The generation of a ton of useless plastic and other trash, the total inability to get a fresh french fry, the inability to actually know when your food will be there, the general inconsistency....

Every time I get food delivered, it feels the opposite of luxurious. Unless it's pizza or sushi, I only feel ripped off and pathetic.

Then again I'm in a tier 2 city suburb. Door Dash may perform better in a tight urban center.

I don’t think you shouldn’t feel ashamed. My first digit (at least in USD) is closer to a 9 than a 2 and I still enjoy cooking. The relationship between your food and you should be healthy. Call it spiritual garbage, but so is much of our relationship with human civilization.

To cook feels to me fundamentally healthy. It is satisfying. And I find that - Michelin starred restaurants aside - I can do better in thirty minutes in my own kitchen than pretty much anyone available on the apps.

I find that - Michelin starred restaurants aside - I can do better in thirty minutes in my own kitchen than pretty much anyone available on the apps.

I'm not in a position to have food delivered, but I find that almost any pre-prepared Costco meal is better than one I cooked (they keep up with the trends; they have birria now). We still cook from raw meat and root vegetables about half the time, but unless it's a taco or something, there's a marinade, some kind of eggs and crumbs or else cooked in a pan and deglazed, then some kind of roasting for one to six hours. The tacos are not bad, but also not better than from a food truck, and with less variety. I absolutely cannot cook proper beans, but I think it takes 8 hours and a piece of pork fat. We can't bring ourselves to eat enough beans to justify that.

I absolutely cannot cook proper beans, but I think it takes 8 hours and a piece of pork fat. We can't bring ourselves to eat enough beans to justify that.

Beans take longer than that.

More evidence I should stick with takeout beans.

To cook feels to me fundamentally healthy. It is satisfying.

Whereas to me it is tedious and unfulfilling. If I were doing it for someone else that might be different, but it’s just spending an hour of my life (I’m clumsy so prep and cleaning takes forever) to accomplish something that lasts a few hours at best. And the result is inferior to any restaurant.

My first digit (at least in USD) is closer to a 9 than a 2 and I still enjoy cooking.

I meant in the other direction, i.e., closer to $99,999 than $200,000. The stereotypical urban young person does not make closer to $900,000 than $299,999.

The relationship between your food and you should be healthy. Call it spiritual garbage

I wouldn't call it spiritual garbage, but I don't think or feel in such a manner.

It is satisfying. And I find that - Michelin starred restaurants aside - I can do better in thirty minutes in my own kitchen than pretty much anyone available on the apps.

There is a certain satisfaction to it, but there too lies the opportunity cost of leisure time and effort. I don't know about 30 minutes—especially when including cleaning time—but I also believe I generally cook better than most mainstream restaurants, at least the dishes I'm good at. I've gotten pretty good reviews from dates and family. However, the former is likely biased in me having a halo effect by the nature of the occurrence, and the latter is biased in that we likely like similar flavor profiles (and I've appropriated many ingredients/techniques from them).

The sandwich effect, flavor fatigue, and the culinary Coolidge Effect whack away at the enjoyment I get out of my own food.

The relationship between your food and you should be healthy.

I guess I don’t see anything unhealthy about the thought process, “Somebody who does this for a living, and whose job it is to cook food, is likely going to do a better job than I would at making this dish. Also, that person is on the clock at that restaurant anyway and would still be preparing someone else’s food, even if it’s not mine, whereas I’m off the clock and could be using this time for leisure instead of for cooking.”

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