Oh man, I checked all but two, and those two could have theoretically applied if I was working. Privileged AF apparently.
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I got 40. Super privileged here.
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Fascinating. 37/43 in modern day. 3/43 in 2005
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Hmm, I find a lot of convenience food, meal kits, and restaurant food to be very mediocre! Though, my mom was a good cook, so I was spoiled. And I like to cook, and can cook to my preferred flavor profiles. I think even moderate cooking skills and “equipment” can have you making much tastier food than you can buy.
I cannot even imagine trying to properly regulate the heat of a wood cooktop / oven to make food (especially baking).
And instant gelatin was a game-changer. Before that only richly rich people had gelled dishes because of all the work to get the gelatin!
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I agree about convenience food, meal kits and restaurant food. But like you, I grew up with a mom who cooked all of our meals, and taught me to cook starting at 5 years old. I never realized what a privilege that was until I went to college and lived with friends who literally didn’t know how to fry an egg. As an adult I have tons of friends who love the taste of fast food, restaurant food, etc and it always surprises me because my cooking is (IMO) so much better. But then I remember that I had a mom that taught me everything she knows about cooking, and I was making our family meals in full by 8 years old, and few people have that kind of upbringing. I feel really lucky that I can cook just about anything, but I know most of my friends don’t have the time/confidence to consider making food that could taste better than food they can buy.
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I learned to cook in my early 20s. Before that I knew how to boil water for pasta. At one point someone’s dad came to my middle school, he was a trained chef and basically just showed us how to do flavored rice and when I showed my parents how to do that they seemed really impressed. We went out to eat a LOT.
I credit Alton Brown’s Good Eats for teaching me a lot about how to cook and why somethings work and others don’t. Generally watching Food Network back before it was all reality competition shows. If it hadn’t been for that I probably still wouldn’t know much about how to cook. We got recipes from the internet but those videos showing how to cook things weren’t quite as common yet.
Now I’ve graduated to being meh on going out to eat because I can make better food at home a lot of the time, and when I worked in a call center all day the last thing I wanted to do was sit around a bunch of other people with background chatter for an extra hour of my day.
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I totally agree! I’ve had to eat a lot of convenience food this week and it’s been a slog, honestly. I can’t stand it though I appreciate that it exists. I meant more in terms of variety and complexity, both in types of cuisine and different meals per week. I feel like I can outcook most restaurants too, but I’m not typical because cooking is my primary hobby and I’ve been doing it since I was a kid.
I think if you do not cook and you’re used to having a different lunch and dinner every single day (sushi, falafel, pad thai, gnocchi, tamales, burgers) and you are just learning to cook you might not be satisfied with simple home cooked recipes (like roasted chicken and vegetables or pulled pork and polenta), which are necessary if you want to learn to cook. Attempting to recreate the same level of variety and complexity as a beginner cook leads to a lot of needless difficulty IMO.
Anecdotally when I’ve helped people with meal planning in the past the most frequent responses I’ve gotten are that people don’t want to eat the same lunch M-F or want a different dinner every single night. I think the way the meal kits are structured too, like restaurant meals, are not very home cooking like in terms of number of components. Lots of rustic meals are so simple but I think people have the expectation of multiple side dishes, sauces, garnishes, etc. Again, totally doable if cooking is your hobby, but if you don’t enjoy it you’re going to fail over and over trying to cook that way.
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So following up from NYE, we made macarons! They were delicious and the texture was absolutely normal macaron texture. So, many thanks to your baking friend for the recipe, @ginja_ninja
They looked… like a cookie, for sure. I would describe the appearance as “they tasted really good.” Room for improvement in 2022. We don’t have an oven thermometer, so I’m blaming the oven’s temp.
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THANK YOU, just last night I was thinking “hm, I have a bunch of cream cheese to use up, I KNOW there is a pasta recipe I like that uses it” but I never bookmarked it. This is it!
(Here, apparently the “cream cheese shortage” means that all the store had was multipacks. Couldn’t just buy one brick of it.)
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I am so glad that they worked out!!! They look like they tasted really good 
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Thank you for sharing this picture. I am so delighted by these and I think they might be my 2022 mascot.
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how dare you call me out this way
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I had Julia Child and others on PBS, and I loved Alton’s Good Eats! One of the few shows I really missed when we “cut cable”.
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Have you seen any of his Quarantine Kitchen stuff on YouTube? It’s just him and his wife doing their thing but it’s great. Mr. Meer said he wants to be adopted by them.
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Yeah, I was 17/43 in 2006… 38/43 now. Big difference, that.
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I got 40/43. I am… not surprised 
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24/43 - some rural access issues plus my life now is not my life as a kid or young adult and I could not check any of the “I have never” selections despite my privilege now.
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I agree that I have been cooking so long that I have built up my knowledge base and so trying something new isn’t the same sort of hurdle it might be for someone who hasn’t cooked.
Since my mom cooked so much, you had better get used to the idea of leftovers because you are crazy if you think there’s going to be completely new things for every meal! But that was also a teaching on how you can take those basics and repurpose them into new dishes.
But - her cuisine was not diverse. And every Sunday was either chicken or roast beef. And since she grew up when undercooked pork could transmit any number of parasites or germs, she cooked the bejesus out of everything - including vegetables.
Restaurants are handy for me to figure up if I like a cuisine, and if so what dishes I like most and will it be worth buying all those spices. Or for those really work intensive dishes.
I think not being impressed with restaurant food is another sign of my privilege
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I have not! I heard they are bringing back (brought back?) Good Eats.
Brought back, though I haven’t seen most of Good Eats: The Return. It’s on Discovery+, so says the internet.
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