Marilyn Haggerty's amazing Olive Garden review and the subsequent viral shitstorm

Not meant as a punchline. Just thought this thread needed to be annotated like a recipe.

I'm gonna ANNOTATE you like a RECIPE, punk

Don't collapse me.

cooking is a little like learning another language i think. you learn some rudiments and then comes a point where you just need to fling yourself off the edge and wing it, knowing you will make mistakes, not being afraid to make mistakes. knowing it will almost certainly be good enough. the deep skills come in with what DL mentioned about leftover improv. that is the moneysaver. when i buy a chicken i buy a really expensive chicken, but i get 2-3 meals out of it, and 2 pints of stock go in the freezer, every time. add a potato and some leeks to those and that's another 3 meals.

frogbs i have kids, so economizing is important to me, so that's a helpful motivation. i guess i also have a kind of morality about not wasting food. and i feel stupid when i waste money. but "neat and organized".... is not how anyone would really describe my life. it's maybe because of that that the kitchen is like one place where a TINY TINY bit of planning drastically improves my day and makes me feel good about myself.

the way i learned to cook was to just do a ton of simple recipes and follow them terrifiedly and slavishly. eventually you get good at them. eventually you learn why they are structured the way they are and what is actually 'going on' in the pot or whatever. like tracer said, it's like a language, where eventually you just start doing it on your own with some implicit knowledge of what will work or not.

Tracer OTM.

Also after a while it's not really that hard to plan b/c you just get to know your eating habits and how much of something you will or won't finish.

Wait, what the fuck what thread did I just wake up in an hour later? Is it just really nice everywhere and no one feels like working?

xp to s1ocki yup. best thing i ever did was get 3-4 cheap cookbooks of like "easy weeknight dinner" recipes and make all the ones that seemed appealing. it gives you a great base for doing more complex stuff.

the rudiments are beyond me, i am terrified of making mistakes and also how do you learn to ENJOY this lengthy, time-consuming, incredibly stressful, hateful process, at the end of which you produce a mediocre and unappetising mess that's gone in 10 minutes and oh hi it's washing-up time?

compared to "heat soup up in 5 mins, pour into bowl, wash up bowl and spoon, fin"

i used to live wiht a guy who was really 'good at cooking' and used to 'freestyle' in the kitchen and 'throw things together' and would always interrupt and tell me how i should probably just throw some of X in there with Y. fuck off i like to cook like a robot and follow the recipe exactly! how it should be imo.

also something i realized i had to do early on was plan a couple days in advance, just have some general idea of what i'd be having for every meal so i had time to shop and prepare, instead of waiting till the last minute, getting too hungry to do anything, ordering a pizza and falling asleep on the couch

It's some kind of communist connection to the fruits of your labour, I suspect, lex. Seriously, if you're ever near Exeter, let me know, come round, I'll cook.

xp lex one way is to drink a beer or refill your glass of wine between the time when you're done eating and the time when you clean up.

the rudiments are beyond me, i am terrified of making mistakes and also how do you learn to ENJOY this lengthy, time-consuming, incredibly stressful, hateful process, at the end of which you produce a mediocre and unappetising mess that's gone in 10 minutes and oh hi it's washing-up time?

compared to "heat soup up in 5 mins, pour into bowl, wash up bowl and spoon, fin"

― lex pretend, Wednesday, March 14, 2012 11:58 AM (36 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lex the first time you make something a bit more ambitious and it is awesome, it's such a great feeling.

you need something to cook with to show you the ropes! if i lived where you lived i would volunteer!

the way i learned to cook was to just do a ton of simple recipes and follow them terrifiedly and slavishly. eventually you get good at them. eventually you learn why they are structured the way they are and what is actually 'going on' in the pot or whatever. like tracer said, it's like a language, where eventually you just start doing it on your own with some implicit knowledge of what will work or not.

― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Wednesday, March 14, 2012 10:56 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this.

the way i learned to cook was to just do a ton of simple recipes and follow them terrifiedly and slavishly

when i tried to do this, there was always one bit of the recipe that went wrong - an ingredient i couldn't find, a step i didn't understand or more usually a step that didn't HAPPEN like the recipe said it would happen. at which point i panicked and things went more and more wrong and this is where the nervous breakdowns come in

the rudiments are beyond me, i am terrified of making mistakes and also how do you learn to ENJOY this lengthy, time-consuming, incredibly stressful, hateful process, at the end of which you produce a mediocre and unappetising mess that's gone in 10 minutes and oh hi it's washing-up time?

compared to "heat soup up in 5 mins, pour into bowl, wash up bowl and spoon, fin"

― lex pretend, Wednesday, March 14, 2012 11:58 AM (27 seconds ago) Bookmark'

bcuz some ppl enjoy eating food

make sure you look at the recipe in advance and visualize what you have to do. if there's a step/ingredient you don't understand, google it or ask a friend.

there are really few things worse than 8pm approaching and you know you don't have anything in the fridge and you haven't been paid yet and you're just like ohhhh GGGGOODDDD

i'm much better about planning now that i cook for 2. (almost) every sunday we pick out meals for the week and go shopping. then i know what i'm making and just have to pick what night to make each thing.

haha tpp my partner is the big improviser and i absolutely adore following recipes to. the. frickin. letter.. we have called a cease-fire and don't fuck with each other now, basically.

i eat like lex most of the time tho. whenever i cook something nice i just end up eating like 4 portions of it because i have no self-control.

yeah I do that too

the rudiments are beyond me, i am terrified of making mistakes and also how do you learn to ENJOY this lengthy, time-consuming, incredibly stressful, hateful process, at the end of which you produce a mediocre and unappetising mess that's gone in 10 minutes and oh hi it's washing-up time?

compared to "heat soup up in 5 mins, pour into bowl, wash up bowl and spoon, fin"

― lex pretend, Wednesday, March 14, 2012 10:58 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lex, you are that guy who's like, NO I CAN'T DO IT I JUST CAN'T.

we are like those people who are like NO REALLY YOU CAN. JUST CONCENTRATE. YOU CAN DO IT.

hey, if i gave you a simple recipe, would you like make it and REALLY try to make it not like, OH NOES I CAN'T GET THIS CAN OF TUNA OPEN I GIVE UP?!

because i have some nice simple recipes i can share w/ you.

how does beer bread sound? it is tasty.

frankly if you SWEAR that you can't do ANY of this stuff, then i kind of wonder how you like put your clothes on and open a bank account and stuff.

yeah i can never plan what i want to eat in advance, the only time i ever think about food is when i'm really hungry right now

bcuz some ppl enjoy eating food

so do i! i save my enjoyment of food as a thing for when i eat out. i don't associate enjoyment with my own cooking

this is like when people show up in threads all "i dont like rap" and then people spend hours trying to get them to like it but its such a waste of time

seriously lex would you try to make beer bread? it is tasty and easy and you can eat it for a few days. you can put whatever you want on it. butter, jam, nutella, whatever.and it has BEER in it.

Do you masturbate?

yeah you are barking up the wrong tree amateurist

lex the first time you make something a bit more ambitious and it is awesome, it's such a great feeling.

This is very true. I felt like Will Hunting at a blackboard the first time I made a really well-done carbonara (not a hard recipe, but still represents about the upper limit of my skill set).

why would i try to make bread? you can buy nice bread that isn't exactly expensive

yeah you are barking up the wrong tree amateurist

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, March 14, 2012 11:04 AM (28 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ok, but she or he should shut the fuck up about "NOT BEING ABLE" to cook because it's patently untrue and she or he is being a huge drama queen about it.

xpost oh fuck you lex.

actually i'm with lex on that one

everyone else itt is being as ridiculous as lex ftr

Yeah, some of you are acting like Lex is refusing to breathe.

lol.

actually i'm with lex on that one

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, March 14, 2012 11:05 AM (45 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but it's like crunchy and warm and wet inside and delicious -- it's nothing like store-bought bread. or even bakery-bought bread. tracer, you would like it.

i think some people should just accept that we have all different skill sets and for some of us they don't include cooking

Homemade bread is the best thing in the entire goddamned universe. The smell when you take it out; that first, still-warm piece with a little butter on it . . . it's better than a hundred Super Bowls.

Yeah, but being belligerantly insistant us fun on both sides.

i dont know if baking bread is necc the best first thing to cook

i mean it is amazing but not exactly entry-level

in london there are real bakers who can make better bread than i could ever, ever make in a million years of baking, and i REALLY like bread, so it's worth it to me to spend a crazy amount of money (£3) on a big loaf of REALLY nice bread rather than spend several hours of rising and kneading to produce something maybe a quarter as good

which is not really true of most food - i can make better lunch than a hell of a lot of places i might eat out at

i think some people should just accept that we have all different skill sets and for some of us they don't include cooking

i'm a firm believer in anyone can do anything tbh.

Yeah, some of you are acting like Lex is refusing to breathe.

― Eric H., Wednesday, March 14, 2012 11:06 AM (14 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm not actually upset. it's one thing to claim that you don't like to cook and don't really care about eating what you can eat w/o cooking. it's another thing to claim that you are physically or mentally incapable of cooking. i accept that you are not anthony bourdain, i do not accept that you are actually incapable of e.g. making a sandwich.

it's like saying "oh, playing the piano is so amazing, all you have to do is practice!" "writing an essay is so easy, all you have to do is type the words!"

some people just don't have the knack and are never gonna have it. stick to what you can do or enjoy doing, why stress yourself out with the rest?

"oh, playing the piano is so amazing, all you have to do is practice!"

it's true! some people don't want to practice though. it's about interest, not skill or some mysterious knack.

i accept that there are tons of simple things i just don't want to do or spend my time/energy learning. like gardening. but i am not physically or mentally incapable of gardening.

if i HAD to play the piano, i would do some piano practice at home instead of going out to play piano all the time