Helen Nearing's "Simple Cooking for the Good Life"

February 23, 2025 6:42 AM

"Helen Nearing felt that she should be the last person on earth to write a cookbook, but she also felt intrigued. 'I am a library inebriate,' she said. 'I began spending long hours in the rare book room of the New York Public Library every time Scott and I were in New York. I made my way through the introductions of 14,000 old cookbooks to discover if I had anything new to say.' (Since she was strictly a salad and potatoes woman, few of the recipes interested her.) She decided that she did, and the goal of Simple Food for the Good Life became 'to simplify cooking to such a point that it would take less time to prepare a meal than to eat it'."

Simple Food for the Good Life captures Nearing’s minimalist cooking style and folksy intellectualism. She writes of her preference for “crisp, hard, crunchy foods, raw if possible, which you have to chew – not soft, soggy, slip-go-downs.” ...

Her recipes rarely exceed 10 ingredients (and many call for just three or four) and include dishes such as dandelion salad, pumpkin shell casserole, lentil pottage, Chinese thin soup and Guatemala carrots. She cooked on a wood-fired cookstove. …

Likely Helen Nearing’s most famous recipe is Horse Chow, which calls for 4 cups of rolled oats, a half cup of raisins, the juice of one lemon, a dash of sea salt and olive oil or vegetable oil to moisten. The directions read: “Mix all together. We eat it in wooden bowls with wooden spoons.”

posted by Lemkin (61 comments total)

I love this idea and I love these dishes in the abstract. I envy people who can eat them. But after one day of whole fruits and grains with a little milk and honey and you’ll see me in the street picking fistfights with strangers. Totally not my metabolism.
posted by toodleydoodley at 6:57 AM on February 23 [12 favorites]

I rarely cook main meals from recipes anymore, unless, for example, I want to make a lentil concoction a little closer to what a cook from the Indian subcontinent might do. And I find that the ingredients list for my meals gets shorter and shorter with the passage of time, although I still do have a well-stocked herb and spice larder.

So I find myself in complete agreement with the basic premise of this book ... but looking at more recipes, no matter how simple, is not something I need to do!
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 7:23 AM on February 23 [2 favorites]

Horse Chow sounds like one of those "you'll never go hungry" foods.

Because you'll figure out how to cook things like asbestos and mule poop before you have to eat Horse Chow.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 7:23 AM on February 23 [13 favorites]

I read her cookbook years ago and tried a few recipes including Horse Chow. The main takeaway I got was she and Scott ate it out of wooden bowls and that’s what stuck. I have a set of small teak bowls and that’s what I eat my breakfast oatmeal/granola/congee/Captn Crunch out of. No wooden spoon though.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 7:30 AM on February 23 [3 favorites]

It's the smartest way to eat, and I wish it weren't so hard to do. Just this morning I was looking at a new study about the impact of salt (and, optimistically, of salt substitutes) in stroke. We're killing ourselves with 'easy' food. A couple of years ago, I was binge-reading information on gut health and fiber, and was just shocked at how much harm we're doing to ourselves with processing. I just wish my teeth could put up with the simple stuff! By the end of a plate of raw veggies, I feel like I've been crunching on concrete. (And even then I'm reaching for the salt!)

But now I want to go look at this book!
posted by mittens at 7:42 AM on February 23 [6 favorites]

> less time to prepare a meal than to eat it
> crisp, hard, crunchy foods, raw if possible, which you have to chew

Is it cheating or not if you just make the eating part take longer?
posted by trig at 8:15 AM on February 23 [10 favorites]

We're killing ourselves with 'easy' food

As Starship Troopers asks us, "What, do you want to live forever!?"

I'm really enjoying this post, so don't think I'm against a broad set of options for food and diet.

But, I also remember that when they found Saddam Hussein, he was munching down on a bag of cool-ranch doritos. Maybe this isn't the strong argument I think it is, but there's a street-level allure to stuff like greasy diner fare and pizza. I'll never begrudge someone that stuff and I think the more the current spartan aesthetic thumbs its nose at it and goes 'paleo', etc., the more I enjoy my corn chips.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 8:18 AM on February 23 [3 favorites]

Thanks for posting. But also: how sad. Food is essential, it should be joyful.

I'm sure they enjoyed their lives and lived them the way that was good for them, but I remember that type of vegetarianism from when it was the norm and it was so depressing.

Anecdotally, all the people I know who eat like this are very fond of proper food cooked with spices and love when they can get it. They just don't have the spoons to figure out how to cook for themselves, and that is fair.
posted by mumimor at 8:19 AM on February 23 [6 favorites]

The diversity in what people can and enjoy eating amazes me.
posted by lepus at 8:36 AM on February 23 [4 favorites]

Anecdata: Her husband, the interesting Scott Nearing, lived so long on this diet that, shortly before his 100th birthday, he decided to simply stop eating - passing away a month later.

Helen Nearing herself lived to 91, succumbing only to a single-vehicle car crash.
posted by Lemkin at 8:38 AM on February 23 [5 favorites]

What seems to be ignored in all the comments about how "...But after one day of whole fruits and grains with a little milk and honey and you’ll see me..." and the like is it is VERY important that this is NOT "one day".

I've struggled with my weight all my life till I finally figured out how to do it. Then I lost ~100lbs. It's stayed off now that I know how.

Two things:
1. The cool ranch Doritos is a processed thing that plays to our built-ins. Like Heroin, our bodies are built to find it *very* appealing. So, free choice, people are going to do it for a lot of reasons. And, people being people, will find all the reasons it's not what it is.
2. When you *don't* have such in your diet, or as I noticed in the weight loss, you have different taste buds. The most common things taste a *lot* better than when the rest of your diet is Cool Ranch and such.

You do you. But stop ignoring how things shift/change over time.
posted by aleph at 8:38 AM on February 23 [12 favorites]

I was raised on back to the land food like this (though we did have meat because we raised a beefalo heifer for slaughter every year). I think I developed an interest in cooking well and cooking foods from other places as a reaction to the blandness and monotony of my childhood diet. Even when I was in elementary school, I was trying to figure out how to make things like I'd eaten on the rare occasion we went to a restaurant.

Of course, peasant food from cultures around the world is very often delicious. People have figured out over centuries how to turn humble ingredients that you can grow or raise yourself into tasty dishes. Then the back to the land folks came along and decided they'd ignore all that collective wisdom and just make their food bland. I can understand and respect not wanting to spend a lot of time preparing food and have eaten many delicious meals of good quality ingredients prepared simply, but often it's well worth spending those extra few minutes to not be eating horse chow.
posted by ssg at 9:05 AM on February 23 [10 favorites]

What bothered me about the introduction to the book is the assumption that food can either be nutritious and easy or delicious, but not both. It's written with disdain for the idea of gustatory pleasure, even including quotes that promote fasting rather than feasting on special days.

Apparently, it's not all Horse Chow and many of the recipes are actually good, but you wouldn't know it from the initial framing. And that framing would definitely put me off investigating farther if I had stumble across this book without more context. Regularly eating Horse Chow while living "the good life" is just not a circle that I can square. I think about the lasagna I make every Christmas - a dish my family loves, that I learned to make from my mother - and I feel sad.

I guess, to a lot of the approach to food here seems like a precursor to the toxic way large parts of our culture approach food as a wellness practice, imbuing it with an almost mystical power to ward off disease, age, and hell, whatever various spiritual crises we suffer that are caused by the modern age.

And I say this as someone who doesn't like a lot of processed foods, who eats what is broadly considered a healthy diet most of the time. I do think that the quality of the food we eat matters, but I don't like food itself as wellness. And where we actually do have to pick two of nutritious and easy and good, it's because there are systemic barriers.

It seems like a complicated legacy to have, anyways.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 9:09 AM on February 23 [11 favorites]

Reminds me of the stories I heard that when cheap sugar was available it was described as like "crack cocaine".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sugar

(snip)
During the 18th century, sugar became enormously popular. Great Britain, for example, consumed five times as much sugar in 1770 as in 1710.[49] By 1750, sugar surpassed grain as "the most valuable commodity in European trade — it made up a fifth of all European imports and in the last decades of the century four-fifths of the sugar came from the British and French colonies in the West Indies."[49] From the 1740s until the 1820s, sugar was Britain's most valuable import.
posted by aleph at 9:24 AM on February 23 [3 favorites]

I adore the Nearing's books, and this book especially, but I have also always been somewhat put off by how they come across as being very, very proud of themselves. I love their theories; I would not ever have wanted to interact with them in person.

A fascinating look at the contradictions of their lives, including with food (they ate like that yes but they also took vitamin B12 shots on the quiet) by someone who knew them well can be found in Jean Hay Bright's Next Door to the Good Life.
posted by JanetLand at 9:40 AM on February 23 [6 favorites]

Today I learned there is a Vegetarian Hall of Fame.
posted by yellowcandy at 9:41 AM on February 23 [1 favorite]

My favorite recent story about sugar was in Ireland a few years back during COVID. Subway sandwich shops applied for a "basic sustenance" tax exception during COVID saying their sandwiches were basic necessary food, or something like that. The Irish Court disagreed, saying their "bread" wasn't bread:

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/agribusiness-and-food/subway-bread-too-sweet-for-the-irish-tax-authorities-1.4367663

Subway bread too sweet for the Irish tax authorities
Franchisees lose Supreme Court appeal as judges rule that bread sold by chain has five times the sugar content allowed in statutory definition
posted by aleph at 9:46 AM on February 23 [4 favorites]

the contradictions of their lives

Scott Nearing, a courageous social activist, also authored a short book in favor of eugenics.
posted by Lemkin at 9:57 AM on February 23 [4 favorites]

"...food can either be nutritious and easy or delicious, but not both."

I believe that.

The "...the lasagna I make every Christmas" is NOT easy (to me). I haven't had your lasagna but the ones I had *were* delicious but were very far from what I'd call easy. There are a lot of background skills to cooking that I do not have and don't want to have. So I eat much less delicious food because I have other things to do that I value more. I enjoy Restaurant food when I sometimes eat it but wouldn't care to develop the skills or spend the time when a sandwich will do.
posted by aleph at 10:05 AM on February 23 [1 favorite]

There are a lot of background skills to cooking that I do not have and don't want to have.

Well of course cooking is harder if you don't know much about it and refuse to learn.
posted by axiom at 10:08 AM on February 23 [3 favorites]

That's what I'm saying. And you say "refuse to learn" like a Bad Thing.
posted by aleph at 10:09 AM on February 23 [4 favorites]

Well, you don't have to choose between Doritos and raw food. There are millions and millions of delicious recipes for healthy food out there, and some of them are quite easy to make, even for an inexperienced cook.

I have to say I am absolutely fascinated by this book and its author, though not in a positive way. There are so many layers of superiority, based on class, religion, race and politics that combine to make a smug raw food lasagne with no taste at all.
posted by mumimor at 10:11 AM on February 23 [4 favorites]

"...authored a short book in favor of eugenics."

Wait till they start changing the Genes *directly* instead of sterilizations and such. Lots less fuss then. :)
posted by aleph at 10:11 AM on February 23

Didn't say "Doritos or raw food". Strawman argument.

Most cooking isn't worth it to me. So, *of course*, it will limit my diet. Optimizations of time/effort could have me cooking very simple things with a much higher quality of life.

Don't care.
posted by aleph at 10:14 AM on February 23 [1 favorite]

I mean, I do think it's a little bit of a Bad Thing, in the sense that I think even a small degree of cooking skill/experience opens you up to enjoying something you might currently be avoiding, not to mention that the sorts of things you eat may change drastically for the better. But I don't know you, and you of course do, so maybe there's a good reason for the refusal. In my own experience, attaining a little cooking skill pays you back many times over for the time invested.
posted by axiom at 10:15 AM on February 23

"...might currently be avoiding". Not avoiding. The interest I'd have in eating better isn't worth it to me for the time I'd spend.

I finally understand an old story I heard about Jim Williams, one of the very best Analog Circuit Designers, ever. Bob Pease had it in one of his columns. He described how Jim and his second wife, also an Electrical Engineer, used to compete by finding ever shorter microwave times for a TV dinner type thing for their meals. They couldn't wait to get back to the Lab.
posted by aleph at 10:22 AM on February 23 [1 favorite]

My diet used to be more varied with Microwave stuff. I started cutting that out a couple of decades ago when health effects were coming out. Then even more so when the whole "processed food" thing happened. My diet is much simpler now but reasonably healthy.
posted by aleph at 10:30 AM on February 23

You do you. But stop ignoring how things shift/change over time.

You also do you, and maybe don’t assume someone who says “this wouldn’t work for me” is interested in or even needs to lose weight or be healthier. Not sure what your weight loss has to do with someone saying that the diet described in this cookbook sounds unpleasant.
posted by misskaz at 10:54 AM on February 23 [4 favorites]

The weight loss was when I found out how taste buds get *much* more appreciative to basic/bland foods when the Dorito type food isn't eaten for weeks. Your taste buds *do* shift.
posted by aleph at 10:55 AM on February 23 [1 favorite]

I'd like to see someone pull together and publish a bunch of Horse Chow recipies — a kind of 'Horse Chow Collection', available via, say Neiman Marcus.
posted by zaixfeep at 10:58 AM on February 23

Never cared about weight that much. Probably big contributing reason I never did anything about it. Got more motivated when Type II diabetes came along. Then I figured it out. The latest thing I'm doing with Intermittent Fasting has gotten it back to pre-diabetes A1C numbers.
posted by aleph at 10:59 AM on February 23

The "...the lasagna I make every Christmas" is NOT easy (to me).

Aleph, that was an example of a special dish I make for a holiday as part of a family tradition, not an example of the type of dish I make every day - or even every week. It's pretty labor-intensive and expensive to make. I brought it up because I was talking about how Nearing's disdain for the enjoyment of food extends even beyond everyday enjoyment and onto this kind of celebratory meal.

When it comes to everyday cooking, I'd guess I spend about 10-20 minutes per meal, if that, which puts me well within Nearing's own rule of spending less time cooking than you eat.

Some of that is because over time I've learned to make a lot of dishes that work as meals on their own (stews, etc) and that I enjoy as leftovers, so on some days I don't have to cook at all. Some of that is because I cook only for myself; I don't have to worry about pleasing multiple palates and the leftovers go farther. Some of that is because I've also learned to make a lot of dishes that take minimal time to prepare.

I'm well aware that cooking is a skill that not all people have the ability (or frankly, interest) to develop. But we're talking about a cookbook here. Nearing isn't presenting people with an alternative that doesn't involve cooking.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 11:08 AM on February 23 [2 favorites]

I spend about 5 minutes or less for all of the meals I eat at home. Which is most of my meals. For decades. That's just preparing. Eating ~ 20min or so.
posted by aleph at 11:13 AM on February 23

Previously (2022) on MeFi New cookbook for folks out of spoons, time, and money. Presenting The Sad Bastard Cookbook.
posted by zaixfeep at 11:20 AM on February 23 [2 favorites]

" Presenting The Sad Bastard Cookbook."

More good time/effort Optimizations to eat better. And it does look good.

Don't really care. Care enough to not eat the stuff that'll have me falling over soon but not much more than that.

Which is weird because I still can appreciate food. Made a trip to Italy pre-COVID and Wow! Just have no interest in doing more than minimal myself.
posted by aleph at 11:28 AM on February 23

What's your point, aleph?

If it's just that you don't care to cook and that leaves you with more limited and less tasty meal options, I don't know that anyone would disagree with you. I wouldn't. And I'm not going to tell you what you should do with your life, except maybe to suggest keeping your weight loss advice to yourself unless someone asks for it first.

But again, this is a thread about a cookbook. We're talking about Nearing's approach toward cooking.

If you don't cook at all then the criticisms of her approach to cooking probably aren't all that relevant to you.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 11:30 AM on February 23 [6 favorites]

I thought I was making my points. Apparently not.

And why I'm saying anything is that I *agree* with what I see in the Cook book. I'd do it this way if I cooked at all.

And I had nothing to say about weight loss. I *said* I found out how taste buds shift during weight loss (which took months) when you don't eat the Doritos type food, which very much speaks to this cookbook.

I'm done.
posted by aleph at 11:34 AM on February 23 [1 favorite]

Not everyone needs to enjoy everything.

But I really think cooking is intimidating to some because they unreasonably expect it to be good right away. Nobody would expect to be good at drawing or playing the piano right away. If you get even a little pleasure from cooking or serving people within the first few times you try it, that's a hint it might be an enjoyable activity to pursue further. Failures are unimportant.

I grew up in a family that embraced the idea of "eat to live, not live to eat" and "saving time" and in retrospect learned a bad relationship with food as a result. Saving time for what? It's like saying there's no point learning piano since you can just throw on a CD or play something on Spotify, or not listen to music at all.

When I was single I found that even on days when I felt crunched for time, cooking dinner was something that could make me feel better. (It *is* a bit different cooking in a family with a young kid, I will admit, but even now sometimes the act of cooking will convert a stressed mood into a more relaxed one.)
posted by splitpeasoup at 11:41 AM on February 23 [3 favorites]

I am eating Cool Ranch Doritos as we speak and am not sure whether to feel guilty or liberated. Maybe both.
posted by mittens at 12:02 PM on February 23 [10 favorites]

But I really think cooking is intimidating to some because they unreasonably expect it to be good right away. Nobody would expect to be good at drawing or playing the piano right away.

This! So much this!

And also, because it is easier and often even cheaper to eat out or get take-away, many people's perception of what food is and how it should taste is skewed towards more complicated recipes with many ingredients and seasonings.
Or another version of this is my mum. She thinks she is a good cook, and her friends agree, but for her, food is always a feat of engineering and something to admire. So when we were kids, we ended up with charcuterie chicken and fries every time she was out of spoons, which was very often. I love chicken, so it wasn't a big issue, but my gran could make a feast out of some tins of sardines she found in her pantry. In no time.
posted by mumimor at 12:06 PM on February 23 [2 favorites]

Ah, a sixtie's flashback!
Helen Nearing in her early years was consort to Krishnamurti.
Love life's little weavings . . .
posted by Mesaverdian at 12:58 PM on February 23 [3 favorites]

Never knew that. Thanks.
posted by aleph at 1:03 PM on February 23 [1 favorite]

When you *don't* have such in your diet... you have different taste buds.

I have definitely noticed this myself. The healthier I eat, the healthier I want to eat, and the more junk food and/or sugar I eat, the more of them I want. Your taste buds will adjust to and crave more of whatever you routinely give them.
posted by orange swan at 1:07 PM on February 23 [3 favorites]

Well, that but I don't believe the "delta" is the same in both directions.

The "healthier" seems to take much longer to get there than the "OH Wow!" when kids first taste the Dorito things.
posted by aleph at 1:18 PM on February 23

And that's why it's really tough to do a mixed diet. Healthier and the Doritos stuff. Certainly can be done but what we're talking about makes it tougher. Your taste buds (and other stuff) gets "normalized" to the Doritos. And the other stuff suffers even more in comparison.
posted by aleph at 1:21 PM on February 23

The "healthier" seems to take much longer to get there than the "OH Wow!" when kids first taste the Dorito things.

Well, obviously, if the healthy food is Horse Chow or something similarly boring. If you give a child delicious, well made, healthy food, they will go WOW right away. I've seen it happen again and again in real life.
posted by mumimor at 1:22 PM on February 23 [2 favorites]

Yep. But those are much rarer than the cheap everywhere Doritos. => results
posted by aleph at 1:23 PM on February 23

Though you may live in a place with good street food. It's been coming back here in a few locations. There are high quality low price food in many of the places but all quite a distance from me.
posted by aleph at 1:28 PM on February 23

Mod note: Hi aleph, could you take a break from the thread for a bit? You're dominating it a bit at the moment, so let's give some other members a chance to discuss other things. Thank you!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 1:38 PM on February 23 [1 favorite]

Love life's little weavings

This is freethread material but today I learned that Baby Got Back and Fire Walk With Me are both products of 1992 and both ended up in my church sermon today (theme: I Like Big Buts)

I'm moderately chuffed
posted by ginger.beef at 2:31 PM on February 23 [2 favorites]

> But I really think cooking is intimidating to some because they unreasonably expect it to be good right away.

I would have thought it's more the expected bad outcome, combined with the fact that wasting food is a bigger risk than playing a clanger on the piano. Or as the man trying his first temperature probed grill said: the steaks are too high.
posted by lucidium at 3:33 PM on February 23 [1 favorite]

Funny, I haven't looked at this book in years. It and Diet for a Small Planet were big books among my crowd of vegetarians / activists in the early and mid 90s. There was one guy, he was a co-worker of a friend, who basically stopped eating anything fully cooked citing the Nearing book as the reason and ate a mush akin to Horse Chow made up entirely of slightly cooked grains. When I met him, he'd been on that diet for years and his teeth were very worn from essentially eating like livestock. He also unfortunately was into eugenics. I had so much bad food based off some these ideas... I just got into the habit of making the food for everybody or fixing the poorly constructed food someone made. I became a pretty good cook as a result.

In anycase, there are some decent if very plain foods in this book - it isn't only Horse Chow. I always found the tone to be a bit condescending and joyless but not always. That book did get me to look more deeply into my own cultural foodways finding joy in some of the simpler preparations from my culture rather than the contempt I largely had for it in my 20s.

If you like the ideas in the book but are unimpressed by the recipes I suggest checking out the More-with-less cookbook, another central cookbook for my crowd from that era of my life.
posted by Ashwagandha at 3:41 PM on February 23 [6 favorites]

i am old enough to remember when this & Small Planet came out & it was popular among people my age to want to try to live that way. america was a lot more homogenous place then, & even though it would not have been an impossible task to research the great point ssg makes about other cultures & what they do to make a "poor" diet palatable, it seems hippies from this milieu didn't care to unless they'd just come back from a pilgrimage to India & wanted curry on their lentils. i ate a lot of that & felt pretty virtuous for it. i still think vegetarianism is one of those simple things which would fix the world if people could bring themselves to want it badly enough, but i prefer these days the great pickings of inexpensive local eateries such as Korean. spicy food is not only cheap luxury, it is balm for the spirit in gray days.
posted by graywyvern at 5:07 PM on February 23 [4 favorites]

I visited her cottage in Maine as a teen. I don't remember if she was there or if the work had been taken over by volunteers, but it was a pretty spot.
posted by chaiminda at 5:13 PM on February 23 [2 favorites]

I definitely vibe with least cooking effort for most effect (unless I'm feeling fancy). A couple of thoughts:

Especially when I was working full time, I was always looking for ways to reduce food prep time while maintaining a healthy diet. My approach evolved into cooking a large batch of something on Sunday, and eating it throughout the week.

My favorite is a thing I call Bachelor Stew, because it has it's roots in my early days as a single person cooking large batches of food for dinner parties (which, coincidentally is why I'm no longer a bachelor :)

In a large pot:

- Coat the bottom with Olive Oil
- Dice up and add a couple of pounds of chicken thighs or pork
- Stir it up to coat the meat in oil
- Dice up and add a couple of large Sweet Potatoes
- Dice up and add 1-2 large onions
- cut up and add a pound of mushrooms
- Add a pint of pico de gallo or salsa verde
- Salt to taste
- add some wine if that appeals, tumeric can also be nice.

Simmer for an hour and a half (or do it in a slow cooker/Instapot), eat delicious stew for a week.

Next thought - Horse chow, not so much, but I love a cup of yogurt with honey, and a mix of nuts, raw oats & other grains & seeds like buckwheat and quinoa and chia, maybe some pepitas, stir, put in the fridge over night. Delicious breakfast, no cooking! (with heat, anyway).

Going to go make some now.

I reads some excerpts of the book. I like some of the ideas, but I found the writing style hard to approach. Appreciate the conversation tho!
posted by chromecow at 8:55 PM on February 23 [3 favorites]

Forget the cookbook - I'm more intrigued by her reported belief that the workday should be divided into two four-hour chunks: 4 hours for the grunt work you do to make money, and 4 hours for work on your own pursuits.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:36 PM on February 23 [3 favorites]

I just put some dinner in the oven. Easy to prepare and only ONE ingredient: El Monterey frozen chimichangas!
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 2:52 AM on February 24 [1 favorite]

4 hours for the grunt work you do to make money, and 4 hours for work on your own pursuits.

Which leaves 16 hours to scroll on social media!
posted by mittens at 4:22 AM on February 24 [2 favorites]

If you get even a little pleasure from cooking or serving people within the first few times you try it, that's a hint it might be an enjoyable activity to pursue further.

Huh, cool way to phrase it because it’s making me think about how I don’t and never have. Well, maybe if someone really enjoys the food, that’s nice? But it’s not any more enjoyable than if I bought the food for them at a restaurant and they liked it. Nailing their taste in food, that’s enjoyable. Making it myself? Never given me the littlest bit of pleasure.

Not so for drawing, writing, or knitting. Then it matters that I, specifically, made it for them. And I enjoy those processes, But I have never, not once, not ever in my entire goddamn life, gotten pleasure out of the process of cooking. Even things I know how to make and taste good, while I might enjoy the result I’d have enjoyed it infinitely more if someone else had made it instead of me.

It’s really fascinating how different people are!
posted by brook horse at 7:01 AM on February 24 [3 favorites]

You do you. But stop ignoring how things shift/change over time.

i think “you do you” also means stop assuming that your body is like other people’s and that your success at weight loss is because you’re better at it
posted by knock my sock and i'll clean your clock at 7:12 AM on February 24 [2 favorites]

There are plenty of things I do because of the function of the time it would take to learn versus the money I have to expend, both positive and negative, so I don't really judge people who don't like to do a thing. People's tastebuds and bodies are also very different. And tolerance of change. I knew a guy in college who ate cheese pizza and Dr Pepper for every meal. I can only tolerate leftovers for one day, no matter how delicious.


I am somewhat bemused that my daily hour of cooking is consumed in 5 minutes by my busy children. Like get 3 full sentences out before you go, kids.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:39 AM on February 24 [2 favorites]