On the I-do-not-cook type, and Kitchen Therapy...

The otherwise mindless article at Sydney Morning Herald about the people who don't cook, is at once interesting, yet annoying.

It cites various people on why they don't cook. It ranges from "I'm too busy," to "I hate the chores," to "I prefer to watch."

A bit of disclosure suffix. I cook at times, but I rarely cook these days. My husband cooks better than I. I used to cook before the babies came. These days, I see the kids to school, go to work, pick up the kids, set the table, eat, clean the table, and throw out the garbage. My husband takes care of everything in between, when he's not working. That includes, grocery shopping, planning, cooking, and doing the dishes.

Having said that, we still do grocery shopping whenever we can. It can be fun finding recipes. And my husband sees cooking as an experiment on its own right, after hanging up his hat in basic research in biology after his Ph.D in MIT. It's also fun to have the kids as tasters-in-training to tell you if the dish is good or bad. Truth be told, we eat out quite often, but it's the cooking at home that is most fun for the kids.

As to those people in the article who don't cook, or think that cooking is old-fashioned, or that it's a chore, I would say that they really miss the point of cooking. Because cooking really is fun. Cooking is transformational. You bought raw ingredients, and then after a lot of care-and-feeding into the pots and pans, you have a beautiful dish (or horrible dish). No matter, since it's the fun in transforming the raw into the cooked. It's really quite magical.

I still like to help out in the kitchen sometimes. It's my Kitchen Therapy. There are a few things that I like, in particular; the things that are so mindless that you won't need to use your brain. Like, skimping oil from the top of a boiling soup; even doing dishes, or putting the dishes away after they're dry. It's perfect for me to decompress from a whole day's work, since I don't need to kill a single brain cell.

Cooking takes a lot of planning though. For those who have never done it or are not used to it, it can be daunting. And, they're probably just lazy, trying not to do the dishes afterall.