People who don't cook

Here's an interesting column on the state of home cookery today.

Paul Roberts wrote: Today, despite a mania for cookbooks, celebrity chefs and 24-hour programming on the Food Network, cooking is a dying art. According to the Department of Agriculture, half of our food dollars are spent on items cooked outside the home, and almost half of the meals served in the average U.S. household lack even a single from-scratch item.... We may be a busy nation, but the same "average" American who has just 30 minutes for the kitchen is somehow finding 240 minutes each day to watch TV....

These are the people who keep chefs like me in business!

Very interesting.

I am glad to be a self proclaimed scratch cook. But I do know many people/coworkers, etc. who eat lots of processed foods, and cannot cook. So I believe the stats listed above.

The 240 minutes of daily t.v. kind of surprised me. Unless its baseball season, and the typical American League 3 hour White Sox games, I do not watch that much t.v. in a day. I wonder in the computer era we live in now how much time people waste staring at their computers each day. I would have to guess it may beat the daily t.v. total.

It's also interesting how far-reaching "don't cook" is: it means there are people out there who've never seen a raw ingredient - meaning, never fried a steak or baked (or even microwaved) a potato or put oil and vinegar on lettuce. There are hundreds of foods out there that are much more satisfying than a TV dinner, not to mention better for you, that take less time to make.

A number of things have contributed to the current generations of people who don't cook. One would be the feminist movement, which in the beginning strongly equated domesticity with downtrodden womanhood. (They've gotten over that now, mostly.)

And as women -- the vast majority of home cooks, even today -- entered the workforce, they increasingly curtailed time spent on meal preparation. For thousands of housewives, the Peg Bracken idea that women might have better things to do than spend all day at the stove was an awfully liberating concept.

That, of course, coincided with advances in food technology -- better canned foods, frozen foods, mixes, new appliances, etc. -- so even though women were still doing most of the cooking, they didn't have to work at it so hard or spend so much time at it. If there were some compromises in freshness or flavor for convenience's sake, most people didn't care. Plus many of the new packaged foods had novelty appeal.

Meanwhile, a vibrant economy, the growth of expressways and the rapid expansion of affordable fast food and family restaurants made dining out more accessible.

Naturally, if fewer women were home cooking, they weren't passing their kitchen skills on to their children. It fell to schools to do that. When I was in junior high, every girl was required to take home economics (and every boy shop class).

I loathed this class, not only because I felt the gender distinction unfair, but also because I had no interest in homemaking. I thought it unlikely I would marry, and I was already planning to have a career. I had no use for learning to sew a dopey-looking dress when I never wore anything except blue jeans.

Most of all, I hated the food they taught us to make, which was strange, bland, white-bread stuff unlike anything we ever ate at home. My mother worked full-time and didn't like to cook, so I grew up on a diet heavy on supermarket rotisserie chicken, grilled steaks, Birds Eye vegetable medleys and garbage salads, crossed with deli and diner fare, Greek and Cantonese food, ribs and my grandmother's Ashkenazi cooking.

Why on earth did I need to know how to make white sauce? The only food I can remember liking that we made during the whole semester was poached eggs. (And today, I make those in the microwave, more often than not.)

Of course, I also had a similar disdain for algebra, so what did I know? Despite myself, I did learn a few basic skills that stood me in good stead when, in college, destitute and desperate for food worth eating, I decided to really teach myself to cook and learned to enjoy it, too.

For years now, though, if food has featured in school curricula at all, it's as part of an elective course on family and consumer sciences that concentrates more on shopping skills than cooking, or as a vocational class meant to prepare youngsters for restaurant jobs.

So, many people today haven't had anyone to teach them how to cook. For that matter, some of them haven't even learned how to eat, only how to subsist.

I've never considered myself to be a great cook - but I cook. I will use a recipe for most of my creations - generally using it as a guideline for the first attempt and modifying it for my tastes the next times I prepare it. We've been weaning ourselves off certain prepared foods - certain things I'm still a sucker for (Zatarain's whatever, boxed Au Gratin potatoes...) but that's because I haven't perfected my recipes or in some cases even tried.

I find most people I come in contact with, don't like to cook. I don't even think its all about time. To me, there are few things more satisfying than preparing a meal, taking the first bite and having an "Oh my!" reaction. To get it in a restaurant is starting to cost a lot fo money. I've never had it from a TV dinner....

I've talked to more and more women who feel they don't 'need' to cook. I'm all for the feminist movement - take your bras off I don't think it is a gender requirement to be able to cook/clean/laundry - it is a household requirement. My wife and I cook almost every meal together.

I don't know if I'm becoming cheap or starting to appreciate cooking more - maybe both. There are many benefits to cooking at home - cost, potential for better ingredients, better service, not dealing with the public/traffic/waits...

This thread inspired me to announce at dinner yesterday that everyone in the family is going to shop for and prepare at least one from-scratch meal a week - of their choosing. Sparky volunteered to learn to cook scratch Mac & Cheese for his first project; I think it's an excellent start, actually - there are a lot of competencies in that simple food (excuse me while I squelch the urge launch a lecture about mother sauces.) Whoever cooks will also participate in the shopping for that dinner, as well.

I was also reminded of the summer my mother hired a couple Rentakids from our local church, and started showing them how to prep a chicken for dinner. One of the girls had never seen or touched raw meat before, and was so disgusted she became faint. She never returned to the job. Admittedly, I was never allowed to cook in my Mother's kitchen, (I was invariably accused of "making a mess," something I struggle not to do with Sparky, as mess is part of the process) so, as soon as I emancipated myself, my first objective was to fire up the kitchen - it's amazing how those years of hanging longingly around in the kitchen rub off on you (I still cook with a lot of olive oil and oregano because that's the way my mother did.)

Mhays wrote:This thread inspired me to announce at dinner yesterday that everyone in the family is going to shop for and prepare at least one from-scratch meal a week - of their choosing. Sparky volunteered to learn to cook scratch Mac & Cheese for his first project; I think it's an excellent start, actually - there are a lot of competencies in that simple food (excuse me while I squelch the urge launch a lecture about mother sauces.) Whoever cooks will also participate in the shopping for that dinner, as well.

I think that's a great idea. If anything it might inspire a little creativeness.

LOL @ mother sauces. We were playing Trivial Pursuit one night and that was one of the questions. Of course, nobody had any idea. I still can't ever answer that question without the internet. I'll take technology for a blue pie please...

I think that most people who do not cook are people who are afraid of trying. I think that many people have NEVER had an opportunity to cook and are intimidated by the number of things you have to know to produce a decent meal.

To get around this, I recommend that you start up with very easy dishes - things like scrambled eggs and then work forward. If the student has 5-10 successes, they will more than likely want to try more complicated recipes.

Personally, I will admit that I do use some convenience foods - like spaghetti sauce - and doctor up the food substantially.

One more thing. I started shopping for the family at age 12. I wasn't allowed to cook as I "made too much of a mess" but I would do all the shopping as I "stuck to the list" and "made good decisions as to choose between the generics and brand names".

Mhays wrote:excuse me while I squelch the urge launch a lecture about mother sauces.

Oh, yes, I know. And if they'd explained the importance of white sauce by first giving samples of some of the good things you can make starting with bechamel, I might have paid more attention. But in my house, macaroni and cheese (and most goyische foods) started with a box. It seems to me we made mayonnaise in class, too, but I thought it was strange, runny stuff compared to what came out of the jar at home.

It does strike me that the best way to teach cooking may be to start with teaching an appreciation for the foods you're going to cook.

I hope you'll document Sparky's cooking lessons, Mhays! (Not that I'd expect any son of yours to grow up at a loss in the kitchen.)

i really like this thread -- I've been a cook for what seems like most of my life. I'm a recipe cook as opposed to a truly gifted creative cook, although I've been known to go off the path occasionally --sometimes with success, sometimes not. It's hard for me to fathom not knowing how to cook -- although I can certainly understand those who chooose not to cook but more from a standpoint of not wanting to spend the time as opposed to not understanding how to do it. And I certainly take advantage of some convenience foods -- stock in a box, the occasional Near East rice dish, spaghetti sauce in a jar that i make "better" but normally, I use real foods and whip them into something that resembles a meal. I find it gets tiring to figure out what to make and I have a lot of ruts that I get into -- i'm trying to shake that up right now by eating differently -- I have type 2 diabetes so I've been experimenting with counting carbs and watching my carb intake and that's sort of forcing me into making different things. I can't believe how many carbs I've been eating. Can't ever give them up though -- life without pasta and bread would be worthless.

But I digress...what i wonder is how many folks grew up with a mom or a dad (or parental type unit, i guess) who cooked regularly and taught them to cook? Mhays story of her mother's territorial kitchen is interesting because my Mom encouraged us to cook -- we were always doing prep for her on various things -- i've peeled more potatoes than i know how to calculate and when I got older, i'd be assigned dishes to do myself instead of contribute to everything Mom was making. I was also told I made a mess...but I was just told to clean it up. In fact..there are some great photos of me baking a cake for a 4H cake baking contest with flour in my hair and on my clothes but boy oh boy did that cake look tasty!

And I will say that I can make a bechemel and a veloute pretty well. But I've never attempted a hollandaise or a bearnaise...

LAZ wrote:...Most of all, I hated the food they taught us to make, which was strange, bland, white-bread stuff unlike anything we ever ate at home. My mother worked full-time and didn't like to cook, so I grew up on a diet heavy on supermarket rotisserie chicken, grilled steaks, Birds Eye vegetable medleys and garbage salads, crossed with deli and diner fare, Greek and Cantonese food, ribs and my grandmother's Ashkenazi cooking.

In the late 70s, things changed a bit, I think. Stir-fry became a national craze, and there was the opportunity for better, healthier food that could be maked "In 30 Minutes or Less" -- long before Rachel Ray. I remember my mother's cooking improving significantly around then. (We still remember the all-white meal: whitefish, mashed potatoes and cauliflower. So bland, so bland!)

LAZ wrote: ... And if they'd explained the importance of white sauce by first giving samples of some of the good things you can make starting with bechamel, I might have paid more attention.

You ain't kidding! And if they'd told me you need algebra to scale a recipe...or touch-typing to post it on the Internets...well, the nuns who taught me would have been much less cross, I'm sure....

LAZ wrote:
... And if they'd explained the importance of white sauce by first giving samples of some of the good things you can make starting with bechamel, I might have paid more attention.

Ha! You know...I know how to make a bechamel simply because I love au gratin potatoes. In my version of them, you have to make a bechamel and add cheese to it. it's all about what i wanted to eat. A veloute was because of making chicken pie. I had no idea what these were when I made them but boy did I want to know how to make those two things.

Never underestimate the power of your tummy to dictate your knowledge base.

s

LAZ wrote:...Most of all, I hated the food they taught us to make, which was strange, bland, white-bread stuff unlike anything we ever ate at home.

JoelF wrote:In the late 70s, things changed a bit, I think. Stir-fry became a national craze, and there was the opportunity for better, healthier food that could be maked "In 30 Minutes or Less" -- long before Rachel Ray. I remember my mother's cooking improving significantly around then. (We still remember the all-white meal: whitefish, mashed potatoes and cauliflower. So bland, so bland!)

It was about 1975 when I was taking home ec. No stir-fry there.

At home, Mom opened cans of La Choy. I doubt she ever mashed a potato in her life. And her whitefish nearly put me off seafood forever -- frozen fillets broiled to aridness, dotted with diet margarine and sprinkled with stale paprika.

Thanks to restaurants and my grandmother, I ate plenty of good food growing up, but my artist Mom had no interest in cooking. It might have appealed to her sense of aesthetics, but that was before even the fanciest of restaurants did much more than garnish with parsley.

LAZ wrote:At home, Mom opened cans of La Choy. I doubt she ever mashed a potato in her life. And her whitefish nearly put me off seafood forever -- frozen fillets broiled to aridness, dotted with diet margarine and sprinkled with stale paprika.

Ah, I believe you forgot the piece de resistance for the whitefish recipe, which is a squeeze of lemon juice from concentrate that came from a plastic container shaped like a lemon. At least that's how it was served at my house growing up.

Both my sister and I love to cook and I have no idea where we get it from. We never took Home Ec. Our mom was your typical 1980s homemaker with a 20 hour a week job and no interest/time to cook. She was the queen of the lipton or campbell's soup recipe, grand mistress of the broiled protein with no seasonings except salt and pepper.

She blames her mother, who in turn blames her mother. My grandmother was never allowed in the kitchen to help her mother cook. I found this odd, as you would think that my great-grandmother would have wanted to teach her daughter how to cook, especially since it was considered "woman's work" when she grew up.

It's also sad that my grandmother was banished from the kitchen, as many of my great-grandmother's recipes were lost to history without someone there to witness her making them.

Kim

earthlydesire wrote:...what i wonder is how many folks grew up with a mom or a dad (or parental type unit, i guess) who cooked regularly and taught them to cook?

Many if not most of my kids’ high school friends live in families that rarely eat together much less cook together. When my daughter brought home a bunch of her classmates her freshman year, they were impressed and amazed that we ate dinner as a family and that I cooked a whole dinner “from scratch.” They were some of the most wonderful dinner guests I ever had, though—they loved the food and ate every bit. Of course my daughter had been telling them what a great cook her mother was, but that could have easily backfired on me!

Said daughter is profoundly uninterested in cooking 98% of the time. Every once in a while she conceives of herself as someone who should cook for others and spends a few minutes trying to watch me and help in the kitchen, but she soon drifts off. Her younger brother, on the other hand, loves to cook and is very creative in the kitchen. He’s been helping in the kitchen for years. At 15, he now believes that he knows a great deal about cooking—and everything else….

I certainly learned to cook from my mother, who was already a foodie in the 1950s and ‘60s. She subscribed to Gourmet and took us to Chicago’s ethnic restaurants. Her mother had grown up in a German-Jewish upper-middle-class home with servants (including a cook) and didn’t learn to cook until the Nazis forbid Jews to have non-Jewish servants. She became an excellent cook, and my grandfather joked that he could thank Hitler for her cooking skills and his improved dining.

LAZ wrote:At home, Mom opened cans of La Choy. I doubt she ever mashed a potato in her life. And her whitefish nearly put me off seafood forever -- frozen fillets broiled to aridness, dotted with diet margarine and sprinkled with stale paprika.

Kim3 wrote:Ah, I believe you forgot the piece de resistance for the whitefish recipe, which is a squeeze of lemon juice from concentrate that came from a plastic container shaped like a lemon.

Omigod! You're right!

It's scary to think that my mother wasn't the only one cooking like that. Maybe it was a Weight Watchers recipe?

Kim3 wrote:My grandmother was never allowed in the kitchen to help her mother cook. I found this odd, as you would think that my great-grandmother would have wanted to teach her daughter how to cook, especially since it was considered "woman's work" when she grew up.

It's also sad that my grandmother was banished from the kitchen, as many of my great-grandmother's recipes were lost to history without someone there to witness her making them.

One reason my mom didn't learn to love cooking was my grandmother's attitude. She always found it much simpler to do kitchen jobs herself rather than take the time to show someone else how. When I finally began to take an interest in cooking in my college days, I did insist that she teach me a few things, though sadly we had little time together for that since I was away at school and she died the year I graduated. So many of her recipes were lost.

Fortunately, I did learn most of the holiday recipes -- particularly for Passover -- since cooking for Passover in those days was so much work that all hands, skilled or not, were pressed into service. One of my earliest cooking memories was of being swathed in a apron tied up under my armpits and set to work chopping nuts for Pesach cakes in a little hand-cranked nut grinder.

I can cook, but I don't usually bother.

It's a waste of time and money for me to cook much beyond the basics for myself. I can't eat the leftovers before they go bad, and I end up wasting both the money I spent on the ingredients, and the time it took me to cook food I won't be able to finish.

I wish more ingredients were sold in smaller quantities. If I could buy 1 chicken breast, a few tortillas, and a single serving container of sour cream, I'd cook more.

merkay wrote:I can cook, but I don't usually bother.

It's a waste of time and money for me to cook much beyond the basics for myself. I can't eat the leftovers before they go bad, and I end up wasting both the money I spent on the ingredients, and the time it took me to cook food I won't be able to finish.

I wish more ingredients were sold in smaller quantities. If I could buy 1 chicken breast, a few tortillas, and a single serving container of sour cream, I'd cook more.

Sour cream keeps six weeks in the fridge, at least. Cooked or uncooked, chicken breasts freeze readily (and if you shop at a butcher instead of a supermarket, you can buy a single breast).

Tortillas also freeze. Put waxed paper between each tortilla, put in a plastic bag, squeeze out air and freeze. Then you can take them out one at a time and warm them in the microwave or a frying pan.

LAZ wrote:chicken breasts freeze readily (and if you shop at a butcher instead of a supermarket, you can buy a single breast).

At Whole Foods, you can buy virtually any cut of meat in individually sized portions. At almost any supermarket they will sell fish in a single portion. Produce can be purchased one item at a time. You won't pay Costco prices, but its still a lot cheaper than eating out and much healthier and less expensive than eating processed food.

I only cook for two which is not much different than cooking for one. I tend to make extra so that we have leftovers for lunch or dinner the next day, but anything worth eating rarely lasts longer than that.

The one thing that I do throw out is celery. I use it in a lot of dishes, but only a stalk or two, and it has a limited shelf life before it becomes limp and nasty. Celery is my ongoing dillemma. Everything else that ends up in the fridge gets eaten up.

wak wrote:The one thing that I do throw out is celery. I use it in a lot of dishes, but only a stalk or two, and it has a limited shelf life before it becomes limp and nasty. Celery is my ongoing dillemma. Everything else that ends up in the fridge gets eaten up.

Limp celery works just fine in chili and stews. I cannot tell the difference between using limp or really fresh celery in those cooked dishes.

Option two is to dice the celery and freeze the celery and use it in recipes calling for celery.

My first foray into cooking was as a single person (which was good, as I had time to build up a repertoire before having to cook for two) Since the 'spouse works 24-hour shifts, I'm often cooking for myself and Sparky (which often may as well be for one) I sometimes work up new food desert recipes and use Sparky as the guinea pig on those days, some of them (especially the pastas) are easy to cut down into a single portion.

I found that the salad bar is your friend in these cases: you can get most of the ingredients for a stir-fry in portions for one, as well as single-serve portions of celery, onions and other aromatics - more expensive in the long run, but cheaper if you wind up buying the whole thing and throwing it away. If you wind up with leftovers, they make great soup. I think even at the large supermarkets you can get single portions of meats and fish at the counter.

One of the real barriers I found to cooking alone was the lack of company - but (since I didn't have the money at the time to go out and eat) I found the act of cooking itself to be a calming and satisfying way to end the day; beat the heck out of a frozen dinner in front of the TV.

earthlydesire wrote:
But I digress...what i wonder is how many folks grew up with a mom or a dad (or parental type unit, i guess) who cooked regularly and taught them to cook? ...

One of the reasons I named myself "messycook" in this forum is because I was encouraged/allowed/required to cook from a young age and of course trashed the kitchen every time I made something (and still do) So, to answer the question above, my mom did a wonderful job by letting me "help" - stirring, mixing, or chopping a part of whatever she was making....and there was a lot of whatever she was making because my family ate dinner together 7 nights a week, all made from scratch. Going out to dinner or ordering pizza was unheard of. Boxed potatoes were not to be touched...actually we were rarely allowed to get things at the grocery store that listed more than 3 ingredients! (Oh, the torure at the time, that I was not allowed to have Cap'n Crunch, but now I am so thankful she enforced this.) Sundays were an even bigger deal because she would make a huge meal and a large portion of the day would have to be devoted to it, and almost every week I continue this tradition. Another thing that helped us learn was that as soon as we were old enough (probably about 10) we had to pick out and make one meal a week. It could be anything we wanted and she would help us, but we had to cook for the family. Things ranged from steamed clams to tacos and now I am proud that I feel confident enough to make just about anything. Even if she was not cooking, I would be allowed to fool around in the kitchen, making things like "spice soup" (bowl, water, dry spices, wooden spoon=endless fun) or cut out "cookies" made from flour and water paste. I'm sure my poor mom cleaned up more than what got consumed but it was worth it in the long run and now my whole family's conversations together center around what we are growing in our gardens, cooking in the kitchen, and cookbooks we're reading in our free time. I agree there is little that is as satisfying as seeing something come out of nothing and having it be delicious.

One of my favorite stories about trying to tell someone they could cook was when I was at the grocery store. On the conveyer belt: apples, brown sugar, white sugar, flour, butter. The checkout girl asked with utter sincerity: "what are you making?" When I said, "apple pie", she said, "oh wow! I can't make anything like that." I said, "sure you can! If you can read, you can cook." Response: "look how cute you are, saying if I can read, I can cook! I just don't think that's true." I tried to convince her but she wouldn't have it. Sigh.

I do wish more people would believe this!

LAZ wrote:It's scary to think that my mother wasn't the only one cooking like that. Maybe it was a Weight Watchers recipe?

Oh yeah, very likely. My mom was always on a diet between 1982 and 1989 and was a big fan of the WW recipes. It was a "treat" to have the above recipe served with a fresh, not frozen, whitefish, like Tilapia.

jlawrence wrote:Limp celery works just fine in chili and stews. I cannot tell the difference between using limp or really fresh celery in those cooked dishes.

Option two is to dice the celery and freeze the celery and use it in recipes calling for celery.

Option three is to wrap the celery in tinfoil. It will keep twice as long in the fridge. It's a Martha Stewart tip.

Kim

My mom was a wildly forward-looking home manager & cook in the 50s. When Better Homes and Gardens had an article about wild asparagas, she went out looking for it. We got an Amana freezer just about as soon as a big one came available.

The downside, of course, was that she had to try all the new technological items as well: TV dinners, dried potatoes, etc. etc.

But she was on top of the whole scene, leading edge. Plus, and here's the bottom line for me: "You'll need to learn to cook (wash, iron, clean, sew) for yourself" she'd tell me, "because you'll maybe not find a woman crazy enough to marry you, and you'll have to do for yourself." So she taught me the rudiments of frying, roasting, baking, etc. and I loved every minute of it.

She tried that same routine with the piano. Didn't work, unfortunately. So today I can cook pretty well, but can't play the piano at all. Sigh.

Seems to me that early introduction is awfully important.

Geo

Geo wrote:But she was on top of the whole scene, leading edge. Plus, and here's the bottom line for me: "You'll need to learn to cook (wash, iron, clean, sew) for yourself" she'd tell me, "because you'll maybe not find a woman crazy enough to marry you, and you'll have to do for yourself."

You would be surprised at how many guys get to college and have no clue as to how to do laundry, cooking, and the like. You can tell them as they are the ones wearing pink t-shirts as they did not know to separate the colors from the whites.

A few years back, I spent a few weeks teaching a co-worker how to cook simple meals WITHOUT the George Foreman. When he moved east a couple of years ago, he let me have all of his pantry staples. He learned well as the items were all very good selections.

jlawrence01 wrote: A few years back, I spent a few weeks teaching a co-worker how to cook simple meals WITHOUT the George Foreman. When he moved east a couple of years ago, he let me have all of his pantry staples. He learned well as the items were all very good selections.

Which reminds me of another facet of this issue: the conviction of people who don't cook (unlike your co-worker) that it's a trait and not a matter of education. I am amazed how often I hear at potlucks "Oh, I don't cook" delivered with the same conviction as "I don't have 20/20 vision."

While this was probably true in the era before cookbooks, (The Fannie Farmer Cookbook was made famous by using standardized volume measurements that could actually be followed by someone who didn't cook) between FoodTV, PBS, cooking magazines, cookbooks - not to mention places like LTH, you can learn to cook entirely on your own, and find your own style to boot.

I don't get this either. how can someone just so wholeheartedly dismiss their ability to do what I think is as natural as reading? And the ones that crack me up the most are the ones who say they can't cook except for one or two things. As if there was some sort of limit in their capacity-- they mastered THIS and they can go no further! My middle sister, who had the same mother that both my younger sister and I had and was exposed to the exact same amount of encouragement and excellent food from her -- still contends that she can't boil water --although somehow that doesn't include her ability to make some really good asian vegetable dishes (stir fry broccoli with sesame seeds & sesame oil which is really tasty). Every time I come to visit she begs me to make our family's au gratin potatoes and I've taught her the very very simple steps several times but i think it's more of a lack of patience than anything else. And she's a frakking architect! I couldn't draft my way out of a paper bag -- and believe me...that's no exaggeration.

But I can cook my way out.

Mhays wrote:While this was probably true in the era before cookbooks, (The Fannie Farmer Cookbook was made famous by using standardized volume measurements that could actually be followed by someone who didn't cook) between FoodTV, PBS, cooking magazines, cookbooks - not to mention places like LTH, you can learn to cook entirely on your own, and find your own style to boot.

Most of the cooking guides - other than those written for children - assume a lot of cooking background. Many of the FoodTV recipes are fairly complicated.

Even with the illustrated Betty Crocker Cookbook, if you lack the fundamental skills, you will struggle with producing the basic recipes in the book.

Over the years, I have had the fortune (or misfortune) to train dozens of "cooks" as I worked for a company that thought that you could train ANYONE to cook. Very quickly, I found out that many people have problems with even basic measurement devices. Ask a novice to measure 1 TBSP and you generally get a HEAPING TBSP which can be double the amount. Or the folks who will use a LIQUID measuring cup for measuring dry ingredients.

I could post one kitchen blooper (or disaster) a day for the next two years for entertainment value.