Let’s put a positive spin on this, since people in the comments are dogging on him enough.
Guy’s 20, living on his own, clearly inexperienced in the ways of living on his own, and he had the courage to do what so many fail to: ask for help. If he keeps that going, he’ll be fine.
He clearly didn’t get the guidance he needed when he was younger, but he is trying and asking questions. He is on the right path.
People like to blame men for the failure/neglect of society, parents, teachers, etc., to teach them the things they’ll need to know as an adult. Generally regarding stuff that was conventionally ascribed as “women’s duties”: cooking, cleaning, decorating, etc.
People blame the individuals as if they’re supporting the patriarchy by not knowing the things that they were never taught. That’s missing the point, because these men were harmed by the patriarchy which neglected to teach them these important things.
It’s really hard to enter your twenties and become moderately independent and suddenly have to learn a hundred different things that are absolutely critical to a well-ordered life, that already come so naturally to people who have been doing it their entire lives that they hardly even think about it and look down on you for not just intuitively grasping everything you need to know.
But no, they see a young guy struggling with basic tasks like washing the bed sheets or hanging curtains or choosing a tasteful rug or not burning dinner or whatever, and they jump straight to “NOBODY IS GOING TO MOMMY YOU, GROW TF UP!!!” Because it’s sooo cool to attack a man who you find in a position of weakness because he’s struggling with tasks you deem basic.
If we could just break that stigma and make it okay for men to ask for help, they’d be able to learn what they need to a lot easier. At least the ones who try. Clearly the ones who don’t try and have no interest in trying are the problem, so why focus the ire on the ones who do try? Asking for help kinda skylines yourself and makes you vulnerable to attack, so I’m not surprised few people do it.
That would at least ease the transition for a generation or two until people who learn basic things as boys grow up and become men who don’t need to catch up on the things that the average 20yo woman has already been doing for over a decade…
Also of note, some of that can just be pure crippling ADHD too,
washing the bed sheets
Thanks for reminding me.
hanging curtains
Bought 'em 2y ago and they’re still in the box in a seldom used closet, keep forgetting about them until I see them but then I’m doing something and will have to get to it later, by “later” I’ve forgotten again. I’ll get to them later…
choosing a tasteful rug
This one might not be ADHD I just hate shopping for things, I get in and get out.
not burning dinner
OH SHIT MY PIZZA!
Many, many years ago I did one of these. I made sure to take pictures, because at least some of the shots looked good enough to make up for the sadness of not eating it.
The worst part about burning food is it stinks the kitchen out for days. The last time I burnt some pasta (straight up forgot about it and went to bed) I seriously started looking at buying a ozone machine. But I would 100% definitely kill myself with that so in the end I just left all the windows open for a few days.
Who ever said it’s not okay for men to ask for help!? I’m pretty sure that’s a personal pride thing more than a societal norm, or is at least a societal norm because so many men let pride get in the way. Small men tend to be embarrassed if they don’t know how to do something that’s perceived as simple, and don’t know how to handle that emotion so it is either dismissed or becomes a point of frustration.
Why do you think those men make it a point of pride not to ask for help? It’s because they’ve internalized the subtle (and not-so-subtle) messaging that they’ve received since childhood that asking for help is weakness, and weakness is bad, because you’re a man so you’re supposed to be strong and know how to do everything by yourself.
Social norms and individual behaviors are a chicken and the egg situation. Yes, societal norms are made up of individual behaviors. However, those behaviors are also influenced by societal norms. And often, society punishes any deviation from those norms.
It’s literally the same process that teaches women to do the things that basically all of the feminist literature ascribes to societal norms and internalized messaging. It’s the same process. So why do people always try to invalidate it whenever someone brings up the male side of that coin?
He also didn’t get the guidance here. Who says “I’m tweeting this”.
You help him, and then you tweet it privately…
I’m sure he helped him after taking the screenshot
Bold of you to assume this when clearly that hasn’t happened in the first 20 years of life
Are you responsible for teaching all your cousins how to cook?
The guy’s cousin asked him for help, so it’s not that bold to assume he helped him. It’s pretty clear that he hadn’t asked before, so why would the first twenty years be any indication of what happens now?
Yeah that and honestly, its also mainly a failure of the parents to teach him.
Also for the cousin, I hate when you ask someone, specifically a family member for help, and they make you feel stupid, I mean sure, I maybe late to the party, but I am learning.
Maybe they have a good enough relationship where they can gently tease each other like this, and both of them are laughing.
Sorry you don’t have any friends and family you can just dog sometimes.
some abusive parents even go out of their way to NOT teach things like this on purpose in order to keep their children dependent on them
He a 20 yr old loving on his own. He already beat 80% of the other kids living with their parents.
I knew how to use an oven at 20, so I’m guessing he it’s probably from the class that doesn’t really ever go into the kitchen.
I never understood what true wealth was until I went to Uni. My roommate was extremely ill equipment for life. They had never done laundry, never cooked(even a microwave), and never cleaned up after themselves. They wore clothes until the clothes smelt bad or ripped, and then throw them out. Then someone from home would send them a package with brand new clothes. They demolished their meal plan and gained a bunch of weight because they had never had to make any decisions about food before. They trashed our unit because the idea of cleaning was non existent. There is a class of people that have never done anything for themselves and are completely out of touch. Also these are the fucking people that run the government. Their parents were going to pay me $5000 for putting up with their kids shit for a year. Until you have seen this, you will never understand what the word wealthy means.
Did you get the cash?
No, they explained to their parents “that they(the poors) don’t do stuff like that.” That is the story about how I learned who the owning class is. People just have no idea what it is like to have that much money. We have very little im common with them. If you make 500k a year, you are still part of the working class.
It’s not just about class, but sexism. Cooking is women’s work.
While I may be older than most here, I was one of the few among my friends to cook, as a guy. I never got teased directly but people would say things in my presence. I loved to bake so always made desserts for My family, plus there were a few dishes that were always “mine”.
When I got married, we did both agree that we liked traditional roles, but she didn’t let me cook. Sure parts of it were that she is the better cook and also the more picky eater, but a lot of it was “her role”. She felt anxious about not doing “her part”. It was too ingrained that cooking was women’s work
But we both made sure our boys could cook. Now that they’re home from college for the summer, i try to get them to cook at least once a week
He’s probably injecting his message and destination into someone elses data transmission lmao
Let’s put a positive spin on this
Genuinely: why???
Because we should encourage people to be smart enough to realize they’re doing something dumb and ask someone to help or make sure they’re doing things correctly.
The last thing we need in this world are more aggressively stupid people inordinately confident that they’re doing shit right while doing nothing but fucking up.
The one thing that is bothering me a little… Like I was on my own in college at 18. While I wasn’t really “taught” how to cook for myself I at least observed my mom and dad over 18 years cooking. I’ve seen them use baking sheets in the oven, and never just directly on the rack.
My question is where was this guy for 20 years? Was he never in the kitchen helping set the table? Emptying the dishwasher/doing dishes while mom was making dinner? Did he just disappear at all times and thought some magic genie made food?
Frequently wrong, never in doubt.
Because the fact that you’re seeing this in the first place shows something deeply wrong with how people interact these days.
We should be free to make mistakes. Just because you had a perfectly predictable childhood doesn’t mean everyone does. If you didn’t have a perfectly predictable childhood then you need to practice some empathy.
Guy is trying to learn. That shouldn’t get him posted for everyone to make fun of.
First, you don’t know anything about me, what a weird thing to say.
Second, guy isn’t here. Guy possibly doesn’t even exist. This isn’t about guy and his needs, it’s about the needs of the people actually present. I don’t think you are seeing through your own bullshit well enough to have actual insight into, “Why?”
Lastly, if you think this is how we meaningfully express empathy to each other, I suggest this is more about feeling like you are practicing empathy than actually practicing it in meaningful ways.
Mmk buddy, let me know when you’ve figured out how to remove your head from your ass.
Their name is “jerkface”, I wouldnt hold your breath!
Or maybe:
Parents, make sure your kids have some basic skills in running simple household appliances like the washer and dryer, the dishwasher, and the stove.
And learning to cook simple things like boiled pasta or scrambled eggs or a baking pan of box-mix brownies, lays a foundation for more advanced cooking skills. When they get motivated (hungry), they will at least have the basic skills to cook up a pot of pasta with sauce, and maybe they’ll start experimenting, and learn how to cook more advanced stuff.
The funny thing is: The boomers, the silent generation and everyone before and after… they made mostly the same mistakes, but there was no internet around to chronicle their mishaps
How’s he supposed to know if nobody every taught him?
“Common sense” is rarely all that common.
‘Common sense’ usually means ‘I was taught this young enough that i don’t remember learning it, and therefore treat the knowledge as instrinsic’
Like the only reason it’s Common Sense not to put metal in a toaster is because of warnings from others about it. It’s not like our species evolved al9ngside toasters.
A lot of kids out there are neglected and taught to obey instructions, but not why those instructions matter, what they do, or the comprehension needed to optimise them.
Often people forget (or more commonly: don’t know) that homo sapiens are called like that because we were the only* species of homo that actively tries to give all the knowledge they had to their kids
*well, we weren’t the only ones, homo erectus and other homos did it too to a certain extent i belive
I operate strange new machines all the time. There’s usually some kind of instructions or video. Never activate the device without trying to figure it out first, you won’t even know what sort of personal protective equipment to wear.
You’re not wrong. But dang some things seem kinda obvious.
And ppl wonder why the younger gens are terrified of doing anything fun or risky.
Right? You do stupid once and get publicly shamed.
My life is ruined! Everyone knows I’m the cousin of Henpecked Hal!
“Hey guys! I have a CRAZY idea! Let’s put meat on the grates in the oven!” - Fun loving people millennial and older
My sister once had a roommate who asked her what goes into a grilled cheese sandwich. She said just two pieces of bread and a slice of cheese. A few minutes later she found the roommate in the kitchen staring at a plain cheese sandwich on a plate. “Something wrong?” she asked. Roommate replied (I shit you not), “How is this supposed to melt the cheese?”
Also forgot the mayo
I just put cheese in it and then fry it in butter. But I’ve seen people butter the outsides.
This comment broke me
A little mayo on the bread, a little butter melted in the skillet
Just put mayo on the outside of the bread and use that to fry it up instead of the butter. Plenty enough oil in the mayo
I like the way mayo on the outside turns out, but it’s a pain in the ass to make it that way and not enough of an improvement over butter in the pan for the hassle
I do put it on the outside. I like the crisp mayo makes but prefer the taste of butter so I meet myself in the middle and use both. A bothersomely fast metabolism makes up for the extra fat
Ew
Mayo has eggs, oil, and vinegar in it. As it breaks down while cooking the vinegar cooks off, the eggs french-ify the bread, and the oil fries the eggs onto the bread as it turns into toast. It works wonders for sandwiches cooking in a pan.
Don’t forget the mustard!
Lol shows what you know. Do you also cook right on the oven rack?
They need to bring back home ec (economics).
Basic cooking, nutrition and finance. How taxes work, voting, credit, bills and even dealing with cops (be respectful, no sudden movements, know your rights, shut the fuck up).
How to adult for kids who don’t get taught at home.
Agreed. School focuses too much on stem. It should be there to prepare you for life. Go to Uni if you want to advance in stem.
School should also teach other basics like taxes, finance and budgeting.
And the S part of STEM is pretty important for actually understanding the issues facing voters (and our world)
And the T part of STEM is pretty important for actually functioning in the modern world of computing.
The M part of STEM is pretty important for taxes, finance and budgeting.
I’m not saying totally ignore STEM. But do 12th graders really need to know logarithms? Maybe take a few weeks to calculate your taxes instead and understand how tax brackets work.
Logarithms and exponentials were pretty important for understanding the pandemic. Understanding logarithms and exponentials is important for getting the behaviour of interest (which, if you want to use credit cards, is pretty key).
More generally, learning maths gives you the skill to be able to learn how to do all these key life things like budget etc… — it gets you numerically literate. Means when something comes up like (for example) scaremongering over vaccines, you know enough about maths and stats to interrogate the statement made and determine whether you believe the study. Just teaching the skills without their basis is flawed imo.
What is the EC part?
Pretty sure we still do cooking and “how to operate a kitchen” classes here in northern Europe. In Denmark it’s “hjemkundskab” - basically “skills for homekeeping”
Finances not so much though, that should be a class on its own
Short for “home economics”
Is it just food stamp tactics?
Not sure what that means—but back in the day, girls took home ec (cooking, sewing, cleaning, etc.) while boys took shop (carpentry, machine repair).
It was just a hostile joke towards Americans, sorry.
Yea we have both for everyone, probably the most relevant skills to learn. Build a bird house, learn to cook, and patching up clothes. Real world skills
deleted by creator
At least he recognized that he should clean the blood and grease every time. I’ve seen plenty of ovens that suggest that their owner would not be as diligent.
If it’s carbonized then is sterile!!!
as someone who’s used to working with sterile machinery, let me tell you: a mass of carbonized organic matter can still harbor bacteria deep inside when it’s not FULLY carbonized, and release them when it breaks.
Well, not mentioning everything else it can release.
If you don’t, it’s going to smell really bad in a few days. I suspect that’s what led him to start cleaning it regularly. That’s not something a 20 year old is prone to do without motivation. A nasty smell is good motivation.
I am constantly cleaning my oven of blood and grease because damn German kids keep walking into my oven and the oven “accidentally” slamming shut and turning on.
Now, if you excuse me. Some fat German kid is trying to eat my wall.
Don’t make him run, he’s full of chocolate!
Advantage of being a vegetarian I guess. I don’t have to clean blood out of my oven.
I stayed with vegetarians a while ago. I’ve never seen an oven so vile and rancid. Turns out veggies are perfectly capable of turning an oven into a carbonized cesspool, no blood required.🤢
To be fair to him, if you’ve never specifically cooked meat in an oven I can see how you’d think “grill -> like barbecue -> place directly on grill”.
Honestly, if you did this with the broiler, and put a pan on another oven rack under the meat to catch the drippings, it might work okay?
That was 6 yrs ago. Wonder how lil bro is doing 😂
To shreds you say…
I assume he’s doing great.
My mans was cooking his own food; realized (own his own) that his way of cooking was suboptimal; and then asked for help.
That approach is to life is going take him far.
Probs fucked up a bunch of other things, being scared to ask again!
Doesn’t seem scared to ask, just to ask his mom, which could be valid, lol
Yeah, but after his dad tweeted his question to make fun of it publicly, he’s probably scared to ask him, too.
It’s his cousin, he probably went to him because he knew he’d just get roasted instead of getting yelled at
If someone can’t find humor in their errors, life is going to be a lot harder for them. It’s not just about people learning and practicing being nice. You and I, the error making people, need to also do our part. K love you. Good bye.
Depends on the person :)
He’s probably drinking
Yep. Dad’s first reaction was grabbing a beer, and that shit runs in the family.
Hopefully got a pack of baking sheets from the supply house or Costco. Baking sheets, cutting boards, mixing bowls take up so much room but are universally useful.
I use cook my ramen noodles in the bowl I would eat them out of
Looking back that’s incredibly stupid but my thought at the time was, “I got to put the noodles in something, how about a bowl?”
So I’d put the noodles in a bowl (glass or porcelin or whatever they’re made out of these days), pour water in, put it on the stove
Lucky the bowl never exploded on me
Why a pot wasn’t the first thing that came to my mind I’ll never know… Weirdly, I don’t know when I realized I was being stupid. Just one day I was like, “I should put my noodles in a pot”
I use cook my ramen noodles in the bowl I would eat them out of
Seems pretty normal, just pour the kettle into the bowl…
stove
Oh, oh no…
Depending on the ramen this works in the microwave, as long as the bowl is microwave safe.
However, I’ve gotten into ramen that you drain (chopsticks work great to help drain, no colander needed!) after cooking so I’ve had to be slightly less lazy. Plus I can microwave the frozen veggies on a paper plate while the ramen’s cooking on the stove. Then eat it from the saucepan!
EDIT: had intended to reply to the parent post, sorry about that!
I also like draining them and scatter-frying with an egg and veggies, cheese, or whatever
I would eat out of the pot instead. Now Im refined and I microwave the bowl of water to heat it up, once its close to boiling, drop the noodles in and put a lid on it to lock in the steam. Wait 5 minutes and were good to go.
My younger one learned this lesson very dramatically when a glass measuring cup full of ramen blew up on the stovetop! No one got hurt, so it was a good lesson
I have to admit that no one ever said not to do that: it seems so fundamental. But even stuff that seems obvious have to be learned somehow
That’s great! I am impressed the bowls survived.
Even a pot shouldn’t be the first thing that comes to your mind. It should be an electric kettle. Or are you from the US where you can’t use electric kettles (efficiently) cos ur shitty electrical grid runs only on 120V and therefore it takes ages to boil the water lol
A kettle? What’s that?
I did try shooting my gun a whole bunch and cooking them with the heated up barrel
Good lord, that’s terrible advice. Absolutely a pot should be the first thing that comes to mind. Electric kettle? I guess your idea of “ramen” is just pot noodles?
pot noodles
You guys are putting cannabutter on your noodles or something?
Dude how much Ramen do u eat in go that requires a pot? Just put the ramen in a bowl, boil some water with the kettle (since it is much faster than boiling it in a pot, unless u live in the backward country named the US) and pour the boiling water into the bowl. Jeez, do I really have to tell u how to make ramen lol. Also, boiling water with the kettle means one less thing to clean afterwards.
Some of us have kettles , even in the benighted medieval dystopia of the US, but we think of ramen as food, not something where you just add hot water.
In Canada our electricity also only goes to 120v, but the simple solution for this is to utilize the already hot water from the water heater. The hot tap on full already comes out steaming. Add that to the electric kettle and it takes less than a minute to boil 500ml.
I’ve always been told the water from the hot water tap isn’t safe to drink due to bacterial and mineral buildup in the water heater. Not that I can drink my tap water where I live anyway (America!) but even when I lived with delicous well water I never drank the hot tap water.
I thinks it’s more lead )and other metal) accumulation but yeah ……
The first time I remember hearing a specific , not generic, concern was when legionnaires became A thing several decades ago. People were turning down their water temperature to save money. But legionnaires is more tolerant of heat than most other germs, so there’s a window of opportunity where the water is hot enough to kill off most diseases but cool enough to let legionnaires flourish.
Even today, you’re supposed to keep hot water at 120°F at the tap to prevent scalding but your water heater at 140°F to kill off legionnaires. Most people dont
That’s crazy, I’ve never heard that. I know our hot water heaters are kept high enough that bacteria can’t grow, and every source I’ve found says the other risk is lead contamination, and we don’t have any lead pipes in our house, so I’m going to assume this is an old outdated rule. Plus for the bacteria concern, it’s being boiled again anyway.
Even without lead pipes, it may be worth testing ….
- what about all the pipes bringing water to your house?
- copper pipes used lead-based solder for many years, so can still leach lead into hot water
My reason for not putting hot water into the kettle is that I need to run the water for a bit to get it hot, and that takes longer than the few seconds I’d save
1: all the pipes leading to my house are out of my control and will be sending the same temperature and purity of water regardless of what temperature I set the tap to? The water goes into my house, to the hot water heater, to the tap. Or just into my house to the tap. Either way whatever is outside of that is outside of my control and the hot water heater can’t cause the water to retroactively absorb lead from pipes outside of my house.
And as for your second point. Running the kettle from cold takes like 4-5mins. Running the hot water to max temp takes 30 secs. Running the kettle with max temp water takes 1:30-2 mins. That’s still like a 50% time savings, for a 500ml load. I haven’t tried with larger amounts than that because I don’t need more than that, but I assume that the greater the volume of water, the more time it would take from cold.
Well yeah, but if u put it into a kettle and boil it, it should be fine, cos boiling kills the bacteria.
Do me a favor, fill 2 cups, one with tap hot water, one with cold. Let them go to room temperature and taste them. Hot has a taste, and it’s not great.
Okay, now bring two cups to room temperature and then boil both and tell me you can tell the difference. I’m not talking about drinking hot water straight from the tap.
deleted by creator
Such an odd juxtaposition between recognizing the oven needed to be cleaned and not thinking of a way to prevent the mess lol.
Hope the young chef is still in the kitchen and better than ever.
Maybe the oven didn’t have a baking sheet so he didn’t think of it. Like for BBQ you cook directly on the grill
Yeah but even with barbecue you very often wrap it in something. I guess it’s possible to get to that point without learning about aluminum foil, but unlikely. In any case, a valuable lesson for him and we’ve all done dumb stuff and only realized after stopping to think about it for ten minutes so it’s not really that big a deal. Very funny though!
Kinda like that guy on Reddit who hated showers all his life until he moved in with his partner & observed them waiting for the water to get hot before getting in
You wrap your food before putting on the BBQ?
It completely depends on the food, my point was that foil exists.
For example if you’re smoking a brisket you wrap it half way through.
Edit: to be clear I’m usually wrapping brisket in peach paper, but the knowledge still applies
wtf is peach paper?
peach paper
You’d probably call it “butcher paper”.
Peach paper is a special kind of butcher paper, peach. Idk. Holds up better than butcher paper imo, but could be me imagining things.
Special kind of butcher paper.
I wrap vegetables when I grill them.
Vegetables, baked potatoes, sometimes entire meals like chicken and shrimp you want to steam rather than fully cook on the grill
Yeah uh idk where you think these things are taught
I tried wrapping did in foil. The foil melted and then set fire.
Edit: I was on grill
The foil melted and then set fire.
The fuck?
The minimum ignition temperature of aluminum DUST is 750°C. That means your grill was at almost 1400°F. That’s enough to literally forge titanium.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0957582019302769
https://www.weforging.com/forging-temperature-of-steel/
Sorry, but I do not believe you.
Uhhh, pretty sure that aluminum isn’t flammable
Everything is flammable if you put enough heat in it.
Maybe they were baking in a fusion reactor and accidentally made plasma brownies
The ignition point (flammable point) of aluminum dust is 750°C, so yeah it’s flammable, but at that temp you literally can forge titanium so yeah there’s zero chance what they said is true.
Pretty much everything is flammable if you can get it hot enough.
Are you sure you didn’t confuse wax paper for parchment paper? Because it sounds like you tried to bake with wax paper.
Uh… Bro? I’ve used Tin Foil in 650 degree BBQs. I doubt you used foil.
Aluminum has a melting point of 1,220°F (660°C). What brand oven were you using to achieve these temperatures?
A grill. Dynaglow 5 Burner
Rooster is full of cockamamie, or it was parchment paper.
Maybe they were those foil-coated sandwich wrapping papers?
Hope that one day he develops problem solving skills.
Edit: put something under the dripping thing FFS
Every oven I think I’ve ever opened has always had like 8 mismatched trays in it, I think I assumed they just came with the oven.
I was excited to take home ec, but little did I realize it was basically for people who had never been in a kitchen before. If you were a kid who had parents/grandparents who cooked and let you help out, you were miles ahead of the game.
We made brownies. From a box. Taco salad. Forget what else but it was all box food type stuff. If you’re a kid in the US who doesn’t have a home cooking tradition Home Ec isn’t going to teach you shit.
to be fair, learning how to make even boxed meals is still better than nothing if you’re from a home life situation where you’ve received zero food prep knowledge
Not to be too picky, but boxed food usually aint the best for you. Now a class called “Shit you can do with rice” would be a killer way to go.
… and beans.
That’s lesson 1
Lesson 1 would be “Don’t use actual shit”.
And potatoes
And once you get $30 and already have a couple pots and pans, a rice cooker ought to be high on the priority list. They don’t have to be expensive, although some are, but they are so worth it for the convenience.
I used to rarely have rice: it’s not hard to cook but you have to pay attention, and get the timing right, and it’s easy to screw it up. But getting a rice cooker was a game changer, and now I eat rice several times a week. While single use gadgets are generally not worth it, this one is.
I helped out in the kitchen a lot, but the home ec classes I took were things that I wasn’t (yet) doing at home.
My mom made scrambled eggs, but the way they taught me to do it in home ec resulted in much better eggs. They taught me how to make tacos, my mom didn’t know about tacos at all.
I think the issue is that my mom really learned very little from her own mother because her own mother wasn’t much of a cook. My mom cooked every day. She had cook books. She had a few recipes handed down from relatives. But, she didn’t know what she didn’t know, which was a lot. Almost everything was overcooked and dry. She didn’t know how to taste what she was cooking and adjust things. She didn’t understand the purpose of the ingredients in the recipes she made, so she’d substitute things that completely ruined it.
I think my home ec classes were much better than the ones you had. But, also, my mom wasn’t very good at cooking. So, home ec was really useful for me.
Now we have the internet: an entire world of inspiration, variation, coming with strips and perhaps a video! No more excuses
They taught me how to make tacos
One of the things still on my list. I grew up learning to make tacos from my mom: buy a kit with crunchy shells, a spice pack to brown ground meat with, preshredded lettuce and cheese.
But I’ve had some amazing tacos that look nothing like those and are so much better. I’ve started exploring making real tacos with actual ingredients and with tortillas l, but there’s so much more to try and to learn even for such a simple food.
Currently I really like the Costco family taco kit. Real ingredients, So good, so convenient, inexpensive for prepared food, and better than anything I make.
I recommend a trip to Mexico. The street tacos there are nothing like the hard shell tacos that are common in grocery stores.
Just the variety of meat fillings is huge: Suadero, Barbacoa, Chorizo, Carnitas, Carne Asada…
The tacos are also small and cheap. That means you can try a variety of different ones without filling up, and obviously without worrying about the cost. Even places in the US and Canada that sell pretty authentic tacos typically make them fairly big and fairly expensive, so you have to choose one flavour per sitting. You may get 3 tacos in an order. That same amount of filling would be spread among 10 tacos in Mexico so you can either have a small snack, or have a variety of different tacos for a full meal.
That would be excellent! It’s on my list
One of my teachers took us out hunting once. Shot a hare. We were there for every part of that journey from the hunt to it being on the plate and eaten. I definitely learned a lot from that.
Did you learn metallurgy to make the gun tho?
I knew I missed one class!
Also chemistry to make the gunpowder
That’s what shop class was for
When I had it, we learned much more than just cooking…
I remember they taught us how to do laundry, how to iron clothes, how to sew, how to balance a checkbook (yeah I’m old shut up), among other things.
Very useful actually, and despite it being over 2 decades ago, I still know how to do all of it.
Like with any class it really depends on your teacher.
Also depends on whether you live in a regressive borderline fascist state that views education as either propaganda for them or propaganda for us.
We learned about food safety (“don’t leave stuff on the counter forever”, “raw chicken is bad for you”), how to properly hand wash dishes, how to budget for a household, and a bit about the various non-nuclear family shapes. (Yes, I learned about divorce in 6th grade. It just hadn’t come up in my life before. No mention of non-hetero couples or non-married couples because, you know, Kentucky in the 90s.) It was a broad life skills class with an emphasis on cooking. Not a clue what we cooked, but we got to use a flour sifter and that was fun.
Makes me really sad when people can’t make a cake without a box or can’t make a basic roux or something. Really take for granted my privellege to have been exposed to basic stuff like that.
My first boyfriend in college taught me how to make a roux. It’s such a useful building block for all sorts of foods. We’d make leek and potato stew, generally using the fat from bacon for the roux. Highly recommend as a filling meal for college students.
Huh, it just occurred to me that when people say “Glad school taught me the Pythagorean theorem but not real life skills like how to do my taxes”, they’re just forgetting about home ec.
Bold of you to assume schools even have home ec classes anymore.
I’m pretty sure they phased those out in the late 00s to early 10s, at least in the school districts around me.
I use the pythagorean theorem a lot more than I expected tbh
It’s actually extremely useful for a lot of things, I was just relaying the meme.
Or they never even had it offered.
I never had the option of taking something like that I school, but thankfully my family cooked enough that I got rather good at cooking and spicing food. I’ve actually taught my wife how to do it, and we’re in the process of trying to teach our partner how to cook now.
Home Ec was an elective class for me (that I didn’t take) as an alternative to Personal Health, a low-impact PE course with an emphasis on nutrition (that I also didn’t take). We did not have any other practical skills classes, like wood shop or automotive whatever. Poverty district.
Pretty sure it existed in my school but that was for kids not on a college track.
My brother took “small engines”, if you include that as home ec. Basically how to take apart and rebuild a lawn mower
Yeah Home Ec was an elective for me too, but it did exist.
The most homemade thing I made in home ec in the 90s was pancakes.
I already made pancakes at home lol
I think my school only offered sewing. I have clue where they would have cooked, except for the cafeteria kitchen. I made a dope walrus, though.
My middle school had a cooking class and a sewing class, each of which we all took at different times. I saved my favorite recipe from the cooking class (a poppy seed cake) and made it a few times even after the class was over (but have since lost the recipe for.) I remember we used a pudding mix in it, which I wouldn’t have thought to do before. Meanwhile in sewing, we made letter-shaped pillows of our initials, which I really enjoyed. I ended up hand-sewing the rest of the letters of my name after the class was over to go along with it.
The only complaint I have is that the electives for my middle school (which were mandatory, so hardly “elective”) were cooler than the electives for my high school. I remember other schools having things like metal shop and swimming. A friend from Canada had an entire booklet of electives to choose from. My school had a single sheet of options, many with stupid names that didn’t reflect what they really were. I ended up taking an interior design class because the name made it sound like it would teach practical home skills. Granted, I still enjoyed the class and learned a lot from it (and have been able to apply the knowledge, even if just when building in the Sims.) Though if the classes had descriptions that actually fit what they were teaching, I probably would’ve taken something else. There were even a few boys who had signed up for that class, just to transfer out after the first day. Like me, they thought they’d be learning how to handle home finances or something, not learning how to identify a Queen Anne era chair by the style of its legs.
Damn, sewing would have been so much more useful than the religion classes I had
Ours was just, “Here’s a video unrelated to home economics,” because it and choir were the classes you got stuck in if there wasn’t something else you could take that period (only 150 kids k-12)
They should have just combined the two and had a singing kitchen.
I once shared an apartment with a guy who just moved out of home and had literally zero life skills. One day he almost burnt down the kitchen by heating about 500ml of oil in a frypan till it was smoking and then proceeded to drop in a kilo of fully frozen chicken pieces.
I lived with a depressed Polish Master’s student for some time who was also a sad alcoholic. Besides some other stuff he also did what you described - and my dude was in his early 30s. Only he made an entire Chicken and fries in that oil bath.
AND HE NEVER CLEANED IT UP. The fries and the oils literally sat in the oven for weeks over the summer and we ultimately had to just throw the tray out and buy a new one.
Wild times.
Uni halls with international students who have zero real world skills, and are used to the staff/maid cooking for them. They started 3 fires and ruined so much food before giving up on using the kitchen altogether.
I had to go to the student housing council or whatever when I had an international student take the room in my on campus apartment mid year while I was in college. Dude didn’t speak English and my roommate and I were NOT paying for the damage some rich kid did because he couldn’t clean up the water from the toilet and sink. Also, who the fuck wants to constantly deal with standing water in your bathroom??
When I was at university one of my flatmates actually started a fire serious enough to require the emergency services to come and put it out. Somehow she managed to set a towel on fire because for some ungodly reason she put it in the microwave. Apparently the solution to a burning towel is to throw it out of a sixth floor window, where it landed in an apparently extremely flammable bush.
How does someone who can’t speak English, get a college degree that is as good as what a regular student gets?
Oh, yeah, they pay their tuition in cash.
I was hanging out with a couple at their rent house they’d just gotten and was sitting with the girl in the living room after dinner and the guy came and sat down after finishing up cleaning in the kitchen. He said it was the first place he’d lived with a dishwasher and how nice it was going to be.
I ended up telling a story about how my Mom had used regular Pamolive dish soap in the dishwasher on 2 separate occasions, and the girl laughed. The guy was like “I don’t get it.”
I explained how regular dish soap will fill the entire kitchen with suds, and he was like “I’ll be right back” and dashed out of the room.
We went in there and the bubbles were just starting to escape the dishwasher.
