“Some women, it is said, like to cook. This book is not for them. This book is for those of us who hate to: who have learned, through hard experience, that some activities become no less painful through repetition: childbearing, paying taxes, cooking. This book is for those of us who want to fold our big dishwater hands around a dry Martini instead of a wet flounder, come the end of a long day.”

These are the first few sentences of the I Hate To Cook Book, written by Peg Bracken in 1960.  Clearly, this is a woman way ahead of her time.

Some people love love love cooking. One of my closest friends is the best cook I know. She rarely makes the same meal twice and considers a meal a total fail if people aren’t scrambling for seconds and thirds. She is so good that her husband often jokes how she has “ruined restaurants” for him.

Good for her.

…but here are the top five reasons why I hate cooking:

1. It takes up so. Much. Time.  ‘Cause we’re not just talking about time spent on the actual cooking. You gotta choose recipes, figure out which ingredients you need, then go to the store and buy the stuff. And the clean-up – ugh!  Who wants to clean pots and dishes when you’re enjoying your post-meal food coma? And for me, personally? I have OCD issues, which makes the actual cooking take twice as long as it would for a “normal” person.
2. Why is this my job, anyway?  It’s not 1950. Before I had my baby and became a stay-at-home mom, my husband and I both worked. So why have I always been the default chef around here?
3. I probably wouldn’t hate it quite as much if I didn’t have to do it almost every day
4. Cooking is boring!
5. It’s basically an unpaid part-time job

But, this post is actually about hope, not hate. Top five things to give you hope:

1. If I can learn to not hate cooking, anyone can…trust me
2. Like with almost everything in life, the more you practice, the better (and quicker) you’ll get at it
3. They say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, if that interests you
4. If you become a good cook, you’ll never be lonely (unless you want to be). Everyone loves hanging with their girl who cooks a good meal.
5. It’s the Informational Age! Twenty years ago, if you wanted to make a lasagna, you opened your Bible-length cookbook, followed the instructions, and hopefully the result would be delicious, but more often than not, it was simply acceptable. Today, just Google “lasagna recipe” and pick the one that is rated 4.7 stars out of 5 by a thousand people.  Chances are the end result will be fabulous.

And in my own cooking journey, I figured out something very important. Yes, I hate cooking, but I love feeding the people I love (myself included) delish, nutrish food. And love is always supposed to trump hate, right?

My name is Suzanne Jacobetz, aka The Cursing Gourmet, and I am Bridget’s older (not necessarily wiser) cousin. I’m Generation X all the way and do not enjoy it when I hear 80s/90s rock on classic rock stations. I live in the mountains in Colorado with Mike, my husband of 10 years, 15+ miles from a grocery store. It’s a very quiet, peaceful life, or at least it used to be:  a year ago we had our first kiddo, a sweetie pie named Isabelle ❤️