Pretty much daily. We normally eat a lunch out one day a week. DH and I either cook together or take turns depending on how we feel or what we are making. We don't always do a large dinner. And one day a week on either Sat. or Sunday we normally have a large family get together at either our or another family members home. It rotates but not on a real schedule. The family loves to cook so we figure out what we are doing and then everyone brings something. Usually the main dish is meat or seafood and that is done by the brothers once everyone is together. Last week we had duck and oysters 3 ways. If there are leftovers we split them up and they are used for lunches or sides during the rest of the week.

For breakfast it could be a slice of toast and eggs, Steel cut Oatmeal or cereal.

The past few days our menu was no breakfast, chinese lunch out, roast beef sandwiches and salad from a roast we had at family get together; Oatmeal, no lunch & homemade meatballs and homemade sauce on rolls; Smoothie for breakfast, Homemade pizza with the homemade sauce and tons of veggies; Scrambled eggs with sausage, Tuna, Egg & Black Olive salad on a lettuce bed and Salad for dinner.

I cook almost daily. I enjoy it! Even if DH grills the main dish I'll fix sides to go with it. I like being creative with leftovers and being inspired by what's in the pantry, fridge, or what looks good at the market. Because of deer, the only fresh things we grow are various herbs, and asparagus which I'm thankful the deer haven't acquired a taste for (yet). We'll eventually need to remodel to replace our kitchen floor and counters, and perhaps update appliances, but I don't think we will change the basic layout because it flows nicely for us.

I cook dinner every Monday-Wednesday and then Thursday we eat leftovers. It's just me and the kids - DH doesn't eat here during the week. So if we don't eat leftovers, Thursday and during weekend for lunch (weekdays for me too - but no kids, they don't really like to take leftovers to school for lunch), we'd end up throwing food away.

We almost always order in on Fridays, eat out on Saturday night and then Sunday is a mixed bag - either I cook or we go to my parents for dinner in the afternoon.

I'll also add that every breakfast is cooked except on Sundays when we have bagels. I don't offer cold cereal, so it's always something cooked up - lately it's either scrambled eggs, steel cut oats, protein pancakes, or warm oat bran cereal

I have made all my own breads/pastries etc. since I had children in the mid 70's. I have pics of my eldest son, who is 41 now and a chef , standing on an ice chest in our married student housing apt. in Chapel Hill NC and he is washing dishes and has flour down the front of his clothes...he was 2 yrs old !! We have always been a foody family , I ran a health food co-op out of my house/garage for 8 yrs back in the 80's. I made and sold breads and pastries to the co-op members. DH and I put in our dream kitchen in our 1890 home 8 yrs ago. We did everything we could to make it useful for the way we cook. There are things I would like to have be different but the arrangement and quality of the appliances and the surfaces I chose are still perfect. I still make all our baked goods and we make all our own pasta and yogurt and kefir. We cook dinner every night and share the duties around that. I have posted lots of pics over the years of DH :) He is fantastic at Chinese and pasta. It is just the two of us but we sure do use the kitchen a lot since we never eat out . All three of our kids are great cooks and love to help when they are home. When my DH and I are bicycle touring for weeks/months at a time we have a tiny gas burner and pots and we cook every night at our campsite. It is very interesting to read the different approaches of all the posters. c

Daily - breakfast and dinner. Summers - 3 square meals a day when they're all home and working on the farm. I love cooking (baking not so much...).

My boys (9,12,15,17) can make breakfast and lunch. They all make better eggs than me. I have taught them how to read recipes so in theory they can make anything with a recipe. :)

I cook 4-7 nights a week. All meals including breakfast, even if it is just me. I just finished my kitchen remodel last week and I am amazed at how much improved function helps improve my attitude about cooking. I am not a fancy cook, but I am a good cook and I have always enjoyed it, but having improved my space makes it a much easier and happier experience. My family is not used to eating processed foods, but we survived on minimal fresh meals while under renovation. Lean Cuisine and Marie Calender's meals were a stable along with grilled chicken, salad, and smoothies.

I will probably continue to eat a lot of grilled chicken and salad, but not the frozen meals.

I have always enjoyed the baking but it was difficult with only one rack in my oven and 2 feet of counter space as well as having to pull the pans out of the dark hallows of the blind corner cabinets. I now have a 4 foot long run of counter space and two ovens with full racks. Just looking at my new space makes me happy and even the new sink adds to my comfort in the space. It is amazing how much the littlest, most benign things can make you enjoy it.

In the old days, dinner was on the table at 6. As the kids got older and became involved in activities, we were not able to eat together as a family every night but dinner was still ready at 6. My girls are good cooks. When they were little, they helped in the kitchen but had no assigned duties. Now mothers, they provide good meals for their families. My grandkids like to cook and bake with me and their mothers. The oldest grand can handle breakfast- particularly riverhouse eggs, a grandpa specialty. Riverhouse eggs are poached eggs with buttered toasted bread cubes, salt, pepper, and a splash of maple syrup.

Overall, I enjoy cooking, especially now that I have retired, and am a good cook. I like cooking in the new kitchen at the river house. The family comes often and I do 99% of the cooking. Three meals a day. Everyone helps with clean up and available for prepping if I ask. Cooking for the big group in a new kitchen has been more fun than just cooking for DH and me at home.

At home, sometimes I am inspired, sometimes I just can't get going, so we eat out or DH cooks 2-3 times a week. Finally after years of procrastination, indecision, and working on many other home projects, my husband is remodeling the kitchen at home. So with the old kitchen gone, a temporary kitchen is set up in the dining room with fridge and microwave and a coffee station is nearby in living room. On average, we are eating out 4 times a week. Eating in is not the best fare- microwaved rotisserie cut up chicken from Costco, doggie bag leftovers, but we have managed. Forgot the other meals- must not have been memorable. If the food cooks or heats in the microwave, can be served on paper plates, comes in self-store containers, and does not require water for clean-up, it is what I am serving at home these days. I purchased disposable liners for the crock pot. Definitely looking forward to cooking in my new kitchen in May (my target month).

I really don't enjoy cooking. I probably cook 2x a week on average right now and with the exception of this year, I also batch cook tomato sauce, vegetable soup and chicken soup.

While I have no intention of cooking more when we build the new house, I do hope to hand DH the fish, meat, chicken, and even the veggies to throw on the barbecue at least one or 2 days a week, so am anticipating eating home 3-4 nights a week once we have the house.

What I do enjoy is baking so am also anticipating doing some baking once we're moved in.

Even if I still wind up not cooking, it is so much more pleasant to come into a clean, pretty kitchen to reheat leftovers and make coffee. ;)

On my bucket list is to learn to cook as in scratch cooking, cooking by taste all that fun totally not intuitive to me cooking stuff.

I used to cook daily but since returning to work full-time it's probably 3-4 times per week and then on the weekends. I try hard to have left overs for the other days but the kids are growing like weeds and there just isn't anymore left like in the olden days. ;) We have breakfast for dinner regularly. We do use brown eggs from our chickens though so hey that's gourmet right?

I do cook but have to abide by recipes for anything to turn out. We don't eat too much in the way of processed foods but I am far from a chef. Usually we have a meat, a veggie, salad and some kind of a starch.

I love to bake. Speaking of which I tried my first cookie recipe using 'browned butter'. Have I been living under a shoe? I had no idea that is what can make things so rich tasting. They were really good! Baking I find I can be more adventurous as if something sweet doesn't turn out it is usually still more than edible. Ha!

Some batch cooking (soups in winter), some leftovers with a new addition, some entire meals. NEVER prepared or processed foods other than chicken salad from Fresh Market. It's just me so I certainly don't cook the way I once did, but I'm in the kitchen preparing a meal in some form 3 times daily. Rarely eat out.

Every day. Except today it consisted of toast for dinner. LOL. Normally I have a rough plan and we follow it fairly closely, if I don't make what is on the calendar for Tuesday, we'll have it Wednesday or Thursday. We eat stirfry fairly often because it's super fast, and tastes good! LOL Cooking in this kitchen is much easier now because I actually have prep space. Though I broke the handle on my domsjo cutting board and gorilla glue won't hold it so I have to find someone to solder it because I am not paying $20 for shipping. Nor am I paying current exchange rates, so I won't go to the US for it, even though it's only a half hour away.

The chicken parm looks delicious!! I try to have the boys cook dinner once a week in the summer. During the school year with sports, etc. it's too much of a hassle.

When we found our house 13 years ago, I said that I would move in if and only if the kitchen was renovated. My husband laughed.... he couldn't understand why I wanted a new kitchen because "you don't cook". We renovated, and fast forward 13 years, I cook most days and have become quite good. We are now renovating again partly because I didn't get it right the first time and partly because I want to have a kitchen that will take me into my "sunset years". Drawers instead of cabinets, wall oven instead of range, organization which allows for better storage in the kitchen as opposed to having to rely on basement storage. So yes, a functional kitchen and a comfortable space can turn a non-cook into someone that enjoys cooking!

I cook dinner 5 or 6 nights a week. We eat out once or twice per week. I eat at home every day; DH buys lunch at work. Breakfast is usually at home except on weekends when we often eat out.

I am the Batch Master. Or Mistress. Yup. BATCHES.

Every 4 months or so, I go to the grocery store. (It's been 6 months, but I haven't had any money.) I spend upwards of $3-400.

I cook for a weekend.
If you buy onions, bell peppers, tomatoes, hamburger, celery, carrots, rice and weird grains, fresh parsley, boneless chicken thighs, sirloin, sour cream, spicy sausage, (my newest thing) red lentils, and many other things that strike my fancy, I create:

Spaghetti sauce
Chicken soup
Stuffed peppers
A weird grain dish I love
Beef stroganoff (How do you spell this?)
Beef stew
a Carrabba's knock off, Spicy Lentil & Sausage soup
And anything else that continues to strike my fancy.

I freeze it in containers for the next couple of months.

Learned to cook in 7th grade when my mom went back to school. But I had the skills to do so, because my mom let us "help." I had the basics and the interest. Ironically, in college, my youngest sister melted a pan because she didn't know how to cook eggs. Oh, the smell lasted for days.

If I had kids, they'd need to learn to cook, a foreign language, a marshal art, yoga, and/or some type of dance. Notice learning to cook is 1st. Give a kid a meal and he'll be hungry in an hour. Teach a kid to cook and you can sit on the couch and watch TV. Or type on the Kitchen Boards.

Great thread, TG. I cook most days. I make a lot of soup. Lots of salads. I've been known to cure a leg of pork for gammon. I'm hoping my remodeled kitchen will facilitate teaching my ten-year-old niece, who lives next door, both cooking and baking. She likes both, but my sister hates the messes. They don't bother me.

My sister is an organic stone fruit farmer and she brings home the most amazing produce. Not only do we have all the fruit, but we get wonderful vegetables from the SF Ferry Building and Berkeley farmers' markets. We grow a few things, the usual tomatoes, green beans, basil, etc. We have herbs, citrus trees, so much bounty year round. It's fun to cook with all this stuff. When I think of the canned green beans and fruit cocktail we ate as kids--yikes. Romanesco cauliflower and green garlic were unthinkable. We'd never heard of white nectarines.

I'm really looking forward to using my new Blue Star rangetop, especially for stir frying. My old cooktop was a thirty-year-old electric coil job with one broken burner and a broken exhaust fan. I could coax decent food out of it, but many things were beyond reach. If my GC keeps to schedule, we have three weeks until I get my new kitchen (and the rest of the house). Stir fries here I come.

I'm remodeling my rental homes kitchen right now. But I remodeled my own kitchen years ago. I cook every day...or I'm in the kitchen a LOT! Just heating water for tea or grabbing a yogurt. I do batches and freeze "and" cook big dinners at least three times a week. I sit at the breakfast bar several times a day. I feed the cat in the kitchen. :0)

I at least cook once daily. It could be breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Sometimes I do 2 out of three. Sometime I do none. Depends on my mood. Batch cooking, oh yes for sure!!!

It's funny that many of you mention your active dislike for cooking. I used to tease my mom that the real reason she made us both cook dinner one night a week was actually because of her intense hatred for cooking.

She DOES hate cooking but, given everything else she "made" us do (repair split seams on our clothes, sew buttons, balance our checkbooks, laundry, housework, etc) I'm certain she did it so we would learn valuable life skills.

My husband came from a family that didn't teach him anything. As we were explaining to our 8 year old a few days ago that doing her own laundry isn't intended as a punishment but a necessary skill, he explained to her how embarrassed he was when he went to college and didn't even know how to launder his own clothes, let alone cook or clean!

When we first got married, he was almost never in the kitchen as he didn't really know how to cook. He has learned a lot since then and he really enjoys it as much as I do.

He excels at Asian cuisine, grilling/smoking and breakfast food and so those are his.

My Asian cuisine isn't that good, I've never grilled or used a smoker in my life and I don't really eat breakfast so the few times I try to cook "daddy's" dishes, the kids let me know how wrong mine is!!

The chicken parm my 7 year old made on Sunday tasted great but (this is just the perfectionist in me) most of the chicken pieces were barely breaded, with a lot of bare spots.

I didn't correct her or say anything about it during the process because I feel like it is really important, in learning a new skill, to take pride in your work! What you did unaided.

Hubby and I also differ in that respect. When he is working with one of them to cook dinner, he does a lot of the work and they are really just active observers, helping when needed.

When I'm the one "helping" all I do is supervise. I will give verbal instructions but I leave all the work to them. It takes a LOT longer (hence why it is currently regulated to weekends only) but I feel like they take much more pride in their work if it is solely theirs.

As an example, on Saturday, my 8 year old made one of my family's staple dishes that takes me 20 minutes and if took her over an hour to prepare it.

Honestly though, I think it is beneficial that they get both "methods of teaching" because sometimes they just have to tough through it and they feel that genuine sense of accomplishment and sometimes they need a lot of help but they still feel pride.

I know this is already book length but I have to share the experience from Sunday making the chicken parm.

I cut open the package of chicken breasts, then I handed her the meat tenderizer and told her to hammer the chicken pieces, turn them over and hammer the other side.

I had to go help my potty training girl in the bathroom and when I walked back in the kitchen, there she was, hammering away and saying ewww, ewww, ewww, every time she had to touch the raw meat.

I tried to stifle my laughter but it eventually escaped and I told her she obviously takes after me (I HATE touching raw meat and eggs) BUT that is part of cooking and that's why mommy washes her hands all the time.

After the tenderizing, she cracked the egg and added her seasonings (washed hands) then mixed up her breading and grabbed each piece of chicken; dredging it through the egg mix and flour coating before setting on a wire rack to rest.

We washed our hands and cleaned up the counter area where any raw egg or chicken might have touched.

She actually put the first piece of chicken into the oil for pan frying, and flipped it over. When it came time to remove it from the pan though she couldn't get a good grip with the tongs and she kept dropping it back into the oil, causing it to splash on both of us with pinprick burns.

That was the first time I intervened and pulled the chicken out of the oil for her.

I finished her chicken pieces while she made the marinara sauce and cooked the pasta.

She transferred to the oven and pulled from the oven when it was finished AND she plated each serving to look "pretty" (her words)

I'll never forget the "eww, eww, eww!!" though!! My little mini-me.

As much as I love cooking, with 4 kids, I'm painting myself into a corner where I will only get to make 2 or 3 meals a week until they move out!

Oh well...the sacrifices parents make, right?

What is "cooking" exactly? I cook breakfast, but are the lunches that I make and eat elsewhere and the salads that I make every night "cooking"? They are certainly a lot of prep work.

I'm impressed how many people cook every day! We probably cook 4-5 x a week. We try to do a large batch of legumes most weeks so have a day or two of left overs from that (maybe a little cooking to change things up a bit). Eat out once a week most weeks - either on a busy night during the week when we don't want to cook or out with friends. We do live in a place with tons of fantastic and inexpensive restaurants from all over the world though so it's really hard not to do this. Breakfast is cereal probably all but 1-2 days a month where I might cook something! Lunch is usually at work or we probably each go out 1-2 x a week (trying to minimize this!). We don't really cook more than before but it is SO much easier to cook in the new kitchen as we have 2 42" prep areas, whereas before we were doing 90% of our prep on a tiny Ikea island (18" X 20" or so!!!). We also use the oven a ton more than we thought we did since it has a working broiler and is not a tiny vintage one. Also having a DW makes all of the difference in the world so the sink area is no longer overflowing with clean and dirty dishes - this provides a lot more space.

Yeah, I'm not really sure where to draw the line at 'cooking'. After all, I cook steel cut oatmeal for breakfast every morning, but I don't really regard that as 'cooking'.

We eat out about half a dozen times a YEAR! We rarely use much in the way of processed foods either, preferring to cook most things from scratch. I'd like to get on my high horse and say that we are eating healthy, but really it's a matter of economics and preference rather than any loftier aspirations LOL!

I cook at least once everyday and sometimes twice. Depends when the husband wants breakfast. ;)

It is very interesting to think about the definition of cooking, I guess I consider that we've cooked something if we do more to it than just heat it up. I also have to admit that my home cooking doesn't necessarily mean we're healthier... I'm getting ready to make candied bacon. Sigh. The salad will be there just to have a reason to serve the candied bacon...

I cook a pretty big dinner 6-7x a week. Breakfast on Sundays and Mondays since DH and I are both off that day. We go out to eat maybe 2-3x a month and get pizza or take out 1x a month. I love cooking and I am good at it, I can almost always figure out what something needs by taste and very rarely follow a recipe, without adding my own touch. My kitchen works well and has worked well since the mid 90's when house was built. No desire to change much in it, except paint every so often.

I cook for the weekends when we have company (which lately is rarely) I travel for work a lot and when I'm home I'm exhausted by the time I get home. My kids are extremely picky and literally won't eat anything besides plain noodles. Sometimes they may eat a hot dog. We have tons of food allergies so no eggs milk products or nuts which makes it HARD. So I make a huge pot of noodles on Sunday and the nanny can heat up noodles for dinner for them every night. It's literally getting insane though. I wish I could get them to eat other foods I've tried but it just doesn't work.

I do get tired of doing the dishes afterwards though, even if it is just a half sink full or less; but that's mainly because I don't like seeing dirty dishes in the sink. ha.

I cook, he cleans.

I used to love to cook, but at some point it became a chore. All that work, and then everyone gets hungry and you have to do it all over again. Now that I live alone, I rely more on just-heat stuff from Trader Joe's.

Texas, I think teaching your kids early and having them be responsible for an entire meal is genius and doing them a favor as well. I've always liked to bake (even now) and started when I was 5 or so, rolling out dough for pies. There really isn't a dessert that intimidates me and pies are my specialty.

So, I fluctuate from something easy I can pick up at the store, then to something home-made. Tonight I'm making Chicken Marbella, because it's so good and so easy. I like making main-dish salads.

If I could afford it, my luxury item would be a personal chef. Someone who makes me a delicious, healthy dinner. Calls me to the table: "Linelle!! Dinner's ready, come and get it!!"

Please tell me more about candy bacon

Candied bacon: 8 slices thick-cut bacon. Mix 6T brown sugar, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, pinch of cayenne pepper. Coat the bacon on both sides and lay on a rack sprayed with non-stick spray that is set in an aluminum-foiled covered rimmed pan. Bake 25 minutes at 350. After it cools slightly remove from the rack so it doesn't stick. We cool and chop for salads. Enjoy!

I'm with sjhockeyfan, I cook he cleans. Omelet, I'll have to try the bacon with cinnamon and cayenne. I usually bake it with just a little sprinkling of brown sugar. Sounds decadent!

Re: Candied bacon- YUM!

"We cool and chop for salads." ...I'm guessing a slice or two somehow disappears before making it to the salad? ;)

Wow. I can't wait to try this! We have occasionally wrapped sweet potato with bacon and painted it with maple syrup and bake. As the saying goes - anything tastes good wrapped in bacon.

I cook mostly on weekends with the intention of having nice meals on the weekend plus leftovers and maybe one other dish to eat during the week. Then we usually eat out once during the week. I'm just too exhausted after work to get into cooking. I love cooking when I have time to truly enjoy it and that isn't after work. We eat oatmeal, cereal, yogurt, fruit, etc. in the morning so no cooking breakfast. In the summer we cook more on the grill and prepare a salad and/or vegetable in the kitchen.

What a fascinating discussion!

@TexasGem, I love how you are teaching your kids such a valuable life skill. And the way you are going about doing it. You sound like a super-duper mom!

I let my kids help me cook and bake but never even thought to actually put them in charge of meals. My daughter never really caught the cooking bug although she can make decent meals. However, my son got into it. He even owned a restaurant for a few years (before getting a buy-out offer too good to turn down). So, when he was in high school, he started doing some dinners just because he wanted to. I was glad to turn it over to him.

I grew up never allowed in the kitchen and had to teach myself how to cook once I moved out. My mom hated cooking and transferred that idea to me. So, for most of my adult life, it's been a necessary evil, not something I've enjoyed. As I look back now on our previous home, where we lived from '84-2010, it was a dark, gloomy kitchen, with little natural light even in the daytime, and it was a corridor kitchen. While it had a decent layout and storage, it wasn't a pleasant place to be. When we moved into our current home, I immediately liked being in the kitchen more and, thus, started enjoying cooking more, as we have great windows with lots of natural light. The few changes made to date have increased my enjoyment of the space. I have a great 54" wide prep space between sink and range and, on the other side of the sink, a nice 48" counter which is my baking center and can be secondary prep.

Over the last few years, I've become more concerned with a healthy diet and had been learning to cook beyond the typical meat/potatoes/side veggie meals and had gotten into a lot of stir-frying, more interesting salads and side dishes, etc. I had also been exploring some meatless meals and really enjoyed coming up with tasty, healthy bean/grain-based dishes.

Mid-January, my DH had a health issue come up which has pushed us firmly into eating healthier plant-based, whole foods on a daily basis. We are basically vegan at home plus food a couple nights a week. I know, a bit of an oxymoron, but we have a freezer full of salmon and halibut from DH's fishing trip to Alaska last summer and it's too yummy to not eat. Reasons for this radical change are health-based for my DH and conviction-based for me. I just can't abide contributing to the factory farm system any longer. It makes my heart sad. I figure the fish at least had happy, natural lives in the ocean so I feel much less guilty about eating them. Maybe I'm justifying a bit?

Anyway, I've always cooked daily but now I'm doing it with gusto and really enjoying coming up with interesting new plant-based foods. I made a chick-pea based "meat" loaf a couple days ago that was so delicious I think I could eat it daily.

I have always done some batch cooking and freezing, and pre-prepping things like a big pot of rice to use all week in stir-fries, and other time-saving measures. Now I'm adding cooking up pots of dried beans and other grains to that list. If we don't finish them off in recipes or just as side dishes in a couple of days, I transfer them to the freezer.

I have always made a lot of "clean out the fridge" type soups and now I'm also saving veggie scraps in the freezer to make my own veggie stock. I now make huge pots of different types of soup 2-3 times a week that we freeze for later meals.

And I am now baking all our own breads to keep from eating preservatives out of our systems. I either do no-knead or Man Bread (basically like no-knead in ingredients but kneaded with the KA for about 10 minutes so it can be baked that day).

Anyway, while I've always cooked daily when at home, I'm having more fun with it now because I'm finding all sorts of intriguing, tasty, and healthy dishes to try, and it's all so healthy and yummy that I dislike restaurant food now, for the most part. Although while traveling for work this last week, I did find a great vegan restaurant and another with superb farm-to-table offerings. I'm just more choosy now then before.

I may not cook full meals each day as I sometimes just heat leftovers or something from the freezer, or re-purpose something I made yesterday into something a bit different, and then add a salad to the meal but each day I'm usually making something, even if it is just the bread or salad.

Once a week I spend time putting together freezer packs of green smoothie ingredients. Yummmmm!

If my kitchen is ever finished, project put on hiatus at the moment due to DH's health and recovery issues, I will finally have my DW moved out of my prep space and a separate clean-up area with sink/DW. But my kitchen is still super-functional as is even with that annoyance still there. It's ugly but it's functional and, for now, that's fine. I do wish I had space for a wider fridge. The niche we moved the fridge to only allows for a 28" wide fridge. Since we're eating so many more fresh veggies than before, it means that I have to move some of it to the garage fridge. Not a big deal because it's good to keep active so the stairs are good for me. :)

I have to say, I've never understood how people can eat out so much, even before my quest for a much healthier eating style. It's a budget buster, isn't it? Even when DH was allowed to eat steak, I could never see paying big bucks for a fancy steak in a restaurant when I can make one just as well, with just as good of side dishes if not better, for a lot less money. I'd rather spend my money on fun things like travel or tickets to great plays or toys. The restaurant industry is probably breathing a sigh of relief that there aren't more people like me, lol.

Oh, I do ramble on, don't I? It's always interesting to me how different we all are. I love hearing how everybody lives.

Funkycamper, funny you should say that about eating out - just last night we stopped after work for a quick dinner with friends. We then walked home, and on the way I commented to my DH "doesn't anyone in this town eat at home?" Every restaurant we passed was hoppin' busy, and this was a Tuesday night.

We live in the SF Bay Area, so going out is almost mandatory. Folks in this area go out more than any other city in the U.S., we even beat out New York City last year [grin].

Our kitchen was remodeled when we first moved in, back in 1989-91. Finishes are probably dated but the increased size and more functional layout are as good as ever. I can cook anywhere - my apt kitchen previous to this was affectionately called The Black Hole, since I could stretch out my arms (which are short) and almost touch the walls!

But it's lovely to have a good-sized, well laid-out kitchen drowned in light every day, from an entire wall of picture windows with an unimpeded hillside view. From sunrise to sunset I don't have to put the lights on, which still feels like such a luxury.

Yesterday it was misty and drizzly - as I was finishing up cooking dinner, I looked out the windows and the setting sun was making a huge rainbow over the hills. Glorious!

We're retired. I cook twice a day, or we go out. We love trying new restaurants and returning to old favorites. If we stay home and don't travel, we'll eat out 10-15x/month. Many times it will be lunch when we're running errands; dinner out is usually when we're dining with friends.

My mother was a great cook; she even ran a kitchenware shop and took cooking classes from Cecilia Chiang and Diana Kennedy. She didn't teach any of us how to cook, but since she worked full-time we did have to help with the prep and clean-up. I absorbed her philosophy and habits; to this day I make my own stock and can whip up a Hollandaise without a recipe.

The best thing about my kitchen? I've got a full-size separate freezer hidden in a closet in the DR. Plus a full-size double pantry with pull-outs, and more food storage downstairs. For two people, there's a lot of food in our house, LOL.

We eat most cuisines, but prefer French and Chinese. Chinese food being in a funk these days, we usually settle for SE Asian, Mexican, or Ethiopian. The only popular cuisine we don't care for is Peruvian. DH loves ceviche, and Peruvians make fabulous cebiche, as they spell it, but the rest of the traditional dishes are uninteresting to us.

I can usually recreate a dish if I want to; but I seldom do. I go out to eat because many dishes can take considerable prep and 'a little of a lot of different ingredients', leaving you with a big mess to clean up and a bunch of specialty items you can't use up fast enough.

When we travel, we eat out twice a day. Since retirement we've been making a regular round-robin around Northern CA - every 6-9 weeks, we travel mid-week, staying 3-5 days in an area. Once a year we make a longer trip. In early 2015 we did a 2-week driving trip down to Burbank/Los Angeles to visit my brother, so that was 30 meals at various restaurants.

We had a fabulous time (we travel well together), stopping in Monterey/Carmel on both the drive down and the drive back, as the French and Spanish food is fabulous. We ate veal chops in Paso Robles and Uyghur pulled noodles in San Gabriel; Armenian flatbread in Glendale and Korean banquet food in Los Angeles.

In the second half of 2015 we were sidetracked by a big remodeling project on our MBR, so did very little traveling but a whole lot of local dining out and holiday feasting (my entire family participates in massive gourmet potlucks on all special occasions).

Yesterday I finally made reservations for us to return to the Sonoma Valley, one of our two favorite gourmet destinations. We'll be doing our usual mix of half new restaurants, half old favs. I'm hoping to track down an elusive source for a black walnut pie in Healdsburg, too. There's a couple of places to stop in, so we can place advance take-out orders for pick-up just before returning home. Greek chili, Parisian croissants, and New Zealand meat pies, woohoo!

We prefer Sonoma to Napa; we find the food and scenery so much better and less touristy. It's the most beautiful time of year to visit CA; the rains have made all the hills incredibly lush and beautiful.

This is one of the major reasons we want to return to Sonoma Cty: Walter Hansel Winery & Bistro. Chef Philippe Colasse is one of the best chefs in Northern CA. His beet salad tasted even BETTER than it looked:

I'm glad nobody seemed put off by my comments regarding eating out. I wasn't being judgmental at all. Just commenting on how different we all are.

@jakkom - Good points on how eating out allows you to enjoy different cuisines without investing in ingredients you may not be able to use before they go bad. I live in such a small, rural area with limited cuisine options (mainly Americanized Chinese, Italian and Mexican) that these type of foodie adventures are limited unless we're traveling. And when traveling, we have usually focused on sampling the local cuisine. I never thought of trying the offerings they might have from elsewhere around the world that I don't have access to here. Great idea! I'm going with DH to Vancouver BC next week while he attends some work meetings. Since that's known as an international city, I will scout out some interesting new cuisines to try out. Maybe we'll even try out Peruvian to see if I share your lack of excitement or not. :)

And, to be honest, it's even difficult to find the ingredients here to make some different types of cuisines. I often stop at places like World Market when in the big city (about an hour away) to pick up different things to try that I can't get here.

There are many benefits to living in a rural area which I love. I'm definitely not a city gal. But it's difficult when one is a bit of a foodie. :)

@sjhockeyfan - I'm sure the restaurants where I live would love it if there were more diners. We really don't have a lot of restaurants around here and only a few are consistently busy. I hate to say that one of them seems to be Denny's. (sigh) Ya know, maybe that's why I don't eat out much. We have slim pickings. And few that do anything interesting. While working out of town the last week, I went to a terrific restaurant with a mix of offerings including some vegetarian and vegan dishes. I ate there several times. I also found a fantastic farm-to-table restaurant. If we had more delish choices like those, I'm sure eating out more regularly would be more fun and worth spending the money on.

I make a wicked French press coffee.

Hehe.

Actually my husband and I go all out fixing our favorite meals -- stir fry for him, improvised sauces over great pasta for me -- and we suck at everyday, boring cooking. We're both jazz musicians, so I suppose it's only natural that we prefer to make it up rather than follow recipes. We take turns cooking (our small kitchen works best with one chef at a time), and we go from every-dish-we-own-dirty kind of cooking punctuated by meals eaten standing in front of the open fridge...it's just us two, so if it weren't for my blabbing here, nobody would know! We grow our own veggies, fruit and herbs, so in summer we eat a lot of our fresh-picked produce.

But i really do make a mean cup of coffee!

Funky, you're from the PNW, right? So you know to bring your rainboots and umbrella, LOL. Have you been there before? It's been years for me other than last year when we took the skytrain and bus from the airport to Tsawwassen to catch the ferry to the island, so we did not eat. There are a lot of great restaurants and sights to see though. Have an awesome trip!

We don't eat out much due to finances. We are constantly trying to fix up the house (hopefully that will be done soon except regular maintenance). I will have lunch and breakfast out once per month to meet with friends I don't get to see all the time. Plus, the boys eat out on a fairly regular basis with their dad, so I like to get some good veggies, and healthy food into them as often as I can. We eat a lot of stir-fries here too. Taste great, healthy and super fast! :)

Hey, mgmum. Raincoat? Definitely. Umbrella? No. When folks around here see an umbrella open up, we figure they are tourists. LOL We don't tan, we rust.

Yes, I've been to Vancouver BC and Vancouver Island both many times. Especially over the last few years as DH's job includes one meeting a year in Vancouver and another meeting every year in Nanaimo, which is on the island. I love tagging along. Lovely areas.

I'm so cheap that I pack food from home when on car trips. Home-made items I take include dried fruits, granola, bread, fruit, cut-up veggies, healthy treats like black bean brownies, etc. to eat in the car. And if the hotel we're going to has a fridge and microwave, even shelf-stable nut milks and big containers of things like pre-cooked steel-cut oats that we can heat up in the micro and add our fruit to. I also pack snacks from home for long plane trips. Airline food is gross anyway.

Although I'm less inclined to do a lot of this when on DH's biz trips because the company pays for his meals and I don't eat as much as he does so we'll share his entree and just buy an extra appetizer and/or salad so there's enough for each of us. It's splurge time for us! :)

We don't eat out much, either, especially in expensive, high-end restaurants. My kids enjoy Chinese take-out from a local family-run restaurant as a
special treat (they went to school with the owner's kids), and my
weakness is the $5.00 pizza from a chain franchise, when I don't have
time to make homemade. My sister, who eats out occasionally, explained that she is almost always disappointed, because she's paid much more for a meal that one of us could have prepared just as well, or better. She's said that her co-workers rave over anything homemade brought for lunches, as if it's something rare.

I like to cook in large quantities a few times each week, then have re-worked leftovers, or freeze some for a quick meal later. The kids are happy to take the leftovers in their lunches, too, which saves them money and time. The first meal is usually the meat served plain, with a starch and a salad. My kids are almost vegetarian with their cooking, and mostly do quick meals, such as pasta and sauteed vegetables, but if I do the cooking, they are happy to eat whatever I make. I was raised on meat and potatoes (and beans with ham and cornbread), so while I like adding quinoa and canned chickpeas to soups and casseroles, I do not want to make several meals based on them.

I'd much rather bake than cook--I've been practicing puff-pastry for the last few weeks, so I've neglected making cookies. My son-in-law brought home a package of cookies last week, and when I mentioned that they were the first store-bought cookies that had darkened our doorway in years (except for GS cookies--and we don't buy those for the taste), he sheepishly put the package in his lunch pile, to take to work. I rewarded him by making fruit tarts with smooth-as-silk cooked buttercream. ;)

Over the years, I've seen several non cooks here on GW planning out
their new kitchens. My first emotional response (to a non-cook) is
why?!?!?

I truly couldn't fathom spending that much time, effort, money, etc on a room that I basically didn't use.

Yeah, I have the same reaction; however, I know that even people who don't "cook" need a place to heat up frozen meals and to fix sandwiches.

When I was growing up starting when I was 6 or 7, I was responsible
for dinner every Monday night and my brother was responsible for every
Wednesday night.

Yeah, I have four siblings, and my mother claimed this was so each of us could be responsible for one evening a week. All of us are rather adventurous in terms of food, and four of the five of us are excellent and enthusiastic cooks.

An interesting thought: We all turned out slightly different in terms of cooking. I'm the most versatile and the one most likely to cook something with fresh, healthy ingredients ... but I counteract all that good healthy food by also being the best baker. One brother is the grill master to end all grill masters, the master of all meats. Another brother is devoted to Asian and Italian cooking in all forms. And my sister is all about the old-fashioned comfort foods.

On a slightly different topic, we each had a day of the week when we were assigned to do our laundry. If we didn't do it, no clean clothes 'til next week.

As the kids got older and became involved in activities, we were not
able to eat together as a family every night but dinner was still ready
at 6.We made family dinners a priority. Even if it was take-out or sandwiches at a ball game, it was a rare, rare night we didn't ALL have dinner together. But we weren't fussy about it being early or late.

Funky, I grew up in Nanaimo and also lived in Victoria for a long time! Have you been to Coombs? It's not as good as it used to be but it's a fun little farmers market with hand made crafts etc.

Now I want some Nanaimo bars!!

I will gladly eat a Nanaimo bar just for you, TG!

No, I don't think I've been to Coombs, mgmum. Where is it? I have to admit that I'm not a shopper and virtually never go into any stores while vacationing, but farmer's markets and hand-crafted, locally-made items would be an exception.

I'm all in for Nanaimo Bars as long as there is no coconut! Coombs is north of Nanaimo, but west of Parksville (or did they officially change the name to Oceanside now?). You take the new highway and then go left to Coombs instead of right to Parksville. It's about 10 minutes up the road from there. It had gotten kind of junky in recent years, but last time I was there the Goats on the Roof market was still very good, lots of fresh fruit, veg, cheese, baked goods, and some fun stuff in the back and they were working on upgrading the part in behind there. They used to have hand made jewelry, hats and then some other shops with more touristy things in that part.

There is a fun store called Flying Fish in downtown Nanaimo at the corner of Commercial and Bastion Streets that has a lot of fun kitchen stuff in it and jewelry, fridge magnets and even furniture. I really liked that store. I dropped a ton of money on starfish, sand dollar and shell magnets for my friends (they are hand made on Salt Spring Island). And around the corner to the left from that, kind of across from the Modern Cafe, there is a store called Artiztry or something similar, that has some nice hand made jewelry. I like the earrings she has from Keeping Afloat that are swarovski crystals with a kind of silver knot around them that then becomes the part you put through your ear. And of course in the summer in Victoria there are all the artisans in Bastion Square and the Inner Harbour! Can't wait until 2017 when we go back! We did whale watching with Eagle Wing tours and when the boat was stopped two whales came so close we could almost touch them!! Ah, I love the Island!!

Oh, thanks so much for the info. I should have added that I'm also attracted to kitchen stores so you've given me lots of great ideas of where to go when DH is in his meetings. Yay! Bookmarking your post so I can save it for reference.

Texas_Gem, great QOTW! Kudos for teaching your kids to cook, clean, do laundry, etc. My parents also did that with us and I did it with my two boys and girl. About a decade ago, I was in the market for a new tool kit and Sears had a basic one on a great sale. I ended up buying one for my son too, who was about 22, and added in some things it didn't have, such as a hammer, duct tape, picture hangers, etc. I sorta swelled with pride, when Joe told me about a year later that it was one of the best presents he'd ever gotten and that he used it on a very regular basis. OTOH, neither he nor my daughter ever mastered my clean as you go cooking technique. When I cook, by the time dinner is served, the counters are clean and cooking dishes at a minimum are rinsed and stacked neatly in the sink. When they cook, it looks like a category 5 hurricane has swept through the kitchen, lol! :-)

Depending upon your definition of "cooking," I cook almost every day. It was just myself for the past few years, but now my daughter (age 30) lives with me. I do really enjoy cooking and puttering around in the kitchen, but it's hard to cook for one, and even two is not as ideal as cooking for a larger family.

So I categorize a lot of what I do as "heating up" or "assembling" a meal. Breakfast is cold cereal, juice, and coffee most days, and something like eggs and hash browns and toast about once a week. Joy and I both work mostly from home. I'd say we heat up or assemble lunch 3-4 days a week--sandwiches or canned soup, a simple salad, maybe some tortilla chips and salsa. Another 2-3 days we eat breakfast really late and skip lunch, or we skip breakfast and do brunch. The other day or two we eat lunch out while running errands.

We cook dinner, on average, six nights a week. Sorry Texas_Gem, but Hamburger and Tuna Helper do count as entrees, but only once a week. Mainly due to time and budget constraints we cook simple meals. Once a week or so we do something in the crock pot like chili, a chicken, soup, etc. We probably do tacos once a week. One or two meals are more elaborate, such as eggplant Parmesan, lasagne, spaghetti with either home cooked marinara or Alfredo sauce, babooti, etc. One to two nights are leftovers, and one day is either take out or a "lazy day," which means a frozen pizza or frozen dinners, lol. We steam veggies every day with dinner and rice when the entree isn't pasta. We make salads every day with dinner too. Fruit lives in the fruit bowl or fridge, and is our go-to for snacks.

Now that I've bought the house, we are going to have a veggie garden! We're very excited about that!

Although our cooking isn't gourmet, a well designed kitchen would be really, really helpful. It's not so much the design, as it follows the ice, water, rock, fire flow, it's simply the lack of counter space, because everything is packed in so tight in this small eat-in kitchen! I don't need a "chef's kitchen," just some basic, hard working appliances and a decent amount of prep space. Ample storage and pantry space would be icing on the cake! I think I've got it figured out, but it will be a couple of years before the kitchen remodel, so lots of time to change and learn!

Great question! I enjoyed reading everyone's answers!

Have a great day! :-)

Debbie- while I can't say I've every actually purchased a Hamburger Helper, I do agree with you. That was my mother's rule and I'm 99% certain it was instituted because of my brother.

He always wanted the easy cheap method out, she wanted us to actually learn to cook.

It's funny to me that the question of what constitutes as cooking has been raised several times, my family actually had that very same discussion tonight.

Friday nights are pizza night in our house. I make the dough, make the sauce, shred the cheese, cook/chop/prep all the ingredients, etc.

My 4 year old has been a "Whiney McFusserton" as I like to say lately.

She has watched big sisters get to make dinner all on their own and she's been angling for her turn but she's just not quite to that stage yet.

So tonight, I already had the dough proofed and the ingredients prepped and I let her assemble all the pizzas.

When we sat down to eat, she proudly exclaimed that she had made dinner and we should all thank her, she's so humble! ;)

My older two immediately corrected her, saying, "well, Mommy made the dough and sauce, you just put it together, you didn't really cook". I guess this is basically my own words coming back to bite me!

I reminded them that when they were her age, all they did was help like she had but that it was still an accomplishment and we shouldn't be mean.

"But mommy, she didn't cook!! All she did was put it together!"

After further explaining to them, it eventually ended with them congratulating her on a delicious meal and (hopefully) learning to recognize others accomplishments and not look down their noses at them because they can do better and the 4 year old didn't seem to get upset in the slightest.

I think what constitutes "cooking" is all relative to personal experience.

If Julia Child were standing in my kitchen watching me cooking with frozen chicken tenderloins, dry pasta, canned tomato sauce and canned beans, she might not consider it cooking but it is to me.

When my college roommate was so proud of herself for having made a box of Kraft Mac and cheese, it wasn't cooking to me BUT, given that the girl had never cooked anything before in her life, I wasn't about to say so. I told her good job and complimented her on how good it tasted and saw the pride in her eyes of having done something she had never done before in her life; make her own food to eat.

So, to a gourmet chef, what I do probably constitutes as cooking only a few nights a week, to a college kid, what I do constitutes as cooking every night.

Tonight, my 4 year old cooked dinner, and I couldn't be more proud!