No One Knows How To Cook Anymore

It's the perfect storm: everything costs more, and no one knows how to save money by cooking with basic ingredients anymore. Thankfully, there is a way out of this mess.

Food prices have risen considerably in recent years, while wages have not done the same. This is making it harder for people to make ends meet. At the same time - I feel that there has been a cultural loss over the past few decades - such that people have lost the knowledge and skill of how to cook with basic ingredients. The result is a multiplicative effect on the cost of feeding oneself: the ingredients cost more, and the inability to make use of the more cost-effective ingredients drives people to buy more pre-made, pre-packaged, and take out foods - so the cost of feeding oneself, or a family, is becoming very hard to manage for some.

A few generations ago, preparing food was just a part of life, and not an overwhelming task in need of sophisticated solutions.

As consumers, there’s not much we can do about the price of things, aside from “voting with our feet” when possible, and not buying certain things when we think they are priced too high. But as home cooks, there’s a lot we can do - because we determine the menu. Unfortunately, I feel that people are losing their ability to do this, because from what I see people buying at grocery stores, the knowledge and skills that were common just a few generations ago, that got families through countless hardships for centuries, are becoming lost. And it’s a shame, because we have many options that those people from the past could not have imagined in their wildest dreams.