The Thanksgiving comments made me laugh. I dunno, man. I couldn't tell you what our problem is... I don't feel too stressed, but I'm only cooking sides. I think it's just a classic American marketing opportunity? And actually I think people *don't* cook all year. Consistently astounded by the fact that so many people just don't cook at home.
Yes, this is probably it. People just don't cook then completely stress about a meal that involves multiple cooking times, because if you're not cooking often it would seem pretty foreign. But also, I think part of the problem is that people probably even more rarely cook for large amounts of people, but more than four people. Cooking for 7 everyday including three teenagers is quite a bit of food. If we have anyone over I easily adjust and can cook for more without any real mental math or effort, and I often cook for other big families so cooking for 20 is kinda a regular Sunday for me. But I AM A WEIRDO. Who else lives like this????
I 💯 agree. Large scale cooking is a totally different skill and I think it’s stressful until you’ve done it for a while. Our family Sunday lunch is regularly 15 ish people, so this feels normal.
I cook for 6+ very hungry people every night. But it’s taken about 10 years of gradually scaling up, regularly having people over for dinner, and also - this is not to be underestimated! - watching my MIL cook for giant crowds of people on a regular basis. It’s amazing the things I have learned just from helping & knowing how to think through the timeline of make ahead/day of etc…
You’re not a weirdo! I think it’s just a dying skill set.
Yes, that's all very true! I've been doing this for a long while now so I don't remember any other way tbh! I have a hilarious story from the summer when a friend and I were cooking a dinner for about 45 total people, we were all camping together at a friends house, and both of us thought we needed to make more! And let's just say we could have safely fed 100 people that night...but we made our separate elements at the perfect ratio of the other's, and had everything ready in under an hour. We were too good at our job.
I agree. I think the average American doesn’t do much cooking outside of special occasions. It is truly horrifying how much I relied on frozen microwaveable meals when I was working full time outside the home, even when I was single and only had to cook for one. There just is literally no time unless you use most of your weekends to prep ingredients & stock a freezer. Our culture is so structured around maximizing work time at the expense of eating real food and taking care of our families and homes.
I’m glad I’ve now read Dracula, but I found it colossally boring. The travelogue and planning sections drowned out what little reflection on good & evil there was. Atmospheric? Yes. Great literature? No.
Yes, our culture has completely destroyed time at home to be spent cooking. And I think the general attitude is that cooking time is an evil that should always be kept to the lowest possible amount. And with two parents working outside the home, work and school consistently ending later in the day, any extra curricular activities there really exists no time to actually cook real food.
I didn't say it was great literature, but it is formative to the horror genre and not reading it takes away from knowing where a genre developed.
The Thanksgiving anxiety here is really something else - it's even all over the radios! It's inescapable ahhhh!! I try to just hunker down and ignore it. I also just kept canning anyway, just to make the kitchen as chaotic as possible. 😂
Haha, I guess as an outside observer it feels not a little bit like something that's observed so as to create stress. When it should be a holiday with somewhat less stress since it's not a gift giving holiday, or a holiday specifically for children, and with not that many consumerist trappings? Other than all the food. Which again, I just don't think needs to be something stressed over! And you are a canning superstar. I can one thing and then I'm like, yeah...I'm probably good.
Very late to this post (hello, giant inbox full of Black Friday sale emails, I get it); I read Dracula with the Dracula Daily substack this year -- I had SO MUCH FUN. What an utterly creepy story.
It's really fun actually, he sends it chronologically over the whole calendar year as the dates occur instead of page-by-page as it appears in the print. If you want to reread it next year sign up, I honestly might do it again
What kind of sensitive reader would find the Cormorant Strike series tough? I don’t want to have to skip sex scenes, but I feel like I’m not that sensitive to fictional crimes or tragedies unless they involve children. (I’m looking at you, In This House of Brede!)
You know I'm not a sensitive reader, Helen, and I'm not big on warnings. But I can safely say that if you're sensitive to any type of violence, abuse, sexual abuse, let alone dark psychologically disturbing themes and content then these books are not for you. They're not romance sex scenes that are the problem, every book has some form of very disturbing criminal or evil behaviour that's being dealt with forthrightly.
The Thanksgiving comments made me laugh. I dunno, man. I couldn't tell you what our problem is... I don't feel too stressed, but I'm only cooking sides. I think it's just a classic American marketing opportunity? And actually I think people *don't* cook all year. Consistently astounded by the fact that so many people just don't cook at home.
Yes, this is probably it. People just don't cook then completely stress about a meal that involves multiple cooking times, because if you're not cooking often it would seem pretty foreign. But also, I think part of the problem is that people probably even more rarely cook for large amounts of people, but more than four people. Cooking for 7 everyday including three teenagers is quite a bit of food. If we have anyone over I easily adjust and can cook for more without any real mental math or effort, and I often cook for other big families so cooking for 20 is kinda a regular Sunday for me. But I AM A WEIRDO. Who else lives like this????
I 💯 agree. Large scale cooking is a totally different skill and I think it’s stressful until you’ve done it for a while. Our family Sunday lunch is regularly 15 ish people, so this feels normal.
I cook for 6+ very hungry people every night. But it’s taken about 10 years of gradually scaling up, regularly having people over for dinner, and also - this is not to be underestimated! - watching my MIL cook for giant crowds of people on a regular basis. It’s amazing the things I have learned just from helping & knowing how to think through the timeline of make ahead/day of etc…
You’re not a weirdo! I think it’s just a dying skill set.
Yes, that's all very true! I've been doing this for a long while now so I don't remember any other way tbh! I have a hilarious story from the summer when a friend and I were cooking a dinner for about 45 total people, we were all camping together at a friends house, and both of us thought we needed to make more! And let's just say we could have safely fed 100 people that night...but we made our separate elements at the perfect ratio of the other's, and had everything ready in under an hour. We were too good at our job.
I agree. I think the average American doesn’t do much cooking outside of special occasions. It is truly horrifying how much I relied on frozen microwaveable meals when I was working full time outside the home, even when I was single and only had to cook for one. There just is literally no time unless you use most of your weekends to prep ingredients & stock a freezer. Our culture is so structured around maximizing work time at the expense of eating real food and taking care of our families and homes.
I’m glad I’ve now read Dracula, but I found it colossally boring. The travelogue and planning sections drowned out what little reflection on good & evil there was. Atmospheric? Yes. Great literature? No.
Yes, our culture has completely destroyed time at home to be spent cooking. And I think the general attitude is that cooking time is an evil that should always be kept to the lowest possible amount. And with two parents working outside the home, work and school consistently ending later in the day, any extra curricular activities there really exists no time to actually cook real food.
I didn't say it was great literature, but it is formative to the horror genre and not reading it takes away from knowing where a genre developed.
The Thanksgiving anxiety here is really something else - it's even all over the radios! It's inescapable ahhhh!! I try to just hunker down and ignore it. I also just kept canning anyway, just to make the kitchen as chaotic as possible. 😂
Haha, I guess as an outside observer it feels not a little bit like something that's observed so as to create stress. When it should be a holiday with somewhat less stress since it's not a gift giving holiday, or a holiday specifically for children, and with not that many consumerist trappings? Other than all the food. Which again, I just don't think needs to be something stressed over! And you are a canning superstar. I can one thing and then I'm like, yeah...I'm probably good.
Very late to this post (hello, giant inbox full of Black Friday sale emails, I get it); I read Dracula with the Dracula Daily substack this year -- I had SO MUCH FUN. What an utterly creepy story.
Hilarious that there is such a substack!!
It's really fun actually, he sends it chronologically over the whole calendar year as the dates occur instead of page-by-page as it appears in the print. If you want to reread it next year sign up, I honestly might do it again
What kind of sensitive reader would find the Cormorant Strike series tough? I don’t want to have to skip sex scenes, but I feel like I’m not that sensitive to fictional crimes or tragedies unless they involve children. (I’m looking at you, In This House of Brede!)
You know I'm not a sensitive reader, Helen, and I'm not big on warnings. But I can safely say that if you're sensitive to any type of violence, abuse, sexual abuse, let alone dark psychologically disturbing themes and content then these books are not for you. They're not romance sex scenes that are the problem, every book has some form of very disturbing criminal or evil behaviour that's being dealt with forthrightly.
Ooh, I think I’m behind on the Cormorant Strike series, I’ll have to catch up!
Only a couple thousand pages to go then, Leah! ;)