Different strokes for different folks, personally I enjoy a variety of differently seasoned foods. The base is usually quite similar for most of my cooking but variety is the spice of life.

No need to No True Doberman the discussion. There are plenty of picky dogs in the world.

Some dogs (like people) are more particular about their food. Your pet might be bored with their current diet or may have developed an aversion to the way their food tastes, looks, or feels. Additionally, dogs receiving frequent treats or table scraps may become reluctant to eat their regular dog food, in the hopes that a better-tasting treat will be coming along shortly.

https://www.greatpetcare.com/dog-behavior/reasons-your-dog-is-a-picky-eater/

That’s true but you can mess up pretty bad if you don’t know what you’re doing and aren’t carefully following a recipe. One time I wanted a stir fry to be more filling, so I added flour, which apparently gives it a uniquely unpleasant slimy texture and is basically inedible. Never did that again but that kind of stuff can happen more often before you have much experience cooking. Even if you are following a recipe sometimes they can be ambiguous or give wrong measurements (especially for the amount of salt to use).

Different people are at different points in their journey of learning to cook. (Or any journey to learn new things for that matter)

It really is and has been over the years

I’ve been cooking good food for a long long time, I mostly shared this because one of my friends is quite early in his journey of learning to cook lol

Start with soup. Soup is easy to get good at, and teaches you techniques that are critical for other dishes.

Then do sauces (which are just soups in a top-hat), inc making a roux.

With classical cooking techniquesyou turn boring steamed veg and grilled chicken into grilled veg and steamed chicken with a mushroom sauce.

Hell yeah!

The journey of learning to cook has so many awesome things in it!

Just wait until you jump into baking, that one also has so many awesome stops in it!

I know people that don’t even know how to cook. They come eat 3+ times at the restaurant my wife works at. She even has nicknames for’em.

By constantly complaining they’re broke.

I’ve lost count of the number of people I know tangentially who complain about not having any money yet talk about constantly ordering DoorDash for some cookies or other frivolous crap.

My boss doesn’t even own silverware, he eats out 3 meals a day EVERY day.

Some people can afford it so they never cook.

yep.

Meal prep is a godsend!

I make my breakfast a week at a time (over night oats), my lunches are typically sandwiches made day of, and my dinner is usually pilaf or lasagna made in roughly 10 day portions.

Doing such large portions minimizes cook and prep time which is great.

It’s the soy sauce, man, you gotta be careful with that stuff.

Pasta is deceptive. A box of pasta, a pack of meat, 2 or 3 jars of sauce and all of a sudden you have 8 pounds of food…

Accidental meal prep, lol

I have been slim my whole life apart from that one year I perfected mac & cheese.

I can cook some reasonably decent chow, but most people are deluding themselves if they think their cooking is better than any restaurant that isn’t totally terrible.

Restaurant-style cooking is very equipment intensive. A proper Chinese style stir fry needs a gas jet burner and a big wok. A proper pizza needs an oven hotter than home ovens can do. Proper rotisserie meats like gyros or kebab need, well, a rotisserie. You can try to emulate these at home with varying degrees of success, but typically you do more work for what is objectively an inferior product. Many restaurant dishes also require the kind of prep work that doesn’t make sense unless you’re making them at scale.

With home cooking you have to play to your strengths and accept the fact that a lot of restaurant dishes are not worth making. There’s lots of great home cooked dishes you can make, and oftentimes making them yourself at home does make them feel better than at a restaurant, but let’s be honest the overwhelming majority of us are not cooking tastier food than a restaurant.

It’s impossible to get better at cooking than eating in a restaurant. Already the fact that someone else is making that food is enough to make it better than any food i have and will ever cook and I’ve been cooking since teenage years, nearly 20 years. Every single day. Fuck. Eating, cooking, planning, balancing, considering others, basically everything involving it is a rather annoying chore and it has to be done whole life.
No I’m not bad at cooking, average, I’ve just grown to resent this activity.

I await the day we invent a food pill or at least one in all superfood or i can at least start eating current foods that claim to be all in one foods for every meal. Wife already looks at me weird when i eat my breakfast slop multiple times a day.

I think this has more to do with what kind of restaurants you go to

For most things, I can make it as good or better than a restaurant because I can get better quality ingredients. The one thing I can’t seem to get to be similar is a burger to fast food burgers. I’ve used super high quality beef, I’ve used even lower quality beef, tried various seasoning combos, etc. I can make a damn good burger, but it’s nothing like the insanely addicting flavor of fast food burgers. IDK what they are doing, but it’s not just the quality of the ingredients you can see. The only place that seemingly just makes homemade burgers is In-n-Out. I can replicate that taste all day.

Yeah this is what I don’t get. Of course the first 2-3 times you try, it might be bad, but use your senses! Use ingredients you like, try adding a little something, look, taste, put more if you like, stop if you don’t. If the texture seems weird, try to correct it (add a liquid if it’s to dense, let cook if it’s too liquid). Get that feedback loop running!

I meal prep for the week on sunday and make food for the week. Every week what I make is as good or better than the restaurant version. This week is Kenji Lopez’s cochinita pibíl with which I make tacos. It is very good and took me like 3hrs to cook over the weekend.

Ive refused to ever eat at an olive garden for goodness, goin on 20 years now because anything on their menu, I can make better

It does not take very many tries to start cooking better than a restaurant.

Goddam it must be some lousy restaurants in your area.
My wife cooks really good food, and I love her food. But a proper restaurant with a proper chef, they are better than good, they are professionals and also professionals at picking fresh produce and good cuts to use.

But I agree, it’s pretty easy to learn to cook a decent meal.

And the best part is you can make sure that only your favorite ingredients get in there.

It also means the food will have less variation. To appreciate good cooking properly, you need variation.

That’s the spirit!

Add some potatoes into the rotation and you basically have my dinner almost every night. Just different spices and a healthy amount of different veggies as an auxiliary.