View Full Version : How much time do you spend in the kitchen?
I saw somewhere recently -- it may have been in the most recent issue of Yes Magazine -- a little infographic that claimed the average male spends 17 minutes a day preparing meals and the average female spends something like 45 minutes. (Being the adult male in the family, I didn't pay too much attention to the female statistic).
I find that hard to believe. I practically live in the kitchen. I may be a little of a statistical outlier, but people still have to cook.
I realized last night that I had, more or less, spent six hours in the kitchen.
My wife and I spent a couple of hours earlier in the day bicycling around doing the grocery shopping for the week.
At four O' clock, I shredded some cabbage to make sauerkraut. Once that was packed in the crock and salted, I started making Pad Thai for dinner. I also put some chickpeas in the pressure cooker because I told my daughter I would make her some hummus for lunch this week. (She's been living off PBJ, and she's sick of it). We ate dinner. I washed the dishes and put water on for tea while my wife watched her current favorite Netflix show the Fisher Murder Mysteries. We sat down for a moment and had tea. Then I washed the tea cups. I was about to sit down, but I realized I had the hummus to make. I squeezed the lemons, made the hummus, and washed all the dishes from making hummus. I sat down for a little while, and then remembered that I needed to soak the white beans for tonights soup. By the time I was finished with everything it was almost ten.
Granted, I wasn't cooking full bore for six hours, and I kept sitting down to have tea or to eat, but I was, more or less, in the kitchen for six hours.
Now I've got the white bean and kale soup going, but that has to cook for two to two-and-a-half hours, and I'll probably drift around the kitchen while that goes on. I started soaking some bok choy, daikon, and carrots this morning in salt water to make kim chi, so after I post this, I'll probably grate the ginger, chop the onion, mince the garlic, etc. and start the kim chi fermenting.
Time in the kitchen never seems to end.
Who are these wimpy men who only spend an average of 17 minutes on meals?
I do most of the cooking, and we mostly cook things from actual ingredients that look like food, so, I spend a fair bit of time throughout the day in the kitchen. Never kept track, it's usually a day-long thing, doing a step here, a step there.
Who are these wimpy men who only spend an average of 17 minutes on meals?
Not my husband, thank goodness. He's no wimp in the kitchen. I'm the 17-minute cook.
I'm the cook here as well, and 17 minutes maybe covers just breakfast. :0!
Lunch for me often is leftovers and DW usually grabs a protein shake or some yogurt when she goes to work. Dinners are geared to serve us more than once, so some nights are mostly reheating or maybe steaming some fresh vegetables. I would say 45 minutes a day on average is low for me. Maybe more like an hour/hour-fifteen.
Someone asked me this when my kids were still at home. I figured it to be about 8 hours/day.
Now its probably 3-4 on an average day. Around the holidays, I think its 23.7 hours. ;)
I rarely take more than 15 minutes of preparation time for a meal on the actual day I'm eating it BUT maybe once a month, I'll spend a couple of hours doing things like cooking up sausage, or some meatloaves or baking pizza/flatbread shells so that I can throw things together quickly on a weeknight. During the week, meals are nothing fancy, usually not prepared food, cooked mostly from scratch except for those weekend shortcuts. In the summer, I'll spend an hour making a few salads we'll have during the week, in the winter I'll spend time making a soup or stew to have during the week. Garden preservation is not included in these figures.
ApatheticNoMore
12-2-13, 8:30pm
Maybe about averaging an hour. I mean realistically there are nights I'll spend 2-3 hours making food (and it generally takes longer than you think it will). But then the rest of the week I'll eat leftovers - so maybe I'll spend 15 minutes heating stuff up on those leftover days. Then there are dishes ...
I do almost all scratch cooking, and so I wouldn't be surprised to find I average 2-3 hours a day in the kitchen. And I love it.
I spend a good 2 hours a day in the kitchen. It is broken up throughout the day. I can pull off a 45 minutes in the kitchen day only when we are eating leftovers from the refrigerator.
3-4 hours a day on the weekends. I usually do one pretty major/labor intensive meal a weekend, plus easier stuff around the edges.
Minimal the rest of the week. We have a helper who cooks dinner for us M-F, and she usually does the dishes, too. DH is on a business trip at the moment so I'm getting the kids breakfast in the morning, but that takes maybe 15-20 minutes tops, including the time to wash up.
Not as much as I would like....
DH and I both work full time outside the home. Add in an elderly, legally blind mother who does not drive - three grandchildren who basically live at our house on the weekends and their parents and - NOT ENOUGH TIME!!!
We really strive to eat whole foods. DH and I take lunches every day, so 20 mins in the am for that - then breakfast, another 10 minutes or so. Nightly meals are much as some of you described - a larger cook on the weekends with planned reheat or leftovers during week nights. Altogether about 6 hours weekly on dinner.
Rounding up - 1.5 hours per day
Dishes - done irregularly and not to my satisfaction, but that's another issue, and not in the above calculations.
Who are these wimpy men who only spend an average of 17 minutes on meals?Well I'm the wimpy woman who spends less than 17 minutes per day in the kitchen. I'm pretty much a raw foods vegan who eats a lot of raw fruits and veggies, salads, sandwiches and smoothies rather than cooking (plus I don't have kids). Most meal prep and clean up take me under 10 minutes (peel the banana and put some peanut butter on it, eat - and no clean up :-)!). I own one pot and one pan which are basicly still new after a year but the Ninja blender has gotten some serious usage :-)!
Well I'm the wimpy woman who spends less than 17 minutes per day in the kitchen. I'm pretty much a raw foods vegan who eats a lot of raw fruits and veggies, salads, sandwiches and smoothies rather than cooking (plus I don't have kids). Most meal prep and clean up take me under 10 minutes (peel the banana and put some peanut butter on it, eat - and no clean up :-)!). I own one pot and one pan which are basicly still new after a year but the Ninja blender has gotten some serious usage :-)!
We tried to stick with the raw food diet several years ago and made it through about five months. I think I may have spent *more* time in the kitchen making dehydrater crackers, raw hummus, various nut loafs, etc.
I have to say that I felt fairly healthy on the raw foods diet. I lost a lot of weight, but I was weak and dizzy frequently. Our food costs also shot through the roof, (I think we were around between $1300 a month of groceries). Some of that was from bicycling everywhere. We expend a lot of energy in our commuting, and I was hauling our two kids around in the bike trailer besides. We were tearing through six to eight avocados a day. I'd like to get back to eating more raw food again, but our budget is happier fueling us on rice and beans.
We tried to stick with the raw food diet several years ago and made it through about five months. I think I may have spent *more* time in the kitchen making dehydrater crackers, raw hummus, various nut loafs, etc.
I have to say that I felt fairly healthy on the raw foods diet. I lost a lot of weight, but I was weak and dizzy frequently. Our food costs also shot through the roof, (I think we were around between $1300 a month of groceries). Some of that was from bicycling everywhere. We expend a lot of energy in our commuting, and I was hauling our two kids around in the bike trailer besides. We were tearing through six to eight avocados a day. I'd like to get back to eating more raw food again, but our budget is happier fueling us on rice and beans.I eat rice and beans too ( I should have said "mostly" raw foods) and I don't buy organic which I think you said you do so your budget was probably 4 times higher than mine. Plus as a single person it's cheaper. I also don't "make" things either - just grab some raw food and go. Nuts and seeds and fruit and veggies. Or throw a bunch of stuff with some non-animal protein and fat into a blender and that's that. 5 minutes or so of prep. I do eat a lot of calories each day - several thousand - and often suppliment with a very high calorie protein powder in my smoothies for extra calories, so never have the weak feeling even when working out a lot.
I'm going to say 2-3 hours a day if one includes cleanup. I get home around 5:00 and he not until 6:00 so guess who makes dinner? Shopping for food is another big time user. DH probably spends no more than 15 minutes unless he is doing his kitchen chores, ie making fresh salsa, smoothies, roasting poblanos or BBQing. I let him think he is better at those things so I can get some rest:)
Blackdog Lin
12-6-13, 9:41pm
Two hours a day, I'd say. Mostly on our noonish meal, the main one for us. Since retirement it seems I've unintentionally come up with a 2-pronged approach to household choring: (1) spend more time to cook more "real (or clean)" meals, as opposed to using time-saving "convenience" foodstuffs; which leads to (2) less time available to spend cleaning house.
Since I enjoy cooking and food-related learning, and deplore housecleaning, it's a win-win situation so far.
I used to spend lots of time in the kitchen. But now I have sciatica and need to work standing up at the computer hours every day. So I don't want to stand in the kitchen long.
Now I start with healthy boxed soup and add tasty things. And I'm using the slow cooker lots in the cold months.
Two hours a day, I'd say. Mostly on our noonish meal, the main one for us. Since retirement it seems I've unintentionally come up with a 2-pronged approach to household choring: (1) spend more time to cook more "real (or clean)" meals, as opposed to using time-saving "convenience" foodstuffs; which leads to (2) less time available to spend cleaning house.
Since I enjoy cooking and food-related learning, and deplore housecleaning, it's a win-win situation so far.
ha ha Blackdog Lin - I missed this earlier but that's funny!
I do almost all scratch cooking, and so I wouldn't be surprised to find I average 2-3 hours a day in the kitchen. And I love it.
Ditto.
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