854: Learning to Cook

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Learning to Cook
And yet I never stop thinking, 'sure, these ingredients cost more than a restaurant meal, but think how many meals I'll get out of them! Especially since each one will have leftovers!'
Title text: And yet I never stop thinking, 'sure, these ingredients cost more than a restaurant meal, but think how many meals I'll get out of them! Especially since each one will have leftovers!'

Explanation

This comic shows the plight of Randall who occasionally motivates himself to cook. After buying ingredients and cooking them, the food always ended up either tasted "kinda good" or not good, therefore - although he puts the leftovers in the fridge - hours later he orders pizza instead of eating the leftovers.

A few days later he first throws away the leftovers, and some weeks later also the unused ingredients. After some months he is motivated again to cook more and the loop repeats. This discontinued effort may be part of the reason his cooking does not improve much overtime.

The title text describes that buying ingredients for a single meal might be more expensive than eating at a restaurant, but it would be compensated if there are enough leftovers to eat again from it or cook several meals. Of course, this idea is vitiated if he gives up cooking after a single try and throws away all remaining food.

Transcript

[A flowchart.]
I should cook more! -> Buy ingredients -> Put some in a pan -> Cook -> Does it taste good? -> (arrows marked "Kinda" and "No" both lead to) Put leftovers in fridge -> (hours pass) -> Order pizza -> (days pass) -> Throw away leftovers -> (weeks pass) -> Throw away remaining ingredients as they go bad -> (months pass) -> (arrow leads back to beginning)


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Discussion

It only looks like I got takeout at Pizza Hut. I made this pizza! Legit! I made the box too! Davidy²²[talk] 07:09, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

The current explanation is "a person who cannot cook and can't quite find the time to learn", but I interpreted this as someone who thinks they want to cook more, but ends up buying pre-made food often enough to cause the ingredients to go bad. Such as buying a loaf of bread, deli meat and toppings, making a sandwich (or sudoing someone else), but then eating at restaurants until discovering the bread has gone bad... I may be biased, though, since this is what usually happens to me. Tryc (talk) 17:49, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

I did this same thing. I bought pots and pans and everything I could use. Tried making noodles and cheese and it did NOT work! ~JFreund

In most case cooking definitely need some level of passion, as there are some learning - involving trial and error - required to be able to cook good tasting food. Almost all cooking recipes have some ambiguity or omitted details about the cooking process which need to be found to produce good result. Arifsaha (talk) 20:05, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

In most case cooking definitely need some level of passion, as...

...in getting married to someone that can cook. Kissing don't last, cookery do. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/george_meredith.html

I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait (talk) 17:53, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

The text also refers to the use of leftovers to create another meal which itself will create leftovers. This is similar to the Hobo's Cigarette Butt Puzzle. http://goodriddlesnow.com/riddles/view/673/index.htm Brenda (talk) 14:00, 9 July 2018 (UTC)