cooking at home is a full time job, to liberate us from domestic labour we need industrial kitchens and places to eat. the idea that it is normal for each individual home to aspirationally cook for themselves enforces good old fashioned 'family values', amd solidifies the role of the patriarch, who probably wont be cooking because cooking is gay or whatever
having said this I couldn't justify eating where I work, it's too expensive. Learn to cook lentils. 🍛
Its funny, for huge swathes of history the common people didnt prepare and cook their food individually because the resources and space necessary to construct a kitchen in every individual living space made it unfeasible. As with much of their mythology, the RETVRN guy's (and by extension general western liberal's) concept of this only goes back to like the 50s.
solidifies the role of the patriarch, who probably wont be cooking because cooking is gay or whatever
Fellas, is it gay to be able to feed yourself?
I really don't get it. Chefs are masculine coded, wilderness survival guys cooking meat is masculine coded. Even grilling is masculine coded. But do any of that shit in a home kitchen and suddenly it's gay or girly or whatever.
a chef is a professional, a homecook is a hobby artist, some background work that that goes unnoticed and doesn't come with the glory of showing the outside world the mastery of your craft (like mowing the lawn am I rite fellas?)
I'm being sarcastic btw for the most part, but i've met guys who unconsciously act like this
As a cook, I would soooo have the same job under communism and have a great fucking time doing it. The reason the industry sucks is capitalism also under communism we only make meals to order once or twice a week. The rest of the time it's stuff that can be mass prepped, there can be a variety, but you're going buffet style most of the time.
hell yea, I used to work at a bourgie health food store and the best time of the night was at 8pm when the deli started closing and the deli guys would let us raid the hot bar buffet for free. I'd take like a dozen premade burritos in addition to my own dinner to pass out to unhoused folks on my way home. Whenever someone learned I would walk home to the "sketchy" side of town every night they would ask if I wasn't scared of being accosted or something and I was always like "What who's gonna fuck with me? I'm the burrito guy!"
The Soviet Union had achieved this 90 years ago, people didn't need to cook at home anymore. They had professionals preparing good food on cheap popular restaurants. No worker exploitation needed.
In poland, "milk bars" were created, which were basically just cafeterias serving homely food very cheaply. The name refers to the fact you would not be served alcohol as in a "traditional" restaurant and the menu had a ton of dairy. Hell, even after the transformation, they continued to exist and were often a good way for students and workers to get cheap lunch.
But people still cooked at home. Cooking is part of culture after all, and I actually disagree with the take that cooking for yourself is some recent capitalist invention.
Sometimes I go to these remnant bars as they are the few places I can afford food. I can't even fathom where do students get money for McDonald's, shit's got extortionate pricing.
In Anna Louise Strong's This Soviet World (which you can find on libgen), she describes how the factory became a hub of life for the Soviet worker, far beyond just a place of work. From how she described it, they were practically small cities, with attached daycare centers for the workers' children, full cafeterias for the workers to eat their meals at, along with classrooms where people could take and organize classes of any subject they wanted, and large meeting spaces to conduct political business.
That's the kind of chad pro-industry take that is lacking on the western left. We're so full of hippies who come up with fascist adjacent rhetoric on nature and crap..
Yeah like I don’t really understand why everyone is obsessed with everyone cooking for themselves all the time. Restaurants or kitchens are still objectively the best way to feed large groups of people. I like to cook, but damn having to cook and clean multiple times a day while also going to work and doing my hobbies sounds like ass.
Sure in socialism community kitchens would be best, but within our current structure, cooking your own stuff for yourself (or even better, potluck for your affinity group) is taking back a little bit of control. You are not smashing patriarchy by going to McD lmao
Also, most restaurant food is literally poison, made to be tasty but is terrible for your health