It's about time.

Right. So I like Jamie Oliver. I like the fact that he puts his money where his mouth is, and even more importantly - he physically gets involved. He's been proactive about sustainable farming, humane treatment of livestock, etc. His work with school lunches, Fifteen, and the Ministry of Food is great. I've been watching the tv series Jamie's Ministry of Food again in preparation to compare/contrast with the new US version which is being jointly produced with ABC and set to begin early next year.

Even with the second go round it still completely boggles my mind that people can live like that. Every once in a while I enjoy eating take-out or fast food, but it's something I quickly bore of and nearly always get sick from. Nightly? I'd rather stab myself in the eye repeatedly with a pencil.

Fair enough. Because of life-threatening food allergies (allium: onion, garlic - basically the whole bloody lily family) I don't have the luxury of resorting to convenience foods the way that most people do. (I recently went into anaphylaxis and had to use my TwinJect because the lemon in the iced tea I'd ordered at a drive-through had been stored with the onion. Good times. A $1000 emergency room visit later...) Moreover, my mom died when I was a kid so I had to learn to cook for myself or I wouldn't have been able to eat. It's not like I started out making anything more complex than scrambled eggs, pancakes or pasta with butter and cheese. But after a while the scrambled eggs became omelettes, the pasta with butter and cheese became pasta carbonara and the pancakes became scones.

I understand that time is a big impediment to cooking for a lot of people. Personally, I don't think it takes any more time to throw something together at home than it does to head to your nearest greasy spoon and pick something up. The financial as well as physical benefits from cooking for yourself are tremendous compared to eating convenience foods. I just don't get it. I really don't.

All of my friends know how to cook (although some of them prefer not to). If they didn't, I would gladly embrace the "pass it on" mentality and invite people over to share a meal and learn how to prepare that meal.

Thinking about the meals I regularly prepare for myself, I'd say at least 90% of them take 30 minutes or less from start to finish. Sure, sometimes I decide to go all "culinary school" and make insanely complicated and time/labor-intensive dishes, but generally speaking it's more a case of, "hrm, I'm hungry, what's in the pantry?" and bang, 20 minutes later I'm eating. And yeah, sometimes I can't be bothered and I eat toast with peanut butter and a piece of fruit for dinner. But even that is still a far cry healthier for me than bloody take-out.