Can you cook?

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Does boiling/steaming grains and vegetables and eggs or baking (sweet) potatoes or vegan sausages count? My parents couldn't really cook so I never really learned beyond these basics. My ex and her mom were pretty good at cooking and about about 20 years ago when we were together (i'm 45 now), my ex taught me how to cook a few things, but I've long since forgotten.

Yes. There have been years when cooking has been the only way to afford enough healthy food. I prefer my own cooking, partly because it is familiar, and reliably vegan and low in chemical pollution. I buy a few prepared condiments, but sometimes make pasta sauce from scratch. I always make my own bread, sprouts, granola, hummus, and sweet treats. I'm learning how to store vegetables for the winter, and sometimes grow my own.
When I was young, we didn't get regular stories about clogged toilets and other digestive outrages. I'm sure that junk food is involved. I'm astonished at what people will put into their faces if it comes in a package, but the corporate cooks are very cunning. To avoid such hazards, I also have a full miniature kitchen in my car.
I have seen the world population triple, but our ideas of how to eat were set by my grandparents, still heavily influenced by life before we had trade and food preservation. If we don't give up meat, we will have far more extinctions before a human population crash. Just sharing a building with dead animal parts shuts off my digestion now.

Technically I'm a fairly good cook, but I struggle with inertia (difficulty starting or changing tasks), so although I know how to make some pretty decent meals there's no guarantee I'll actually manage to.

I tend to manage to make one specific meal each day until I get fed up with it, then struggle with food altogether until I light on something else that I'll cook/prepare most days for a few weeks, ad infinitum.

(And I have chronic anorexia cycles which messes up everything food related for months at a time.)

Currently I'm struggling to manage having the right kinds of foods in that I can manage to make meals from. Urgh!

I don't love cooking as much as I love feeding people. It sounds weird but I frequently make 8 course dinners even on weekdays and watch my family eat them all. I was not able to cook at all when I moved out, lived on instant noodles and frozen pizza for quite a while. I eventually learned cooking little by little. I think it's just like sports, some people are naturally better at them, but everyone can improve with enough practice. When people say "I can't do this or that" it usually means they're not interested in putting in the effort to do them. I found that usually people who don't love food tend to not improve their cooking. Also depressed people tend to not want to cook much, but eat lots of snacks.

I'm not really into cooking because I don't like to think about food - sensory problem, I believe.
I'm also discouraged by my husband who is a cuisine artist - I can't compete with him.
But I know how to turn raw ingredients from my fridge into something edible and nutricious with minimum effort. Even my children want to eat it, so it's apparently not really bad.
Baking and making casseroles are my favorites because they don't require precise timing. I don't have sense of time so frying is risky for me.
I also love the timer option in my cooker, so if I forget about the dish I was doing, it will automatically turn off and I still won't burn it

Microwaving is about the only form of food preparation that I'm competent at.

I can grill steak and burgers, bake various things in the oven, use one of them awesome new air-fryers, and of course make stuff in the microwave. However, I'm cripplingly terrified of grilling chicken out of fear I won't cook it long enough!

I have a quick read digital thermometer for making sure meat is properly cooked.

I love to cook. My dream job is to open a soup kitchen

No I can't and it's a problem. I eat at work so that makes it easier but the food there is often not healthy. I'm planning on taking a cooking course in a few months. At the moment I make the same thing almost every week: rice with chicken. And I just don't really like it, so taking a course is no guarantee I'll start cooking for myself more often.

I can follow a recipe just fine, thanks to my mom spending time with me on cooking skills when I was a kid. However, kitchen improvisation eludes me.

My knife skills will be forever slow, though... fortunately this means that I haven't injured myself very much.

-- Amy B.

To take the test for a Boy Scout cooking badge, you have to prepare bacon and eggs. To pass the test, you have to eat it.
A course is the last thing I'd try. I learned by trying to imitate dishes I had enjoyed, and by reading about the healthiest things to work with. I had roommates to watch, but YouTube is probably a better source, except for samples. Mother sent me dozens of recipes, but I never tried one. Her shortbread was excellent, but it turned out to be a trick of mixing, not anything in the formula. I've collected a half dozen recipes I use for odd occasions.

The glory of cooking is that it can make the inedible not only safe and nutritious, but even tasty. When times are thin, we waste much less.

Let me mention the site

http://www.cookingforengineers.com/

The recipes there are written with people like us in mind, providing details where we need them, allowing us to understand how to proceed. Their recipe collection could be more extensive I will admit but the ones they do have are good.

i just boiled some spinach tortellini that i augmented with minced onions, garlic, marinara sauce, shredded seaweed, soy marinade, and peas.

I enjoy cooking although I tend to make the same few things over and over with some slight variation. Today I made soba noodles with broccoli, chicken, miso, garlic, coriander and cardamom. For breakfast I cook rice and oats with apples, raisins and figs and then add banana, walnuts and yogurt. I also make soup with lentils, potatoes, cabbage, carrots and greens like kale, spinach or collards. Sometimes I make simple flatbread with just whole wheat flour and water. I also go through periods of eating only frozen pizza.