How fast can you cook?

I type these articles and recipes on a computer and, over the years, have very much convinced myself that to do so saves me time and makes my job easier. I’m all for this as, like most people, I live a busy life and will grab at anything that’ll give me more time. Computers are a Godsend – until they go wrong of course. Then, the amount of time spent trying to fix them is disproportionate to the benefit received. It’s made even worse for me because I think I’m a bit of a “techie” and believe I can fix anything. It usually takes me a long time to find out that I can’t.

However, modern life is full of things that make life easier and faster, enabling us to take on more and become more effective than ever. Or at least that’s the aim. For instance, I’ve got a very clever mobile phone that sends me emails, takes videos of my drunken friends, reminds me to do things I’d otherwise forget and lets me answer calls while driving – on the hands free of course. So obviously life is more productive. Isn’t it?

It’s one of the reasons we’ve developed fast food. Apart from making many people very rich by selling us over-seasoned, impossible-to-sell-otherwise remnants of meat, fast food is there to prevent us spending unnecessary time slaving over a hot stove when we could be doing much more productive things like watching television.

Every second of the day can thus be utilised usefully rather than just wasting it which was obviously what we used to do. Didn’t we?

Despite being a total convert to all things technological, I keep getting these nagging doubts that try to persuade me otherwise. My wife was driving me back from a meal the other day. So I grabbed a notepad from the passenger door pocket and wrote a letter that I’d normally compose on a computer. Even accounting for transferring it to my laptop when I got home, I somehow think I did it more efficiently. Impossible of course.

And a few days ago I spoke to wife as I left work and we both said that we couldn’t be bothered cooking that night so I offered to make a detour and pick up a takeaway – which took me 15 minutes out of my way plus a further 15 minutes to get home plus a reheat when I got there and resulted in a £12 bill for my efforts. And we left quite a lot of it.

As a lay, stuffed, on the sofa in front of the TV, this started to bug me and the thought must have lingered over the next 24 hours because the following evening, as I opened the cupboard door to remove vegetables with which to make a soup, I decided to time how long it took me to cook the meal from scratch.

Despite not being a particularly fast cook, I made a celeriac and parsnip soup in 12 minutes including the blending time. Of course I had to leave it to simmer but I used those 30 minutes to have a shower, pour myself a drink and read the paper. But my actual used-up time was 720 seconds. And the meal cost pennies. And was delicious.

There’s no doubt that cooking sure beat the takeaway but I’m not completely clear about all there is to be learnt from the exercise. Maybe I’ll have time to think about it when I’ve rebooted this computer to try and stop it playing up.