Cooking and not cooking

I just finished this article: The Joy of Not Cooking. It made me sort of sad, even though it's all true. It talks about how people spend more money on their kitchens even as they spend less time in them.

The article said the average woman in the 1920s spent over 30 hours a week in their kitchens preparing meals, while today women spend only 5.5 hours a week on average.

It talked about how we buy silly gadgets and restaurant-quality everything even though we rarely use them, which made me feel a little guilty about our ice cream maker and our little deep-fryer.

But I think the difference is, John and I don't outfit our kitchen in order to keep up with the Joneses and their granite countertops. We do it because nothing is more exciting than a date night spent at home when we bust out the fryer to make vegetable tempura to make sushi rolls. We really enjoy cooking and eating well and exploring different recipes. It's something that brings us together.

Which brings me to some recipes:

How can you not love Strawberry-Nutella homemade poptarts? I don't know. But I know I couldn't resist them as soon as I saw this:

If that wasn't drool-worthy enough, today I was reading honey & jam (one of my fave blogs), and this recipe crossed my path: Honey & Rosewater Tapioca

They look so heavenly, and the photography just adds to that. I've never tried to make tapioca from scratch. I might have to try with this recipe, though!