Or hey--here's an idea!--you could eat out.

Ooooh, Dahlink! Comment of the week. That's definitely one for the scrapbook.

I agree on corn silk, especially since Dad didn't react rationally if I left so much as a speck of silk on the ear.

Deveining shrimp doesn't bother me. But, I don't like the little buggers to begin with, so it doesn't come up often.

I agree with the corn silk and the tendon in the chicken breast. I also hate peeling potatoes.

I don't soak mushrooms, but I do clean them with water. It doesn't hurt them any.

Alton Brown did a show on mushrooms and proved that even letting them sit in water did not cause them to get water logged. Go ahead and wash away.

My least favorite kitchen chore is boning chicken thighs.

Inspired by a comment of El's I just finished a Richard Morgan novel, The Steel Remains. Not sure how much I liked it. It is the first of a planned trilogy so maybe the next two books will clear up things that continue to bother me.

His writing is...er...rather dark, but an interesting take on traditional fantasy. EL

I get the split shelled shrimp - that makes for easier de-veining. They are also easier to shell.

I HATE corn silk almost to the point to buying already shucked corn - fresh in season from my neighborhood stand. But, the few occassions I do shuck, I found if I do it "upside down" the silk comes off better.

Mushrooms can be brushed off. Julia Child said so, so my shrooms that look icky just get brushed.

No reason to do all that extra work IMHO!

Far and away is making home made pasta. I got a pasta machine as a wedding gift, and there are times it seems to be metaphor for marriage. It requires way more space and is more expensive than you would have thought. It makes a mess, and even after you think you've cleaned it up everything there are still bits that will remain only to pop up in the future at some inopportune time. It is tedious requiring lots of patience, but even when you put the time in it never turns out the way you envisioned.

The worst is the preparation of sweetbreads. It's a long process involving many water changes.

Making a large fruit salad is also laborious.

I'm with Hal about peeling potatoes, a chore my wife generlaly gave me before a dinner party. I'll admit I wasn't very good...there was usually more potato in the peelings than the pot. Then we discovered Bob Evans mashed potatoes. They're delicious and while obviously more expensive than home-mashed, the savings in time, effort, lumps, scraped fingers and marital strife is well worth the cost.

Everytime I get inspired to make homemade pasta I end up disappointed. Italians thought up dried for a reason. The only thing worthwhile is ravioli and that is really hard. More often than not I don't get a good seal and end up with more filling in the water than in the pasta.

El, if by dark you mean scenes that border on pornography I would agree. Otherwise the best of Robert E. Howard's work is just as dark. What bothers me are too many things that just don't make sense. Like I said maybe the next two will clear things up.

Hate snapping he ends of green beans and then snapping them in pieces. Not so hard just alway so many of them when I make smoked neck, potatoes and green beans for dinner. Also dislike shelling lima beans, seems I eat almost as many as I shell!

Chris, I cooked sweetbreads exactly once. I think the prep work took two days. The results were delicious but I have never been inspired to repeat the experiment.

RoCK, thanks for validating my decision never to try to make my own pasta! I may be a snob about a lot of things, but I think the stuff that comes in a box is just fine!

The only part of cooking that I hate (besides the dailiness, which takes away a lot of the fun), is the cleaning up as you go and afterward. I need staff.

Oh, yeah. Homemade pasta. I made lasagne from scratch once, as a moving present for someone I thought the world of.

I started at 10 pm. At 2 am, I decided the (*#$^%(@ pasta was @$(^% thin enough. At 2:30, I had to make a grocery store run for more ricotta cheese. At 4 am, I lay down for a 1 hour nap.

After work, at 4 pm, I dropped the lasagne off, and went home to crash. Never got a taste of it.

That was 20 years ago. I haven't made homemade pasta since.

The genius that came up with selling already-shelled nuts for baking is my hero. Grandma used to make me sit and shell walnuts for hours to use in her baking when I was a kid.
Like EL I also don't like cleaning and deveining shrimp (and I cook a lot of shrimp dishes). I found a machine called the "Shrimp Butler" that does the task for you. It was well worth the $49 I paid for it.

I forgot about peeling tomatoes. How well I remember being forced as a teenager to peel tomatoes for a steak sauce my mother decided to make. After hours of peeling and complaining my grandmother shows up and says "if you dip them in boiling water the skin comes right off."

I actually like mundane tasks like husking corn, peeling shrimp, and shelling lima beans. It calms me.

Just be careful about mundane tasks that involved knives. Spacing out while handling sharp objects can be dangerous.

Like NotableM, I tend to like mundane tasks like peeling and deveining shrimp, husking corn, snapping off the ends of green beans, etc. It's so different from my day job, it's calming, and you can actually see the results of your labor.

On my grandparents farm, we spend the afternoon preparing vegetables for dinner and it is a fun, calm, relaxing time.

However, as I have experienced too many times recently, at home and on vacation, when the grill is ready for your shrimp, asparagus, and corn, trying to get that stuff done is a pain. To me, it's a problem with timing and pace, not the task itself.

I hate rolling out pizza dough. Mostly because I know I lack the tossing skills so many can do in their sleep. Maybe I need to take a part time job at a pizzeria and learn to do it right.

I love roasted sweet peppers, but peeling off the skins is my most hated kitchen chore.

Carol in Hampden, I usually put my peppers right off the fire and into a ziplock bag. the steam actually makes the charred skin blister off and easy to peel. But, even easier than that - Son Of Italy Roasted Red Peppers. All the taste, none of the work!

When I was a kid, I loved peeling tomatoes for Granny's Ripe tomato Pickle. Pickling with her was just a joy. She was inclined to be a giggler and nothing set her off like a bunch of grandkids (with a daughter and/or daughter-in-law(s) snuck in) all chopping and slicing away. That's where I learned to sing harmony.

If God wanted me to make my own pasta, He wouldn't have put it in boxes.

I bought a gadget in Canada that I call my shrimp sperm. It really looks like an elongated sperm. You stick the sharp pointy end in the end of the shrimp where the head was and gently push it between the skin and the body towards the tail. As you push it, it splits meat and dislodges the dirt and at the same time forces the shrimps legs apart so you can just slip the shrimp out of the peel. What you end up with is a clean shrimp that when cooked has those professional looking curls on the back and no dirt. Whip through a pound in about 5 minutes.

Wow, Kitkat. I feel like I've just read an X-rated short story. Awesome!

I saw a video on youtube recently where Rachel Ray was cleaning an ear of corn. It was somewhat racy. Perhaps Owl can track it down and post it. ( Thanks in advance Olwie. There is no way I could accomplish this. I can barely manage E-Mail)

Owl--spare us!

I think I've seen that video, and it was upsetting.

Cutting chicken wing pieces apart to make buffalo wings. Just plain tedious and boring if you're making a big batch.

Aw c'mon, kids, cleaning cornsilk is easy--just use a soft brush. I gave myself a "corn brush" a couple of summers ago, and it's paid for itself many times over.

Peeling hard boiled eggs....ugh! Especially when they are being uncooperative and take big hunks of the white off, which totally screws up my deviled eggs.

Double picking crab meat is a close 2nd for me.

Oh yeah, I forgot about peeling eggs. I hate that one too!

About peeling eggs, y'all are doing it wrong I guess.

I used to have lots of problems until I started cooking them like this:

Put eggs in pan (or pot) with enough water to cover them.
Heat on high until the water gets to a rolling boil
Reduce heat to simmer/low and set timer for 12 minutes
When timer rings, remove from heat and rinse with cold water.
Then fill pan (or pot) with ice cubes and allow most of cubes to melt.
Peeling is really easy then, most of the shell practically falls off and there is no green ring around the yolk.

At least that has been my experience with hard-boiled eggs.

This works best with Eggland's Best, but regular store-bought eggs work fairly well too.

FL Rob, I use that method also, except I think 12 minutes is too long (for large eggs), and I usually don't wait for a rolling boil before starting the timer.

Most of the eggs will peel just fine, but there are always some that are difficult. I suspect that the eggs from the grocery store are of varying ages. Eggs that are too fresh tend to be hard to peel when hard boiled.

PRob - somehow never figured you to be a hard boiled egg expert. Obviously, you have some experience. What do you tend to do with your eggs once cooked? Eat as is? Deviled eggs? Potato salad? Served on top of green salad?

When I was a child, my mom served us hard boiled eggs, sliced with an egg slicer, and we put salt on them. In high school, I had to eat hard boiled eggs as part of a sports training program. Haven't made any myself since then, except to dye for easter egg hunts, and we didn't eat them.

Hal,
Maybe I'll try shortening the time a little, but I'm leery of undercooked eggs.

BG,
I don't eat them much anymore, but I used to eat one for breakfast. They are good with the Tabasco green pepper sauce. And sometimes sliced (with an egg slicer) as a salad topper.

My mom did the same thing for us as children, but we'd use pepper too.