Cooking is now an endangered skill

Aug 25, 2026 Dem Boys Seh, Features / Columnists

(Kaieteur News) – Dem boys seh President Irfaan Ali got people talking when he suggested that changing habits, including more people eating out at restaurants, helping to push up household expenses.

But dem boys seh, Mr. President, restaurant is only one part of the problem. The bigger problem is that too many Guyanese now don’t know how to cook—and, worse yet, don’t want to cook.

Once upon a time, breakfast used to start in the kitchen. Now breakfast start on the public road. From six o’clock in the morning, dem boys seeing people lining up at roadside stands for bake, saltfish, eggs, porridge and everything else that could have been cooked at home before the first rooster finished crowing.

And lunchtime is another story.

Long ago, a working man or woman would leave home carrying a lunch bag like it was a briefcase. Inside was rice, curry, stew, cook-up, chowmein—something that told the stomach, “Don’t worry, I got you.”

Today, ask somebody to walk with lunch and dem boys hear, “Lunch? Where I going to warm that?”

Very few people now know what a thermos looks like. Some young people probably believe a thermos is an extinct species of stainless-steel animal. At lunchtime, the office worker does tek a walk around the block where you have six caravans and ten food stalls serving a growing clientele.

Dem boys seh Guyanese now cooking less and eating out more. The kitchen becoming a museum. Stove getting rusty from loneliness. Pots hanging on the wall looking at each other and asking, “When last we work?”

And this is where the real expense comes in.

When you cook at home, one chicken could stretch from Sunday dinner to Tuesday lunch. When you buy food outside, one meal can stretch your wallet until payday. So yes, habits changing can increase expenses. But dem boys seh the best restaurant in Guyana might still be the one in your own kitchen. Because the food there is cheaper, the portions bigger, and—if you know how to cook—you don’t have to leave home to eat out.

Talk half. Leff half.

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cooking, Dem Boys Seh, endangered skill, President Irfaan Ali

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