Okay, not literally, but in literature. And not all the time.
It’s just one of those things that irks me quick—any more than a paragraph talking about what’s laid out on the table and I get the irrational urge to toss the book in the oven and bake it at 500ºF for the length of time I just wasted reading a recipe book disguised as fiction.
Look, I get that some women are into cooking. I’m happy for you, honestly. But for those of us that aren’t, your character gushing over the cream sauce she perfected for pages and pages don’t make us like her too much. We get real bored and start picturing her having accidents in her modern kitchen to die for that involved the knife she’s been using to cut cucumbers. Maybe she can slip and
chop off her fingers. Then the hero can stick them in a baggy full of ice and rush her to the hospital. Or maybe the grease on the stove could catch fire and she’s so distracted by the hunky man that she tosses a pitcher full of water on it. And even I know what would happen then <g>
Readers wanting bad things to happen to your characters is not good. Unless they’re bad guys, but even the bad guys shouldn’t be boring. I’m willing to bet not everyone will agree with me, but I find cooking the most boring thing in the world. I hate doing it. I certainly don’t want to read about it. I can tolerate almost anything briefly, but if the last thing I remember from a kitchen scene if how much flour Miss Betty Crocker wanna-be used, the book will probably get stuffed on the shelf to gather dust with my actual cook books.
I think what bothers me the most is that there’s no warning for books like that. It’s not like you’ve got a picture of a little housewife in an apron on the cover. The woman could be anyone: A cop, a dentist, an elephant trainer. The story could be part of any subgenre. These scenes are never near the beginning so you won’t know until you’re halfway through the story that the sassy chick you were starting to like had a food fetish. And yes, I’m calling it a fetish, ‘cause nothing less would explain a thousand words on the touch, taste and smell of bread. After a sentence, I might be able to imagine being there, eating the bread. After a paragraph, good symbolism might work for me.
But don’t force that damn bread down my throat! I’ll choke on it!
Seriously, I love cars, and I could explain to you, in extreme detail, exactly how to take a nasty dent out of a side panel. But I won’t, because it’s not giving my story any forward motion and part of my job is to keep my reader from getting bored. I don’t do that by drowning them in my passion, I do that by being passionate about the story as a whole, and things happen in stories. Things that are a lot more interesting than frying onions to perfection or picking your own herbs. Fine, things can happen while you’re flipping 
pancakes—I’ve got no problem with that—but it better be more than bubbles rising through the batter.
Ah, that feels better. Must do rants more often! It’s kinda therapeutic 
PS-I just read an article lately saying people who ‘claim’ to hate cooking just don’t know how to do it properly. Guess what, I’m a great cook. I can make gravy from scratch and my stews are divine. But I still can’t stand it. I’d rather scrub a toilet than stand over a hot stove.
If that ain’t hate, I don’t know what is.
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