I don’t know how to answer this without sounding like a jerk, but it is really not my intention.
料理 means making food and 食事 means meal.
Jisho for 料理：
Jisho for 食事：
You can say things like 料理上手 (cook well) or 趣味が料理 (your hobby is cooking), but with 食事 it becomes completely something else.
To tag onto this, would it be okay to say 食事を作る to mean “cooking”?
I don’t think it’s actually wrong and I’m sure any Japanese would understand it without problem, but it sounds a bit unnatural to me. Maybe it would be better to ask a native.
But you can totally say things like 食事の準備をする。(what could possibly include things other than cooking, such as preparing the table or washing dishes)
EDIT: But thinking about it, 昼ご飯を作る、夕食を作る and such are 100% ok, so maybe 食事を作る is fine, too.
Yep, I’m really surprised how often native speakers use 作る to describe the creation of something, that’s why I wondered.
In my mind, it sounds a bit like “baby speech” where everything is “to do” and “to make” until the proper verbs are learned. But apparently Japanese is very different in that respect.
Used Leebo’s technique and checked BCCWJ
It gave me 79 results for 「食事を作」, what is not so much but at the same time it is not so rare you can ignore it, specially because some of the sources are quite serious, not just blog stuff.
If you read the results you can start understanding what is happening.
30人分の食事を作れるようになり
簡単でバランスのよい食事を作り
帰宅後は、食事を作る気力もなく
主婦が家で夫の食事を作って
Although it is not 100%, most of the results seem to be of occasions when you want to define one specific type of meal (making a meal for 30 people, what is clearly different from regular “cooking”) or the activity of preparing one meal in a specific moment of the day (not having the energy to prepare a meal after returning home).
I can see why one would use 食事を作る instead of regular “to cook” in such cases.
I looked up 食事 on this website and 食事を作る has more than 1,000 hits, so it seems like it’s totally fine to use.
My own university had an online corpus and I never knew about it! I’m in shock =O
Thank you for showing it. The search method is quite different from BCCWJ and opens very interesting possibilities, very nice!
Jerk. 
Actually, now that you’ve laid it out, I wonder if it’s more like 料理 is food that’s in the kitchen, while 食事 is food that’s in the dining room. 
I wouldn’t say 食事 is food. 食事 is meal, an abstract concept that takes the whole process of having food in front of you and eating it, together or alone, usually a couple of time during the day. For example, a hand made 和菓子 is totally a 料理, but I’m not sure a Japanese person would call stopping at a 和菓子屋 and having one warabi-mochi a 食事.
Google images illustrates it quite well.
The origin of 食事 is a noun that actually means “the act of eating.” You can see it right in the construction of it. 食べる事. Then, by extension, it came to also mean the food you eat.
The original meaning is why 食事する means to eat, and the extended meaning is why you can say 食事を作る
According to Cure Dolly, this is largely because Japanese always imports new words from other languages as nouns, so it needs to have plenty of interesting grammatical things you can do with nouns.
Edit: I think another effect in English is that, when we invent new words, we mask a lot of the underlying grammar behind Latin roots. If we need a word for converting spaces to tabs in a text file, for example, it sounds pretty informal or babyish if we just say “I’m going to do tabs in that file” or something, but when we say “I’m going to tabify that file,” it sounds like a proper high-falutin’ verb, even though it’s really just a noun with some added grammar.
Sorry for a long one, I promise not to ask anything for a week after this.
Could somebody please tell me what this crackhead of an article is talking about?
で、9位は薬剤師さん。薬剤師さんもね、ここ数年人気がありますよね。うーん。や、やっぱりお薬をもらいに薬局で、調剤薬局なんかにね、行ったりする機会も増えたからですね。それでどうしてもこう、目にする機会が増えてきた、っていうのはあるんですかね、うん。何をされてるのか、やっぱりね、こう、気になって、見ちゃったりしますもんね。うん 白衣を着て、ね、こうね、仕事をされている姿は確かにカッコいいから憧れますよね。うん。
Given translation: Now 9th is a pharmacist. Pharmacists have also been popular for the last few years, haven’t they? Yeah, as expected, it’s because the opportunities to go to a pharmacy or a pharmacist’s office to receive medicine are increasing. Because of that, despite your intention, the opportunities to see pharmacists are increasing. It can’t be, can it? Yeah. What they’re doing, as expected, it attracts you, and you can’t help but see them. Yeah, because by wearing a white coat, this figure doing work is certainly cool. People will long for this I think. Yeah.
my take:
やっぱりお薬をもらいに薬局で、調剤薬局なんかにね、行ったりする機会も増えたからですね
As expected, at pharmacies that you can receive medicine from, y’now things like dispensing medicine, the opportunity of going have increased. As in it is more accessible these days.
それでどうしてもこう、目にする機会が増えてきた、っていうのはあるんですかね、うん
No matter what, there the opportunities are increasing, (that is the case). This really thows me off, it sounds threatening. It sounds like “no matter what you do, you can’t run from these increasing opportunities”
何をされてるのか、やっぱりね、こう、気になって、見ちゃったりしますもんね
No matter what you do, you’ll be worried, and inevitably go (to the pharmacist). Again, what’s with the “you have no choice” tone
Any help would be majorly appreciated
I think you’ve got it right more or less. She is so drawn in by the work the pharmacists are doing she can’t help paying attention. I think rather than accessible, it sounds like she’s saying it is more common for either her or people in general to visit the pharmacy. Just my bit, I’m not sure what context this blurb was in.
Thanks for the help!
She was reading a “most popular jobs” list.
Ah, I see, so most of what she’s saying is probably meant “in general.” One other thing, 調剤 is not vending machine, it’s the act of the pharmacist preparing your medications and doing whatever comes with that.
Ahhh I see. If you don’t mind me asking one more question, am I right in sensing a “you have no choice” tone?
I don’t think it’s negative, but it sounds like that. “Wow that’s so cool! I can’t look away!” It definitely has a very light tone.
Thank you very much!
この表は年齢区分ごとの人口を表しています。
This table shows the population divided into age groups.
What does ごと mean here?
