telophase | (no subject)

The Myth of "Easy" Cooking. Well, the author and I have very different ideas of what "easy" means. (for one, it looks to me like she conflates "easy" and "tedious".)

"All this means that tonight, I can order excellent pad thai from my phone in under a minute. Or, I can find a recipe for “easy” pad thai, run—literally, run—to the grocery store at lunch, hope that grocery store sells fish sauce, then spend 40 minutes making the dish and 20 minutes cleaning up. The decision to cook from scratch may have many virtues, but ease is not one of them."

Or...you go to your pantry and use the fish sauce that's already there, because you cook Thai-ish on a semi-regular basis and fish sauce doesn't go bad? Or you look up the recipe at lunch, realize you don't have fish sauce, and find another recipe that uses ingredients you already have? Or you order the damn pad thai and start making a list of recipes that you'll cook this weekend when you have time?

Mountain =/= molehill

In somewhat-related news, Toby and I have been trying to make an effort to cook at home more and either plan a little more in advance what we're going to make, and to have a selection of stuff already at home that we can use to make something quick. We use a recipe app that shares items and lists back-and-forth with each other and our computers, and it has a grocery list function. We came up with a basic set of meals and listed the ingredients, then created several "recipes" like "Basics: Pantry" and "Basics: Freezer" that listed them. When we get ready to go to the grocery store, we add those recipes to the list, then go through and delete anything we still have stocked. It's worked for about three weeks so far--we always have something on hand that we can cook in 10-45 minutes, so we're not resorting to fast food or eating out because there's nothing else.

(And fish sauce is a "Basic: Pantry" entry. Squid brand fish sauce, to be precise, partially because that's the one my mom used when she started coking some Thai recipes, and partially because we have a friend whose mother is Thai who uses that.)

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Cooking---where "cooking" means "preparing an appetizing, edible, nutritious meal from scratch" emphasis on "appetizing"---without even a small library of staples and seasonings is very, very difficult; I moved into a place with an empty kitchen and the first grocery store run was overwhelming. I'm still not back on line but at least the place near me sells spices in bulk, so I don't need to spend $150 on jars of various seasonings to make even a pot of chili or bean soup. And yes, you can cook without seasoning, but it doesn't taste as good, and that's self-undermining.

Yeah. I grew up with the habit of always having a certain set of staples on hand (mostly potatoes, because you can always nuke a potato and slap butter and cheese on it and have a meal in less than ten minutes), but Toby's habit was to look through cookbooks and cooking sites, find a recipe he wanted to do, go to the store and get exactly the amount of ingredients called for, come home and cook it, then consume it. His basic don't-want-to-eat-out thing was frozen pizzas.

When we moved in together, the result was a terrible mashup and not pretty: we'd have potatoes on hand because I MUST HAVE POTATOES IN THE HOUSE but Toby doesn't care that much for them so we never ate them, so they'd go bad and start growing, and we'd have frozen pizza but I don't eat that much pizza due to lactose intolerance (and not liking it reheated in the microwave at work for lunch), but it wouldn't get eaten either, and so on.

Our local grocery store doesn't sell spices in bulk, so we have to drive 20 minutes to the oofier grocery store for small amounts or to the spice-and-chilis specialty store for larger amounts* but the principle holds up!

* We did the thing where you forget you bought something and buy it again there. With bay leaves. In what seems like industrial-sized quantities. WE WILL NEVER RUN OUT OF BAY LEAVES EVER AGAIN.

I haven't read the article and I hate it already. (1) There is only one restaurant that delivers to our house; it's a pizzeria, and I now have a life-threatening dairy allergy. (2) If I want to order that "excellent pad thai", someone has to drive back into town to get it; that's a 20 minute round trip, so I'm already halfway through the cooking time of that recipe, plus there's the cost of the gas to get there. (3) Feeding a family of four on restaurant food is absurdly expensive.

Even if we move back inside the city limits, our delivery options are still just pizza, subs, and budget Chinese. None of the decent restaurants in town deliver.

Limited budgets, limited options, and food allergies are facts of life for TONS of people. Thank god for easy recipes.

There was a lot in the article I disagreed with, but the author's point was not that we should all eat out, but that so many of the recipes and cookbooks that are touted as "easy" these days are actually not easy and are very work-intensive.

Yeah, I thought the writer made some good points about how so-called "easy" recipes/cookbooks are often not, but that example just seemed ridiculous to me because jfc, if you're going to cook Asian food, maybe keep some fish sauce on hand?

Food and menu planning for the week is part of how we (we as a couple) run our lives. We've been doing it for so long that I can't remember doing it differently; it's always a mild shock to be reminded that not everyone does this, or even wants to organise their live this way. And my take on that article was "love, you need a different cookbook"

She does seem to have forgotten that there is such a thing as a pantry, and that one can keep it stocked with the essentials. And doesn't quite seem to get that yes, shopping with kids is a hassle and will inevitably lead to meltdowns and running around pulling stuff off the shelf, but is actually something she should use to teach her child, "this is a grocery store, this is where you buy food, this is how we behave in the store." And I say inevitably not because I think she has bad parenting skills, but because that's what kids do.They get bored and fussy. They get excited and want to buy All The Toys in the toy aisle, and pitch a fit when Mom says no. They explore the power of their bodies by picking things up, and sometimes realize too late they miscalculated. This is part of being a kid and it's important, and the lessons of how to behave are important too. It's something that I understand she doesn't want to deal with after work (I've been known to toss some Ramen on the stove after a long day, although I do jazz it up some with meat, egg and veggies) but it can be a valuable chance to introduce her kid to the world of food.

That said, there is some point to what she said - I have seen a number of "quick and easy" recipes that are only quick if you are a pro who can chop an onion in 2.5 seconds and only easy if you have been formally taught. There are ingredients lists that have foods of a sort you can only get around here by driving 60 miles into the Big City, and may not use in a recipe again for months or years.

I have a patron we call Recipe Lady. She's older, and has some disabilities that make it hard for her to get around or use a computer (and impossible for me to teachher to use it - I tried!) As far as we can tell, she spends all day watching cooking shows. There have been times when she has come in looking for these recipes, and I have told her, "You don't want this recipe, you aren't going to be able to find these recipes without going to Savannah or Augusta, and you won't be able to afford them if you find them." I mean, yes, I know you can substitute saffron, for example, with turmeric without screwing up the taste and color too much, but you do too many substitutions like that, and what you get isn't the actual dish, it's something vaguely inspired by the dish. Or the ingredients list is a page and a half long - she's a home cook, she's not going to spend all that time shopping, chopping, blending and pureeing just for one dish, especially not when a lot of what the recipe asks for are just little bits of things that come in larger quantities and won't last until whenever she needs them again.

She also forgets that food services are not evenly distributed; if I want food delivered to my door, I have the choice of Dominos pizza or regrettable curry, either of which will probably take around 40 minutes to arrive. Not cooking (even if it's just heating up ready meals) is not really an option around here, which I imagine is also true most places in the US outside of urban centres.

I do however agree with her general point that "easy" foodie cookbooks are often wildly unrealistic (Jamie, I'm Looking at YOU). However, her assert still that truly simple, quick day to day cooking isn't possible to package and sell in commercial cookbook form completely overlooks the fact that one of the best selling cookbook series over here is still Delia Smith's How To Cook, which famously starts with boiling eggs...