We made play dough today.

[conuly]

I couldn't find the boughten play-doh, so we made our own. Scented it with a little bit of rose water. There's something viscerally good about seeing children playing with undyed play dough, and knowing that you did that yourself. It smells so... wholesome, it really does. Like the store bought kind, but moreso.

Play dough is really easy - just about two parts flour to one part water, and as much salt as you think it needs. I always have it too sticky like that, so I keep adding flour until it's right. Takes about five minutes of my life - less if I make the kids do it, and they think it's fun.

It's like cakes all over again. So many things we buy as a matter of course, we assume make our lives easier. And I guess they do, sorta - but it turns out that the homemade replacements aren't actually that difficult to make, or even that time-consuming.

I was reading a review on Amazon.com about a cookbook, and somebody commented that parts of it were "too time-consuming" because she's a mother of a pre-schooler, so she substitutes (this is her example) canned beans for dried. I didn't get it. From where I'm sitting, soaking the beans is the easiest part of cooking! Sure, it takes several hours, but you don't need to be there. You don't even need to be awake. Just put some water over the beans and go to bed, and by tomorrow they'll be ready to cook. They're healthier that way, and cheaper, too, and it's so easy. I suppose if you start cooking every day by looking in the fridge and seeing what you haven't run out of yet, it makes sense, but that costs more money and time to do, and stress as well.

I was inspired, after the play dough, to look up some recipes for glue, for paint. Why, it's easy to make glue, and not that hard to make paint that'll stand up to the needs of a very young child. (It's not like your very young child is Picasso and needs good quality art supplies just to make a mess on the table, right?)

I read just the other day an excerpt from an old cookbook, preaching frugality. It is the height of waste, I was told, to buy vinegar. One should buy some vinegar once, and then just keep topping it off with this and that - old cider, sour beer, whatever. It sounds so simple, but who makes their own vinegar now? Or stock - why do we buy stocks? What could be easier than dumping your vegetable garbage and bones in a pot and watching TV for a few hours?

Our garden last year was so simple, we didn't touch it, and we had fresh veggies all summer and into fall.

What else is there that's really just so easy to do, that people generally don't do? And why don't we? I appreciate that people don't know how, but why don't people know how, or think of it?

Edit: To be clear, since I don't think I was, I don't mean "This way is better than that way" except for tangible things - these things are easier than they're portrayed (even if they're not totally easy), and they do save money.

I mean, more along the lines of "Why don't people see these as options? Why don't they know these options exist?" It's one thing to know your choices and make an informed choice to do this or that because it's easier for you. It's totally different to make your choice because you think something is impossible for you when it's not, or to not even make your choice because you don't realize you have one.

So like, to be specific, planning meals in advance *is* cheaper. But if it can't work for you, or if it's not a priority, that's your business. This is me, totally not caring (except if you're my mom, in which case, I really wish you'd stop buying food that looks good now, but that never gets made and goes bad in the fridge or freezer) because it's not my concern at all.

*deep breath*

I'm running off now.

Comments

[leora.livejournal.com]

Dried beans take more than that. You have to check over all of them to make sure they're safe to eat, because you don't get that guarantee as you do with canned ones. You also need to rinse them before soaking, although that isn't hard.

Stock would require having a lot of space to make it. We have only two burners, if we're using one up for a long time making stock, that's only one for actually cooking if someone is hungry, although I do have a crockpot. However, I do not regularly have materials from which to make stock. And when I do make stock, I generally have to buy fresh stuff to make it with, which somewhat defeats the savings part of it.

[conuly]

which somewhat defeats the savings part of it.

At least it's still yummy?

Can you make your stock in your crockpot, saving a burner?

And this family regularly makes beans. Without rinsing, and with a minimum of checking for foreign particles. Nobody has died yet, though I live most days with my fingers crossed (admittedly, because we're working on letters still, and I spend a lot of time asking people to "make an r with their fingers").

[griffen.livejournal.com]

didn't get it. From where I'm sitting, soaking the beans is the easiest part of cooking! Sure, it takes several hours, but you don't need to be there. You don't even need to be awake. Just put some water over the beans and go to bed, and by tomorrow they'll be ready to cook. They're healthier that way, and cheaper, too, and it's so easy. I suppose if you start cooking every day by looking in the fridge and seeing what you haven't run out of yet, it makes sense, but that costs more money and time to do, and stress as well.

Because of the vagaries of our digestive systems, Danny and I can't just plan ahead that way. There may be days where neither of us can tolerate beans. Pre-prep is almost nonexistent in this house because from day to day, what either of us can handle can change.

So for me, it's not easy to pre-plan anything mealwise. It's easier to have a set of recipes that work, involving different ingredients, and check with him before cooking any of them to make sure both of us can still handle them in an hour. A day is too far in advance to plan.

[conuly]

You're not typical in that respect though, are you? I can honestly say that your situation would never have occurred to me as a possibility, and I'm guessing that most people don't have that problem.

Though I can imagine it makes life harder for you, as I said.

[rantinan.livejournal.com]

ahahahahahah
Stock... easy???

ahahahahahahahahah

ha
ha
oh wow.

Stock is reasonably easy IF you have
1) giant pot
2) stove large enough to heat giant pot eavenly.
3) the sort of mind that is quite happy to get up and stir/season/salt/ check every 5-10 minutes.
once the stock is established, it can be maintained very easily and with low maintence, but it is that first batch that's the tricky part. You also need to be aware that most people completly balls up their stock the first few times they try to make it, which is espensive, messy and insanely smelly. Realy. In 5 years working in profesional cooking, nothing, not even the smell of a box of fish that was left out in the sun came close to the day that a new aprentice had the stock at the wrong temptreturs for the wrong times and ended up with a pot of semi stewed, semi rendederd rotten meat scraps.
I can make proper stocks. I however have a nasty electric stove, and nothing approaching a spare half a day to get one going. Yes I buy pre made ones. Yes its lazy. In terms of cost of running the stove, it comes out cheaper, let alone the ingredients.

Vinigear is worse. In the days where you could top up your own, beer wasn't full of the sorts of artifical preservitives it is now. Also, i dunno bout prices in the USA, but here your clasic white and brown vinigear costs a couple of bucks for a half liter. Beer is a lot more expensive than that. Mabye if this was an age where everyone drank ale with their meals and slops were common, it would be worth doing.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Make your own beer. For $5 of malt, some homegrown herbs, $1 of yeast, I make a gallon of beer. Use the dregs for the yeast next time and buy malt, I get a gallon for $5. And this is quality beer, not that nasty-ass "lager" that Coors and the other macrobastards fob off as beer.

Vinegar is easy. Homemade cider, let it sit, acetobacter will usually happen.

[conuly]

*shrugs*

I've never had trouble making stock, as long as I remember that most people don't like things as seasoned as I do. And if I'm cooking upstairs, it's on an electric stove, and I certainly am too lazy to get up and check it very often.

I don't do it that much, but that's because we don't *use* stock that much, and don't really have a good storage system for it, unless I really boil it down and freeze it.

As for beer - why don't we make our own beers, then? Seriously - why not? Or buy from local brewers who don't have to use a zillion preservatives? What happened to these local options? It's all the same problem together, it seems.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Making clothes. My work clothes are all homemade from $1/yard fabric, since I wear something closely resembling scrubs and they don't need to fit like a glove. (My sewing skillz are good but not bespoke-seamstress level.)

Mending clothes. How many times have I found stunningly expensive (pure silk, etc.) clothes discarded to Goodwill with missing buttons? For the cost of a card of buttons, I had a new blouse. I also darn socks, which with prices these days I don't know how anyone can afford NOT to.

[conuly]

Oh, I always mean to learn to darn socks. But usually, I'm so happy to *find* socks, I don't worry about the holes. If they're that bad, I switch them to the other feet so my toes don't poke through anymore.

[rantinan.livejournal.com]

heheh. Sock darning. You win super kudos points for that.

[rantinan.livejournal.com]

Ahh, now i see what you were tryign to get to.
I suspect that the reason peopel dont even relaise the option exists any more is because they have not real been exposed to it. Todays 30 year olds probably grew up in households where traditional (read time expensive) cooking was already dying due to the ever increasing number of dual income families. All I have to do is compare myself to my mother and my grandmother. My grandmother baked every week. My mother baked once a month. I bake once a year if im lucky, and I've had the professional cooking experinece, unlike most of my friends my age or younger.
Every one of my grandmothers friends could bake
about 75% of my mothers friends can
Only myself and one other person I know my age can bake, and most of our friends have expressed no interest in it at all.
As a society we are narrowing our options, our food diversity, and our diets, and I don't like it. I don't like it at all.

[conuly]

But you know what? It still doesn't make sense. My sister and my brother-in-law both get home rather late - and they both make real meals from scratch most days. Mostly him, sometimes her, once a week me. And they have canned beans, but when my sister cooks (and she gets home later than he does) she is sure to soak her own. I'm finding these things don't take quite as long as they're perceived to, which is - surprising. They take more time than just buying food, yeah, but they aren't the agonies of time that people would have you believe they are!

I guess our perceptions are messed up, again, because we don't *know*. We say "Well, I know my mom didn't do such-and-fuch because she was busy working, so therefore it really takes so-and-so many hours" - and maybe it only takes half as long as we think, but we don't know, because our mom and dad and whoever never did whatever it is when we were young!

[conuly]

Though if they choose not to make meals, again, that's their business. At least they've done it often enough to know what it actually entails, instead of thinking "Wow, another night, I have to slave over a hot stove..." all the time, when maybe it's not that hard.

[jedirita.livejournal.com]

It's probably due to our culture of consumerism. We're just accustomed to purchasing things.

I think I ought to come up with a list of 15 ingredients, and then come up with an array of recipes I can make with those ingredients. Hmmm. Do you have any suggestions of what those 15 ingredients should be?

[conuly]

Rice. Rice is a staple part of our diet over here (and they always make too much - I should talk to Jenn and 'dul about that). We have chicken and rice; beans and rice; chicken, beans, and rice; fish and rice; fish, beans, and rice; rice and rice; rice, rice, beans, and rice; chicken, rice, beans, rice, rice, and rice... you get my drift. And if we had spam, I'm sure it'd find its way into my litany somehow :)

Beans - canned or dried. Dried beans are a heck of a lot cheaper, but you *do* need to plan to use them.

My sister always has a ton of canned tomatoes, and they find their way into most things - pasta sauce (really easy to make, and I bet you didn't know that), beans, whatever.

Potatoes. They're not the most healthful of root veggies, but they keep, and they can be added to anything to bulk it out. Sweet potatoes are better for your health, but they take longer to cook, I find.

Onions and garlic. EVERYTHING ultimately is improved with onions and garlic.

I'll think on it some more, if you like. You'll note I'm only listing things that keep. Things that get used up, unless you love them, you don't really want to just keep on hand. Buy them as you need them, and only as much as you'll use, you know that.

[rantinan.livejournal.com]

Rice. I second this motion.\
Eggs. Incredibly versitle, nutrious &C.
Pick a green vegitable I like peas, becasue of hte versitility. My favorite sort is snowpeas, which is a cop out since you shouldnt cook em, just wash em and use for garnish, greens, &C
Cheese. there are 10 zillion types of real chese out there. I recomend a good vintage chedder for learning with, it has a nice sharp taste and a firm texture. might be to strong for kids tho Mozzeralla is also wonderfull to work with, not jsu shreadedo n pizza
Beef. In different places in the world, different cuts of beef have different popularities. so prices, cuts, and similar vary wildly. there are inumerable specalities you can look up. Beef is one of the more universaly available meats, and so is worth learning.
A fish. If oyu live in a costal area, it;s a crime not to know how to prepare fish. I hate most salt water fish, but i still know quite a few very solid recipies.
Chili. IMNSHO the absolutely most fantastic spice on the planet. dried and groud, fresh, pickeld, preserved, seeded or unseeded, salted, roasted, and in several hundred varieties (although only expect to be able to find 2 or three unless you live in a country where it is worshiped)
Salt and pepper. Classics for a reason. learn their secreats. master tasty food.
An oil. Butter, peanut oil, oliveoil, or similar. make your choice and learn to use it. pay for something good, not the random "vegitable oil" crap. Once you perfect one source of greasey goodness, you will be able to use lots of others. Even a teaspoon in the rightplace can have an amazing effect on foods.
Something unique to where you live. For obvious reasons
Something awesome from far away. Something i like to use in stews is south african Biltong (dried, spiced beef). I have to buy it from an import delictessian, and it costs, but is it worth it? yes. by trying out ingredients form other culturs than your own, you expose yourself to otherstyles, and broaden your understanding of food.
Pork, or another pig product. Unless you have religeous reagons agisnt it, it;s even more common than beef, and usualy a bit cheaper. learn to use it both with an without fat. a lot of people who "dont like pork" actualy dont like the traditional euro high fat cuts. Butterfly medelions.
Chicken. Versitle food. Try to use freerange, tougher, but it has flavour.
beans. Boil em, fry em, roast em, refry em, soup em. Hundreds of varieties. cheap as hell.
Noodles. So many varieties, each wiht their individual uses.
Boquet garni. A combination of eurpoen spices. an excelent starting point for beginners.
this is the sort of thing i use in my kitchen all the time.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Dried beans take more than that. You have to check over all of them to make sure they're safe to eat, because you don't get that guarantee as you do with canned ones. You also need to rinse them before soaking, although that isn't hard.

Stock would require having a lot of space to make it. We have only two burners, if we're using one up for a long time making stock, that's only one for actually cooking if someone is hungry, although I do have a crockpot. However, I do not regularly have materials from which to make stock. And when I do make stock, I generally have to buy fresh stuff to make it with, which somewhat defeats the savings part of it.

[conuly]

which somewhat defeats the savings part of it.

At least it's still yummy?

Can you make your stock in your crockpot, saving a burner?

And this family regularly makes beans. Without rinsing, and with a minimum of checking for foreign particles. Nobody has died yet, though I live most days with my fingers crossed (admittedly, because we're working on letters still, and I spend a lot of time asking people to "make an r with their fingers").

[griffen.livejournal.com]

didn't get it. From where I'm sitting, soaking the beans is the easiest part of cooking! Sure, it takes several hours, but you don't need to be there. You don't even need to be awake. Just put some water over the beans and go to bed, and by tomorrow they'll be ready to cook. They're healthier that way, and cheaper, too, and it's so easy. I suppose if you start cooking every day by looking in the fridge and seeing what you haven't run out of yet, it makes sense, but that costs more money and time to do, and stress as well.

Because of the vagaries of our digestive systems, Danny and I can't just plan ahead that way. There may be days where neither of us can tolerate beans. Pre-prep is almost nonexistent in this house because from day to day, what either of us can handle can change.

So for me, it's not easy to pre-plan anything mealwise. It's easier to have a set of recipes that work, involving different ingredients, and check with him before cooking any of them to make sure both of us can still handle them in an hour. A day is too far in advance to plan.

[conuly]

You're not typical in that respect though, are you? I can honestly say that your situation would never have occurred to me as a possibility, and I'm guessing that most people don't have that problem.

Though I can imagine it makes life harder for you, as I said.

[rantinan.livejournal.com]

ahahahahahah
Stock... easy???

ahahahahahahahahah

ha
ha
oh wow.

Stock is reasonably easy IF you have
1) giant pot
2) stove large enough to heat giant pot eavenly.
3) the sort of mind that is quite happy to get up and stir/season/salt/ check every 5-10 minutes.
once the stock is established, it can be maintained very easily and with low maintence, but it is that first batch that's the tricky part. You also need to be aware that most people completly balls up their stock the first few times they try to make it, which is espensive, messy and insanely smelly. Realy. In 5 years working in profesional cooking, nothing, not even the smell of a box of fish that was left out in the sun came close to the day that a new aprentice had the stock at the wrong temptreturs for the wrong times and ended up with a pot of semi stewed, semi rendederd rotten meat scraps.
I can make proper stocks. I however have a nasty electric stove, and nothing approaching a spare half a day to get one going. Yes I buy pre made ones. Yes its lazy. In terms of cost of running the stove, it comes out cheaper, let alone the ingredients.

Vinigear is worse. In the days where you could top up your own, beer wasn't full of the sorts of artifical preservitives it is now. Also, i dunno bout prices in the USA, but here your clasic white and brown vinigear costs a couple of bucks for a half liter. Beer is a lot more expensive than that. Mabye if this was an age where everyone drank ale with their meals and slops were common, it would be worth doing.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Make your own beer. For $5 of malt, some homegrown herbs, $1 of yeast, I make a gallon of beer. Use the dregs for the yeast next time and buy malt, I get a gallon for $5. And this is quality beer, not that nasty-ass "lager" that Coors and the other macrobastards fob off as beer.

Vinegar is easy. Homemade cider, let it sit, acetobacter will usually happen.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Making clothes. My work clothes are all homemade from $1/yard fabric, since I wear something closely resembling scrubs and they don't need to fit like a glove. (My sewing skillz are good but not bespoke-seamstress level.)

Mending clothes. How many times have I found stunningly expensive (pure silk, etc.) clothes discarded to Goodwill with missing buttons? For the cost of a card of buttons, I had a new blouse. I also darn socks, which with prices these days I don't know how anyone can afford NOT to.

[conuly]

Oh, I always mean to learn to darn socks. But usually, I'm so happy to *find* socks, I don't worry about the holes. If they're that bad, I switch them to the other feet so my toes don't poke through anymore.

[rantinan.livejournal.com]

Ahh, now i see what you were tryign to get to.
I suspect that the reason peopel dont even relaise the option exists any more is because they have not real been exposed to it. Todays 30 year olds probably grew up in households where traditional (read time expensive) cooking was already dying due to the ever increasing number of dual income families. All I have to do is compare myself to my mother and my grandmother. My grandmother baked every week. My mother baked once a month. I bake once a year if im lucky, and I've had the professional cooking experinece, unlike most of my friends my age or younger.
Every one of my grandmothers friends could bake
about 75% of my mothers friends can
Only myself and one other person I know my age can bake, and most of our friends have expressed no interest in it at all.
As a society we are narrowing our options, our food diversity, and our diets, and I don't like it. I don't like it at all.

[conuly]

But you know what? It still doesn't make sense. My sister and my brother-in-law both get home rather late - and they both make real meals from scratch most days. Mostly him, sometimes her, once a week me. And they have canned beans, but when my sister cooks (and she gets home later than he does) she is sure to soak her own. I'm finding these things don't take quite as long as they're perceived to, which is - surprising. They take more time than just buying food, yeah, but they aren't the agonies of time that people would have you believe they are!

I guess our perceptions are messed up, again, because we don't *know*. We say "Well, I know my mom didn't do such-and-fuch because she was busy working, so therefore it really takes so-and-so many hours" - and maybe it only takes half as long as we think, but we don't know, because our mom and dad and whoever never did whatever it is when we were young!

[jedirita.livejournal.com]

It's probably due to our culture of consumerism. We're just accustomed to purchasing things.

I think I ought to come up with a list of 15 ingredients, and then come up with an array of recipes I can make with those ingredients. Hmmm. Do you have any suggestions of what those 15 ingredients should be?

[conuly]

Rice. Rice is a staple part of our diet over here (and they always make too much - I should talk to Jenn and 'dul about that). We have chicken and rice; beans and rice; chicken, beans, and rice; fish and rice; fish, beans, and rice; rice and rice; rice, rice, beans, and rice; chicken, rice, beans, rice, rice, and rice... you get my drift. And if we had spam, I'm sure it'd find its way into my litany somehow :)

Beans - canned or dried. Dried beans are a heck of a lot cheaper, but you *do* need to plan to use them.

My sister always has a ton of canned tomatoes, and they find their way into most things - pasta sauce (really easy to make, and I bet you didn't know that), beans, whatever.

Potatoes. They're not the most healthful of root veggies, but they keep, and they can be added to anything to bulk it out. Sweet potatoes are better for your health, but they take longer to cook, I find.

Onions and garlic. EVERYTHING ultimately is improved with onions and garlic.

I'll think on it some more, if you like. You'll note I'm only listing things that keep. Things that get used up, unless you love them, you don't really want to just keep on hand. Buy them as you need them, and only as much as you'll use, you know that.