conuly | We made play dough today.

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.

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").

Yes, I can make it in the crockpot, then it just takes up counter space. And it is yummy. But not yummier than some of the store bought soups. So, it's a fair bit of work, buying of stuff, washing of stuff, chopping of stuff, for not much benefit.

But you know, yeah?

I'm getting all tangenty, and I don't mean to. My point is just - so many people don't even think they really have the option to make stock at all, because they think it's harder than it is, and figure they don't know how to do it, and it's too hard to learn. So they can't make the choice "Do I buy stock or make it or work around?" because they don't know they have the option to make stock if they want. They can't do a cost-benefit analysis because they don't even really know what the costs are.

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.

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.

Ever had a picky-eater child? Or adult? It's a lot more common than it seems.

That's true. I usually can plan ahead, but it's not uncommon for me to have a day where a particular type of food just turns my stomach or my body seems to need a particular food. So, speed can be of use.

Not usually picky where something's okay one day, and then terrible the next, not that I know in person, adult or child.

Though, as a kid, I had the worst time with bananas. I'd either gorge myself on them, or (usually right after my parents caved and bought a ton just for me) be totally sickened by the though of them... probably because they were most of what I'd eaten for the past few weeks.

But it was only bananas.

I'm not criticizing you for the problems you've got. You've got to work around it however it works for you. But I don't think most people *do* have that problem in that severity. (Now I want to go out and poll some several billion people to prove my point. I'm thinking that's a bad idea, though, and very impractical, and not very mature, and I'm sorry.)

At any rate, this isn't actually the topic I meant to be on, and I didn't mean to offend you (or anybody) or even judge anybody. I just meant to ask why many people don't know about their choices, not why anybody deliberately makes a choice they do.

People have built up activities like washing cloth pads, or soaking beans, or baking cake, or (I'm trying to think of things I've done recently, you understand, so I can compare them properly to my pre-existing conceptions) making play-dough into tasks of Sisyphean proportions! So they aren't making a fair decision because they don't really understand how hard this or that is - they just think they do, without even trying it. Or they don't know how to do it at all, so they assume it must be difficult - if it wasn't, everybody would know how!

And you can't make a choice if you don't know you have a choice, right?

You choose to use canned beans because you know planning meals in advance enough to soak beans isn't going to work for you. People without that problem, however, might choose to use canned beans because "Wow, soaking beans is hard" (which I've actually seen written, though usually in more words), and it's really a minimum of effort. Their choice is based on a misconception, instead of something they know about themselves.

And I like people to have choices. Choices are good things, even if you ultimately choose something just the opposite of what I would choose.

Hell, I *WAS* a picky eater as a child. And I ate what I was given or I went hungry.

I'll second Conuly's point that most pickiness that I've encountered is a steady state, not an on-again-off-again phenomenon. I'd also expect a mature adult to be able to discuss tomorrow's menu in a reasonable manner, no matter how picky they are. (Children get less leeway, but there's still a little room for discussion.)

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.

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.

You are just a veritable font of knowledge, you know. I'm not even saying useless like I normally would in that phrase, because I'm not thinking it.

I agree with you totaly on the superiority of homebrew. My appartment lacks the space to make it, but it is undeniably infinately superior to 99% of what you ight buy in a bottleo, although living as I do in australia there are some pritty decent beers available.

*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.

I have homebrewed, although i don't at the moment, due to lack of space.
I've also made plum wine with nothing more than a strainer, a pot, a funnel, and a couple of old gallon jugs. Powerfull enough to knock the socks off a person the next state over that was.
These days when I drink, it's usualy mountin goat, which is brewed 10 blocks away from where I live. There is no dregs, cause I drain the bottle ;) Yum!
In Australia, local beer varieties are plentiful, cheap, and good. Typical of a nation of total pissheads.

I'll point out that I probably have less space than you do (I live in a 25x7 trailer, with a real paucity of storage areas), and my brewing equipment on my last batch consisted literally of a stockpot, the strainer, a glass gallon jar (widemouthed), the racking cane/siphon hose assembly, and the bottles/caps to put it all in once it was done. (The bottles age behind my shoes in the closet, next to my homemade wines.)

BTW, I'm doing malt-extract brews, because I seriously do NOT have the space to do full-grain mashing.

I shold explain further. If it was just me I'd be doing it. But my partner is actualy alergic to airborne yeasts and alchol fumes, which meens i cant do it in the space i have without severely discomforting her. WHich meens i cant do it.

Now if i had a shead.

as for the non hoped malt extract ale, I am intrigued by this process ,and would like to subscribe to your newsletter :P
I'm not familar wiht the particular process, have any good links you would like to share?

Oh, and I should add that I live in the very Mecca of U.S. microbrews, so local beer is also plentiful/cheap/good here. Still, I brew because you can make so much that would be unmarketable for the commercial brewer.

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.

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.

And in Ma Kettle's words, it's "real quietin' work".

http://www.ehow.com/how_648_darn-sock.html has a short description of how to darn. I'll add that before I had handspun readily available, I used baby yarn for its fine weight. The lightbulb is also the most convenient to find for your first attempt, but you can indeed buy specialized "darning eggs" or "mushrooms" (http://www.halcyonyarn.com/knitandcrochet.html ) to make things easier.

One rare refinement my antique darning spindle (from my grandmother) has is a metal collar to hold your sock taut while you darn. If you use a lightbulb, you can put a rubber band around the neck of the bulb to hold the fabric.

How weird. None of your recent comments showed up on my comments page.

Incidentally, I spoke to my mother about sock-darning (well, she brought it up), and she said that "nowadays, it's more expensive to darn socks than to buy new", which may be true given the cheap-ass type of socks she favors.

But I thought that was an odd thing to say, since I think I know you well enough to know you wouldn't go on darning socks if it wasn't the cheaper option.

Let's run the numbers just so you can tell her how wrong she is. :-D

The darning egg I linked to above is $8.95. Mine happened to be a free gift from my grandmother. I also have one that I bought at a garage sale for $3. Averaging these prices, let's say four dollars for the darning tool (and that's erring on the generous side, since I darned socks for years with only the aforementioned lightbulb).

A pack of multiuse needles can be had for $.99 at every supermarket I've ever been in.

Yarn...ah, now you have to choose. I'm going to err on the generous side again and cite my own cost ($1/ounce for carded wool roving, which I then spin into yarn) as well as that of a high-end wool yarn from Knitpicks dot com (http://www.knitpicks.com): their Telemark 100% wool sportweight is $1.99 per ball for 103 yards. This works out to roughly two cents per yard of yarn. (If you buy bargain-barn acrylic, it's MUCH, much cheaper, probably like one-tenth of a cent per yard.)

SO, amortize the $4 and the 99 cents over a lifetime of socks and it gets pretty damned cheap. The only non-amortized cost is the yarn. It takes two or three yards (depending on the size of the hole) to darn one hole in one sock....say six cents' worth of yarn. Call it a quarter to include amortized costs of needle and darning thingy.

My favorite socks are $6 a pair to buy.

I think it's cheaper to darn, what do you think?

She said something about the high cost of darning wool, which made little sense to me. Surely, I thought, you can substitute, say, another type of yarn when it's that or go without socks?

For one thing, I've never heard of "darning wool". For another thing, I think she may be committing the common error of counting initial outlay rather than true cost. (In my itemized list above, the initial outlay would be $1.99 for the ball of yarn, but the true cost is 6 cents, since only three yards or so is used for each darn.)

Thank you, that's pretty much what I figured. But I won't tell her - honestly, some arguments are not worth having.

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

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.

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!

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.

It makes no sence? i agree with you. I love cooking for my family. I like to cook (as 5 years doing it profesisonaly shold show.. i gave up because of my health)
But sence or not, most people my age seem to have been indoctrinated into a Its hard work mentality.
NO it;s hard work to pound out 250 plated meals in 3 hours. one is pritty easy, and hwen i cook, i cook large batches of stuff that results in simple 5 minute leftover re heats for days afterwards.
NO i dont know why the perception of dificutly exists. but theres a bunch of people making a hooge profit off it

I hear you--I've worked in a commercial kitchen as well. And, oddly enough, I cook for myself the same way you do: I make big batches on my days off and then reheat them the rest of the week.

I think I once posted about frugal desserts and used as my example a blackberry cobbler made with a Jiffy cake mix ($.49), one egg ($.12), 1/2 cup sugar ($.08), and free blackberries from every damn where since Himalayan blackberry vines are endemic to the area. Serves six.

Yum. That sounds fantastic.

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?

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.

Yes, I was thinking random meats and vegetables wouldn't be on the list of 15. That would be the part where I stop at the store to pick up a random meat and vegetable(s) to be cooked in the 15 ingredients.

It's probably not that hard. Like stir fry. You can stir fry just about anything together. Toss in some oyster sauce, some soy sauce and sesame oil with a bit of cornstarch, and you're good to go.

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.

Good list!

I have digestive problems with pork, which is distressing, since I love ham, sausage & bacon. (A nicely prepared pork chop is lovely as well, but while I may like it, it doesn't like me.)

I agree with much of your list. (Where do you live, anyway? There's a high enough Hispanic population around here that I can choose from a dozen different varieties of chilies just at Safeway, with five or six fresh, three or four dried and many more packaged preground.)

And I adore peas, especially cooked with butter & green onions.

I'm in Australia. I can get great chinese variety localy, but centeral american spices are thin on the ground. SO i substutite thai spicings instead. Preserved, Minced chilis with honey and vinegar is good once you work out ways of rolling with the sweetness instead of fighting it. And easy to obtain.
But yeah, i have 2-3 fresh, 1-2 preserved, and 2 dried varieties of chilli in my local supermarket. Not enough

Ah i see the confusion. I should have said 1 or 2 varities of FRESH chilli. My apologies. I'm sorry to hear about your problems with prok, have you tried smoked turky or smoked beef instead of bacon?

For sausages, turkey and beef pretty much have it covered*, but bacon....the "beef bacon" I bought was just nasty (ground & formed, with cartilage and little bony bits in it, yuggh), and "turkey bacon" isn't even close.

*Can you get beef summer sausage down there? It's a wonderful "substitute" for pork sausage that's even better.