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

[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]

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.

[rantinan.livejournal.com]

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.

[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.

[rantinan.livejournal.com]

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.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

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.

[rantinan.livejournal.com]

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?

[marveen.livejournal.com]

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.