My favorite way to keep grains, beans and herbs is labeled and stored in glass jars ranging in size from gallon to 1/2 pints. These same items, if stored in boxes or plastic bags, defy functional organization...
Yeah, and you never know when you might reach for rosemary and use cilantro instead.
Remember, if you’re hungry right now, it is not the time to start washing rice. Order a pizza for dinner and while you’re waiting for it to arrive, then determine tomorrow’s main dish.
Seriously? How long does it take for this woman to cook rice? 5 hours? I have never EVER had a hungry day when it took me more than 20 minutes to put a well balanced rice-based dish together from scratch. Such ridiculously pseudo-methodical articles about planning ahead and cooking is what makes simple cooking seem tough to people and encourages junk food consumption.
Cooking is meant to be unplanned, quick, improvisational and fun when you are doing it for yourself and your loved (or even unloved) ones. That is why it's called "cooking" and not "strategizing".
Seriously, I want to know what will make that lady eat my stir-fry... If it is the same thing that will make me eat her bacon-fat boiled dish then we, as a city, country, planet are in trouble. Deep chronic-metabolic disease-induced trouble.
"If I was Inuit, the tribe would have put me on the ice floe years ago..."
Really? they take lack of hair and two left feet that seriously, eh?
HEH! Nice calling of bluffs. The thing is I am not able to relate to the populations I study and their food habits because I CANNOT imagine someone eating 6 McD super macs (or whatever they are called these days) in a day (someone actually did in my study population). I am really worse than Jamie Oliver. I can't relate AT ALL. Every time I look at food pyramid recommendations, I feel like laughing because to ME, it seems an extremely trivial target to get 3 or even 10 fruit/veggie portions a day (I have gone up to 15-18/day). I feel like I am SO out of touch with the populations I want to influence through my research.
For example, I was buying the same bunch of chard as some other woman at Pricerite and struck up a conversation with her about recipes. Both of us were appalled at how the other was about the cook the chard (I was going to stir fry for a minute with garlic and serve it with raw onions, tomatoes, whatever nuts I had and splash a bit of yogurt with spices on it all as a dressing). She was going to boil the chard with bacon fat for a whole 24 hours before it would be fit for consumption.
And I don't even fall in the same "camp" as Jamie Oliver and Julia Child. I am in the academic fruit-pyramid making camp. *shudder* *shudder* at how in the world is preventive epidemiology EVER going to work. :/
OK, I'll call your bluff. if you were Jamie Oliver and you didn't want people to sicken and die of food related illnesses caused by eating fast food, what would you do??
And telling people not to eat animal flesh is not an option. As you said, what inner city population can relate to that?
(e:tinypliny) With respect, do you think your food posts are something that the inner city population can relate to? Gor Blimey, substituting apple sauce for butter?? That's just like Jamie Oliver telling people that a fruit smoothie is a substitute for a milk shake.
But that's just me, I'm old, fat, bald, and I can't dance. If I was Inuit, the tribe would have put me on the ice floe years ago. So to echo Neil Young, take my advice, don't listen to me.
Underlying all this eating-healthy/eating-junk culture is a deep-rooted class-divide. If I can have Jamie Oliver shop with a few of the people he ridicules, buy from a similar supermarket, stick to the same budgets and time-tables and cook with them when they have the time, then I'd see it as a sort of promising experiment. I don't see him taking this all-encompassing approach that I think has more potential than just pointing out what's wrong with "them".
It's all about attitude. If you don't play in the same chord as the rest of the population, you cannot be in tune and cannot find what is really wrong with the song. In other words, you can't just say that you are better than the rest of the population and "show" them how you are "better" than them. That is not leading by example. That is just setting an unrealistic target that the population can never hope to reach or even WANT to reach. Because your finger-pointing has turned them off. You see, the Julia Childs of the world show off cooking as some sort of high-priestess-accomplished-complicated-art and the Jamie Olivers of the world scoff at the people because "they can't even do this!?" What sort of messages are these two camps sending?
Cooking is for freaks and snobs who are just not one of us?
This gradual global migration to a fast food eat-out culture is a multilevel multicausal problem. But media environment and social structures play a substantial role in propagating the problem...
PS: Jamie Oliver also has a personal herb garden out of which he takes fresh herbs and cooks them in his 30 min meals. What inner-city population can relate to that?
(e:tinypliny) - hmmm, apparently you didn't skip school the day mindreading was taught. I was going to ask you about Jamie Olivier I liked the bloke since back in the day when he had his band on his show. and I think his heart in the right place. What is it about his attitude that stinks for you? Are you a closet fan of Wendy McDonald? Of which he is a sworn enemy?
Along with that bloody wanker Gordon Ramsey, Oliver wants people to cook quick healthy and tasty meals instead of eating fast food. And just like Paul McCartney asked about "filling the world with with silly lovesongs" what's wrong with that?
Ugh.. I really need to stop ranting today. Cooking and eating and food gets me worked up too much. heh
I really like his 30 minute endeavors, but he could do with a little humility, respect for others and general awareness of why a population cannot be changed by bullying alone.
Jamie Oliver is no better btw. His attitude stinks.
Yeah - that's true. I guess I am not fighting the frogs or even that woman really. I am just a trifle... no make that VERY annoyed that the net is strewn with these self-appointed "culinary royalty" who propagate the general feeling that cooking is not for everyone and that it requires more effort and time than say, ordering a pizza and waiting for it to be delivered. I HATE the fact that julia child-esque minions are so influential and dominate public opinion of cooking as a sort of precise snob-chemistry.
Did you know, for instance that the great julia child actually felt that julie (or julie and julia fame) was "demeaning" her "efforts" and "achievement" at cooking when she did her 1-year project? I mean who are these snotty hags anyway? Why are they dictating (either consciously or subconsciouly) and influencing the populations perceptions on cooking? I wonder sometimes if this gradual move away from simple kitchen cooking to increasing consumption of fast food here and elsewhere across the pond is partially the doing of these culinary monsters...
I spend a lot of time talking with random people on the street and a majority feel that cooking is time consuming. I lead a pretty crazy life, sometime I work 18+ a day and STILL have time to quickly cook something rather than ordering or eating out. But I am not influential. Neither are similar-quick cooks around the world. Why? I think it's because of the self and media-hype built around these julia-childesque dinosaurs... They do a disservice to the mental attitudes of a population when it comes to cooking and eating habits.... :/
Your point about dried legumes is very valid. What I was trying to say that is that "that woman" always pre-soaks her legumes (no matter what your (and general) culinary wisdom might say about the wisdom of doing so). If she has a pre-soak mindset, she can never be spontaneous.
No dice. I use dried legumes too! Not all of them take pre-soaking... In fact out of the ~32 kinds that I have cooked with, around 20 or so cook in around 20 minutes in a rice cooker. I don't cook with canned stuff because I don't have a can opener and have a morbid fear of botulism...
Screw the frogs.
I think "that woman" (Monica Lewinsky incognito?) uses dried legumes so she can't spontaneously decide to have rice and beans for example.
Though I have to say that I am not sure that the French culinary world would agree with you about "unplanned, quick, improvisational and fun" cooking no matter who it is for.