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In Remote Alaska, Meal Planning Is Everything

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Re: In Remote Alaska, Meal Planning Is Everything

#121

Post by ghaff »

HWR_14 wrote: post #111
DoughnutHole wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea I'm not sure how someone can claim "$5 for a meal for one" could possibly be cheaper than cooking unless you're deliberately cooking something expensive? Now maybe I'm missing some cultural context for the price of produce in the US but for €5 per person here in Ireland I could make an absolute feast. Say I make a ragu for 4-5 people, here's what my shopping list might look like (checking prices on tesco.ie): - P…

Those prices seem very low for the US (except for the pork). I also see you're leaving out the salt, pepper, olive oil, red wine, Parmesan, and spices/(dried) herbs. Yes, all the things you left out will last for a long time (except the 1/4 bottle of wine) but they are a huge upfront cost for a single meal. Cooking is a financial commitment. I'll also say the first recipe I found suggested 1kg of pork to go with that…

A woman I knew way back when said that when she cooked for her ex-BF at his place, it always cost her a fortune because he had very few pantry staples. You don't need to go crazy but it's probably a few hundred dollars to setup for reasonable cooking from square 1.

Re: In Remote Alaska, Meal Planning Is Everything

#122

Post by galdosdi »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #17
belugacat wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nuance to all of this obviously, as with anything cultural, but in short - yes. Large swaths of the US population have been deprived of food culture for several generations now. There are many exceptions of course - Latino family bbqs in Southern California, or Cajun crawfish boils, are examples of food culture that’s well and alive that I’ve experienced personally. But you also have many Americans for whom…

Yup. Exhibit A, found on this very site [0]: Cooking for one in the US with ingredients that aren’t laced with preservatives is incredibly expensive, especially if you live in a city. I found it to be the case even 6-7 years ago that it was cheaper to eat out every night than it was to cook. I was scratching my head at how so many people in the thread could possibly believe this, until I realized that they’re probabl…

This is so true. If you actually know how to cook (and I just mean the basics that most people, or at least most women knew in the year 1900, nothing fancy) you feel gaslit constantly when you hear people talk about how hard it is to eat nutritiously and affordably.

You can see this with the inflation discussion -- you can tell immediately if someone can cook by if they complain about the current inflation in the context of food or not. If you truly cook based on commodities, it's barely noticable. If you eat out or use mostly processed and premade "ingredients" with big brand names, yeah, it's a lot more expensive.

What corporate america did to US food culture in the 20th century is comparable to the enclosure movement in preindustrial England. There was a common resource that belonged to and was highly valuable to all (cultural knowledge of how to prepare cheap nutritious palatable food from scratch, using time effeciently), and it was destroyed and monopolized by a small group. Crazy as it seems to those on the outside, there are entire generations of families in the USA who have inherited nothing more from their ancestors in terms of food culture than preferences for certain brands.

The irony is there's never been a better time for the every day worker to be able to cook for themselves with limited time and budget, thanks to modern appliances like instant pots, dishwashers, microwaves, and freezers. A homemaker from 1900 would be flabbergasted and overjoyed. What's missing is the operational knowledge and habits.

Re: In Remote Alaska, Meal Planning Is Everything

#123

Post by galdosdi »

granshaw wrote: post #55
ghaff wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your sole metric is price, there is some very cheap takeout out there. And, yes, it may well be as cheap or cheaper than meals in the supermarket freezer section. But while some planning and a little work is needed, stick to cheaper proteins (chicken/pork), vegetables, and things like rice/beans and home cooking, even for one, can be pretty inexpensive and doesn't need to mean eating the same leftover stew for a w…

> I do think a lot of "cooking at home is too expensive" is actually "I don't want to cook at home and would rather just get takeout." Well, yeah, it shouldn’t be a surprise that many don’t like the actual acts of planning, prepping, and cooking, and would rather eat takeout everyday if it was nutritious and affordable enough, or have their meals cooked for them EDIT: I struggle with this too and am trying to change…

I am still in this journey myself and what's really made it a lot easier is seeing it as a skill that has a lot of opportunity to be improved, with regards to speed/effeciency, ie how many net minutes per week I actually have to spend.

There are so many ways to tweak and "automate" this, much like the effeciency of software development tasks, such as finding pairs of recipes that reuse the same intermediate components, making things in batches that can be frozen and reheated, and just plain getting faster at making something from practice.

There is a lot to be said for making the same recipe many times rather than always trying new ones. Each time you make it you will get faster, and even better, more able to do it without thinking much about it, and keep thinking about something else more useful instead.

Re: In Remote Alaska, Meal Planning Is Everything

#124

Post by notyourday »

solardev wrote: post #79
granshaw wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks that’s probably good advice Pineapple fried rice here I come

Man, I've been trying to make good fried rice for like thirty years. Let me know if you figure it out... supposedly needs a lava-hot wok and a gallon of oil or something.

While this is a comedy, the actual fried rice is excellent, including the tricks that most Westerners don't get - for example re-purposing stale rice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGBP3sG3a9Y

P.S. The owner of the shop also makes the fried rice so you can compare the two slightly different approaches.

Re: In Remote Alaska, Meal Planning Is Everything

#125

Post by HWR_14 »

ghaff wrote: post #121
HWR_14 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those prices seem very low for the US (except for the pork). I also see you're leaving out the salt, pepper, olive oil, red wine, Parmesan, and spices/(dried) herbs. Yes, all the things you left out will last for a long time (except the 1/4 bottle of wine) but they are a huge upfront cost for a single meal. Cooking is a financial commitment. I'll also say the first recipe I found suggested 1kg of pork to go with that…

A woman I knew way back when said that when she cooked for her ex-BF at his place, it always cost her a fortune because he had very few pantry staples. You don't need to go crazy but it's probably a few hundred dollars to setup for reasonable cooking from square 1.

Exactly. And if you aren't used to it, you can easily mess it up. You get things that don't last as long as you expect, or too much of an ingredient.

Once you have a decent set up and pantry, it's not bad. But if you need 5 spices to try a recipe, you're looking at at least a $15 home cooked meal. For one person.

Re: In Remote Alaska, Meal Planning Is Everything

#126

Post by walrus01 »

joenot443 wrote: post #59
koheripbal wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the difference between living in the nations food basket, and a remote town 1500 km into the inaccessible and barren tundra. What's odd is anyone's expectation that they would pay similar prices.

Truly. Really though, the biggest difference is just matter of scale. The US has 10x the amount of people that Canada does. Nunavut has 40,000 residents, Alaska has 736,000. I'm Canadian and know some people who've spent time in Nunavut and life there seemed cold, lonely, dark, and expensive. My understanding is that once you're in Iqaluit, you aren't even able to drive to any other towns, they're generally not conne…

alaska has 736,000 but now subtract the populations of juneau (fairly well linked to BC and WA by coastal barge service and alaska marine highway), and other SE alaska coastal towns with tug+barge cargo service, the anchorage metro area and road system, and fairbanks area.

anchorage and fairbanks have normal road links to BC and the rest of the continent, albeit long and costly for fuel.

very different cargo movement situation from what's categorized as a "fly in" community which is accessible only by airplane during 75% of the year and ice roads during the other 25%.

the remote fly in communities in alaska are closer to nunavut in terms of cargo movement costs.

Re: In Remote Alaska, Meal Planning Is Everything

#128

Post by googlryas »

lovich wrote: post #11
NegativeLatency wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Found an old associated press article about that: >Sam Krogstad of Bush Consolidators, which specializes in sending construction materials via the mail, says the Postal Service’s losses are partly self-inflicted because the postal system pays 10 times as much to send the building materials by air freight as it charges Krogstad to mail them. https://apnews.com/article/281d3e682569b2cc5edd890bf600d17e

They’re not self inflicted losses because it’s a constitutionally guaranteed service. Making a profit is not the point. Ensuring that every citizen has access to the communication network as a right is why the USPS does this

Nothing in the constitution indicates what kind of parcels the mail service should deliver. They already refuse to deliver certain types of parcels - are they violating the constitution by doing so?

Re: In Remote Alaska, Meal Planning Is Everything

#129

Post by [deleted] »

GoodbyeMrChips wrote: post #118
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm in the UK and it is always the case that processed, mass manufactured food is looked down upon. This from the country that brought us beans on toast? Maybe this is more of a middle class phenomenon, but the UK isn't exactly known for its food. Hotdogs and pasta salad sounds like something a desperate college student would cobble together. Not something the average american would consider eating. Given how well w…

WOW! Posts removed for saying OP's statement that "UK isn't exactly known for its food" is both outdated and prejudiced! Explanation needed methinks.

[deleted]

Re: In Remote Alaska, Meal Planning Is Everything

#130

Post by prometheus76 »

granshaw wrote: post #70
prometheus76 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learn how to make a dish you really like. Expand from there.

Thanks that’s probably good advice Pineapple fried rice here I come

This[1] is the best method/recipe I've found for making fried rice without a wok. This is the finale in a series where the host is trying to perfect the method for making fried rice, but ends showing you how to make it at home with a cast iron frying pan.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L5qBMtFXBs

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