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The Sad Bastard Cookbook

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311–320 of 445 posts

Re: The Sad Bastard Cookbook

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>have one person do the more-than-fulltime job of homemaking. This was almost always the woman. >disappeared because corporations needed Also because women did not like the absolute dedication of their lives to homemaking as a default. They wanted the freedom to join the paying workforce, and wanted equal pay for their work (still waiting on that). There's some truth in your comment, but it glosses over the very real…

These power structures have existed for millennia, so this abstracted idea that women wanting to step out of their traditional gender roles ONLY in the last century is a bit arbitrary. It makes much more sense that because the ruling class wanted a bigger work force they sanctioned for (or at the very least turn a blind eye) women’s role in the work force.

Do we have examples of the 1970s women's lib movement (for one example) receiving broad financial, social, and political support from large corporations across multiple industries?

Re: The Sad Bastard Cookbook

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>have one person do the more-than-fulltime job of homemaking. This was almost always the woman. >disappeared because corporations needed Also because women did not like the absolute dedication of their lives to homemaking as a default. They wanted the freedom to join the paying workforce, and wanted equal pay for their work (still waiting on that). There's some truth in your comment, but it glosses over the very real…

These power structures have existed for millennia, so this abstracted idea that women wanting to step out of their traditional gender roles ONLY in the last century is a bit arbitrary. It makes much more sense that because the ruling class wanted a bigger work force they sanctioned for (or at the very least turn a blind eye) women’s role in the work force.

Exactly two millennia. The role of housewife didn’t really exist until the 1820s, and even then it was more of an upper-middle class thing and a distinctly American concept. It didn’t even really take off until the industrial revolution when factory jobs became more mainstream.

It was also created by corporations, largely to sell magazines, cookbooks, and home appliances.

Everywhere else in the world, especially outside of cities, the labor of the home was evenly divided because everyone in the family had jobs.

Re: The Sad Bastard Cookbook

#314

One of the things I absolutely love about the country I live in is the culture of the daily menu. Every day you get a different, grandma-like soup, main course, fresh juice, and small desert. Nearly every restaurant does this for the equivalent of 4 - 6 dollars (I'm in LATAM). Eating that well would be otherwise impossible for me as I don't enjoy cooking at all.

  desert
that would be "dessert" (I don't blame you for that mistake, because americans seem to pronounce it like the arid land covered in sand)

Re: The Sad Bastard Cookbook

#316

The trick for me is to apply engineering to the kitchen. You can actually enjoy really elaborate meals if you simply make more each time and utilize pyrex+freezer. Why make only 6 servings of spaghetti when there's still 50% free space available in your instant pot? (that 'max fill' line is but a polite suggestion :D) Planning ahead, logistics, etc. can make all the difference in the world. Imagine spending one hour…

Agreed. I know someone who refuses to cook at all under the guise of "anxiety" and I do not understand how some people are fine with not being able to provide for themselves on a very basic level. Automate your cooking and meal prep as much as possible and the process becomes quick and easy and you always have tons of food on hand.

What about those that get anxiety when they are in the kitchen due to past trauma or something? To brush them off as “fine with not being able to provide for themselves” is shaming them for having said anxiety. Maybe the last time they were in the kitchen was with Mom when she had her stroke and her face plant into your eggplant is a memory you get every time you see your mixing bowl? Everyone has something, so be kind to those who suffer.

Re: The Sad Bastard Cookbook

#317

Any non-wealthy single person faces an uphill battle to both 1. earn a living 2. take proper care of themselves. In the Middle Ages people invented a rather neat solution for this problem: go live together in a big building, work together, pray together, cook together and call it a monastery.

If you think monasteries were a solution thought up by poor people to be less poor, then I don't think you know much about the history of monasteries.

Not that I'm an expert either, but from what little I gathered monks were relatively privileged people.

Re: The Sad Bastard Cookbook

#318

The trick for me is to apply engineering to the kitchen. You can actually enjoy really elaborate meals if you simply make more each time and utilize pyrex+freezer. Why make only 6 servings of spaghetti when there's still 50% free space available in your instant pot? (that 'max fill' line is but a polite suggestion :D) Planning ahead, logistics, etc. can make all the difference in the world. Imagine spending one hour…

Something that I picked up after watching one of J. Kenji López-Alt’s videos was chaining ingredients. Specifically the difficult ones and not necessarily just reusing the rest of the green onion in the bottom of the fridge.

So, now I give myself a budget of one or two “difficult/time consuming” ingredients. This can be Demi-glacé or some other homemade reduction, soy-marinated eggs, slow-cooked brisket, etc. And I make more of it than I need to.

Then I make and eat the meal I was planning on, but I now have a leftover ingredient. Then for my next meal, I can re-use that ingredient and choose another difficult one. It helps with inspiration and effort level.

An example would be: make homemade tomato sauce then make Spaghetti. Next make dough and reuse the sauce into some homemade pizza. Then use the rest of the dough for garlic bread next to a salad (and maybe there’s a little red sauce left for dipping). Etc.

Of course, I’m not doing this for individual meals, I’m batching it up into 3-4 servings each.

Re: The Sad Bastard Cookbook

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it should be noted that it is not universal. In other places, having the time, the space, the electricity or gas, to home cook a meal is the luxury, and eating out is the default.

Where is this the case ?

I'm now staying in a condo in Bangkok that is like that. Even if I wanted to cook, it would be extremely inconvenient. There's just enough tabletop area for one of the following: coffee machine, rice cooker, portable stove, dish rack. I keep the coffee maker there permanently.

There is also a huge disconnect between prices in supermarkets and takeaway food. It's cheaper to order food than to try and cook it, at least in my area.

Re: The Sad Bastard Cookbook

#320

Any non-wealthy single person faces an uphill battle to both 1. earn a living 2. take proper care of themselves. In the Middle Ages people invented a rather neat solution for this problem: go live together in a big building, work together, pray together, cook together and call it a monastery.

We had other solutions for a while too: get married and have one person do the more-than-fulltime job of homemaking. But that role disappeared because corporations needed more cheap worker-units and politicians needed more GDP, so they rode each others' coattails to eliminate that role. With each homemaker now a worker-unit, there are twice as many worker-units but employee costs are the same, household income is the…

The problem was that which of those two roles you played was assigned at birth, and if you didn’t want the homemaker role, well too bad, you can’t have a bank account and most employers won’t hire you. That didn’t change in the US until the 1960s.

If you were a gay woman, you were forced to be a homemaker for a man you didn’t love because it was the only way to even access an income.

Black women could get jobs… as homemakers for rich white families where the wife either didn’t want to do the work or couldn’t keep up with the mountain of labor dumped on her. But they were paid a fraction what a white man could earn.

If you were a man who wanted to be a homemaker, literally everyone looked down on you and many institutions considered you a drain on society. This attitude still persists to this day.

But sure, corporations are why women now exist in the workforce.

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