The $5B Battle for the American Dinner Plate

>>The trick is to not too slavishly follow the recipe.

Sure, but this is mostly for experienced cooks who know what alternatives are feasible for a given ingredient. For everyone else, ending up with something that tastes like crap and having to order pizza is too big of a risk.

It's also about building expertise. When I learn a new recipe, I follow it as closely as possible until I can cook it without looking up the instructions. Only at that point do I feel comfortable with deviating and experimenting: because I know what the actual thing is supposed to taste like, I can try alternatives and judge whether they work well.

> Especially if you haven't planned things out in advance.

That's why on non-special days I have a limited set of things that I will cook. Or a limited set of combinations, if you will. I don't come home thinking "Oh what do I have, what can I make with this, let's find a recipe". I look at the fridge and it's like "Ah, I have ingredients for X, I'll make X". Then on another day it's "Ah yes, today it's going to be Y" and I just cook the same things all the time.

Helps with a lot of things. I always know what groceries to buy, I know how much nutrients my meals will have in advance, I know which of my staple meals fits a particular day's type of activities etc. Limiting your choices makes life a lot easier.

Think like a line cook, not a chef. Leave the chef stuff for weekends and special occasions.

"Millennials spend more on food outside the home than any other generation, averaging $50.75 a week." That's... actually way lower than I expected, though that's average across the US I suppose.

Gonna provide a contrarian view since people seem to be surprised at eating out: some times you just want to outsource the thinking and execution of food to others while you focus on winding down, hanging out with friends, connecting, or what not.

Let's use the example of an SF techie: makes around 100k ($50/hr-ish, or let's say $40 take-home pay). Would you rather work 1hr and explore good foodie options around the City or cook for an hour ($40 for 3 meals)? And what if you enjoyed your work?

Now let's use 50k income, the value prop becomes a little more compelling for cooking, and the lower that income goes the more interesting cooking becomes. But food not just a necessity but a recurring entertainment expense...

PS -- I love cooking for fun, but I only want to cook when I'm inspired and when I can share with friends. Sous viding some steak or salmon, 36-hour prep some pork belly, or making pasta noodles and spicy meatballs from raw ingredients. Eating alone... I'll just grab a to-go box, thanks.

I like to manage all my computers, configure linux distros, keep them up to date and clean. I use Arch Linux, which is a rather "manual" distro where major packages have major updates on a rolling basis, and I even have a slightly customized kernel because I'm particular about things. Anyway, for my personal machines, it doesn't take much time, amortized over a month, maybe 30 minutes a week.

But I hate cooking, it's just not my thing. I actually wouldn't mind the cooking part, I like following directions and making stuff, even Ikea furniture, it's fun. But going to supermarkets and trying to find the ingredients, and having too much of one ingredient to just start with a few person-meals a week, and cleaning up all the plates and bowls needed to prepare the ingredients, and the result just not being as good as the many Chipotle-like fast-but-real food places here in Manhattan, that all sucks.

It's hard to describe this feeling ... I understand what you're saying, you can do it well yourself, it doesn't really take that much time, just put some effort into it... but when it comes to food, I just don't want to. Food is messy, I hate it.

I used to live in a place in SoCal where there wasn't the easy access to good prepared food like there is in Manhattan, and I just ate yogurt and granola for dinner most days (literally more than half of them).

If a meal kit has good quality parts and clear directions (complex is fine) I'd be up for that.

UK: Birmingham food market has a good range and is fairly cheap (not organic stuff, its commercial grower stuff trucked in from Poland/Holand/Warwickshire). Part of the fun is seeing everyone else (real slice of life stuff). I like to support this market and I like cooking, so box of ingredients would not be something I'd pay for.

Some local organic growers have £5 boxes or £10 boxes they deliver to your house each week. These are bulk seasonable veg not prepared ingredients. I used to sort of like the 'ready steady cook' aspect of making meals out of what was in the box, but now I quite like the shopping aspect. Examples below...

http://www.farm-fresh-organics.co.uk/

http://www.morefresh.co.uk/medium-vegetable-box-3-4-people-%...

Pressure cooker: is this for beans? I've always gone for tinned beans on the basis that they are picked fresh in Turkey and industrially pressure-cooked in the tin. Am I wrong?