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The Sad Bastard Cookbook

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Re: The Sad Bastard Cookbook

#351

Post by kragen »

flyinghamster wrote: post #250
bob1029 wrote: post #191

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…

> I haven't ordered a pizza in 3+ years. Even building a pizza up from a prepared crust is way better than frozen. My mother needs gluten-free, and there was a GF frozen pizza we liked that a local store carried. But then it disappeared, and I decided to try building my own from a GF crust. The home-built pizza was so much better that there's no going back - not to mention the opportunity to try different toppings.

are communion wafers girlfriends

Re: The Sad Bastard Cookbook

#352

Post by fragmede »

pimlottc wrote: post #347
bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent post did not make a claim of universality. I don't really understand this implicit criticism of lack of explicit completeness thing that goes around on Hacker News but I wish people would do it less.

I did not see that comment as being critical at all. They were just adding to the conversation.

Thank you. To be clear, there was no criticism intended, merely an attempt to open people's eyes to the possibility of alternatives to their way of life. Traveling does that for me, and I'm grateful when it does.

Re: The Sad Bastard Cookbook

#353

Post by rafabulsing »

ghaff wrote: post #289
madmax108 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Imagine spending one hour in the kitchen to only feed yourself one time. That would be peak insanity to me today." YMMV. For me, spending time cooking is a great way to take a break from my computer and spend time away from a screen. And like showering, the process of cooking is now mechanical enough that it allows me to focus on broader tangents in whatever I'm working on and set myself up for the next session of c…

I agree with all that. I'll eat leftovers. For somethings they're great like a big pot of chili. For some things they're awful. For others, it's somewhere in between and/or some leftovers can be incorporated into a new dish. Cooking a company meal can be an all-day affair but, especially when I was commuting into an office every day, I had a fairly standard set of recipes that I could whip up in very little time and…

I call this the Reheating Coefficient: how good does something taste when reheated compared to how good it did originally?

Stews can sometimes achieve even >1 RC. I find lasagna is really good as well. And then you have stuff like fries which start out pretty great and lose all appeal the second they hit room temperature, never to recover.

Re: The Sad Bastard Cookbook

#354

Post by vladvasiliu »

sph wrote: post #348
vladvasiliu wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can get fancier as you learn, but stews are my favourite food because they require cheap ingredients, and with the instant pot I don't even need to take care of it while it cooks. Toss everything together and turn the thing on. It has a timer and a keep warm function, so you can literally fill it in the morning, and come back from work to a warm pot of stew. This is the main issue I have with my model: it won't…

30 minutes is not very useful. The good thing about pressure cooking is 1 hour is more or less equivalent to 2.5 hours in a regular stove. Cook a stew for 2 hours in a pressure cooker and even the toughest meat will melt like butter in your mouth.

I don't know what the limit is on pressure-cooking, the 30 minutes is for non-pressured "slow cook" mode. It won't engage the "pressure-cooking" mode if the lid is not secured in place. I never needed to pressure-cook for more than 30 minutes at a time, though. The longest recipe I had was, IIRC, 30 + 15 minutes. The recipe said to put dry beans in, pressure-cook for 30 minutes, release pressure, add sausage, cook for 15 more minutes.

Re: The Sad Bastard Cookbook

#355

Post by kragen »

doix wrote: post #319
Melatonic wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

where do the takeaway food places buy their supplies

i have a couple of 1000-watt immersion heaters that can boil water in a coffee mug or, more relevantly, a one-liter thermos. they cost about 30 cents. the thermos doesn't have to be on a tabletop, though it's dangerous to touch it while it's plugged in because the water is electrically connected

i don't want to claim that boil-in-bag cooking isn't 'extremely inconvenient' but it is certainly feasible

also the rice cooker you mention can provide most of your calories for zero hassle

Re: The Sad Bastard Cookbook

#356

Post by MengerSponge »

didgeoridoo wrote: post #321
MengerSponge wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the timer goes off and the cooker switches off, the contents are still under pressure. That pressure shifts the liquid's boiling point, which is why pressure cookers cook hotter. If you vent the pressure vessel, the liquid inside will rapidly boil as it dumps that excess thermal energy to steam and your kitchen. It'll carry bits of liquid and cooked food with it. Another thing you know but may not have connected…

I think the microwaving water issue is slightly different. It does indeed become superheated, but not of course from pressure; if the vessel lacks nucleation sites (imperfections) for bubbles to form, the water can heat quite a bit higher than 100C as it’s not losing energy to the steam phase change. Eventually when a bubble does spontaneously form (or the vessel is jolted), a huge amount of water is instantly conver…

Pretty much everything inside the pressure cooker is a nucleation site, so if you could make the lid just disappear, the superheated contents would explode.

Water is only converted to steam while there's energy for it, so only a fraction of the water actually boils*. The risk is that it's a rapid process that propels a lot 100C water outside of the vessel.

*) I haven't done the full calculation, but I'm pretty sure the upper bound is something like 10%, with 2-4% being the best most normal people could accomplish in a microwave.

Re: The Sad Bastard Cookbook

#357

Post by fragmede »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #229
VoodooJuJu wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You can tell how good a job corporatists and statists did at eliminating homemaker by observing how most moderns fruoously rebuke even the mere suggestion that the role was A Good Thing. Indeed. Ironically, the effect is to be expected, and in every other situation people would call it obvious. Give everyone $1k in unconditional basic income? Obviously, the market will quickly readjust prices to consume surplus inc…

The sci-fi story solution I've come up with is we put everyone into a lottery. Everyone draws a number. Evens get their salary doubled, odds are no longer allowed to work. Everyone find a partner.

Re: The Sad Bastard Cookbook

#358

Post by kragen »

Melatonic wrote: post #284
bob1029 wrote: post #191

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.

anxiety can be very disabling, and can indeed leave people unable to provide for themselves at a very basic level; they will, as you seem to have correctly inferred, die without support

fortunately most of us live in a society, so we don't have to be robinson crusoe or the man of the hole to survive

Re: The Sad Bastard Cookbook

#359

Post by CommieBobDole »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #150

When It's really bad I just buy multiple costco rotisserie chickens, some frozen veggies, put food on plate, microwave, cover in sauce, eat. Add in premier proteins, fit crunch, and clif builders and you can shop for like 2 weeks in a single run and not die. My "I cant be bothered" template is the following. is essentially pick one from each category * 1/2 LB (225g) veggies * 1/2 LB or 1 fruit * 1 protein * Caloric l…

>frozen veggies

The giant bags of 'Normandy vegetables' and 'Stir-fry vegetables' from Costco are an absolute dietary staple for me. Grab a couple of handfuls from each bag, toss 'em with olive oil and sprinkle generously with salt, MSG and some sort of spice mix (or just garlic powder sometimes), then roast at 450 for ~15 minutes.

Fast, minimal prep time, and at least I'm eating vegetables with my probably-unhealthy main dish.

Re: The Sad Bastard Cookbook

#360

Post by fragmede »

ChiperSoft wrote: post #320
VoodooJuJu wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ho…

House husband households, where the man is the homemaker, and the woman (in the case of a heterosexual relationship) is the high powered lawyer/c-suite exec/other highly paid professional are on the rise. Attitudes that the man in this case is a "drain on society" are slowly changing.
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