food

Cocinando en tu cuarto? Dale

Whitehorn’s book rescued me as it did thousands, probably millions of others. She knew just what people like me wanted: “Cooking to Stay Alive,” the first part, and “Cooking to Impress,” the second. No escaping cooking to stay alive because restaurants were few and far between in the 60s and too expensive for anything but a very special occasion.

Source: Cooking in a Bedsitter – Rachel Laudan

Ojalá hubiese tenido este libro durante mis años rebotando en Mexico.

Cocinando en tu cuarto? Dale Read More »

This is my “I’m being a shill” moment

I recently discovered Instacart is able to deliver Costco and…

OMFG

GAME CHANGER. STUFF is CHEAP and at VOLUME.

Granted, not Commercial Foodservice Company cheap, but for home use this is fucken ferpect.

  • Got 20 lb Basmati rice for like, 20 bucks.
  • 6 lb of pasta elbows for *checks notes* 6 bucks
  • Eggs are stupid cheap, pick how many you want.
  • Bleach? I got me a lot of bleach.
  • EVOO! A gallon of it is 15 bucks!
  • Canola oil! 6 qt are 10 bucks!

I got some more things to round out the pantry for pasta production but for getting all of this stuff delivered? I can probably order once a month and 80% of my grocery shopping is done right there and then.

Now, they don’t have everything at the store available. They don’t have kosher salt (well they do but it’s the Kirkland brand. I prefer Morton or Diamond). The meat and fish selection is somewhat limited but they got the basics on there. Produce is good but I’d rather mosey down to the neighborhood coop for that.

Again, for me the angle here is the delivery; I bike everywhere and carrying all the stuff on my last order on my bike rack would probably require at least 5 trips, so the 8.99 delivery charge is totally worth it. This isn’t a promoted post (ugh) but there are many use cases for exactly this kind of thing at this volume, which is right in between “let’s pick up groceries on the way home” and “I need to open a sysco/us foods/reinhart account”:

  • People with more than two kids. Kids eat a fucken hell of a lot. You ate a lot when you were a kid, you just don’t remember it.
  • Disabled/sick people.
  • People who literally don’t have the time, like when you’re working 2 full-time jobs. Good luck finding time to cook, much less to buy the groceries.
  • People without cars, like myself.

Anyway, click on this here referral link so I get a fucken discount on my next order and you get cheap groceries. Everyone wins.

This is my “I’m being a shill” moment Read More »

Now it’s the very opposite

Looked at from another angle, in the past soft food was more prestigious than crunchy food. I had always put this down to two factors. First, that soft food was refined food, refined in the same sense that metals are refined, processing out the dross and getting to the pure essence or nature of the food. Second, since only the rich could regularly afford laborious soft food (easily pounded or mashed roots being a major exception), soft food was desirable food.

Source: Of Soft Food, Now and in the Past | Rachel Laudan

Now it’s the very opposite Read More »

On The Meaning of Meals and their future

Subtitled “the invention of the American meal,” Three Squares is an engaging and eye-opening look at the economic and cultural forces that have shaped the country’s shifting formats of consumption over time — and, in turn, the changing meanings and value judgments that Americans have attached to those eating patterns.

The Meaning of Meals.

As a child of two countries, I can attest to the differences in food culture even when both of those countries are neighbors, but derive from completely different source cultures.

In Mexico, born of Spain and the old Mexica empire it, the food schedule is something like this:

  • Breakfast varies by family and, when heading out on your own as an adult, by person. Some eat heavy breakfasts, others keep it extremely light.
  • Lunch again varies by family and individual, mostly depending on work/school schedules. Usually kept to a single protein-based entree.
  • Dinner is in the late afternoon. It’s the one time the whole family sits down and interacts, usually over two or three courses (soup, entree, dessert).
  • Supper (usually known as the cena is usually kept light, owing to the fact it is usually eaten one or two hours before bedtime. Usually sweet bread and milk.

In my experience in both countries, it has been lunch that has been influenced the most by Mexico’s imitation of the cultural mores of the United States. For children and teenagers, lunch is usually had during recess at school. For adults, it varies wildly depending on the job and the availability for time, like breakfast.

Now, in the US, it usually goes like this:

  • Breakfast is usually two courses (fruit, protein) accompanied by juice and/or coffee.
  • Lunch again varies by family and individual depending on school/work schedules Schools try to have two courses on a single tray, while most adults go for a single entree.
  • Dinner is late in the evening, with three courses always called for (soup or salad, entree, dessert).
  • Supper is mostly a snack.

Mind you, these is what I remember from my own family experience. Being of Mexican origin, my elders tried to keep the schedule mostly the same but things had to change by necessity and adaptation of the social mores of our new adopted home.

On The Meaning of Meals and their future Read More »

Spirits of food that has passed away

The three items on offer — cod, chocolate, and peanut butter — come from or are species that “may very well soon not be available to eat,” Simun explains. With the help of a wearable smell-dispensing device and an edible textural analogue, GhostFood truck customers will experience a simulation of a future phantom food.

Ghost Food.

What happens when some or all of the foodstuffs we are accustomed to eating right now are gone? I’ve read of futures where everything is grown in vats, futures where to eat a nice side of beef you have to pay stratospheric prices since the meat has to be imported from off-planet.

These futures obviously imply FTL travel and that humankind as made it to other habitable planets for long enough to create a import/export economic relationship between them.

But… what happens if that doesn’t happen? The diet of a human being a hundred years from now is going to be very, very different from my own diet, both cooking at home and dining out.

Spirits of food that has passed away Read More »