“cuisine of the week”, learn to prepare meals from around the world
replaced teflon cookware with cast iron, stainless and carbon steel, and learned to use them
got a steel griddle top covering my entire stove and learned to play short order cook. Played a little hibachi chef but made too much mess trying to twirl and flip things
got a smoker
This weekend I have a 10 lb pork shoulder to smoke. Easily pulled pork for the week and unless my kids come home from school, I’ll likely freeze a bunch
Bread is probably the least time consuming thing on that list though. There’s a whole slew of no-knead recipes out there, and it takes about 5 minutes to measure out and mix together the ingredients. After that it’s just waiting for it to rise, another 5 minutes to shape the loaf, proof it, toss it in the oven and wait till it’s done. For 10 minutes of active prep time, you can have a nice loaf of crusty white bread that’s nearly as good as something you’d find in some bougie bakery. Granted it takes a couple seconds of pre-planning since the rise/proofing times are long, but most basic no-knead recipes are super forgiving on that, and if something comes up before you’re able to bake it, you can toss your uncooked dough into the fridge for short term storage, or freeze it for long term.
Breakfast is the worst. Sausage, ham, pancakes, cereal, eggs, hash browns, or toast. Want a breakfast burrito? Take a normal burrito, add scrambled eggs. Want a breakfast sandwich? Swap out sliced bread with english muffin or bagel, optionally add an egg.
Screw that. I’m having leftover spaghetti for breakfast.
If you practice and prepare you can cut down on some of the time. I used to live right next to a street of fast food joints so it was never worth it to cook myself from a time standpoint unless I was just having some frozen garbage. Now it’s a 15 minute trip to pick something up if there’s no line so I cook a lot more and with experience I’ve been able to streamline things so it goes faster. Also make enough for 2-3 meals when you cook and then “leapfrog” through the week eating the leftovers. That way you don’t have to cook every day but also don’t have to eat the same thing every day.
If you find a few recipies you really like and learn how to do them from memory, and then make them a lot, you learn lots of efficiencies and shortcuts that save a ton of time. Making stuff without a recipie at all is even faster.
If you don’t have a freezer that can hold two weeks worth of meals, buy one. I have three homemade frozen pizzas and a half dozen chicken pot pies waiting right now.
I can cook a whole roast chicken on Sunday and enjoy chicken tacos, chicken sandwiches, etc. all week.
I can cook a five liter pot of chili/soup/stew and freeze it into pint containers; I’ve got a nice hot meal any time.
My problem with that is defrosting. It requires timing and planning, which is tough due to impromptu work based meals. And some stuff once frozen tastes like crap defrosted.
You don’t have to defrost anything except raw meat and even that can go straight into the oven if you want to season it after it’s cooked. If you have a frozen pizza/pot pie just throw it in a pre-heated oven.
Soup, beans, pasta. Also, for cooking: frozen meat. Veggies are also difficult, yeah there’s flash frozen veg that can work but that requires cookery too.
Store made frozen pizzas and pies taste like crap and are expensive. Homemade ones take a lot of time.
Soups are still good especially with a crock pot but I get so sick of soup.
I’m lucky because I have an Italian food shop near me that makes homemade uncooked pizza. I can take it home and cook right away or freeze. Same with the chicken pot pies.
The main thing I’d say is get in the habit of making giant servings and freeze them. I will make 5 liters of stew/chili/soup on a Sunday and freeze it in pint containers. A different recipe the next Sunday. Now I’ve got 20 meals sitting in the freezer.
It takes as much effort to make a big meal as a small one; make a meal big enough for four people and freeze three portions.
Yeah same. I just try to cook a meal on Sunday but it doesn’t get me through the entire week. Not to mention I usually need a second meal at night when I work out. It’s too much.
They’re like parallel processes. Rice takes about 20 min. Start that first and you can have the stir Fry done before the rice finishes with plenty of time to clean up. A sandwich leaves just a knife and cutting board. Just rinse that off. And if I was making pizza I’d make the dough the night before and the rest is simple, clean up when the pizzas in the oven.
Personally love leftovers. Make extra rice, use the leftovers in a burrito or something. Make extra pizza dough and put some in the freezer, etc
That’s the problem. It’s more efficient with bigger meals. If you’re single, you have to cook and then clean. If there’s two of you, you can divide tasks.
Being single doesn’t mean you can only cook single portions of stuff.
You can cook two portions, and have an entire meal ready to eat anytime during the next few days.
You might even find yourself adventurous and cook three portions, and have TWO whole meals ready to go.
But be wary, most people who just learn the ability to plan ahead quickly get carried on and start preparing 5, 6 or even 7 servings ahead of time and I only recommend this for experienced meal preppers who know what they are doing.
Also, clean as you go, and cleaning suddenly doesn’t become this insurmountable task.
I swear to god half of the people in these threads are not fit for life.
The other half are armchair quarterbacks who can’t fathom that anything is ever difficult for other people.
meals ready to go.
Reheating leftovers is a gamble. Sometimes reheated food just tastes like ass, no matter how good it was fresh.
clean as you go
It still takes twice as much effort, IF the recipe you’re making leaves time for it.
Jesus, you condescending fuck, you think I don’t know this shit? Are you so damn arrogant you think no one else has figured out meal prepping? You think you’re goddamn einstein because you discovered cleaning as you go? We fucking know. And it sucks.
Where’s all the people who loathe breakfast because they aren’t hungry until lunch?
Followup question because I’m not one of them. Should we not talk to you until you’ve had your morning coffee and cigarette? You know it doesn’t give you permission to act like a dickweed to everyone Amanda.
I look forward to lunch every day. I make myself a wrap with some sort of oven cooked filling and a bunch of fresh veggies and some apple slices and a small bag of wasabi peas for dessert.
I used to do something like that for lunch. Next thing I knew I was crashing from not enough protein, and developing high cholesterol. Be careful eating the same basic things all the time, it’s easy to accidentally max something out without thinking about it.
But seriously: for the week. I have multiple family members who do this and used to do it myself: most meals last up to a week in the fridge, so just put a little extra in Sunday night so you have leftovers for lunches.
My previous version of this was to start each week with giant: salad, pasta salad, fruit salad. Then I have a complete meal, including variety by just throwing a protein in the toaster oven.
I’m trying to restart something like this now that its back to just me all week: I have a 10 lb pork shoulder for the smoker!
I am pretty sure I have ADHD and I still manage to meal prep.
Even if you cant, you can literally just have a backup plan like mine, for when I forget to cook I have some frozen chicken strips, potato wedges, and green beans, throw it all on a sheet pan and into the convection oven for 20-25 mins, boom you have a decent meal, bit more pricey than doing it from scratch, but it’s quick and low effort
I do have ADHD, and while I can manage meal prep, 99% of the time I just can’t be bothered. But I force myself to do it, because the alternative is eating a bag of crisps and a big bar of chocolate and feeling like crap all afternoon.
I make slow cooked chicken burritos and freeze them. Takes about 1 hour of prep, and about 6 hours to cook so it isn’t easy, but I only gotta do this occasionally. If I do this in conjunction with meal prep it takes a lot longer to prep, but then I can have a work week of food, and have like 8 burritos for when I’m too lazy to cook.
So much of these news aggregate sites are morons reposting the same tired posts from absolute crayon eaters who bloviate about how critically incapable they are at basic life functions.
Genuinely interested in how that is practical in an office setting. We barely have room to keep leftovers, let alone decent bread and cheese. It’s also a bit boring if you’re having it most days.
There’s tons of different kinds of bread, cheese, deli meat, spreads, nuts, fruit and vegetables that you can easily make a different combination every day for a while. And you could pack a lunchbox that is enough to feed you for the day and leave leftovers at home.
Me, living in France, where a cafeteria room is mandatory, 1-2h long lunchs are the norm and your employer has to give you at least 4-5€/day to buy lunch:
Do I want to get 6 hours of sleep and then pay $25 for a shitty meal, or get 4.5 hours of sleep and cook something that I hope tastes okayish reheated in the microwave tomorrow?
Start going to Starbucks for lunch, instead of the roadside stall and you’ll understand.
I’m happy with cooking at 13:00. Better than having an extra-humid, stale-feeling lunch box
Why would you assume I am eating at roadside stalls? Cause I am Indian?? Ignoring that hopefully accidental racism, I do in fact cook lunch when I have the time with mostly rice with one of the premade mixes and quick vegetable stir frys. Shouldn’t take more than 20 mins to make something simple. When I am busy I usually get something either in office or nearby restaurant. A good lunch at normal restaurants usually costs about 100-300₹ per person and could get some light food within 100₹ as well. I don’t count the shit at Starbucks as a meal, maybe a snack but why a sandwich when I can get good Indian food.
I think anyone with taste knows that a small non-chain restaurant, stall, or cart will have much better food than some corporate chain crap food made with industrially sourced ‘ingredients.’
Personally, I’m always looking for the small restaurants that serve food on Styrofoam or paper plates. Bonus points if it’s attached to a gas station or the owner’s little kids are in the dining room or kitchen playing and coloring.
Ethnicity doesn’t matter, it can be a barbecue joint or some sort of Asian culture I’m ignorant of.
You see a little kid quietly coloring in a booth by themselves, you know that shit is going to be good.
I think anyone with taste knows that a small non-chain restaurant, stall, or cart will have much better food than some corporate chain crap food made with industrially sourced ‘ingredients.’
With my aversion to food made out in the open, right next to running cars and open-coughing people, I stopped eating from roadside stalls by the time I started having enough autonomy.
I tend to prefer non-chain restaurants with viewable kitchens ^[those places tend to hire cooks who actually mind their coughing], but due to lack of any such desirable place in my area, eating out nearby, usually means subway (which is just, less bad).
Then I realise that with the amount of money I would spend to pay for the cheapest local meal place, I can actually cook with Ghee at home. And that topples the equation over its head.
Morning: Sandwich in Ghee/butter/peanut oil depending upon the mood
Afternoon: Fried rice in Ghee
Evening: Gram/Kidney Beans/Lentils in Ghee, with rice
Definitely not going back to outside food with nobody knows which oil they use.
We try and only eat out as a treat. Almost all of our my meals are eaten at home as we work from home these days. Also, my wife is an amazing cook and her food is better than most restaurants. We usually have leftovers or a sandwich for lunch.
I’m not familiar with your currency symbol? What country do you live in and are the health standards low enough that eating from a stall is a concern? That’s a different situation.
I’m in the US, so food trucks, stalls and gas stations actually have decent standards. (Often, the cleanliness in these places is heads and shoulders above corporate chain places.)
I learned to always check the bathroom of a restaurant. How clean they keep their bathroom tells you a lot about how they keep their kitchen. Small, family run, places tend to have the best food and the cleanest bathrooms, in my experience.
It’s got both, a terminal frontend and a Qt GUI one. (Actually 3. Also a GTK one)
You can copy the currency text along with the symbol into it and by default, it will convert it to your Locale’s currency, so you can know the exchange rates at least.
Also, ₹2000 - ₹3000 per 8 hour day tends to be what an engineering fresher would normally expect in a place like Delhi, where a Subway sub will cost around ₹400.
Running stock Android on my phone and use Jerboa for Lemmy, my computer is Windows 10 as Linux still is lacking in CAD/CAM. In particular, CAM at a professional level. My home server is running Linux, however. Been playing with Linux for a long time.
Wish Mastercam worked in Linux and I’d happily make the jump.
I have used CAD software quite a bit during my childhood and BTech and realise the great difference between Autodesk tools and OSS Alternatives. While blender has already overtaken their stuff in its domain, I feel the need for an alternative for AutoCAD ^[currently checking out QCAD] that can overthrow its crown. While I can’t expect anything for stuff like ArchiCAD, Revit etc. which would require loads of domain specific knowledge.
Never tried CAM software, but I see 3 OSS ones here, so perhaps you can check out any that you haven’t. I’d be interested in knowing about your exp with these, since I don’t have much to think of how to test those.
It’s been a year or two since I played with OSS CAD/CAM. It was still heavily lacking. QCad is only 2d.
I check it every few years hoping for improvement.
FreeCAD UI was still so bad it was basically unusable and I could not wrap my head around it. Horrible interface and totally unintuitive. I’m still not sure how to take a simple linear measurement. Installed a plugin that sort of worked to measure. That crap was designed by aliens.
The OSS CAMs can generate a tool path, but it is difficult and they aren’t feature rich. CNC programming puts food on my table and I need the speed and features of pro level software. If I was playing with a router and doing a lot of 2d stuff, I could make it work for that. Especially if my time didn’t matter.
If Mastercam would just port to Linux I would happily switch.
I’m a CNC programmer with enough computer programming knowledge to be dangerous but not actually contribute to the various projects out there. Sucks.
I’ll have to throw qalculate on my computer and play with it. I’m actually rebuilding our new little farm right now and am taking a break from machining while I put our home right. If our savings hold out, I’ll be building my own shop.
I have the ability to create basic a 3D, line based design tool. Though I would have to read up on NURBS. Maybe QCad has the potential to grow in that direction.
I just still tend to hope that it may be implemented in something fully featured like Blender, which is more geared towards artistic modelling and replaces stuff like 3dsMAX and Maya. It does have some plug-ins to support precision drawing, but last time I checked, I was still not convinced of using it in an AutoCAD like workflow.
The first statement sounded like I am always eating at road side stalls and never had a lunch at a restaurant. Not that I would bother going to a chain like that to begin with. I am obviously not a native speaker so maybe I misunderstood it.
I am not a fan of those road side stalls, I am not a germaphobe but at least my food should be made in a clean Kitchen. Maybe because my mom would never let me try those and I grew up that way.
It’s rare, in America, for there to be an actual stall. Food trucks or carts are much more common and serve the same function. Stalls can be found at festivals and fairs.
Some of the best food comes out of food trucks. There’s a whole little culture around food trucks.
I’ve seen stalls in other countries on TV. Anthony Bourdain, for instance. He seems to accept a certain amount of food poisoning and dubious ingredients. Some of it still looks really good.
We also have the Tamale Lady phenomenon here. If you see a Hispanic lady or old man selling tamales out of a cooler, you better get some. They’ll be the best damn tamales you’ve ever had.
I’m betting they didn’t mean it to be racist. I wish I had roadside stalls as options to eat at where I work. A lot of times those end up being better quality and I like the thought of giving money to the people directly making the food instead of a corporate overlord that takes 95% of the money and makes the workers divide the 5% among all of them.
We don’t have roadside stalls around me, but that’s exactly what food trucks are for. When I used to work near a bunch of food trucks, the food was fantastic, always different, and so much better than a chain restaurant
I travel a lot for work so I’ve been to a pretty large number of restaurants and such. I’ve definitely had bad food from food trucks before, but it isn’t very common for it to be abysmal. It’s not like a restaurant that can have other factors like atmosphere, lighting, etc. If the food is bad they won’t last long. Never seen a true roadside stall any of the places I’ve been though unfortunately. I’m honestly so sick of chain restaurants. They completely take over and drive local stuff out a lot of the time.
₹300 comes at around 4 euros. 4 pounds is ~₹450, so it’s pretty close.
If you check the pricing of one of the shit-listed chains, you get hardly anything filling in that price, vs ₹90 for a full meal in some places (that was somewhere in Bengaluru).
But that’s on the high ends tho. I just had a rava dosa and lime soda for 110 in udupi so still very affordable. The term affordable depends on each person but I think you would agree it’s very reasonable.
fedia.io
Newest