On food and foodies...

[daveon]

I came across this blog post here, about the nature of cooking and being a foodie. There is a weird kind of snobbishness about this that I see across the political spectrum.  But I have been on the receiving end of fights about cooking being something of an elitist activity.  As money has been tight over the last few months in the O'Neill household we've been cooking a LOT more, I've also been a lot more practical about shopping.  The arrival of the basement in the new house has meant that I can buy canned and large scale basics at Costco in ways I'd never have been able to in the apartment.

The other issue is that both of us have put on historic amounts of weight over the last decade and we're trying to lose them.  Cooking at home makes it a LOT easier to manage what you eat.

So, we've been cooking at home and mostly loving it.  The freezer is full of meals, I've dusted off my cook books and been working on a new recipe a week, especially from the Indian cook book.  It takes a little more time, but interestingly our monthly grocery bill has gone down from when we'd eat out more and plan less.  And, so far, over the course of the year we've both lost over 6kgs...  slow, boring, 0.5kg a week loss.  Not bad, especially given the run-in with pneumonia and the 3 long business trips.

I like cooking, I like creating something interesting and I like seeing how tastes go together.  It's not always convenient and we've occasionally given in to the take out menu, but we've saved a small fortune over the year.

Now I'm looking forward to the weather getting better so I can clean off the BBQ and start that again too.

Comments

[camies.livejournal.com]

Tell me about it. People can spend thousands on a 56-inch TV and all that but tell them you spend a bit extra on good food and drink and they storm out (it happened a couple of weeks ago to me). I don't have expensive holidays (well, Skyros isn't cheap but...), I don't have a car or a large house but nice food, well, yes. But although this would be quite understood in the Mediterranean countries it doesn't seem to be here. How many members of Slow Food are there? And in the UK? They all seem to be restaurant owners or producers here. (the movement got off to a ropey start when SF UK was pretty much a front organisation for Food From Italy. They saw sense eventually).

[daveon.livejournal.com]

There's an interesting thing I'm seeing from some of the "usual suspects" (mixture of Libertarians and the like) about Organic food where, as they often do, they miss the point.

Eating free range and/or organic isn't just about the organic bit, it is actually about the taste and flavour. I can tell the difference, especially in eggs, anybody can. I think the problem is too many people have got used to not actually tasting food.

I see it with cheese here in the US. Cheese is on practically everything, but it's almost like a grease to lubricate the food, rather than something to add flavour. We're lucky that there's a local Seattle cheese maker (Beachers) which is nice, and sold in Costco - but in the supermarket a 250g block is about $8! Anything other than tasteless orange junk is so expensive you can't possibly afford it.

One of the other things I noticed when we moved here (hence my comments about Costco) was "staple" stuff like tinned tomato, tomato puree, beans, flour and similar were all outrageously expensive in our local supermarkets. So having a place to store bulk stuff is really helpful, and means that we can easily turn out meals quickly.

And, on that note, I need to defrost some chicken pieces, I see a curry in my future...