Food ponderings

[commodorified]

So I have been musing about food, the buying and the cooking and the eating thereof, and about my Cooking For People Who Don't tag.

I have a lot of strong opinions about food, of which probably the strongest is, Describe Much, Prescribe Little. Which makes talking about it tricky, but ultimately really rewarding.

And it occurred to me last night as I was adding a handful of vegetables and a hefty shake of spice to a canned soup that one of the things that I really want to do when I write about food is to help increase people's levels of food security.

It seems to me that one of the less-considered factors that goes into determining someone's food security or insecurity - subjective AND objective[1]- is, well, knowledge, and access to knowledge. You have to HAVE resources - money, accessible grocery stores with good food in them, transport, a kitchen, physical capacity, maybe some assistance, cooking utensils, time[2] - and you have to know what and where they are and how to use them.

I don't mean, by the way, that NOBODY ever talks about this stuff. Obviously, lots of people do.

But the large, mainstream discussions about food security, especially food security for people on low/fixed incomes seem to me to consistently miss or just plain ignore lack of time, and to be dismissive and minimising and generally privileged and clueless about lack of knowledge.

And the higher up the hierarchy of food needs the conversation gets, the more prescriptivist and privileged it seems to get.

And here's the thing. Everytime you want to take a step up that pyramid, you're accepting that food security just got harder to achieve and maintain, and you're going to need more resources.

My family is fortunate. We get to live at the top of the pyramid most of the time, if we choose to. We don't always choose to, because there are always going to be times when something else is more important to us. But mostly, we can choose to eat things that are tasty and nutritious, which were produced under conditions we find ethically acceptable, that we bought from suppliers whose practices and standards we mostly approve of.

And here's the thing: I honestly, seriously, absolutely don't think anyone needs to do things the way we do. I am not interested in telling people what they ought to do.

What I want to do, and try to find ways to do, is share what I know about getting, storing, and preparing food in the hopes that I can make it easier for someone else to get to where they want to be on that food pyramid.

And I have found over the years that with Food Education as with Sex Education the place where the biggest need is is between Zero and Two: I know a lot of people who are or have been in a position where the major factor in keeping their level of Food Security lower than it ought to be is that they don't know how to buy, store, prepare, and flavour their own food, so they have to depend on someone else - whether that's a family member or a diner or a food company - to do some or all of that for them. It's not just that they don't know how to cook, they don't know who to ask or how to ask or how to access the people who know. So they spend more than they can afford to on food that is less than acceptable to them.

Getting from Zero to Two is not easy. It's a LOT more complicated than disdainfully telling someone that a carrot is "better" than a Mars Bar[3]. And it's risky: when you're trying to get from Six to Eight you end up with some stuff that isn't quite what you wanted it to be. When you're trying to get from Zero to Two, you end up with some situations where what used to be food isn't anymore, because you burnt it or salted it to death, or it rotted. If your Food Security is already shaky... your ability to learn by experiment is kind of limited. Safer to stick with Ramen, or Freezer Pizza.

So when I write stuff for the "cooking for people who don't" tag, I want to be posting about making complex, effort-intensive food, totally from fresh ingredients, and about Doing Stuff Mostly From Cans And Packets and tweaking it a bit to make it tastier and more nutritious, and about things like What A Chest Freezer Can Do For Your Vitamin Situation, or How To Safely Store Twenty Kilos of Beans and Ten Of Flour and Which Things It's Worth Scrimping Elsewhere To Get In Bulk and What It Is Best To Just Get Weekly, and How To Build A Herb/Sauce/Spice Collection at One Jar Per Paycheque, or Living As Well As Possible In A Food Desert, and about Making A Pound Of Meat Feel Luxurious In A Dinner For Six, and about Good Stuff You Can Do With Leftovers. [4]

And I hope it's useful. I want to start doing more of it, and linking to other people who say Smart Stuff About Food.

So that's my Food Philosophy, sort of. Or at least my Talking About Food philosophy.

[1] By objective I mean, how many days worth of good, healthy food you actually have, or can definitely get and by subjective I mean how close that puts you to your own internal sense of "enough".

[2] Time may actually be one of the LEAST talked about resources that goes into a person or family's level of food security.

[3] Also, you tell me that at the half-way point of a 20 km winter hike and I will EAT YOUR HEAD.

[4] Topic requests welcome. Anyone want to listen to me talk about freezers?

Comments

[bemused_leftist]

May I say, thanks for making a place where we can discuss solutions to the problems AROUND food buying and prep and storage!

And clean-up, please? I avoid some dishes (such as brown rice) because the cooking pot takes a long soak later. My solution there is a bread machine (when the heat comes from all sides like an oven, the rice doesn't stick), but few of those have a 'rice' setting.

Also I use disposable paper 'deli containers' for storing leftovers and often for original cooking in the microwave (such as custards). If leftovers spoil, there's no valuable dish to have to clean (wasting water, power, etc). If not spoiled, after use for food they can be used for starting seedlings etc. If necessary, I buy these at Cash and Carry.

Having a lot of one-meal-size containers handy makes it easier to cook a big healthy stew or something and freeze reasonable portions. The paper ones can be marked with a Sharpie medium felt tip, don't need a separate label. (And they store in the door of an upright freezer, real easy to grab something to heat for a quick meal.)

[bemused_leftist]

PS. Not the flimsy fold up 'takeout' boxes, but solid sturdy 'soup cups' with separate lids.

[krait]

Those are handy!

I love the little plastic tubs from sour cream and margarine, too -- they make great containers for freezing one-person portions and you don't have to be invested in saving them, so if one warps in the microwave or just won't stop being orange after you kept chili in it, you can pitch it. After all, you'll end up with another one the next time you need yogurt/sour cream/butter, anyway! :D

[bemused_leftist]

Right. And with paper containers, if something spoils you can pitch the whole thing in the compost!

[(Anonymous)]

Not so good from the health perspective, though. And it is possible to melt those containers entirely. (Please don't make me relive that episode.) Something each person decide for himself.

I consider them a good starting point; if one determines that ze will freeze lots, then get nuker-safe containers.

- Harimad

[cleverthylacine]

The best thing in the world for dealing with brown rice imnsho is a rice cooker. They're not as common as bread machines in areas that don't have a lot of Asian folks, but they're getting easier to find even at big box stores, and at the big box stores a small one can set you back less than $20.

[bemused_leftist]

I had a simple rice cooker and it made lovely rice, even brown rice. But there was always a layer stuck to the bottom of the pot, so tightly that it needed to soak for at least a couple of days, plus scrubbing. Which ties up the sink, and when you empty it there's rice trying to go down the drain, etc. My kitchen area and time are just too limited to deal with that much, messy cleanup.

My bread machine makes lovely rice with NO cleanup, just barely wipe the pot. But it takes space, and I'd like to make rice at both my 'homes'. I've heard that 'fuzzy logic' rice cookers cook more evenly, but they are rather expensive, like $200?

[cleverthylacine]

I don't know what to say, I've never had that problem. Are you using enough water? I've sometimes had a crust form on the rice at the edges and bottom, but this separates easily from the pot.

[bemused_leftist]

I've shopped around online for rice cookers, and it's mentioned often in customer review comments.

What kinds of rice cookers have you used?

[cleverthylacine]

I've owned salton and currently own sylvania; I've also used my ex-mother-in-law's fancy zojirushi.

[(Anonymous)]

I use a fuzzy-logic rice cooker and we love it. I resisted getting it because I make perfectly good rice on the stovetop ThankYouVeryMuch. Now that I got it (excess credit at Sur La Table) it gets used 2-3 times a week - plan rice, rice ready at a specific time, rice and beans, rice and sausage, rice with spice mix, etc. For borwn rice one must plan head because it take 2 hours.

You can also cook brown rice like you do pasta, in large amounts of water. No burning, no scrubbing. The texture is different so I recommend you try it and decide for yourself.

You can also cook brown rice in a pressure cooker. I never got the knack of cooking brown rice the standard way in a pressure cooker so I use the lots of water method. It takes about 10 min. Since a pressure cooker is the solution to many poverty-related food issues - cheap tough meat, beans, time - I'd consider getting a pressure cooker a viable option for someone going from 0 to 2.

Fuzzy logic rice cookers can get gotten for $50 or so; my fancy one was about $175. Pressure cookers are in the same range.

- Harimad

My rice crust solution is edible :-)

[commodorified]

And is in fact the main reason I still use the "stovetop, 2:1 water:rice, bring to boil, turn to low, leave sealed, let sit" method."

1) Place rice-crusted pot back on burner
2) Add milk or cream to cover crust, generously.
3) Sprinkle in cinnamon
4) Sugar and raisins and knob of butter optional.
5) Leave pot uncovered. Turn burner to one or two steps above minimum, depending on your stove; "just barely cooking"
6) Ignore for 20-30 minutes
7...
8) Dessert!

For many other kinds of clean-up

[commodorified]

I keep a great big box of denture cleaning fizzy tabs under my kitchen sink. They are, obviously, very safe for people and environment, given what they are meant for. :-)

Before making ANY exertion on anything, fill it with water, drop in 1-4 tabs depending on volume of pot and degree of ick - 4 tabs is, like, Oh Crap the Stock Pot Scorched An Inch Thick - and ignore it for several hours.

If that doesn't do it, and it usually will, then one may have to imperil one's manicure by languidly plying brush, steel wool, or teflon approved whatsit. But always give the mess a chance to crawl away on its own, first...

Re: For many other kinds of clean-up

[cleverthylacine]

GREAT IDEA! I'm gonna get some.

I spend way too much money on manicures to ruin them without cause, though I find that latex/vinyl/whatever gloves help.

Re: For many other kinds of clean-up

[bemused_leftist]

These are all great ideas, but I don't want to clean up ANY cooking containers, so there! Wiping with a paper towel or rinsing immediately in hot water (without soap) is about as far as I want to go. No space for a container to sit around soaking, either.

I prefer to avoid making the mess. I use a lot of disposables, microwave in paper or throwaway plastic. And I roast veggies on an oven rack or skewers, etc.