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

[ct]

I would probably read all of those. (Except maybe the one about chest freezers. I have a tiny apartment. I'm sure other people will be interested, though.)

Topic suggestion: cooking for one without wasting food.

[ranunculus]

Cooking for one is hard, but doable if you make meals that can be added together to make new meals.

[ranunculus]

My take on freezers (having had both) is that upright beats chest hands down.

I also think that 0 to 2 is a really under-reperesented group in food prep information. It is the same problem that people struggle with when they encounter a subsistence culture and want to introduce new agricultural ideas. Change = the possibility that you will starve to death.

[commodorified]

See, even when we had to keep it in the living room and pass it off as a sideboard we were glad we had the chest freezer. I'd have been willing to buy it a cloth and eat off it to keep it.

Topic suggestion: cooking for one without wasting food.

Ooh one of my favourites. You shall have it.

[commodorified]

My take on freezers (having had both) is that upright beats chest hands down.

I've never had an upright: say more?

Change = the possibility that you will starve to death.

Oh yeah. I try to keep the stuff I post under this tag as low-risk as I can for that reason.

[lucia]

Cooking for one is something I'd love to see too, because it does limit what I buy and cook.

I'm not going to buy a huge container of something, such as some condiments, if I only need to use a tiny bit of it on very sporadic intervals. I absolutely cannot stand seeing food go to waste.

[commodorified]

*makes notes*

Bulk bins are also the solo cook's friend, because they let you buy tiny little amounts of stuff at the same per-unit price as the person getting five pounds.

Herb and Spice in Ottawa sells bulk spices from little drawers and omg is it ever great for that.

[niqaeli]

I've dealt with both. I agree upright freezer beats chest, at least for me. Particularly for finding stuff. I loathe, loathe, loathe going digging in a chest freezer for stuff, where you have to rearrange everything to get to stuff and your hands freeze off in the doing thereof. Upright, while you might have some stuff at the back, it's not worse than finding anything in a regular fridge.

That said, when dealing with a fridge/freezer combo, I vastly prefer them stacked rather than side-by-side, and preferably with the freezer on the bottom. Side-by-side makes the freezer annoying as hell to fit stuff into because it's always so narrow. (Personally, I think I'd be happy to just have a solo fridge but that's not something we're going to be affording any time soon.)

I suspect it has an advantage in form factor too, if you have to keep it inside in otherwise normally living spaces. Ours lives in the front/dining room with a screen to go around it for formal dinners. A chest would be harder to fit anywhere, but the upright fits in the corner without much comment.

[epershand]

Or if you're ok with repetitive meals like me and are willing to eat the same thing for several days consecutively :P

[commodorified]

I also used to sometimes make TWO things and rotate them. Three and something would go off, but two was manageable and made for at least some variety.

[ironed_orchid]

Time, yes. I can cook well, but when I come home from work I don't have a lot of time, energy, or inclination.

My solution is buying an affordable cooked meal on my lunch break, which usually translates as curry and rice, and then eating sandwiches or snacky things like cheese and apples when I get home from work.

[ironed_orchid]

I do that sometimes.

[commodorified]

Yeah; that worked well for me in summer, less so in cold months wen I would get in from the walk home wanting hot food very much, ideally ready and waiting...

[lucia]

The trouble with bulk spices is where do I put them? If I have tiny amounts of a bunch of things, that could get confusing and disorganized easily. At least when I buy the whole jar of spice, it comes with a container and a label and everything, even if it is way too much for me to ever use.

Also, the other trouble with bulk spices is where do I get them? The food co-op in the next town over has a good bulk selection, but few of the stores within easy access of here have bulk anything.

But when I can find bulk goods, I am very happy.

[commodorified]

Yeah, see, this is where it all gets hard and there aren't any perfect answers and I get frustrate with people who insist that there ARE people are just DUMB.

Craft stores often sell tiny jars, though. You could go to the bulk food place once a year and then have a little box - to keep them organised and the light away - full of tiny perfectly labelled spice jars!

Or that might be ridiculously difficult. This stuff gets tricky!

Hmmm... *looks at your journal just cause* you are going to be in SF over Christmas. Penzeys' has small jars ...

Also my wife has family in your small town!

[(Anonymous)]

I think bulk spices are most suitable for those with knowledge. For those just starting I would suggest 2 or 3 spice mixes instead. Ideally salt-free mixes, and add your own salt after.

- Harimad

[(Anonymous)]

One solution to this problem is a Crock Pot. But then one has to learn how to use it and get into the habit of setting up dinner a day ahead. Neither are impossible barriers but are things that need to be taken into account.

- Harimad

[(Anonymous)]

Chest freezers are more energy efficient, more space efficient (internally) and keep food better. But they're hard to organize and so food tends to get lost in them.

Uprights look like small fridges and have shelves. They're much easier to see what you have and keep organized. But they're less energy efficient, less space efficient (internally), and food doesn't last as long.

Based on my knowledge of the poor in the cities I've lived in, neither is a good solution for those getting from Zero to Two.

[commodorified]

See, my experience is the opposite: if you can lay hands on, second or third or even fourth hand - I think ours may be third hand, even, a SMALL chest freezer, maybe one of the bar fridge sized ones, and assuming that you're not paying through the nose for electricity, several tricks for feeding oneself or a family well on limited resources get MUCH easier.

[commodorified]

That is what I mostly did, or else cook something until it was 3/4 done the night before and then put the pot into the fridge overnight, but I'm trying not to write the whole next post in comments here :-)

[jenett]

I get most of my spices from Penzey's (they have stores, but also sell online): their prices and quality are both amazingly good, and their small jars half the size of most supermarket ones, and they're often only a dollar or two for enough to keep you happy for a year. (More for more expensive spices, obviously.)

http://penzeys.com

They also have a few things like minced dried onion and minced dried garlic that are amazing time/energy savers when I'm just cooking for me.

[bemused_leftist]

Local craft stores aren't convenient for us (hm, maybe I should walk down that aisle at Walmart) but we order little containers from TAP Plastics.

http://www.tapplastics.com/shop/category.php?bid=16&PHPSESSID=20111214081201556878026

I love these because I can see what's in them, the lid hinges up one-handed and doesn't get lost, they're a good size to tap on the side of the bowl and shake out a little of the spice, etc.
http://www.tapplastics.com/shop/product.php?pid=427&

I like the 3"x1" because it's very easy to handle, it's big enough to get a grip on one-handed. If that's too much spice, you could fill some of the space with a glass marble or something.

[bemused_leftist]

I love an upright freezer. I set some plastic bins on the shelves to use as drawers. There's a lot of waste space but no wasted time or wasted food (from things getting lost or their wraps coming loose while digging).

On energy, I figure it saves energy because the door doesn't have to stay open as long as when you're digging.

It may waste cubic space but it doesn't have to waste wall space. As with a refrigerator the front can be bulletin board, or in a more formal room you could hide it behind a decorative screen or curtain.

[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.