mindless1
Diamond Member
- Aug 11, 2001
- 8,640
- 1,691
- 126
Heh, food choices get people so riled up. It's HIGHLY subjective.
It's about seeking efficiency in whatever you do.
It depends on what you put your efforts into, whether you choose to refine your home cooking (and shopping) efficiency or not. Your time is finite. However I had a NEED to cook well because I wanted to reduce my sodium intake. That is done by learning to season foods with something besides MOAR SALT.
Personally, I love spicy foods and can just about eat a cardboard box if my self-made (self grown peppers) hot sauce is on it, but at the same time, that just adds a kick, is not the dominant flavor.
Certainly it is healthiest and cheapest to reach nutrition goals if you prepare as much from scratch as possible. The trick is to think about more efficient ways to do that. Preparing more than you'd eat in one meal and refrigerating leftovers is great. Even better, prepare 2-3 meals worth of something that can withstand freezing and reheating and freeze the leftovers, then you have a much larger span of time you can wait to eat the same thing again, without getting tired of eating the same thing again.
This also eases up your shopping for food, that if you prepare more at a time, you can buy more bulk at a time, and go shopping less often. There are a few more perishable items that I find need bought on a regular basis, like milk, fruit, and fresh bread, but most other things, I can wait at least a couple weeks before buying more.
One thing that strikes me as ironic is the idea that fast food is so much easier. If you want to pay the premium for home delivery, perhaps so, or if it happens to be a restaurant you nearly pass by on your drive home from (wherever, work?) but otherwise, when I average the amount of effort to prepare meals, factoring in that I often make a few meals worth at a time, it is less of a burden and time to just make those meals, than drive to some restaurant multiple times, even if ordering ahead, wait in the drive thru or walk in, either way, I spend more time per meal than just cooking multiple meals at once... plus there's that sodium issue I mentioned previously. I can always add more salt at the table but getting rid of what is already in prepared food, not so much.
Anyway the topic started as bulk beef. I have countless ways to use ground beef, and can get the 80%, around $3-$4 /lb when on sale so I buy that (Kroger's, usually) and freeze most of it right away to use later, section it into 1/4 or 1/3 lb portions. 80% gnd. beef works fine in recipes where you have the option of browning it (with a cover over it to capture steam to keep a solution of broth and fat), then drain off that broth/fat solution before incorporating it into the meal.
I drain that into a tea cup, put in the refrigerator, then the next day, can just lift off the hockey puck layer of fat to dispose of it, then the broth left over, gets put into a container in the freezer to make soup with later. That broth is mostly protein at that point.
On the other hand, making something where the dish holds the fat, like a meatloaf, then I'll pick at least 90% lean ground beef.
It also helps to grow what you can, what your time, space, and region allows. I grow many herbs, peppers, tomatoes, other vegetables on a seasonal whim. I don't bother to grow low value or low nutrition crops like beans or lettuce, with the exception of zucchini because those grow so fast, and yet I regret every year I grow them because then the stinkbug population that populates on them, trying to get into my home in the fall, is very annoying.
I could use pesticides, but am not that into high maintenance farming. Just like efficiency in shopping for, or preparing meals, the efficiency of growing food is worth considering and optimizing. Do not just listen to some supposed expert who wants to throw out extra steps trying to seem elite, when more often than not, gains come from amount of land area far more than anything else. It is laughable what some people buy for fertilizer, for example, when your native soil plus what is available to compose with no cost, works well.. and don't even fall into the idea that you need much effort to compost. You do not need a regimen, if you just leave things sitting, and moist, they will compost. Just throw it all into a container (I put it into pots to grow in the next year) that is not air tight. Kitchen scraps, lawn waste, leaves, whatever.
It's about effort vs reward, and especially I don't want to do anything to further decrease the honey bee population. There's very few left around here, the many thousands of blooms on my summer crops are mostly pollinated by little sweat bee looking things or wasps.
I am mentioning this grow DIY angle because that's what it boils down to, what you can DIY efficiently vs what you find more cost/time effective to pay for someone else's work. I don't find it efficient to raise cattle or other protein sources (and could not stand having a chicken coup, hell no!) but on a large enough scale, it would be. It is far more efficient for my needs to grow herbs or hot peppers to season things instead of adding salt. YMMV. I digress....
It's about seeking efficiency in whatever you do.
It depends on what you put your efforts into, whether you choose to refine your home cooking (and shopping) efficiency or not. Your time is finite. However I had a NEED to cook well because I wanted to reduce my sodium intake. That is done by learning to season foods with something besides MOAR SALT.
Personally, I love spicy foods and can just about eat a cardboard box if my self-made (self grown peppers) hot sauce is on it, but at the same time, that just adds a kick, is not the dominant flavor.
Certainly it is healthiest and cheapest to reach nutrition goals if you prepare as much from scratch as possible. The trick is to think about more efficient ways to do that. Preparing more than you'd eat in one meal and refrigerating leftovers is great. Even better, prepare 2-3 meals worth of something that can withstand freezing and reheating and freeze the leftovers, then you have a much larger span of time you can wait to eat the same thing again, without getting tired of eating the same thing again.
This also eases up your shopping for food, that if you prepare more at a time, you can buy more bulk at a time, and go shopping less often. There are a few more perishable items that I find need bought on a regular basis, like milk, fruit, and fresh bread, but most other things, I can wait at least a couple weeks before buying more.
One thing that strikes me as ironic is the idea that fast food is so much easier. If you want to pay the premium for home delivery, perhaps so, or if it happens to be a restaurant you nearly pass by on your drive home from (wherever, work?) but otherwise, when I average the amount of effort to prepare meals, factoring in that I often make a few meals worth at a time, it is less of a burden and time to just make those meals, than drive to some restaurant multiple times, even if ordering ahead, wait in the drive thru or walk in, either way, I spend more time per meal than just cooking multiple meals at once... plus there's that sodium issue I mentioned previously. I can always add more salt at the table but getting rid of what is already in prepared food, not so much.
Anyway the topic started as bulk beef. I have countless ways to use ground beef, and can get the 80%, around $3-$4 /lb when on sale so I buy that (Kroger's, usually) and freeze most of it right away to use later, section it into 1/4 or 1/3 lb portions. 80% gnd. beef works fine in recipes where you have the option of browning it (with a cover over it to capture steam to keep a solution of broth and fat), then drain off that broth/fat solution before incorporating it into the meal.
I drain that into a tea cup, put in the refrigerator, then the next day, can just lift off the hockey puck layer of fat to dispose of it, then the broth left over, gets put into a container in the freezer to make soup with later. That broth is mostly protein at that point.
On the other hand, making something where the dish holds the fat, like a meatloaf, then I'll pick at least 90% lean ground beef.
It also helps to grow what you can, what your time, space, and region allows. I grow many herbs, peppers, tomatoes, other vegetables on a seasonal whim. I don't bother to grow low value or low nutrition crops like beans or lettuce, with the exception of zucchini because those grow so fast, and yet I regret every year I grow them because then the stinkbug population that populates on them, trying to get into my home in the fall, is very annoying.
I could use pesticides, but am not that into high maintenance farming. Just like efficiency in shopping for, or preparing meals, the efficiency of growing food is worth considering and optimizing. Do not just listen to some supposed expert who wants to throw out extra steps trying to seem elite, when more often than not, gains come from amount of land area far more than anything else. It is laughable what some people buy for fertilizer, for example, when your native soil plus what is available to compose with no cost, works well.. and don't even fall into the idea that you need much effort to compost. You do not need a regimen, if you just leave things sitting, and moist, they will compost. Just throw it all into a container (I put it into pots to grow in the next year) that is not air tight. Kitchen scraps, lawn waste, leaves, whatever.
It's about effort vs reward, and especially I don't want to do anything to further decrease the honey bee population. There's very few left around here, the many thousands of blooms on my summer crops are mostly pollinated by little sweat bee looking things or wasps.
I am mentioning this grow DIY angle because that's what it boils down to, what you can DIY efficiently vs what you find more cost/time effective to pay for someone else's work. I don't find it efficient to raise cattle or other protein sources (and could not stand having a chicken coup, hell no!) but on a large enough scale, it would be. It is far more efficient for my needs to grow herbs or hot peppers to season things instead of adding salt. YMMV. I digress....
Last edited:
Facebook
Twitter