I *love* cooking that way! But I also keep a well-stocked pantry, seasoning rack, and freezer.
My wife is an excellent cook, but she is of the “read the recipe, then lay out the ingredients and utensils in order” sort of cook. She does holiday meals, I do everything else.
I never understood this. Is it the people in the household not doing most of the grocery shopping (or grocery list making) and cooking? Or people just buying whatever and then not knowing how to make it work?
I think many people feel uncomfortable with the idea of not following a recipe precisely, and if it turns out they realize they’ve run out of kale, they don’t understand they can substitute cabbage etc.
I used to shop from a very precise list but I don’t need to anymore unless I’m planning something unusual, because I’m so comfortable playing it by ear.
Convenience cooking is all that works when you have a two hour window between school/work and the next sports practice and you are having trouble thinking straight you are so tired. Then again, last Sunday I somehow had nowhere to be and no one else to feed and dinner was an ice cream cone, an orange and a glass of wine so…yeah.
I get that, but sometimes the answer is do less stuff (if you can) and other times the answer is something like make a big batch of soup the day before or eat something naturally fast, like an apple and a peanut butter sandwich.
We have all resorted to convenience at some point when shit was hitting us all at once, though — especially when parenting. Perfection isn’t possible.
Maybe it's not necessarily the ONLY thing that works. There was a time when I was a single working mother of three, living in a one-bedroom flat with an under-the-counter fridge and no freezer, and no car. I worked an hour by bus in one direction, the kids went to school half an hour by bus in the other. The only reason this worked was because I had flexi-time and I worked long days when they were at their dad's house; when they were with me it was a two-hour round trip at each end of the day, and pretty much a load of laundry every day too. No tumble drier - we had a slatted futon base hung over the banister on the landing we'd dry the clothes on. (The door to the flat was on the ground floor; most of the flat was two floors up, that's how this worked.) I mean I would.
Here's the deal: I couldn't AFFORD commercial food. I hate it anyway - I believe in real food above all else, really. I used to make lentil stew, with sausage meat in it (or not) and plain yogurt to put on top (or not). Soups galore, according to my standard failsafe formula that takes about half an hour, costs pennies, and can be reheated the next day. (The formula: Sauté onion, celery, a bit of garlic gently in a bit of oil. Then add: cut-up potato, stock of some kind (either fresh, or a cube), and, at the appropriate time, whatever the main thing is (what kind of soup is it) - if carrots they went in early, id spinach, last few minutes. Split pea is a great way to stretch a small bit of ham. A bay leaf, herbs, spices, whatever. When everything's cooked, whizz it up with a handheld blender (take out bay leaf first) and feed the kids! I had a little repertoire of cheap, cheerful, nourishing pasta dishes, many also cupboard-to-table in half an hour. Real vegetables. Cheap meat, stretched with beans. Crepes are cheap and quick and very exciting for the kids with even some cheap bean mixture inside. Grated cheese cheers anything up. We ate really well.
We had a tiny galley kitchen; my equipment was whatever there was room for.
I made most of our bread, very quickly, often with no kneading at all - though kneading dough is a great stress-busting activity at the end of a day! I find it very therapeutic.
But then I wasn't taking my kids so sports activities - no car, no time, no money, no one to help me, and anyway they were tired too after school. It isn't really the culture, anyway, where we were living (but even if it hadn't been, I wouldn't have). We'd go to the park across the road, which had a great playground.
Checking my privilege: I'm a good cook, I like cooking - I learned as a kid, from my dad actually. I care, a lot, about good food and I hate, a lot, the capitalist industrial food system and the damage it's done to public health (and individual people's lives). So I cared enough, but it didn't seem onerous to me, it was about 40 minutes till dinner once we got home and everyone knew that - it was decompression time.
When I took my then-13yo eldest on a visit to the States to see family he blew everyone's mind - they thought he'd want nothing but burgers to eat, but everywhere we went he'd order a chicken Caesar salad, dressing on the side. 'Where are the VEGETABLES??' he said. (Having said this, for his 18th we went out & he had the hugest surf & turf I've ever seen!)
The point is, we do all really have choices; these things are all DECISIONS.
We have a lot in common, right down to drying the clothes inside to save money. (It also makes your clothes last longer, which saves even more money.)
Lentils and sausage go so well together. I seldom make that, because my husband is a vegetarian, but now that you've brought it up I'm craving it. Just a little sausage really makes it.
My mom learned from her mom how to cook from scratch and how to make menus out of whatever was on hand. I learned it from her and I like to think of it as solving a puzzle....if you have X, Y, and Z ingredients what can you make out of them?
My grandma, after cooking for a family of eight for decades, was a huge fan of all of the 1960's mixes, boxes and cans. She was the one that fed us Kraft mac and cheese and her special treat for visiting grandkids was a strawberry poke cake--a white cake mix poked full of holes and drizzled with strawberry jello, chilled and then topped with frozen sliced strawberries and kool whip. My mom NEVER used what she called "box mixes." I think Grandma was just sick of cooking after doing it for so long, and had the money to buy convenience foods, so she did. My other grandma was one of those 1950's cooks that made incredibly weird and complicated jello salads. She had a standby one of lime jello, cottage cheese, and crushed pineapple. There may have been other stuff in there too, but we all called it "granny vomit" and refused to eat it.
Agree 100%! I think most of us who grew up in the 60s, 70s, and after have no idea how much our ideas about food have been shaped by the processed food industry - very scary. Cooking from scratch can be an extremely creative activity, as well as the best thing for us, nutritionally. Another interesting book about the benefits of cooking for others and seeing cooking and eating together as important social time is “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” by Barbara Kingsolver.
There are seasons of life where I’ve had the time and energy, and others where I don’t. When my kids were younger and my work schedule a little more forgiving, I was able to save a lot of money by spending my time (home made broth, pesto, tomato sauce, dried beans, frozen for later use.) My kids (who are both male) have always had at least a small garden and home-cooked food seasoned with fresh herbs. They are both good cooks. They also love Taco Bell 🔔.
Generally, people behave in the way they do because it’s easier or cheaper or their work fills their hours. I find fresh homemade food almost always better than anything prepared, but it isn’t always possible. Just like getting an hour of exercise a day or any of a number of things that would be “good for” me. Individual actions only go so far.
I would love to see government subsidies for whole fruits and vegetables, and to keep fresh food local where possible. Seems like a crazy dream right now, ha.
I definitely show love by cooking food. My husband is the sickest I’ve ever seen him right now — you better believe I made a big pot of vegetable soup!
Wouldn’t it be great to teach basic cooking skills in school? How to make an easy soup, use vegetables, bake bread? Long gone are the days of Mom and Grandma teaching those skills to enough of our kids. Great read, thank you for reinforcing how simple it is to live without “convenience foods”.
Inrelate to so much of what you wrote here, Michelle. I’ve been a fan of cooking from scratch all my life. I was shocked when my mum started buying frozen vegetables rather than buying fresh and blanching her own. (She instilled those standards in me.) I dreamed of living in the country and growing my own food. And also… now I am disabled by chronic illness I am profoundly grateful to pay for tinned lentils, so I don’t have to soak my own. I am profoundly grateful for frozen diced onion, and precooked rice. I love pre-chopped bags of soup vegetables. And sometimes I love a pre-prepared meal, when the choice is that or nothing. I cook batch meals but the vagaries of my health mean the sicker I am, the more likely I am to run out. I know the supermarket mafia aren’t really doing it for me, but without some busy folk who can’t cook or choose not to cook, they won’t do it at all. Its part of the ‘crip tax’: it just costs me, and many people, more to live in a disabled body. We need some comvenience, its not all bad.
I love this post and your outlook. I am a disinterested cook, but do cook, as I am interested in nutrition for my family. I cannot cut up a chicken (and honestly when I cook chicken I wear latex gloves because it grosses me out so much). I have my mom’s cookbook, which she typed, and it’s so interesting. She and her friends shared recipes. All recipes are attributed to friend, acquaintance, someone, and often to a location as well. It includes her mom’s recipes. These recipes are old, before the propagation of highly processed food, and as you point out, the ingredients are real food.
I’m old enough to remember an occasional commercial from the Washington State Apple Growers Association, but that was a long time ago. Fortunately, I married a great cook and baker, so I’ve eaten well for >37 years. All of our adult kids can cook too.
I wouldn’t characterize cooking as mere drudgery, I like doing it sometimes—but it is work, skilled work, and work that’s a challenge to do when you’re overtired and stressed from all of the other work you have to do. If there was a feasible way to cut back on that work, I think we might cook more, and more happily.
You skipped over leftovers, Michelle. Make a big batch of whatever — soup, stew, pot pie, roast beef & veggies, black bean meatloaf 😉. Live off it for a week (less with a family, natch) or freeze half of it for those weeks where there’s no time to cook. Bonus: some spices improve in flavor the longer the food stands.
Oh, we just finished off a huge pot of vegetable soup. I had a whole head of shredded cabbage in it. Economical, delicious, nutritious and (once made) very convenient.
I think what most people aren't taught is how to look at what is in the refrigerator or pantry and make a meal out of it.
I wish I were good at videos! That would be a great one. I’m particularly good at looking around and coming up with something.
I *love* cooking that way! But I also keep a well-stocked pantry, seasoning rack, and freezer.
My wife is an excellent cook, but she is of the “read the recipe, then lay out the ingredients and utensils in order” sort of cook. She does holiday meals, I do everything else.
yes and we're not taught that we can figure out our own way to cook. I love cooking but am often intimidated by recipes.
I never understood this. Is it the people in the household not doing most of the grocery shopping (or grocery list making) and cooking? Or people just buying whatever and then not knowing how to make it work?
I think many people feel uncomfortable with the idea of not following a recipe precisely, and if it turns out they realize they’ve run out of kale, they don’t understand they can substitute cabbage etc.
I used to shop from a very precise list but I don’t need to anymore unless I’m planning something unusual, because I’m so comfortable playing it by ear.
Convenience cooking is all that works when you have a two hour window between school/work and the next sports practice and you are having trouble thinking straight you are so tired. Then again, last Sunday I somehow had nowhere to be and no one else to feed and dinner was an ice cream cone, an orange and a glass of wine so…yeah.
I get that, but sometimes the answer is do less stuff (if you can) and other times the answer is something like make a big batch of soup the day before or eat something naturally fast, like an apple and a peanut butter sandwich.
We have all resorted to convenience at some point when shit was hitting us all at once, though — especially when parenting. Perfection isn’t possible.
Maybe it's not necessarily the ONLY thing that works. There was a time when I was a single working mother of three, living in a one-bedroom flat with an under-the-counter fridge and no freezer, and no car. I worked an hour by bus in one direction, the kids went to school half an hour by bus in the other. The only reason this worked was because I had flexi-time and I worked long days when they were at their dad's house; when they were with me it was a two-hour round trip at each end of the day, and pretty much a load of laundry every day too. No tumble drier - we had a slatted futon base hung over the banister on the landing we'd dry the clothes on. (The door to the flat was on the ground floor; most of the flat was two floors up, that's how this worked.) I mean I would.
Here's the deal: I couldn't AFFORD commercial food. I hate it anyway - I believe in real food above all else, really. I used to make lentil stew, with sausage meat in it (or not) and plain yogurt to put on top (or not). Soups galore, according to my standard failsafe formula that takes about half an hour, costs pennies, and can be reheated the next day. (The formula: Sauté onion, celery, a bit of garlic gently in a bit of oil. Then add: cut-up potato, stock of some kind (either fresh, or a cube), and, at the appropriate time, whatever the main thing is (what kind of soup is it) - if carrots they went in early, id spinach, last few minutes. Split pea is a great way to stretch a small bit of ham. A bay leaf, herbs, spices, whatever. When everything's cooked, whizz it up with a handheld blender (take out bay leaf first) and feed the kids! I had a little repertoire of cheap, cheerful, nourishing pasta dishes, many also cupboard-to-table in half an hour. Real vegetables. Cheap meat, stretched with beans. Crepes are cheap and quick and very exciting for the kids with even some cheap bean mixture inside. Grated cheese cheers anything up. We ate really well.
We had a tiny galley kitchen; my equipment was whatever there was room for.
I made most of our bread, very quickly, often with no kneading at all - though kneading dough is a great stress-busting activity at the end of a day! I find it very therapeutic.
But then I wasn't taking my kids so sports activities - no car, no time, no money, no one to help me, and anyway they were tired too after school. It isn't really the culture, anyway, where we were living (but even if it hadn't been, I wouldn't have). We'd go to the park across the road, which had a great playground.
Checking my privilege: I'm a good cook, I like cooking - I learned as a kid, from my dad actually. I care, a lot, about good food and I hate, a lot, the capitalist industrial food system and the damage it's done to public health (and individual people's lives). So I cared enough, but it didn't seem onerous to me, it was about 40 minutes till dinner once we got home and everyone knew that - it was decompression time.
When I took my then-13yo eldest on a visit to the States to see family he blew everyone's mind - they thought he'd want nothing but burgers to eat, but everywhere we went he'd order a chicken Caesar salad, dressing on the side. 'Where are the VEGETABLES??' he said. (Having said this, for his 18th we went out & he had the hugest surf & turf I've ever seen!)
The point is, we do all really have choices; these things are all DECISIONS.
We have a lot in common, right down to drying the clothes inside to save money. (It also makes your clothes last longer, which saves even more money.)
Lentils and sausage go so well together. I seldom make that, because my husband is a vegetarian, but now that you've brought it up I'm craving it. Just a little sausage really makes it.
My mom learned from her mom how to cook from scratch and how to make menus out of whatever was on hand. I learned it from her and I like to think of it as solving a puzzle....if you have X, Y, and Z ingredients what can you make out of them?
My grandma, after cooking for a family of eight for decades, was a huge fan of all of the 1960's mixes, boxes and cans. She was the one that fed us Kraft mac and cheese and her special treat for visiting grandkids was a strawberry poke cake--a white cake mix poked full of holes and drizzled with strawberry jello, chilled and then topped with frozen sliced strawberries and kool whip. My mom NEVER used what she called "box mixes." I think Grandma was just sick of cooking after doing it for so long, and had the money to buy convenience foods, so she did. My other grandma was one of those 1950's cooks that made incredibly weird and complicated jello salads. She had a standby one of lime jello, cottage cheese, and crushed pineapple. There may have been other stuff in there too, but we all called it "granny vomit" and refused to eat it.
Agree 100%! I think most of us who grew up in the 60s, 70s, and after have no idea how much our ideas about food have been shaped by the processed food industry - very scary. Cooking from scratch can be an extremely creative activity, as well as the best thing for us, nutritionally. Another interesting book about the benefits of cooking for others and seeing cooking and eating together as important social time is “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” by Barbara Kingsolver.
Love Kingsolver!
There are seasons of life where I’ve had the time and energy, and others where I don’t. When my kids were younger and my work schedule a little more forgiving, I was able to save a lot of money by spending my time (home made broth, pesto, tomato sauce, dried beans, frozen for later use.) My kids (who are both male) have always had at least a small garden and home-cooked food seasoned with fresh herbs. They are both good cooks. They also love Taco Bell 🔔.
Generally, people behave in the way they do because it’s easier or cheaper or their work fills their hours. I find fresh homemade food almost always better than anything prepared, but it isn’t always possible. Just like getting an hour of exercise a day or any of a number of things that would be “good for” me. Individual actions only go so far.
I would love to see government subsidies for whole fruits and vegetables, and to keep fresh food local where possible. Seems like a crazy dream right now, ha.
“Individual actions only go so far” is one of my mantras. We do need systemic change.
Wise words. Support our local farmers. And for some, cooking from scratch is a way of showing love.
I definitely show love by cooking food. My husband is the sickest I’ve ever seen him right now — you better believe I made a big pot of vegetable soup!
Wouldn’t it be great to teach basic cooking skills in school? How to make an easy soup, use vegetables, bake bread? Long gone are the days of Mom and Grandma teaching those skills to enough of our kids. Great read, thank you for reinforcing how simple it is to live without “convenience foods”.
I did have home ec in the 80s but I mostly learned on my own.
I actually love to teach these things.
Inrelate to so much of what you wrote here, Michelle. I’ve been a fan of cooking from scratch all my life. I was shocked when my mum started buying frozen vegetables rather than buying fresh and blanching her own. (She instilled those standards in me.) I dreamed of living in the country and growing my own food. And also… now I am disabled by chronic illness I am profoundly grateful to pay for tinned lentils, so I don’t have to soak my own. I am profoundly grateful for frozen diced onion, and precooked rice. I love pre-chopped bags of soup vegetables. And sometimes I love a pre-prepared meal, when the choice is that or nothing. I cook batch meals but the vagaries of my health mean the sicker I am, the more likely I am to run out. I know the supermarket mafia aren’t really doing it for me, but without some busy folk who can’t cook or choose not to cook, they won’t do it at all. Its part of the ‘crip tax’: it just costs me, and many people, more to live in a disabled body. We need some comvenience, its not all bad.
I’m sorry your body is keeping you from cooking as you wish. That’s really unfair. As we age, many of us may face similar constraints.
I call those recipes "assemblage", because it's not cooking. All my best recipes are from my mum.
Also, potatoes are life.
I love this post and your outlook. I am a disinterested cook, but do cook, as I am interested in nutrition for my family. I cannot cut up a chicken (and honestly when I cook chicken I wear latex gloves because it grosses me out so much). I have my mom’s cookbook, which she typed, and it’s so interesting. She and her friends shared recipes. All recipes are attributed to friend, acquaintance, someone, and often to a location as well. It includes her mom’s recipes. These recipes are old, before the propagation of highly processed food, and as you point out, the ingredients are real food.
I have a recipe box full of family recipes I’ll never make — grandma’s oatmeal sausage would require bits only farmers have. I value them anyway.
I’m old enough to remember an occasional commercial from the Washington State Apple Growers Association, but that was a long time ago. Fortunately, I married a great cook and baker, so I’ve eaten well for >37 years. All of our adult kids can cook too.
I wouldn’t characterize cooking as mere drudgery, I like doing it sometimes—but it is work, skilled work, and work that’s a challenge to do when you’re overtired and stressed from all of the other work you have to do. If there was a feasible way to cut back on that work, I think we might cook more, and more happily.
We don’t have enough work balance and that’s a big problem. When you have to work so much you can’t feed yourself properly, that’s a sign. Been there.
I made your bean loaf and it was delicious 😊
Thank you! Another reader wrote a whole post about it on Medium. Makes me happy that people are making it!
Very well stated. And for more on this topic, I recommend reading Ultra Processed People by Chris Van Tulleken!
You skipped over leftovers, Michelle. Make a big batch of whatever — soup, stew, pot pie, roast beef & veggies, black bean meatloaf 😉. Live off it for a week (less with a family, natch) or freeze half of it for those weeks where there’s no time to cook. Bonus: some spices improve in flavor the longer the food stands.
Oh, we just finished off a huge pot of vegetable soup. I had a whole head of shredded cabbage in it. Economical, delicious, nutritious and (once made) very convenient.