Will The Pandemic Force Us to Learn How to Cook? (nytimes.com) 236
"In one recent survey, 54 percent of respondents said they cook more than before the pandemic," writes a clinical associate professor at NYU's business school:
75 percent said they have become more confident in the kitchen and 51 percent said they will continue to cook more after the crisis ends. Interest in online cooking tutorials, recipe websites and food blogs has surged. Dozens of recipe writers and cookbook authors such as Alison Roman, Jet Tila, and Julia Turshen are frenetically posting ideas and answering questions on Twitter and Instagram. "I feel like this virus is a conspiracy to make me learn how to cook," Eliza Bayne, a television producer tweeted... The search term "online cooking classes" saw a fivefold increase on Google over the past four weeks, and the search title "cook with me" saw a 100 percent increase in average daily views on YouTube in the second half of March.
This surge in cooking is meaningful, as people who frequently cook meals at home eat more healthfully and consume fewer calories than those who cook less, according to multiple studies.
One of the biggest barriers to cooking frequently is that it takes practice and time to gain proficiency and ease. That initial training time has simply not been available to most Americans, as the pace of life has intensified over the decades. Nor has there been a perceived need to cook because prepared and fast foods were readily available. The pandemic has put everything on pause, and almost every "nonessential" worker, employed or unemployed, is now enrolled in a de facto home economics course... [W]e are acquiring an ancient skill that has been shown to help people live better and longer. If we apply that skill with greater frequency over the long run, it could reduce our risk of chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and stroke...
Once life rebounds, we may go back to our previous ways, but our palates will have experienced a reset and our hands would have acquired an artful skill... There will be many lessons from the coronavirus pandemic, but we would be wise not to forget this one. This newfound proficiency could be lifesaving.
Of course, he also notes that sales are also up for Hamburger Helper (and other packaged good). But what's your experience been like.
Are any Slashdot readers doing more cooking?
This surge in cooking is meaningful, as people who frequently cook meals at home eat more healthfully and consume fewer calories than those who cook less, according to multiple studies.
One of the biggest barriers to cooking frequently is that it takes practice and time to gain proficiency and ease. That initial training time has simply not been available to most Americans, as the pace of life has intensified over the decades. Nor has there been a perceived need to cook because prepared and fast foods were readily available. The pandemic has put everything on pause, and almost every "nonessential" worker, employed or unemployed, is now enrolled in a de facto home economics course... [W]e are acquiring an ancient skill that has been shown to help people live better and longer. If we apply that skill with greater frequency over the long run, it could reduce our risk of chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and stroke...
Once life rebounds, we may go back to our previous ways, but our palates will have experienced a reset and our hands would have acquired an artful skill... There will be many lessons from the coronavirus pandemic, but we would be wise not to forget this one. This newfound proficiency could be lifesaving.
Of course, he also notes that sales are also up for Hamburger Helper (and other packaged good). But what's your experience been like.
Are any Slashdot readers doing more cooking?
Quicker, faster, now! (Score:5, Funny)
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I am recently you, quicker, faster, now; eating out or enjoying the luxury of expensive restaurant delivery to the house via Door Dash or some similar incarnation... yet, in the present, we have our groceries delivered or picked up curbside.
Now, after sanitizing the grocery items with the increasingly difficult to acquire Clorox wipes, and quarantining the items for at least 48 hours, we are cooking almost every meal at home.
Overabundance of caution? Probably, but the prospect of dying while gasping for br
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Beat egg slowly mixing in the floor until you get a shaggy dough.
I'll shag your dough mate, but she better look like her tinder picture.
Re:Homemade pasta (Score:4, Funny)
I made a hole in the floor. My downstairs neighbor was a bit nonplussed by my actions, esp. in this time of "social distancing", and questioned if it was wise to connect our two homes. She was even more perplexed when I told her I have no idea why I made a hole in the floor.
But, then things got really weird. I didn't have any flowers but she as some on her balcony so I leaned over and broke an egg into one of these. She was even more perplexed then (as am I, I have no idea why the flower needed an egg or what, if anything, I'm supposed to do with the messy flower).
Then she asked what I was doing and, through my facemask I explained that the next step was to make a shaggy dough. I guess between the face mask and talking over the balcony railing there was a misunderstanding about "shaggy" vs. "shagging" because the next thing I know, she was at my front door wearing nothing but an jacket which she opened when I answered the door.
Well, let's just say that there was no more social distancing at that point...
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Instructions unclear, dick stuck in hole in floor.
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Knead for at least 10 minutes.
You misspelled 'knit'.
sales are also up for Hamburger Helper (Score:5, Informative)
Ye gods, people, read the box. HH is a tremendous amount of fats and sodium. You have better odds of living by just going down to the local hospital's infectious diseases ward.
Why would anyone buy HH, or any other mix? (Score:3)
Look, I don't particularly enjoy cooking, but I would never buy a mix like Hamburger Helper. The difference between that and simply adding the raw ingredients is almost zero. To your meat, add mustard powder, mild chili powder and salt. Done.
Cake mix? The good ones still require you to add all the liquid ingredients, so all they are doing is giving you a mix of flour, sugar, salt and baking powder. Plus a host of chemical preservatives, yum. Need the proportions of flour, sugar, etc.? Visit Joy of Cooking o
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Ye gods, people, read the box. HH is a tremendous amount of fats and sodium. You have better odds of living by just going down to the local hospital's infectious diseases ward.
Nothing wrong with fats and sodium unless it's the only component in your diet. Hell European grandmas seem to be powered by the lard dripping spread on a piece of bread and covered in salt that they've been eating daily since they were born.
The reality is your diet needs to be balanced. Get your HH and enjoy it. Then also enjoy a banana high in potassium and fibre. Make sure you also get your vegetables.
Re: sales are also up for Hamburger Helper (Score:5, Informative)
Re: sales are also up for Hamburger Helper (Score:5, Funny)
salt is good for you
Up to a point, as with most stuff we eat. Even water can kill in excess (funnily enough because it dilutes your salts).
Just drink salt water -- problem solved. :-)
[Seriously, though, don't do this.]
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I mean, that's all things like Gatorade, Propel, etc are in the end. No matter how you name it, sweeten it, market it, "it's got electrolytes" is code for salt water...
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I mean, that's all things like Gatorade, Propel, etc are in the end. No matter how you name it, sweeten it, market it, "it's got electrolytes" is code for salt water...
I actually meant, and should have said, "seawater" -- though I think that's how people interpreted it anyway -- and, in that case, seawater has way, WAY too much salt, even vs. Gatorade, and drinking it can literally kill you. (obviously, small amounts - no, but reasonable amounts - yes)
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Yes, but "Salt" usually refers to NaCl (at least in food context)
Electrolytes would be salts, but saltswater would probably be even more confusing.
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Salt is good until you can taste it. Up to that point, it enhances flavor. If you can actually taste the salt, you've used too much.
Salt is used to hide cheap ingrediants (Score:2)
Lots of Salt covers up cheap, nearly rotten vegetables and low grade meat. It's also a preservative. Hence why processed food has so much.
really? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:really? (Score:5, Interesting)
We cook, though much better now than when we were first married. We're actually doing more take-out now, because it's a way to put a bit more money into the local economy. I'm working from home drawing my pay, so economic activity on our part is one more way to help.
Re:really? (Score:5, Insightful)
This might be the dumbest thread I have ever seen in 20 years of slashdot.
You haven't been on here lately.
Re:really? (Score:5, Funny)
It's because people writing stories like these are 20-somethings, just a few years out of college, living in a shared 400 square foot apartment in Santa Monica or San Francisco, and they have a "kitchenette" which consists of a microwave and 3/4 size refrigerator. They live life eating breakfast/lunch/dinner at their office cafeteria (many times for free), and weekends are for spending the $15K/month salary they pull.
Cooking is either something poor people do, or it's a "novelty" fun thing to do on a date. Definitely NOT part of their lifestyle...
Re:really? (Score:4, Informative)
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Get off my lawn ;)
Re:really? (Score:5, Informative)
Profile age does not prove how long a person has been "on Slashdot". I read Slashdot for a number of years before creating a profile. Other people periodically abandon their profiles and create new ones to minimize the ability to track them.
Re:really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure. Just like you're 23 years old but you're small for your age and you left your ID at home.
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Re:really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Americans prepare 85% of their own meals on average. But is that all necessarily cooking?
Supermarkets are vastly larger than they were thirty years ago, but fresh produce and meat sections aren't any bigger; in fact they're a little bit smaller. What's new is tens of thousands of feet dedicated to convenience foods -- things you empty out of a can, add boiling water to, or microwave.
The panic buying with COVID-19 revealed an interesting pattern. Things like steaks, and chops and boneless skinless chicken disappeared. Whole chickens were still easy to find, and even beef roasts that you could cut up into steaks. There was no shortage of artichokes and asparagus, but frozen peas disappeared.
Thanks to cooking oriented reality shows, many people know a lot more about the theory of cooking than grandma did, but not many of them have the facility with the nuts and bolts of cooking she had. More people than ever can define chiffonade or mise en place, but not many of them can roast a chicken. The kind of cooking in those shows isn't really practical for busy people trying to keep themselves alive.
Re:really? (Score:4, Interesting)
What was really interesting is that supermarkets were devoid of meats, but the local butcher, where you can buy large quantities of high quality meat at equal or lower cost than the supermarket never had any problems.
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I did some pulled pork and a boeuf bourgignonn
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The local restaurant suppliers just started selling to the public. One offered free delivery on order over $100 so I loaded up.
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Its more than a little condescending and prejudiced to think that only rich people eat out. Maybe in your ivory tower all restaurant food is covered in gold flakes but the reality is that many options are inexpensive.
The reality is - right now people are have excess time on their hands and don't have the option of going anywhere. We aren't talking about a timeframe long enough to be habit forming
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And yet, I keep hearing about people (or from people) who have never used their oven and mostly nuke frozen food. Not just 1%'ers. Personally, that sounds a bit like an adult saying they never learned how to put pants on, but it seems to be somewhat common.
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And yet, I keep hearing about people (or from people) who have never used their oven
Part of that may be cultural. My spouse is a fantastic cook, but she has never used an oven. She is Chinese. Baking is not part of Chinese cuisine, and Chinese kitchens don't have ovens. They cook bread in a steamer.
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the article writer or writers friends don't know how to cook and normally go out to eat every single day for 20-50 bucks / day.
you can see how that is not possible for "most people". the article writer cannot. he can't do math.
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Why is the assumption that most people do not how to cook? That is absurd. Most families do cook.
Because even in your example most people don't cook. In our family I never cooked, my mother never cooked, my sister never cooked, dad cooked. Our family cooked, but most people in it didn't.
And that's families, which says nothing about single people or couples. Heck even now the wife and I share duties in the kitchen. However I it would be a stretch of the definition to say she "knows how to cook". At best she can read the back of a pre-mix package, but even the she doesn't understand or follow the practic
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Crazy to think home cooking is... not normal (Score:5, Insightful)
What A spends prudently gives B normal small profit
What A squanders, wastes, give B huge profit margins. So much profits, B employs C to convince A to continue the squandering and waste.
B has tasted blood, B will not give up the easy money go back to old days and let A continue to live with the newly discovered prudence. B is powerful, B will use focus groups, find the weaknesses of A, find the most appealing arguments, spend a ton on advertising. And slowly people will drift back to the good old days of good corporate profits for Yum brands and Coke and McDs.
None of what you say was a secret before. It was well known. Still A was convinced into a lifestyle that generates profits for the dining out industry. So it is unlikely the new found prudence will stick for long.
Americans work a lot more than they used to (Score:3)
My mom worked 50-60 hours a week to support us, so there wasn't a lot of time for teaching me how to cook. So I never did learn. I can make food I'm willing to eat (and seldom eat out as a result) but it's nothing I would wish on another human being.
Millennials have it worse, often working long hours in tough jobs for low pay. A while back there was an essay written by a dirt poor pregnant women liv
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Trying to cook out of cookbooks is fun, but it's an exhausting logistical challenge to feed yourself and your family on cookbook recipes for a whole week. Cookbook are written for people who want to impress their friends, not to help people to feed themselves day after day. That's why people rely so much on prepared foods. It doesn't have to be that way.
The secret is to have a few master recipes -- things you can do sleepwalking, but are adaptable to whatever you happen to have in the house. An omelette
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Trying to cook out of cookbooks is fun, but it's an exhausting logistical challenge to feed yourself and your family on cookbook recipes for a whole week. Cookbook are written for people who want to impress their friends, not to help people to feed themselves day after day.
Depends if you a "cook to impess your friends" or "quick one dish meals" cookbook. Obviously never as quick and easy following a new recipe some of the master ones, but you can pick up the odd new master recipe pretty quickly depending o
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Pre-COVID, I would go out because cooking for 1 is a pain in the ass. Yeah, I'd save leftovers, and then throw them away a week later because I'd forget about them.
Now that my daughter is home and stuck here under SIP, we both cook more.
Nah, not really .... (Score:2)
I never liked cooking much, because I feel like it's often a false sense of savings when you're not trying to prepare food for a whole family. When I lived alone, I just made do with canned goods, frozen foods, the Hamburger Helper and Simply Salad type products, bagged salads, and going out to eat. But even with a whole family of 6 here at home now, that hasn't changed a lot for me. My wife decides to cook a meal maybe twice a week, but she works full-time like me and doesn't often feel like dealing wit
Hamburger Helper? (Score:4, Informative)
Isn't Hamburger Helper just macaroni and some kind of sauce with added "special" ingredients like enough sodium to kill anyone over the age of 30?
A 1/2 lb of macaroni elbows, shells, or egg noodles, a can of crushed tomatoes, some spices and an lb of hamburger is under $4 for all the ingredients and can make a few meals. (you need to add the meat to the HH anyway) Add some mozzarella and/or Parmesan cheese and maybe some red pepper flakes.
Cooking isn't really hard for the most part, it's baking that requires actually following the recipes.
I would guess there would also be an increased demand for slow cookers, air fryers and instapots.
Re:Hamburger Helper? (Score:5, Informative)
it's baking that requires actually following the recipes.
My grandmother (mom's side) was an immigrant line cook from Germany, from about 15 generations of farmers... She taught me the easiest bread ever (and it was a GREAT way to seal-the-deal on a date in college, seriously fresh cooked bread was awesome for that!):
Take 1.5 cups hot water. Mix in 1 tbsp of yeast, 1 tbsp of white sugar, and 1.5 tsp of salt. Whip together, let sit for 10 minutes (will get frothy).
Mix in 3 cups of flour. Fold it in until it forms a big sticky ball.
Cover with saran wrap and place in a warm corner in your kitchen. Leave overnight.
The next evening, put a dutch oven in your oven and crank it to 450 deg. Then sprinkle a little flour on a cutting board, and turn out the dough on to the cutting board. DO NOT KNEAD OR PROD IT! Let it sit like a lump on the floured board.
Once the oven is up to temp, take out the dutch oven, plop the lump of dough into the dutch oven, cover with the lid, and place back into the oven for 35 minutes.
After 35 minutes, uncover the dutch oven, leave in oven for 10 more minutes
Take out, let cool for 15 minutes, and you're done!
This will make you a ~2 pound loaf with airy insides, a nice crust on the outside, great flavor. About an actual 10 minutes of work, and about 25 hours of standing around or cooking. Literally about 5 minutes to make the dough at first (stirring yeast, mixing in flour), and about 5 minutes to prep and cook. And it smells wonderful! Best bread you can make for about $0.60 worth of ingredients...
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There's literally a thin layer of yeast on almost any living thing. If there's none in the stores were you are, cultivate some by making a starter. There's a ton of instructions online about how to do this.
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The crockpot, the bachelor's friend.
And Mabel Hoffman's cookbook. I don't actually use it that much any more, but as a teaching aid it is great.
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The crockpot, the bachelor's friend.
And Mabel Hoffman's cookbook. I don't actually use it that much any more, but as a teaching aid it is great.
And if you're getting tired of bread, you can always make your own tortillas:
https://thepioneerwoman.com/co... [thepioneerwoman.com]
The Alton Brown version:
https://www.foodnetwork.com/re... [foodnetwork.com]
You should probably make a whole bunch of tortillas at once, instead of just 8 or 16, since you can freeze them...
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Really? Given that a hamburger is a kind of beef sandwich, how did they come up with that name?
Does "hamburger" have multiple meanings in the US?
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Who is "Us" ? (Score:3)
I have been cooking every day... streaks/fish/chicken in an iron skillet, along with frozen yeast rolls, canned green beans/corn/spinach, microwave mashed potatoes....
Typical meal, takes 25 minutes...
"How can soup be sold out!?!?!?" (Score:2)
Yep, heard that just this week. At the same time I had the six ingredients I needed to make Broccoli & Cheese soup in my cart. Soup is usually the easiest thing you can make from scratch. Because it's more about putting things into the pot in a certain order than anything else.
Here's the recipe. https://www.thedietchefs.com/k... [thedietchefs.com]
I've also seen a lot of people buying multiple one pound logs of hamburger rather than the larger 3-4 lb. ones. They keep thinking they won't go through all that in a week. So wh
People cook the same thing (Score:3)
I love to eat food I cook, but it is mostly the same few thing. I bake bread, bagels, chocolate chip cookies, brownies and make Chocolate moose.
For protein, I use a sous vide machine to cook meat with a few herbs and spices. Generally picked at random from what I know I like (Basil, onion, garlic, thyme, and a lemon pepper mix).
Vegetables I wash and eat raw.
All of those I knew how to make before the virus. Haven't learned anything in the past 5 months.
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Chocolate moose
Not chocolate mousse [yukon-news.com]?
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I live in Maine. Here it is easier to make chocolate moose than mousse.
Either that or I am a HORRIBLE spellre. ;D
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Force us, or allow us? (Score:3)
Wife and I actually had a discussion about this (Score:2)
Right now, we both still have our jobs - so we decided that, as long as we can afford it, we will make a point of patronizing our local restaurants (take out obviously - we're in Washington state) at least once a week. Those guys are hurting.
However we are definitely cooking more. It's at the expense of fast food, though - and I'd argue that's a good thing.
The Pandemic wil also force us to; (Score:3)
Use deodorant
Not shit our pants
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Actually, those were the first things I forgot abou... I mean, that might be left behind by some people.
Re: The Pandemic wil also force us to; (Score:2)
The one thing that I find annoying nowadays is going to the bathroom and starting to wash my hands. Then suddenly having to pee and having to wash my hands all over again.
Not, unless you are a chemistry student! I learned 30 years ago that nitric acid on your finger can linger until you go to the loo and grab your junk. Ouch!
Since I stayed in chemistry for life I always wash before and after. I often get comments and I always reply with the story above..
I am actually cooking less (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing people who write articles like this seem to not realize is that covid-19 is affecting different groups very differently.
As a single dad who owns his own business and is now also responsible for educating 3 kids, I find that I have a lot less time to cook. I am preparing more food but it tends to be quicker food as I have less time and energy to prepare meals now.
This myth that everyone is at home bored and watching Netflix all day is annoying. Many people are working overtime as grocery clerks or nurses or are still working at home full time while also having the added responsibility of childcare.
Re: I am actually cooking less (Score:2)
Oh man! A single, divorced dude who had to keep working long hours, while everyone else was busy sheltering....
It meant that by the time I could go shopping in the evening everything was gone!
Some evenings I only had a bag of chips...and it was the second to last one in the shop!
Then I stayed home and for the first time in my life I could go out in the middle of the day in the city to shop. What a bliss! You get to choose between many shops, you get all the discounts, everything is fresh!
Why are (single) wo
Pretty much no difference (Score:2)
We've always been home cooks. Mostly we buy things "from the perimeter": bakery bread, dairy, fruits and veggies, meats. If I venture inward it's for the occasional bag of totopos, and to supply my alcohol habit, coffee, spices, baking goods, and to buy dry pasta and canned tomatoes. This isn't about "health" or the hippy organic bullshit; fresh-made tastes better. (Similarly, crappy, cheap, whole-bean coffee at home tastes better than pretty much anything pre-ground, 'cos it's fresh.)
It wasn't until this c
All these people cooking for the first time... (Score:5, Funny)
This must explain the TP shortage.
Grocery check (Score:4, Interesting)
Judging by the empty frozen pizza racks at the grocery store, the answer is no.
How to cook (Score:3)
Find a recipe. Buy the ingredients. Follow the directions. If it doesn’t work, try again. Keep doing different recipes. Congrats, if you can follow directions and can tell success from failure, you learned to cook.
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These days there's also an embarrassment of content on YT that tells and shows you how to make just about everything.
what am I even going to cook? (Score:4, Interesting)
When they run out of bread at the store, we'll be forced to bake our own. Hooray for being self-sufficient!
Except my store is out of flour and has plenty of bread. Safeway has been cutting open 50 lb bags of flour and splitting it into plastic 5 lb bags. Presumably the large bags are available because restaurants aren't using up the inventory.
Most Americans can't cook (Score:2)
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A good example of this are people buying those big jugs of cooking oil. Because heaven forbid the kids can't have french fries and onion rings. So they're buying the oil and those home fryers.
Can't wait till this is over to see how many of those and other things end up at Goodwill/The Salvation Army.
You think it was bad when they had to deal with CRT Televisions? Wait until all the exercise bikes start showing up.
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"Force us" ... "learn how to" (Score:3)
What the hell kind of society is this that can't even feed themselves, and thinks finally learning what every mature human can do, is a horrible act of force against them?
"Will The Pandemic Force Us to Learn How to Dress Ourselves?"
"Will The Pandemic Force Us to Learn How to Wipe Our Bottoms?"
Jesus fucking Christ, I'm rooting for EbolaAIDS-2 to emerge more and more every day.
Huh? (Score:2)
What halfway educated person cannot at least do basic cooking?
Will $Foo $Bar due to $(Virus_Synonym)? (Score:5, Funny)
Inquiring story-posting Slashbots want to know.
No. (Score:3)
it's not going well (Score:3)
Lots of it! (Score:3)
I live in a foodie, farm-to-table city with a lot of pretty affordable good food. So we tend to eat out several times a week.
But I've always loved to cook, and this has been the perfect opportunity to cook up a storm. I'm making new things, doing some of my favorite local dishes my own way, and in a few cases doing them better!
We're eating healthier, eating better, saving money, and having fun. From a cooking and eating standpoint, this has been great!
Oh god yes (Score:3)
I like to cook but ordinarily do not have time to do it, and if I can't do it properly i end up not doing it or nuking something pre-made and coping with the awful.
In the past 6 weeks I've had a few unmitigated successes:
- Easter prime rib
- Slow cooked smoked beef ribs
- Breakfast toastadas
- Lime chicken
- BBQ chicken
And a few failures:
- "Gourmet" marinated burgers (I need a grated skillet or an actual open flame bbq grill)
- Bratwurst (I'm just not from Chicago)
And some very mediocre beef bbq sausage that Salt Lick is in no danger of losing business to.
I keep looking for new things, the real difficulty is that I try to shop only once a week or less and the grocery stores have only recently begun to recover from the great devouring of '20, so it has been tricky to find the right set of ingredients on tap. Meat has been easy (see above), but any kind of pasta, flour-based meal or even canned food based meals have been avoided. I've also been avoiding salads and raw food based meals for obvious reasons. I understand washing, but I feel like the purifying flames are more advisable.
When people who don't know how to cook (Score:3)
There was an article recently about a large spike in the number of cooking-related incidents. Cuts, scalds, burns, falls and fires, not necessarily in that order.
Depends on location (Score:5, Interesting)
I manage a grocery store in a town of about six thousand people, servicing a tri-county area geographically the size of Vermont and new Hampshire combined, with a population around 16,000 people across those three counties. Not a dense population, to be sure.
Now, in chronological order, here's how things have gone down:
Toilet paper
Paper towels
Hand Sanitzer
Bleach
Sanitizing wipes
Milk
Bread
Bottled Water
Canned beans, fruit, and vegetables
Canned soups
eggs
Ramen
Hamburger Helper esque items
Pasta and Jarred Pasta Sauces (these depleted at a more or less matched rate, because obviously)
then we had a weird moment were all the fucking cheese vanished in like, a day.
after that, things took a turn for the "long haul"
Rice
Beans
Frozen fruit and Vegetables
Butter
Flour
Sugar
Yeast
Salt
Baking soda and Baking Powder
Pancake mixes and baking mixes
Ziplock bags and Tupperware canning supplies (mason jars, lids, pickling salt)
Those are the things that sold down real fast, and have been real hard to catch up on.
We're still getting hit hard on all fronts, and its always a dice roll of what we'll be able to actually get in stock as production and shipping catches up to this new normal everywhere. I know we have a bit of an advantage in some regards due to our geographic isolation, and smaller population.
Weirdly enough, we never really got far behind on most meats, To be sure, sales have jumped dramatically, and it got a little dicy for about 3 days while we ramped up and learned what the new normal seems to be.
Strangely enough, frozen fish, frozen pizza, and frozen prepared meals (tv dinners, etc) have held their own in our region, not being hit nearly as hard as the staples.
I've talked to people in other, more densely populated areas which by their nature normally have a higher availability of restaurants and other out-of-home dining, and those areas are being hit much harder on the 'ready made' frozen foods.
It is easy to draw a correlation between the availability of easy out of the home food, and a relative lack of skill at cooking, but we all know how correlation is like anecdotal evidence.
All that said, those of us in the grocery industry are getting real worn out of being asked when we'll have item X. We also don't know when this will be over any better than you do, so please stop asking us.
Why not? (Score:2)
Why in the hell dont you already know how to cook? Its a basic life skill for Pete's sake! Presumably you had both parents AND school. Why didnt one of them teach you? Its not rocket surgery!
Granted I was educated back in the 80s when they did more than teach to the test. But I learned to cook, sew, do woodworking, plastics, basic metalwork, etc. On top of what my family taught me (basic carpentry, masonry, plumbing, and electrical) I'm a pretty well rounded individual.
The fact that somebody survives day t
We cook a bit less... (Score:2)
Normally before the stay at home stuff, we ate out about once a week and cooked the rest of the time.
While everything is closed down, we've been trying to support local restaurants more so we order out two times a week, and more food than we usually get... so we end up cooking a bit less.
It's funny because I've heard other people complain about having to do way more dishes, but we have about the same amount of dishes to do that we've always had...
If you can code then you can cook (Score:3)
Most people can cook something simple, even beans on toast or scrambled egg is simple enough for a child of 6 or 7 to do on their own. Spaghetti Bol, pound of mince, tin of plum tomatoes, carton of passata, frozen diced onions, some diced green peppers and spaghetti and 25 mins of your time. Either cook enough or cook a little more and have it the next day or two reheated in the microwave, my daughter can barely cook baked beans and she managed to cook a perfect "spagbol" the other day. When you cook your own you usually overdo it and it'll give you enough for a day or more of meals and the ingredients usually cost about half an ordered in meal.
If you can code then you can cook! You assemble the resources you need, then you check the code, the most important thing is to ensure you have a debugger running with regular breakpoints set to check the values are as you expect! Mix the ingedients but while you're cooking just add a little under what the recipe says as you can't rollback, but just check at each stage to make sure it's all running to plan.
Eat out to extend reserves (Score:3)
When the Cower-in-Place stuff started shutting things down, I had 3-4 weeks worth of ingredients stockpiled, as part of my normal "I don't like to shop" pattern. I've been eating out a bit more than normal, to extend my supplies.
But my cooking isn't single-serving. My most-cooked dish is "leftovers", and it come in a variety of flavors, from stew to curry to burrito filling. Throw some cheese in, and it's a nacho dip.
If you can't cook, you have bigger problems... (Score:2)
Seriously, I've seen this type of BS story doing the rounds over here in the UK too.
Sure, on the surface, we seem to be a nation in love with cookery books and cookery TV, rather than one that actually cooks, but not so far beneath that surface?
Purely anecdotally, based on everyone I know reasonably well - they all cook. I'm not sure how well, but that's hardly the point.
You cook, you eat - doesn't have to be fancy.
Anyone who has access to cooking facilities and ingredients and is unable to prepare a basic
First learn about the food and how to feed (Score:2)
Then learning how to cook will be a no brainer.
Really!
Cheers from your Utriusque Siciliae Regnum!
"Force" (Score:3)
I don't see this as just a "personal responsibility" so much as failing of governments to put health and wellbeing at the front of their policies.
Learn? (Score:3)
Obesity epidemic? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe this is part of the reason for the obesity epidemic in the USA. We have an entire generation that does not cook. Cooking is seen as something that is only done by people that can't afford to eat out. If you must prepare food at home then it is frozen food.
Personally I rarely eat at restaurants. When I do it's more of a social thing but not part of my regular habit. I prefer to cook my own meals because:
1) It is healthier. I can control how much salt or sugar or whatever that does into the food. You can't do that in a restaurant and frozen food is terrible in that regard.
2) It is less expensive
3) Once I learned how to cook I found that I enjoyed it
4) I like having people over to my house for dinner parties
Give it a try you might like it.
Re: (Score:2)
I went to Dollar Tree last week and it's pretty hilarious which seeds were sold and which weren't. Carrots and Broccoli were being avoided for some reason.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a nice idea, but there are several problems.
One example is italian beef. You can do a really good job of Italian Beef at home, but you need to slice virtually raw meat thinly.To do that you need a $60 meat slicer.
You can make a nice virtually sodium free sausage pizza, the only sodium being in the cheese. But to make the sausage, you need ground pork, which you will not find at most grocery stores. So you need a meat grinder.
French fries
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Ground pork is in every grocery store.
Re: (Score:2)
I hate this dumb /. formatting so rewrite to make it clearer.
It's a nice idea, but there are several problems.
One example is italian beef. You can do a really good job of Italian Beef at home, but you need to slice virtually raw meat thinly.To do that you need a $60 meat slicer.
You can make a nice virtually sodium free sausage pizza, the only sodium being in the cheese. But to make the sausage, you need ground pork, which you will not find at most grocery stores. So you need a meat grinder.
French fries are possible, low fat fries are easy. Just microwave the potatoes before frying them, even better after you use the microwave use an air fryer. If you fry the m after microwaving, you can only keep the fat around for so long. Makes it much more expensive. Or the air fryer costs money.
To top it all off, restaurants get better stuff, because they go through a different supply chain, and they demand better quality and fresher stuff, well not the fast food places.
I think cooking at home is a very good idea, but I think that the logistics have to be improved upon, mainly because we have focused on eating out and living in small spaces where keeping things like slicer, air fryers and meat grinders is hard to do.
OTOH as a teenager I ate almost every day at McDonalds and didn't gain any weight or health problems. of course the McD was two miles away and I walked to it and from it.
Italian beef: Put the beef in the freezer until it is stiff but not frozen, then slice it with any halfway-decent knife. You don't need a slicer.
Ground pork: Maybe it's in short supply here, but in the US ground pork is a standard grocery item in regular supply. I dont' know where you are.
Low-fat frying is about temperature. If your oil isn't hot enough that is when it gets absorbed into your food more. Look around online for other techniques to improve them.
Quality items: Look up the restaurant ven