My farm got trashed out by a storm last week. Expect corn prices to head up more. We need to buy a new center pivot and will lose most of a crop.

embrace the wonderfulness of legumes + rice or masa with some veggies in all the fabulous profusion of delicious variations available from around the globe, mmmmmm.

find a good hippie esque market selling pulses, grains, & spices in bulk with high turnover. if you're lucky they also sell oil, miso, peanut & nut butters in bulk at good prices. if you aren't too particular you can also buy pasta in bulk, i've never been happy with it though & shell out for imported italian.

frozen veggies are often excellent value & wonderful cooked long & slow in good amounts for dinner including as pasta sauce & then excellent lunches as leftovers.

am on my phone in airport lounge but when have access to a private i.e. non work computer will post cooking technique & recipe info, links, etc. so much savory deliciousness starts with a flexible approach to alliums in a bit of fat & building salt & umami layers from there.

The nice thing about frittatas is you can put anything you can saute in them, and they refrigerate decently. (I think they get a bit decrepit after five days, but maybe there are ways around that.) Martha Rose Shulman has a recipe-template.

A little more elaborate, but also easy to make in bulk, also from MRS: Eggplant, bulgur, and tomato casserole with yogurt topping; and not behind a paywall, ratatouille. Basically a whole lot of my recipes are eggplant, peppers, mushrooms, and onions in varying combinations.

You may already do something like this, but standing grocery lists make it all a lot more routine. Whether you print out a big list of all the things you buy with any frequency and highlight them when it occurs to you, or just maintain it in a list app on your phone and uncheck items to indicate you need them, it makes it a lot less of a chore than writing stuff down.

endorse minivet re shopping list on phones, & works great as a shared list with more than one person in household. if one of you is going shopping just tell the other (s), & if the shopper is e.g. stopping at store in way home & someone else is at home, can check cupboards, fridge & freezer. v useful!

One of the things I've been mixing into rotation more often are tofu curries -- (can of coconut milk, can of curry paste [Maesri or Mae Ploy are brands I've had good experiences with. Tofu, and vegetables -- at least half root vegetables because they hold up well to longer cooking) server over rice.

I have a lentil salad that I've made for a while:

Lentils (chop carrots and add to to pot, close to the end of cooking T-[3 or 4] minutes. You can add frozen peas to boiling water around the same time).
Generous amount of good quality olive oil.
Mild vinegar (I like the Nappa Valley Naturals champagne vinegar).
Salt & Pepper
Diced pickles (try to find a crisp pickle, you want a contrast of both flavor and texture).

Serve with bread.

Huh, this blog still exists. Lots of big batch freezable and bean recipes there. We used to do a lot of those and freeze down bags of family meal-size portions- mac and cheese, chili, soups (black bean, peanut stew, minestrone), spinach casserole. We only do a few of those any more.
Could buy Costco rotisserie chickens and shred the meat since they've been specifically excluded from inflation. The hot dog too but that's less versatile.
Haymarket still exists for cheap veggies. In grad school we'd buy a bunch of stuff there but you have to cook them within a day or two because of the low quality so we'd shop on Saturday morning and cook for the week.

pulses and greens over rice, maybe with meat, is basic, it stores OK depending on textures.

With mediterranean herbs, white beans with roasted fennel fennel or braised leek and celery and maybe some sausage (chorizo or merguez) is pretty good. Precook the beans with bay leaf and good bouillon (Guatemala or Mexico, not domestic) and if fennel preroast, then everything can be comined quickly atop some fried onion in one pan. Euro-flavored extra chicken is OK in here as well, or duck if you can get it.

Consider berbere-- if there's an Ethiopian community near you, find their grocery store. Fried onion with collards (frozen work fine and are fast) and red lentils, again optionally with good sausage. Over rice or on injera.

Hopping john-- onions and collards with arbol+mulatto chilis, some vinegar, combined with blackeyed peas. Cooking in some fatback is traditional, but I like making crispy bacon to be added at the table, other food cooked in bacon fat, good texture combination that way.

Harira is pretty good-- must be red not green lentils and soaked-from-dry chickpeas, but otherwise the basic idea below; prechopping the veggies when you soak the beans the night before makes this plausible to put together for a quick-prep evening meal, especially if you can get good bread on the way h0ome.
https://www.themediterraneandish.com/harira-recipe/

This is an excellent red lentils with paprika stew: you could eat it alone or as a side with meat, but it's quick and easy. https://thefirstmess.com/2018/04/04/quick-smoky-red-lentil-stew-vegan-recipe/

Someone recommended the smitten kitchen chickpea pasta. I make it fairly often. Easy and good.

https://smittenkitchen.com/2017/10/quick-pasta-and-chickpeas-pasta-e-ceci/

I have lots of thoughts on this! I do most of the cooking for the family these days and I've developed a repertoire of standards that are popular and meet a lot of BG's requests. I'll post links to some recipes later. For now, I agree with the comments upthread about using a list app for grocery shopping. Once you get a sense of what you use regularly and how quickly it depletes it becomes much less of a hassle to just routinely check stocks and replenish as necessary. We do a lot of bean and lentil dishes because that's my main comfort zone for cooking, plus they're so so cheap compared to meat, but we do have some meat and seafood dishes that are big hits as well. More later!

Following 2: I often make a enough kichari to freeze a meals's worth for leftovers. Kichari is any combination of grains (though traditionally rice) with lentils ( or beans), approximately half and half works for me. I use a regular old fashioned Favor stovetop pressure cooker that can be put away when not in use. When we were just two, a big batch in the pressure cooker was enough for dinner plus lunch plus one meal frozen, so doing this 2x week quickly built up a stock of frozen food. We just used old quart yogurt containers. You can match or contrast textures and cooking times. Quinoa, farro, barley, all works; the usual dal suspects, beluga lentils, French lentils, smaller regular beans. Cauliflower, carrots, bell peppers, green beans, winter squash, turnips, sweet.potatoes, collard greens, lacinato, tomato, celery, are all good vegetables to throw in for the last few minutes of off pressure simmering. Traditional spices: turmeric, ginger, black pepper, garam masala, hing. For beany dishes I often put in a lot of herbs.
Tempered with whole spices fried in oil: cumin, mustard, Chiles, curry leaves, fenugreek. The key is to have lots of fixings on hand; condiments: Indian pickle, sauerkraut, salsa, hot sauce, tamarind chutney, Greek yogurt, sour cream....and crunchy things: pappadums, chips, Haldiram's type snack mix, croutons.

I have been doing a lot of a kind of factory version of this: mixing legume pasta with regular pasta with sauce. Two pot meal.

My other recent favorite one pot meal might not freeze well and is a soup which might not appeal so much in summer, but it is super easy and cisyomizable: boil milk, curdle it with lemon juice so you know have a boiling pot of curds and whey, and cook pasta and vegetables in it.

I don't eat eggs, but I have gotten into Just Egg Frittatas and freezing them in a big way. Mushrooms zucchini green beans all good inserts.

A second vote for berbere, it's good with everything.

If Mediterranean is in favor, a good use for that Cuisinart is to make hummus and falafel from scratch. On the falafel you have to be a little planful because first you soak the chickpeas for 24 hours, then chill the blended-up mixture up to another night, but with those steps in place the actual falafel-frying process goes quick and yields delight.

https://www.themediterraneandish.com/how-to-make-falafel/

One of the recent food threads also had a lot of love for pizza stones, which is extremely justified - making a pizza is one of the easiest ways for me to satisfy the household, and if you're cooking for adults the sky's the limit with toppings. Trader Joe's dough works in a hurry, but mixing it from scratch is also way simpler than other baking I've attempted.

Anyone recommend a particular list app that shares easily?

Yeah, I have a pizza stone the full size of an oven shelf that just stays in the oven all the time and I love it.

We used to use GroceryIQ but a recent iOS update seems to have broken it. Now we just use a shared list in iOS reminders but that's not great because after you check an item off you have to reenter it manually, there's no list of previous things to add back to the list.

Use the separate freezer! When you make chili, e.g, freeze it in meal-sized portions in flattened quart bags. It will keep for months.

You need to keep some free space for when you kill a deer.

Anyone recommend a particular list app that shares easily?

The one we use is called TickTick (not to be confused with TikTok!). I like it because it lets you hide items as they're crossed off, like the iPhone Reminders app, which we can't use because some people in the house now have Android phones. It's free to share with one person and $3/month to share with more. Worth it in my opinion. It also has a calendar that we were using for meal planning for a while, but we've drifted away from that lately.

16: as an app?

Now we just use a shared list in iOS reminders but that's not great because after you check an item off you have to reenter it manually, there's no list of previous things to add back to the list.

You can select "Show Completed" under Options to show things you've checked off.

Pizza stone is also a great idea. We have two.

I just did that and now there are like 17 entries for pears.

7: Costco is about 14 miles away. I tried to buy a rotisserie chicken at Market Basket on Sunday and they were sold out, because they are so popular.

I was using Todoist for groceries (which I love in general) but Tim doesn't like it, so he got an app called Grocery, but I find that my lists don't sync properly with his. We need to play with it, but it does let you create lists by store.

3: That sounds delicious. I can make it for myself for lunch! Tim, sadly, dislikes eggplant.

7: That blog looks great. Haymarket, however, is too far. I figure I'm set in the fall, because the next town over has a bunch of apple orchards.

Depending on your freezer space, make basic sauces in the largest feasible quantities, especially tomato, and freeze them in meal sized portions. Massive time and effort saver.

13: I have made hummus in the Vitamix. Tim likes caramelized onion hummus which takes time. I'll have to try falafel.

18: That was part of my plan. Make chili, freeze portions in souper cubes then vacuum seal.

19: I saw a deer in the woodsy bit of my backyard. However, it's hard to get a gun license here, and I'm not skilled with a bow and arrow.

28: We got this Beko one on sale.

https://www.beko.com/us-en/28-inch-upright-frezeer-white-refrigerator-p-bufr2715wh

24: Wunderlist was great until Microsoft destroyed it. I wonder if it's worth switching from Todoist to TickTick.

Homemade felafel is terrific and not hard if you don't mind frying things.

15: we just use Google Keep. I guess some AI is learning from Trader Joe's purchases.

29: allow me to shill for joyofblending.com which still makes small contributions to our income. Many of the blended soups freeze really well.

Also useful...put in some gloves and peel a ton of ginger and chip into big chunks. Vitamix the crap out of it. Freeze in ice cube tray then store in ziplock. A chunk of frozen ginger pulp will make really kick up a fast meal.

The gloves are helpful because at that large a quantity the gingerol can cause contact dermatitis.

Long ago we also used the Vitamix to make an insane quantity of enchilada sauce from scratch/to taste, which is 70% of the work of making enchiladas imho, especially if you don't fry them. But we had a terrible power outage and lost most of it.

29.3: Persistence hunting is the best cardio.

on non-apple phones we use something (an app? no idea!) called unimaginatively "to do" in which we have created lists entitled e.g. groceries, drugstore, etc.

Also useful...put in some gloves and peel a ton of ginger and chip into big chunks. Vitamix the crap out of it. Freeze in ice cube tray then store in ziplock. A chunk of frozen ginger pulp will make really kick up a fast meal.

We do something similar with garlic. Super convenient.

I also wound up throwing out half a can of tomato paste routinely or throwing out wine I bought for cooking.

Whenever I open a can of tomato paste I take out what I need for the dish I'm preparing, and then scoop the rest in spoonfuls onto a sheet of plastic wrap (parchment paper or foil also works) and stick it in the freezer until hard. A few hours (or days, whenever I remember) later, I peel off the blobs and put them in a ziploc bag and back in the freezer for later use.

You could use the Souper Cubes or ice trays for this, but my way requires less dishwashing, and it's not important to be precise with tomato paste measurements -- any recipe that calls for a tablespoon of tomato paste works just as well with up to double that amount.

I guess you could also freeze your wine in half-cup portions, but I've never not just drunk my leftovers.

Re: tomato paste, I just use ketchup. If the recipe also calls for sugar I just reduce it.

Please never make pasta sauce.

39: Cyrus, here's a pizza recipe video you might like. Nobody else click.

I'm impressed that the Mineshaft works this hard at / has this much bandwidth for grocery lists, shopping, and cooking! We rarely eat out, and I like to cook, but I couldn't keep track of inventory and would be absolutely consumed by anxiety about using up whatever was in the freezer. We're just returning to semi-normal from our pandemic surplus.

As a workday lunch that's cheap and tasty, I'm extremely fond of DIY instant noodle cups:
https://www.seriouseats.com/diy-instant-noodle-cups-food-lab

We now get fancy ramen noodles from Momofuku.

They sell them at Target now or you can get them mailed to your house.

15: We use Trello for this. (Used to use Google Keep but it became unreliable for us.)

Other recipe links later, but here's my chickpea curry (chana masala) recipe that is a household staple, and that I happened to make tonight.* I know BG said Indian food wasn't a preference, but this has been a huge hit with my family so I'd encourage her to give it a shot. The multiple rounds of spices are really key to get the flavor right.

~3 tbsp vegetable oil (avocado, sunflower, etc.)
1 onion, diced
2 cans chickpeas
1 can diced tomatoes
1 baby carrot, shredded

Spices:
Salt
Pepper
Johnny's Seasoning Salt
Curry Powder
Cumin
Coriander
Paprika

Heat oil over medium heat. Add first round of spices. Add onion and another round of spices and sauté 2-3 minutes. Add chickpeas (can either drain liquid or not) and another round of spices and simmer for 4-5 minutes. Add tomatoes and carrot and another round of spices. Simmer another 5 minutes or so, tasting occasionally and adjusting spices as necessary. Serve either on its own or over rice.

*Amadea is getting her IUD replaced tomorrow and she's nervous about it, and she really loves this curry so I figured I'd make it tonight so she can eat her feelings.

For me, my go to if I'm time stretched and don't have things prepped already is to do something with fried rice: pilaf/pilau, etc. By fried rice, I mean, where you cook aromatic stuff (garlic, ginger, onion, spices, etc) in oil, add uncooked rice and fry for a few minutes, and then top up with stock/water and cook until the water is absorbed and the rice done.

There are so many variations, using saffron and paprika and seafood for something vaguely, "paella"-ish. Adding middle eastern spices like berbere or ras el hanout or baharat, maybe with some pomegranate molasses, slivered nuts, dried fruit etc for something vaguely "jewelled rice"-ish. Fry some beef or lamb mince in Indian spices before adding the rice and stock for a keema biryani, etc.

Once you've gotten a sense of roughly how long to fry the rice without overcooking it, and how much water to add (it's fine to add in stages), it's suitable for endless variations, and you can use whatever meat/veg/seafood you have in the house. It's really nice with just some chickpeas and greens stirred through it, it can be a nice vegan or vegetarian friendly meal. My own stable, when I used to get back from work really late was to throw some pancetta in a pan with some garlic, dried chillis and shallots before adding the rice and then stirring some frozen spinach and peas in near the end until cooked. Takes 20 minutes and involves almost no supervision after the first 4 or 5 minutes.

If anybody has sous vide suggestions that can be cooked in the weekend and finished during the week, that would be fantastic as well. We have both an Anova immersion circulator and a vacuum sealer.

47: do you have a band of curry powder you like? I'm not familiar with Johnny's Seasoning salt. I know Lawry's from McCormick. Is Johnny's significantly different/ better?

48: I try not to eat too much rice, because a I don't think it helps my weight and I feel sluggish when I eat it. I do make it in a rice cooker, but that takes time during the week - much more than your sautéed version.

One of my thoughts was to sous vide a pork chop on the weeken and have have mashed butternut root vegetable frozen. That way, I can warm the chop in some water while I reheat the vegetable, sear the chop and sauté some spinach - and I don't have to worry about watching the chop.

40, 41: OK, I realize 39 looks silly, but the OP mentioned problems with tomato paste going bad. I've had that problem too. 38 is technically an option but seems like a pain. Work aside, I only have one freezer and it's messy enough as it is.

Mostly I'm just getting sick of cooking. I blame the kid. She fashions herself a vegetarian if anyone asks. However, she won't eat mushrooms, zucchini, eggplant, or several nuts. (Cassandane also won't eat mushrooms.) The kid will, on the other hand, eat Hawaiian pizza, hamburgers, and hot dogs. She just won't eat meaty entrees I cook. It's frustrating. So when I found two or three recipes that check off the major nutrient categories, and the kid will actually eat them, but they call for one tablespoon of tomato sauce each, and I'd wind up using at most half a can of the stuff and finding the rest covered with mold, well, I found a simple solution.

47 looks worth trying, though, thanks.

51: If you use it frequently, you could probably buy the tubes. They're more expensive, though.

50: honestly for a tablespoon of tomato sauce where the point is presumably acid + umami, ketchup isn't horrible.

For the intermittently picky kids I got nothin'. Pebbles gets picky about textures, and both are suspicious of food that has flavor, so I just try not to worry about it.

BG, one thing we do when I'm being responsible is cook a bigger meal Sunday - pork loin, roast, or similar - and then the leftovers get repurposed in other meals (tacos, rice bowls) throughout the week. I don't sous vide, but the principle is the same.

Frozen veggies are good. For midweek cooking I think less in terms of "recipes" which can get fiddly (and which meal kits encourage) and more in terms of having a handful of reliable meals/techniques that work quickly. Matt's 48 would work with almost any protein/veg combo. Frozen veggies cook quickly and keep well (as in, if you don't use them you're not going to have to toss them at the end of the week.)

both are suspicious of food that has flavor

Let me recommend the entire Midwest.

If anybody has casseroles they like, those would be great options too. Lasagne is too much work and carb heavy. I will make the ultimate carb heavy dish as a side (Mac and cheese), because Tim loves it.

Also - good recipes for stuffed peppers, mushrooms etc.? I used to buy those at Costco, but figure I could make my own and freeze.

51: If it's for a kid you have a free pass. AIMHMHB I apparently asked in my youth for pizza with no cheese or sauce, just ground beef, and my sainted mother did make it, from time to time. (I applied my own ketchup.)

Someone should make an Amazon/Netflix AI for analyzing what picky kids will eat. If you tell it your kid will eat blueberries, TJ shredded spoonfuls, cheese pizza, and Kraft mac and cheese, it will say "your kid may also like..."

42: These food/cooking threads always terrify me. I get the impression some of you may spend more time cooking a meal than I spend cooking in a month, and I'm basically the only person that "cooks" (maybe prepares would be more accurate) food in my household.

The amount of fuzzy logic you'd need to predict a kid's preferences! My two will rave over a meal one night and balk at it the next.

We've assigned each of our kids a night that they're in charge of dinner, with complexity varying by age. It's been hit or miss as activities have limited schedules so sometimes they just prepare frozen foods (mozzarella sticks, pizza) but sometimes they'll make salad and bread or more complex things like braised vegetables and pasta.

56: This book has a stuffed pepper recipe we all like. I've never tried freezing and reheating them but I guess you could do it. It's vegetarian, vegan in fact, but I usually mix in some shredded cheese.

I feel like stuffing anything is a special-occasions thing. Maybe not if you're literally just putting in cheese and throwing in the oven, idk. My mother has a great handed-down stuffed cabbage recipe.

My two will rave over a meal one night and balk at it the next.

I haaaaaate this. Is it too much to ask for a modicum of stability to one's preferences?

I'm perpetually sick of my own cooking.

Grocery list is an obligatory on-the-fridge-in-handwriting list for my sweetie and me, dunno why. We have two habits to use this: 1) take a phone photo of the list on the regular, in case you happen to swing by a store; and 2) we do what I was taught is "Navy stocking" for nonperishable things, where you have enough of things relative to your visits-to-port interval that you put one on the list when you take one from the pantry and you won't ever have to make a store run just for that. Obviously this takes a bit of tuning, but it has worked very well for Covid homebodies.

Also it means you can always eat from the pantry/freezer, which is calming and cheaper than takeout.

Minor tweak; keep gyoza wrappers in the freezer and if we have leftovers of something especially rich, make potstickers to freeze, can be done in front of a video and rich potstickers are an easy treat later. Cabbage in the same pan right after the potstickers come out, maybe.

do you have a band of curry powder you like? I'm not familiar with Johnny's Seasoning salt. I know Lawry's from McCormick. Is Johnny's significantly different/ better?

I just use generic supermarket curry powder. Sometimes I'll substitute straight turmeric if we're out of it, or if we have a guest with certain food allergies. Johnny's is pretty much the same as Lawry's AFAIK. Costco has it in big bottles which is why I use it, but I'm sure Lawry's would work just as well.

I probably won't eat stuffed cabbage or stuffed peppers. I might eat the stuffing though.

Pebbles went a while eating only: bread, peanut butter, milk, cucumbers, yogurt, very mild cheese, and pistachios.

69: Serious question. How long could a kid like that go without eating and then finally decide to eat what's available for dinner. Maybe that's child abuse, I dunno.

Well, as near as I can tell --- a year? I didn't cook separate meals for her, but we usually have some kind of bread and fresh veggies at dinner. I think she just figured out she could load up on toast and yogurt at breakfast and bread and cheese at school, and she wasn't terribly hungry at dinner. She's much improved lately - most raw veggies and fruits are fine, pasta is fine, meat is fine, as long as the food doesn't have observable flavor. Still would live on bread. Still is not a fan of legumes. She's lean and healthy and thriving. The Calabat was similar but has mostly grown out of it.

That reminds me of: https://books.google.com/books/about/Bread_and_Jam_for_Frances.html?id=_0XqMyQrtwkC&source=kp_book_description

Some recipes:

https://cookieandkate.com/best-lentil-soup-recipe/

https://reciperunner.com/mediterranean-lentil-salad/

https://buenofoods.com/recipe/green-chile-stew/

https://toriavey.com/toris-kitchen/recipes/recipes-entrees/chicken-shawarma/

https://kentrollins.com/poor-mans-lobster/

https://simply-delicious-food.com/easy-lemon-shrimp-salad/

https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/classic_stuffed_mushrooms/

https://cookieandkate.com/pinto-posole-recipe/

https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/shrimp_etouffee/

https://damndelicious.net/2014/10/03/easy-lo-mein/

29.3 : https://www.amazon.com/Carbon-Express-55203-Atlatl-Kit/dp/B07CBQNCYQ The 1-pack includes the throwing arm and 1 projectile, and you'll want more than one.

I wonder if you could use that at the local archery range.

That was me.

||

Novel expression heard today: "He's the kind of guy who, if you ask him the time, he might end up building you a watch."

|>

65: It's pretty hard to stay enthusiastic, year after year. My wife started us on Blue Apron last year because she wanted to contribute more to cooking, and the comfort of step by step instructions (and not needing to negotiate or inform me of shopping ingredients before I headed to the store) was a big contributor to her deciding to go the expensive box shipping route.

While she's often willing to help with the actual cooking, I really appreciate the help with picking dinners. We wind up discussing them, then being pleasantly surprised when they're delivered 3 weeks later - we've often forgotten just what we ordered. Even when she's not helping in the kitchen, it's nice to have the automatic buy-in of "she ordered it, so I can serve it," instead of having to negotiate "you say you want healthier food, but you reject all actual healthy food I offer to cook".

After a year of training wheels, we're looking to transition to something less wasteful. This is on our short list -- https://sortedfood.com/sidekick/

This is on our short list -- https://sortedfood.com/sidekick/

That does look interesting. I've been burned out on cooking lately; I could see something like that being fun, but I probably wouldn't try it until I feel less burned out.

so many useful fun ideas it feels great to be too late to the party. :-)

the better half used to dislike discussing what to cook for dinner beforehand, e.g., with our morning coffee, but it has grown on him so that he brings it up on his own - a great way to briefly connect about what really matters (family, being together, enjoying each other) before work intervenes. also i think regular brief conversations among the adults in charge of evening meals keep equity naturally in the forefront. alas so long as i am practicing, i cook less during the week and more on the weekends, just unavoidable with my work. still important to not lose sight of the work involved in getting food on the table, including that just deciding wtf to make is taxing. i'm usually the advocate for him occasionally taking a night off i.e. take out, it is a drudge when you have to do it night after night!

i would personally be totally into keeping a diary with brief annotations for a good stretch to see what really works (ease of prep and enjoyment) and then purposefully rerunning on a long-term schedule but that would be waaaay to unspontaneous for the better half lol.

one thing we do agree on that helps enormously is a solid familial consensus on what "makes a meal" i.e. the constituents. it seems maybe rigid and confining but honestly that evening meal needs to hit the table and a formula just helps. so for us this means: one cooked and one raw (salad) veg, and fruit to finish. then what to have with? since we don't do meat-based meals any longer it's pretty much a question of different legumes/starches and something with (pickles, salsa, etc.). you have to figure out what are the essential components that say "proper meal" to you/your household, recognize them as such and pay them their due. also makes planning easier, also also when you daringly break the mold everyone can keep on saying during the meal "how special this is! omg we never do this! look at us *breaking the mold*!" which is lame but hilarious.

sympathy to everyone dealing with small people's taste-texture-scent developmental issues, for years we just stuck to "you only have to taste, you don't have to eat, but you have to take one taste" and then rigorously not not not never never never commenting, and he grew out of it all and is a voracious and omnivorous eater but damn it is a slog. one of the better half's siblings survived on nothing but white bread and ketchup sandwiches for several years, so do not fuss too much if they aren't getting a varied diet but have not actually developed rickets. you are playing a long game. i'll say that we never cooked a wholly separate meal (aside from an omelet post rehearsal when he got home late or some such), everyone is served the same meal but no one is ever required to eat more than a taste of any one dish.

for savory recipes (all of what follows skews vegetarian-vegan or adaptable to be so as post heart issues we are nearly full vegan), rachel roddy and meera sodha both in the guardian are reliable stars at providing straightforward, simple recipes that technically work as written *and* that are very often built on the kind of invaluable adaptable technical foundation that ttam wrote out above.

this kitchiri recipe by sodha is absolutely wonderful: https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/jul/17/meera-sodha-vegan-recipe-tomato-turmeric-kitchari

and this soup by roddy is a great example of her endlessly adaptable recipes: https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/sep/06/rachel-roddy-mountain-style-bean-prosciutto-pasta-soup-recipe

the my annoying opinions blog dude is great too: https://myannoyingopinions.com/cooking/ his pickles section in particularly strong.

chetna makan's videos with her mum are just delightful, i mean she's great on her own but her mum - omg, a star of the deadpan. love the mum!!! solid recipes too. (when i need pure distraction i watch videos of swimming in the bay or chetna makan's mum.)

surprisingly useful kitchen kit: a 12 oz/350 ml thermos. use it to soak steel cut oats in boiling water overnight, just heat up in the morning and add some fruit (rhubarb compote, prunes, dates, etc.) and nut butter if you've been for a cold swim; or put dried chilis (and sometimes add dried tomatoes) with boiling water in the morning, then before dinner whiz with a stick blender and some garlic, salt, acid (citrus including grated zest and/or vinegar) for an excellent salsa that keeps very well in the fridge - include dried chipotles for smoky fun or just add some smoked paprika when you whiz; soak dried mushrooms with you guessed it boiling water, much more effective than in just a bowl. once you have a small thermos that you think of as kitchen kit you will absolutely think of other ways to use it.

i have very strong and detailed opinions re preparing and cooking alliums, probably well outside the scope of what anyone has tolerance for here, so i'll just implore everyone to pay careful mind to the preparation and cooking of alliums - so much depends! not just flavor but moisture, texture, scent - so so much! respect the allium folks, respect.

one more top tip - white miso is the secret wonderbra of savory cooking. you can get it in bulk at most decent hippie esque grocery stores, it's cheap, keeps well, adds unidentifiable umami reliably without being separately detectable, just a great thing to have in the fridge.

and don't disdain the innards of salted lemons.

also kimchi on top of peanut butter on celery omg sooo good - add smoked salt, heaven.

i am still mourning the closing of the tunisian cafe with san francisco's best harira. still a tender wound.

80: Tim really dislikes cooking. I'm not a fan either. It's been dumped on me - in a very gendered way, though I think he partly believes he's not capable of doing it - other than grilling: he did make delicious grilled cheese (toast bread before grilling lin pan and slather with hummus). He has gotten out of his depressive funk and is more engaged in these discussions, but my diet would have been atrocious and consistent mostly of deli sandwiches If I hadn't done that. He did take on the laundry, so the division of labor isn't completely gendered. But it is gendered, because he's much handier with tools than I am.

81: I am 40 minutes from Boston now, but closer to a milk city with a Cambodian population also a very large town recently converted to a city with a large Brazilian population. The natural foods grocery store in Knecht's PDBS, the next town over, is extremely expensive in the upper middle class woman formerly stay-at-home spouse business kind of way. The owner died of a heart attack in April, actually. Not so hippy. The Co-op in Cambridge and JP closed a while ago.

What I do have near me are apple orchards (3 in the next town) but more in some of the towns just Nirthwest of here and some small farms with CSAs and farm stands that import some of their produce from Northern New England.

I do want to try white miso! Someone suggested adding it to mayonnaise for burgers (beef ones but I suppose you could do it with veggie too).

re: 81

Yeah, we have white miso in the fridge, and a pot of gojuchang, and I use both for adding richness and/or heat to all kinds of things.

I eat steel cut oats for breakfast 90% of the time, but I just cook it. One part oats, one part milk, two parts water, pinch of salt. Turn stove on low and cook for like a half hour.

81 and 84: do you ever use MSG? In searching for the seasoning salt, I read an article saying it had been unfairly maligned.

I give thanks again and again for the fact that xelA is mostly not a fussy eater. My wife was very keen, when he was a baby, on doing the whole baby led weening thing* and giving him solid food of all different kinds early, and we didn't indulge fussiness when he was little. Not with any drama, it was just a fait accompli most of the time that he was eating what we were eating, and he went with it. I don't think I've cooked separate food for him, except when he had to eat at a totally different time from us for some logistical reason, since he was about 1.

So, I never have to think about whether my son will eat something before I cook. He'll eat it. The only thing he doesn't like, and we've tried since he was a tiny baby, and he's never flexed on it, is he doesn't like most cruciferous vegetables. But anything else: any kind of meat, fish, vegetable, grain, etc. Any kind of flavour, including really quite spicy food, it's totally fine. Indian food, Korean food, Mexican, Thai, sushi, etc, he'll eat it. When he goes to friend's houses the parents always ask what he won't eat, and the answer is always "nothing, he'll eat anything."

He took reheated keema biryani leftovers that we made yesterday in his flask for school lunch today. That had quite a lot of garlic, ginger and chilli in it. He also likes these jalapeño cheddar crisps that we sometimes stick in his lunch box. I think there's only about one other of his friends who'd eat it, the rest would find it too much.

* not a magic bullet, of course. We know people who did it who have several kids where they still ended up with one kid who was a totally unfussy eater, and another who neurotically only eats 3 things.

re: 85

That's basically how I do it, too. Although sometimes I microwave it for speed, instead.

87: we did that too and both of mine were adventurous as babies. Pebbles scarfed mushrooms and the Calabat once wowed a party by happily eating curried black-eyed peas when he was 16 months old (and the bigger kids were having frozen pizza). Then they hit preschool lunches - standard school lunch fare - and realized that living on white bread was an option.

My kid also went from "eats lots of things" to "strangely conservative and picky" at age 5 or 6. There's a evo-psych just-so story about this - when kids are entirely dependent on parents to provide food they're willing to eat lots of things, but once they hit the age where they could be proverbially wandering around the veldt, they become more conservative so they don't randomly eat all the poisonous berries.

my exp with all three kids is if you don't make any deal of it whatsoever their tastes keep widening through their teens & twenties. there are vagaries & bumps, but they all seem to have this magic ability to completely forget from one day to the next that they cannot abide plums or eggplant or broccoli or mushrooms & suddenly they can't get enough.

my stepson learned from some guatemalan pals how to hunt squirrels with a slingshot & occasionally posts his "process" on social media so it's like soothing video of dawn bay swimming-soothing video of ocean swimming-random knitting-cooking-birdwatching (brother)-witching(sister) content-more bay swimming-!!!dead squirrels laid on counter!!!-!!!flayed squirrels on counter!!!-adorable grandson-!!!squirrels browning in casserole!!!-birdwatching-soothing dawn bay drone footage of swimming with bonus pelican flyover-!!!squirrel masala gosht with rice!!!

tbh it's a bit jarring. i find his ocean fishing content easier to glide over.

Just don't eat the brain of the squirrels.

82
I'm not a fan either. It's been dumped on me - in a very gendered way, though I think he partly believes he's not capable of doing it - other than grilling

It's impressive how powerful inertia is. I do most of the cooking. I think there are two reasons for it, and enjoying it isn't one of them, although I've sort of learned to enjoy it after all this time.

1. When we started dating and then living together I had just started a pescatarian diet and was thinking about moving on to vegetarian, and it would have been presumptuous to ask her to cook for some specific requirements she had no interest in sharing and I was still figuring out myself.

2. Her job at the time had more uncertain but generally longer hours than mine. If I got home at 6 every day, and she got home at 7 one day and 5:30 the next, it was easier for me to do the cooking the first day and I got in the habit of doing it all the days.

I gave up on either pescatarianism or vegetarianism in 2013 or 2014. Her job became a little less time-consuming in 2012 if I remember correctly, and she's been at a totally 9-to-5 job ever since, and of course working from home 4 days a week now. Those are both two fairly minor and transient factors, right? But I still do almost all the cooking.

M does nearly all of the cooking here, but I do nearly all of the grocery shopping and dishes so it feels pretty balanced. Plus, she actually likes to cook and play with recipes whereas I tend to subsist mostly on breakfast cereal if left to my own devices.

Bowls and spoons aren't really devices.

88: Microwave and not an electric kettle? Are you even British?

85: Half an hour is a long time in the morning.

I work from home.

66: you've re-invented kanbans, the key institution of Japanese industrial management! (not at all surprised that Jack Dusty does it a similar way)

93: there's more than inertia there, there's learning by doing. If you cook every night you get efficient. If you're efficient it's less work *for you* and it's also quite a lot less work than it is for whoever doesn't cook regularly (Hey? Hey? Where's the salt?) Speaking: regular cook

99: excep when you're tired and you completely dread it and procrastinate for 20 minutes.