on the care and feeding of my f'list
Aug. 15th, 2006 12:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aruanSo, I had a small epiphany today. During a mild meltdown in the coffee room that started with not being able to go to Tampa with Brandon's family this weekend because I'm fairly buried in a monthlong backlog of basically anything you can be a month behind on, I realized that there's no time to do everything I've been trying to do.
And as I watched the coffee drip down into the pot, it struck me - cooking. Suddenly, I understood the concept of little bodegas in New York and Europe where people buy just enough for that night's meal - which doesn't necessarily mean ingredients.
See, here in Florida, we have endless reclaimed swampland on which to sprawl our not-much-of-a-step-up-in-terms-of-civilization strip malls in place of sawgrass and water moccasins. And the usual fixture of said strip malls is, 3 times our of 4, a Publix. These palatial grocery oases carry virtually every food, paper and cleaning product, frozen good and cheap wine in quadruplicate varieties. They have the freshest produce, the cleanest facilities and the least annoying muzak, and until we get Trader Joe's down here, they'll continue to be the only game worth mentioning in town.
My mother, bless her heart, worked full time (sometimes two jobs) and still managed to cook for us almost every night. Yeah, sometimes it was macaroni and cheese with hot dogs, but even that she made with real cheese and there was always a salad. Point is, there was always hot, fresh food in my house, and the way this was accomplished was either her going on a weekly Publix run or setting me up with a list and her debit card to do so. Having been fortunate enough to have a car, I've continued this ritual through college dorms and now my apartment.
But she ran a much different kind of house from mine. For example, they don't make loaves of bread for single people, who may take a month to eat that many slices. Whatever my mother bought was gone usually before the next shopping trip, so for the last couple of days we were eating leftovers, cereal or Chinese food. Having made a few of the trips to pick up said takeout, I knew how much it cost to feed a family of four a meal you didn't make yourself, and therefore going to the grocery store and cooking at home made sound fiscal sense.
But does it anymore?
I work a full-time job: 40 hours a week, but often up to 45. Brandon and I usually wake up around noon or 1 p.m. and either one of us has to go in to work an earlier shift or we grab a couple of hours or so for our own things before going in together. We get only half an hour for dinner, hardly enough to go to some fast-food place let alone make something. We get off work about 1 a.m., go jogging for about an hour, then head home, watch The Daily Show over a snack, and either read or do something else for a couple of hours before going to bed. Household chores, a couple of semi-regular television shows, miscellaneous errands and laundry (requires trekking to a laundromat) break up the monotony.
Now, I don't intend to stop cooking. If nothing else, to my great surprise and no small amount of feminist guilt, I've found I like cooking for Brandon. But even that's something we do together, so it's not just cooking. Also, eating out for more than one meal a day wouldn't feasible, but that's fine because we both like breakfast foods and sandwiches, which we can throw together quickly with the bonus of minimal dishes. There are make-meals-for-a-month services like Dinner2Gether here in Polk that'd be worth looking into.
But buying ingredients in bulk at Publix that need relatively quick turnaround without the time to do so makes no sense. But with a bodega, while some nights you want to make pasta sauce with fresh garlic, on others picking up a quarter rotisserie chicken and fruit salad is all you have the time or energy for. And it's that time thing that I keep coming back to, but that's hard because there's no bar code to tell you how much it's worth.
So, all things considered, is eating out for one meal a day instead of cooking at home really that much more expensive for a single person? What kind of households do you all live in/run? Do you cook, and if not then what do you eat? When do you cook? Are there any shortcuts you take?
It's a sad thought, that we're losing the art of cooking to the thousand encroachments of the 21st century, but seriously, is it feasible anymore for anyone who has a job that doesn't involve making one's living from it?
And as I watched the coffee drip down into the pot, it struck me - cooking. Suddenly, I understood the concept of little bodegas in New York and Europe where people buy just enough for that night's meal - which doesn't necessarily mean ingredients.
See, here in Florida, we have endless reclaimed swampland on which to sprawl our not-much-of-a-step-up-in-terms-of-civilization strip malls in place of sawgrass and water moccasins. And the usual fixture of said strip malls is, 3 times our of 4, a Publix. These palatial grocery oases carry virtually every food, paper and cleaning product, frozen good and cheap wine in quadruplicate varieties. They have the freshest produce, the cleanest facilities and the least annoying muzak, and until we get Trader Joe's down here, they'll continue to be the only game worth mentioning in town.
My mother, bless her heart, worked full time (sometimes two jobs) and still managed to cook for us almost every night. Yeah, sometimes it was macaroni and cheese with hot dogs, but even that she made with real cheese and there was always a salad. Point is, there was always hot, fresh food in my house, and the way this was accomplished was either her going on a weekly Publix run or setting me up with a list and her debit card to do so. Having been fortunate enough to have a car, I've continued this ritual through college dorms and now my apartment.
But she ran a much different kind of house from mine. For example, they don't make loaves of bread for single people, who may take a month to eat that many slices. Whatever my mother bought was gone usually before the next shopping trip, so for the last couple of days we were eating leftovers, cereal or Chinese food. Having made a few of the trips to pick up said takeout, I knew how much it cost to feed a family of four a meal you didn't make yourself, and therefore going to the grocery store and cooking at home made sound fiscal sense.
But does it anymore?
I work a full-time job: 40 hours a week, but often up to 45. Brandon and I usually wake up around noon or 1 p.m. and either one of us has to go in to work an earlier shift or we grab a couple of hours or so for our own things before going in together. We get only half an hour for dinner, hardly enough to go to some fast-food place let alone make something. We get off work about 1 a.m., go jogging for about an hour, then head home, watch The Daily Show over a snack, and either read or do something else for a couple of hours before going to bed. Household chores, a couple of semi-regular television shows, miscellaneous errands and laundry (requires trekking to a laundromat) break up the monotony.
Now, I don't intend to stop cooking. If nothing else, to my great surprise and no small amount of feminist guilt, I've found I like cooking for Brandon. But even that's something we do together, so it's not just cooking. Also, eating out for more than one meal a day wouldn't feasible, but that's fine because we both like breakfast foods and sandwiches, which we can throw together quickly with the bonus of minimal dishes. There are make-meals-for-a-month services like Dinner2Gether here in Polk that'd be worth looking into.
But buying ingredients in bulk at Publix that need relatively quick turnaround without the time to do so makes no sense. But with a bodega, while some nights you want to make pasta sauce with fresh garlic, on others picking up a quarter rotisserie chicken and fruit salad is all you have the time or energy for. And it's that time thing that I keep coming back to, but that's hard because there's no bar code to tell you how much it's worth.
So, all things considered, is eating out for one meal a day instead of cooking at home really that much more expensive for a single person? What kind of households do you all live in/run? Do you cook, and if not then what do you eat? When do you cook? Are there any shortcuts you take?
It's a sad thought, that we're losing the art of cooking to the thousand encroachments of the 21st century, but seriously, is it feasible anymore for anyone who has a job that doesn't involve making one's living from it?
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no subject
Date: August 15th, 2006 05:50 pm (UTC)Exactly. I eat very few fresh vegetables at home because of that. I generally try to get in a few salads at lunch to make up for that.
At home I shoot more for meals that can be made quickly and with things in my pantry. Quesadillas, tuna melts, grilled cheese all work well. I also stock a few frozen meals/soups in my freezer for when I have no time. But, I do love to cook so I usually plan for one or two meals and buy groceries for those.
no subject
Date: August 17th, 2006 08:28 am (UTC)Salads! I keep forgetting that veggies don't just come steamed. I wish our work had a cafeteria (the actual New York Times building in New York does, and the menu is posted on the company's homepage, teasing the rest of us underlings), which would probably make some effort at green things as a side dish. Even my school cafeteria did that much. But yeah, remembering to keep some green on the plate is next to impossible with Brandon, but everyone can be cajoled with a few bacon bits and a little dressing.
Quesadillas! With healthy tortillas and pre-cooked chicken. There are a couple of organic Indian meals I've found to be good, and the Thai Lean Cuisine meal, but Brandon has yet to meet food out of the freezer that he likes. And yeah, making soup in bulk and freezing portions really is a smart move - you can have it with sandwiches and such.
Mm, yes, planning the meals you're buying for instead of conjuring up hypotheticals while wandering the aisles is probably what I've been doing wrong with the Publix shopping. Combined with going there hungry, there's just no end to the impulse shopping (how else does one end up with celery seed in the spice rack?)