yan can cook, and judy can't

here i will log food that i rendered inedible. i can’t even call it cooking because all i’m doing is using electric appliances.

exhibit A: frozen bagels. beauty’s gave away a bunch of day-olds.

first, i tried leaving it in the microwave for 10 minutes. i bricked my bagel. i knocked it against the plate and di said “you’re gonna break the plate!”

second, i looked online and wikihow said to wrap the bagel in a wet paper towel and microwave for 10 seconds before cutting and sticking in the toaster on the lowest setting. i’m reusing a little hand towel that i wash out each time. it came out great.

my third bagel went swimmingly until toast phase. it got jammed. it tried to spring itself, but turns out entrapment leads to the heating element just staying on forever.

completely inedible.

here’s a pop tart that fell apart. i take it as an omen. i will keep the shard to fight off white walkers. and california is going to fall off into the ocean.

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i’m using a startup for home meal prep. i am shocked that i am able to turn this into food. behold!

it even looks like food! i can’t tell you how proud of myself i am.

i overcooked the pork. had to leave it in cuz the veggies looked super raw and the instructions thought the veggies would finish before the pork. i think our oven is less hot than it says.

directions:

why are they upside-down

i should re-upload them

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13 posts were split to a new topic: which wok?!

I love strolling down, because while your pics stay upside down, they are distinctly less burnt! So you are definitely improving, and in such a short amount of time! :slight_smile:

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this is actually reheated leftovers, but i am posting a photo of it anyway because it looks so cute in the little bamboo steamer! bonus trivet peeks out from under the plate!

i’m learning that presentation makes a huge difference.

also this tastes better than if i had microwaved it! how is no-microwave going?

i learned that minute rice in the rice cooker comes out a little puffy/soggy. maybe too much water, or maybe too dehydrated/processed (to make it minute rice). i think i am doing it wrong if i take rice meant for microwave cooking and try to rice cooker it.

i want to get some white rice. what kind? and a small bag.

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Not having a microwave makes it really difficult to eat crap. All the crap comes packaged for microwaves, and when one doesn’t have one it changes one’s relationship with entire stores. Trader Joe’s used to be awesome! Now it has strategic things it does best, but most of the stuff takes five times as long to prepare sans microwave.

There might be something there. As for rice, most any rice will do. We get big bags (5 or 10 pounds) from Koreana Plaza in Oakland, or Mitsuwa when we visit. We go for paper packaging.

We have a bulk item rice holder from Muji that isn’t sold any longer, and it holds about 6 cups of rice. We fill it from the larger bag we keep in the freezer (along with our flour; we freeze a lot).

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I soaked three cups of rice since 10 this morning, and it just finished cooking. So fluffy! @susan is making chana masala for it. :slight_smile:

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A post was merged into an existing topic: which wok?!

Very random thought dump re: cooking I had while catching up on this thread…

I love cooking. I’ve been pretty dang depressed for months now but most days cooking is an important part of the day for me. My partner almost does zero cooking. She told me when she was young she refused to learn to cook as a kind of a rebellion against the traditional culture she grew up in, but the downside is she can’t really cook for herself that much! This is fine by me, because I can cook for both of us, and she tends to like and appreciates how I make things, so it is a big deal because I can feel I contribute something important at home, especially if I’m not doing my best in other areas.

But actually cooking is hard! Especially for two people. Cleaning, prepping ingredients, cooking, cleaning up. I am not efficient AT ALL at any of this (although I enjoy listening to podcasts while I slowly go about everything) so it takes me even longer. I usually eat leftovers for lunch the next day or two, but unfortunately my partner tends not to like leftovers!

When she and I went to the Tenement Museum here in New York (the museum owns a couple buildings and other spaces in the Lower East Side and have maintained them as if they were still existing in the late 19th-early 20th century) I kind of realized that despite all the labor that went into preparing meals, some of that was compensated by the efficiency of feeding many people at once. You might have to go out basically every day for ingredients and then spend a few hours preparing ingredients and cooking food, but you were probably making enough for several people (like husband and wife, several children, and probably a couple of boarders who also live in your tiny tenement apartment and sleep sitting up in the chairs at your dining table).

Another thing I’ve been thinking about, watching the Netflix Street Food series, is that working people historically may have often bought food and basic meals out of the house and still do, hence street food. Especially if you are living apart from your family, it makes almost no sense to cook for yourself. It’s an inefficient use of time and then you have a ton of leftovers you may or may not be able to use. And until recently it was probably unusual for a working person (esp if living apart from your family) to have the equipment and space to cook. Like, nobody was making their own bread at home, everybody was buying baked loaves. Who’s got the time to wake up at 3 AM to start baking? Bakers.

Anyway, I like cooking because I enjoy it, it’s nice to work at getting better at something and the reward of getting better is that you get to make yourself happy by eating and make other people happy by feeding them. Plus I’ve listened to so many episodes of The Dig now.

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