Potato Chips, Chicken McNuggets, and Mac'n'Cheese -- What are Your Favorite Comfort Foods and Routines?

[JohnDB]

We have most of those restaurants in Canada, I know it's the lazy way,I've worked in real restaurants and a fast food restaurant.

Your getting a better more nutritious meal when the cooks actually have to prepare the food by hand.

You save a truck load of money if you do it yourself lol

But eating out is always about meeting friends or filling a need and being in a hurry to do something else besides eat.

Preparing a meal requires planning and a good amount of time. And in today's busy world...even though I'm somewhat retired I simply don't have the time to cook.

Quick fix foods are currently filling the shelves at the supermarkets. So much is heat and eat its insane. The actual raw ingredients areas take up the least amount of room in your average supermarket.

Rice and beans are now heat and eat in bags, boxes, and cans. Same with all meats.
In the produce section pre-cut fruits and vegetables take up over half of the displays. Juice and dressings take up a hefty portion too.

People have lost the ability to truly cook.

Public schools have tossed out home ec classes that taught such things as food preparation and preservation.
Asking someone today to make bread, Biscuits, or a cake from scratch without looking up a recipe is an invite for a lot of food wasted.

Can you make a corned beef out of a brisket using nobody else's recipe whatsoever?

How about a pot roast with root vegetables and lots of that delicious gravy?

 

[Lanolin]

I think people should spend most of their time growing food, cooking and eating for a good life in the country rather than run arount a rat race for a crazy city life, but more people choose the rat race because they think they should always come first.

There something to be said about being slow, last and enjoying the fruits of their labour. A lot of people dismiss this as 'subsistence living' and 'backward'

but not having any choice that would take away peoples free will to choose what kind of life they want to enjoy. some people thrive in cities but just as many people dont..however thats because machines have taken over what for many was actually honest labour.

the tractorsand machine processing of agriculture, mining, industrial revolution means factories produced things en mass and it actually loses something in the process when its not hand made.

The luddites and futurists have their anxieties realised in the 21st century.

eating is actually pleasure that needs to be savoured. Jesus said eat and drink to remember me. But a lot of people forget about him and dont even have time to eat and give thanks for what they eat. They just consume without thinking about Him.

 

[Lanolin]

something that I find interesting is flour and sugar
why eat something thats been ground to a powder, think of all the effort made to mill this grain or corn or sugar into a powder and then eat it.

when you could just eat a whole corn, but into a husk of sugar cane and suck out the juice, or eat whole rice which is grain rather than it being ground into a powder like wheat is. its like eating cocaine

soon people just wont bother to eat and just swallow pills or get food injected into their veins.
I dont think thats good for you!

some of the pleasure of eating is in the biting and chewing and spitting out the bones rather than have everything hamburgered and crusts cut off or food processed to a mush and made into something else..pringles are just mashed up potatoes and other ingredients when you could just eat potatoes simply sliced or baked whole.

 

[Lanolin]

how about coffee beans..its basically roasted ground up seeds turned into liquid.
or tea..you can just pick a fresh herb leaf from in your garden or pot grown and boil some water and it will be fresh rather than have a tea bag of dried tea leaves that someone far away in india had to pick and export it to a huge facotry to be packed and dried for you.

 

[JohnDB]

how about coffee beans..its basically roasted ground up seeds turned into liquid.
or tea..you can just pick a fresh herb leaf from in your garden or pot grown and boil some water and it will be fresh rather than have a tea bag of dried tea leaves that someone far away in india had to pick and export it to a huge facotry to be packed and dried for you.

Coffee is the pit of a cherry that is roasted and then brewed....it's a carefully timed and ratio of beans to water.

Roasting Coffee is also an extremely precise temperature and timing process as well.

Tea is all about elevation....the higher the elevation the better the tea. Then the fermentation of those leaves is another process in itself.

Go ahead and try to do this without the requisite skill and knowledge....you will spit out the results very quickly.

 

[Lynx]

Tea is all about elevation....the higher the elevation the better the tea. Then the fermentation of those leaves is another process in itself.

Hmm... I wonder if anybody has ever tried growing tea in a partial vacuum chamber.

 

[I_am_Canadian]

But eating out is always about meeting friends or filling a need and being in a hurry to do something else besides eat.

Preparing a meal requires planning and a good amount of time. And in today's busy world...even though I'm somewhat retired I simply don't have the time to cook.

Quick fix foods are currently filling the shelves at the supermarkets. So much is heat and eat its insane. The actual raw ingredients areas take up the least amount of room in your average supermarket.

Rice and beans are now heat and eat in bags, boxes, and cans. Same with all meats.
In the produce section pre-cut fruits and vegetables take up over half of the displays. Juice and dressings take up a hefty portion too.

People have lost the ability to truly cook.

Public schools have tossed out home ec classes that taught such things as food preparation and preservation.
Asking someone today to make bread, Biscuits, or a cake from scratch without looking up a recipe is an invite for a lot of food wasted.

Can you make a corned beef out of a brisket using nobody else's recipe whatsoever?

How about a pot roast with root vegetables and lots of that delicious gravy?

If I had kept up my culinary skills from high school I probably could, the baking skills are going to waste as well.

 

[TheIndianGirl]

It is easy to cook. Just buy the ingredients and follow the instructions. Shifting through multiple recipes for the same dish is the hard part.

 

[TheIndianGirl]

Public schools have tossed out home ec classes that taught such things as food preparation and preservation.

I took home economics in middle school. Not sure if the class is being taught nowadays.

 

[Lanolin]

Coffee is the pit of a cherry that is roasted and then brewed....it's a carefully timed and ratio of beans to water.

Roasting Coffee is also an extremely precise temperature and timing process as well.

Tea is all about elevation....the higher the elevation the better the tea. Then the fermentation of those leaves is another process in itself.

Go ahead and try to do this without the requisite skill and knowledge....you will spit out the results very quickly.

herbal tea is better
you dont need just camella siniesis, tea can be made of all different kinds of herbs and they dont need to be exclusive grown in the himalayas

I dont drink coffee I never liked it, but seems to me most people just add lots of milk and sugar to make it palatable

anyway
as a comfort food its just good to have anything nourishing and HOT

 

[Lanolin]

I took home economics in middle school. Not sure if the class is being taught nowadays.

ironic since people now need to stay at home to be economical

I did home ec in intermediate...everyone did. Im not sure why high schools didnt offer those options
they can only fit so much in timetable and if you get streamed they make you take certain things as compulsory and not others.

now we have volunteers organisations doing things like garden to table in schools. But the silly ministry says teachers have to fit so much into their curriculum that something has to go..the other thing is gardens require care not just during school time but in the holidays as well, esp if its a vege garden

I did horticulture one year and all the teacher did was teach us out of outdated textbooks, was so disappointed that we didnt have more hands on

 

[Lanolin]

if you can wash, cut things up stir and and heat things, you can cook.
the thing is prep or cutting is actually most of the work the cooking doesnt actually take that long.

 

[Lanolin]

streaming in education is benefits only a few. Theres a rationale why its done, but i dont know enough of the pedagogy to explain why

basically the brightest kids get all put in one class and the rest just get labelled as dumb or too stupid to go to university so they dont even apply themselves and they arent given the resources to succeed. However the bright kids may actually miss out on more practical subjects or ones that interest them the most.

 

[Lanolin]

sorry wrong thread...why am I posting about education...in comfort food lol

 

[I_am_Canadian]

It is easy to cook. Just buy the ingredients and follow the instructions. Shifting through multiple recipes for the same dish is the hard part.

Yeah, or buy a dozen cookbooks.
But nothing is better than that made from scratch.

 

[TheIndianGirl]

Yeah, or buy a dozen cookbooks.
But nothing is better than that made from scratch.

I do prefer making main dishes from scratch and I agree the food tastes better. I have also eaten homemade rolls and they taste good; however I do not see myself making breads or desserts from scratch, mainly because it is a hassle working with flour.

 

[Lanolin]

I make a mess its kind of unavoidable when I cook

some people would rather eat clean in a sterile tidy kitchen then a messy one but thats not always going to happen with me unfortunately


because crumbs, spillage, and other mishaps.
one of my friends is a really good cook but her kitchen...when I was staying at her house and looking after her I had to DIG my way out of there. She left it a mess. I looked in her cupboards and it looked like she literally just threw everything in there...I couldnt find the utensils and remember I tried to clean her oven trays that were black and get them back to shiny steel. But it took forver scrubbing, and it didnt want to use full strength oven cleaner that had toxic signs on it.

Then I just recall the tastiet food isnt always prepared in the tidiest or cleanest of kitchens.
Because I saw my brother clean his sink with jif which I am not sure you are supoosed to do ...if you swallow it you might die..you have a shiny gleaming sink but everything you wash in there would be coated in chemicals and taste like chemicals.

 

[Mel85]

If chocolate is great, but try it with peanut butter or strawberries

True. I’ve done the strawberries dipped in white or brown chocolate and then refrigerate for like 4 hours. Soooo good!

 

[Lynx]

It is easy to cook. Just buy the ingredients and follow the instructions. Shifting through multiple recipes for the same dish is the hard part.

A recipe is just where someone did an experiment in the kitchen and it turned out so well he wrote it down so he could recreate it.

In other words recipes are made to be tweaked.

 

[JohnDB]

A recipe is just where someone did an experiment in the kitchen and it turned out so well he wrote it down so he could recreate it.

In other words recipes are made to be tweaked.

But that "perfect" loaf can never be had.

How many different variations can be had off of flour, sugar, water, milk. Butter and eggs is extreme.

Slight variations in quantities or methodology create vastly different products. Slight differences in flour make vastly different products too.

I've been looking for rye meal....haven't found anything lately. I'm needing to start a Sourdough starter for breadmaking....having a hard time. Hopefully I find some soon.