Cooking Hello World
Posted by Skrud at Tuesday, March 21st 2006 at 7:44pm
My mom is in Banff this week, which pretty much means that I’m helpless in terms of feeding myself. Sure, I can go and buy food, but I’m cheap, and cheap food is also junk food, and I don’t really like junk food (other than Decarie Hot Dog).
I’ve been googling around for some cooking lessons, but it seems that everything starts with stuff like “How to shop for vegetables,” or “How to chop things properly” and other pre-requisite lessons. Going through those things, I’ll be lucky if I come up with something edible by the time I turn 30. I’m hungry now, and I want instant gratification. One website pointed me to a book called the Kitchen Survival Guide, which was described as “for the true beginner, the person who has never cooked at all; who doesn’t know how to clean a kitchen sponge or whether ketchup should be stored in the fridge.” Sounds like it’s for me! (Unfortunately, Amazon doesn’t seem to actually carry it, and by the time it got here I would’ve already starved to death).
Last time I posted about cooking, a lot of people gave me some suggestions and recipes, but I don’t think I have all those ingredients (I don’t even think I have chicken at the moment) – Angelo’s was downright confusing! I’ve decided what I need is the cooking equivalent of “Hello, World”: Something that you can get up and running in no time at all. It doesn’t do much, but at least it’s something.
Cooking for Engineers doesn’t really help, since they don’t really give any indication of where to start, and I don’t know what half the things listed on that site are. There needs to be a “Cooking to get food now: for totally useless people” resource.
Update: I realized something while toasting a bagel and putting peanut butter on it: Cooking requires a lot of forethought. You need to plan in advance what you intend on eating in the future and then go out, buy the ingredients necessary, and defend them from your housemates until such a time as you are ready to prepare and cook them. I don’t have the facilities for forethought. I can’t even think ahead a few minutes, let alone days.
Cooking for bachelors who don’t like spending time on cooking but like eating good food 101:
1- Groceries are the most important step. Go to wherever and go to the meats section and get a bunch of different cuts. Steaks, chops, fish, whatever you want. (I usually grab a mix of most of it.) When you get home throw them all in the freezer and take them out the evening before for lunch/supper or however many meals you plan on eating the next day.
2- Get marinades. Marinade recipes are really easy to find. The 3 ingredients I use the most in my marinades are teriyaki sauce, fine herbs salad dressing (a shortcut for when you don’t want to actually stock any “fine herbs”) and hickory smoke bbq sauce. It’ll give you some different tastes when things get boring and are hardly any more work.
3- With the packages you took out either stick them in a plastic container and let it sit in marinade in the fridge, turning over when you wake up and eat breakfast before going to school. Either that or simply stick the package in the fridge if you don’t care.
4- Get french fries, tasti-tasters and sidekicks. The first 2 take 20 mins of non-supervision (you start cooking your food usually 10 mins into the cooking of previous) and sidekicks take maybe 30 mins total but you have to supervise a bit more.
5- Cook meat in frying pan. Your marinade can usually be used for 2-3 cuts but if you want major flavor (I usually do this when I’ve used the marinade twice or 3 times) dump both the meat and the marinade in the pan.
That’s pretty much what I eat 60-70% of the time. The rest I’m even lazier and just put egg rolls or battered fish or something in the oven with the fries.
Smokinn’s advice is good because it can be allpied to many different meats, and it almost always turns out good.
One thing to keep in mind (this is pointed at you Skrud), different meats cook for different temperatures and different times.. You can eat beef raw if you want, and in general, I like having my beef rare, so it doesn’t take long at all.. But don’t try that with chicken! It needs to be cooked through and through.
My second to last note to you: Don’t forget the power of stirfry. It’s really easy, and you get GREAT results. I still used powered or premade sauces for my stirfry, but I start from scratch with the veggies and meat… Hopefully soon I’ll start making my own sauces.
For my final advice: When in doubt, Kraft dinner.
There’s no KD in my house :(
i’ve always been a big big fan of caesar salads. get a package of pre-chopped lettuce (some come with extra bits like carrot shavings or whatever). slice up some baby carrots and toss ‘em in. lovingly pour some caesar dressing on it. get a block of parmesan cheese (i mean a proper block of parmigiano regiano, none of this kraft powdered bullshit) and shave that into the mix. top off with some croutons and bam. amazing caesar salad.
of course, meat lovers will wanna have some sorta pre-cooked meat-like product to top it all off…grilled chicken works best.
Skruddy, tell us what you DO have in the kitchen, and I can come up with something for you to make.
Smokinn has the right idea… Go out and get a various amount of meats and pop them in the freezer if you DO end up grocery shopping. I would also suggest a frozen veggie mix, in case you feel the need for stirfrying it.
Sometimes cooking isn’t very feasible when you are very low on time.. So I like to introduce my A B C of. Get precooked meals like chicken nuggets/wings. Get home turn on oven, drop off your bags, put nuggets on pan, stick it in oven. Watch tv, go on skrud.net, turn over food, go back to whatever you were doing (please no coding and forgetting that the food is in the oven, I prefer timers!!) hear that ding, and go eat.
If you’re REALLY daring, I prefer the prepare food. I like stirfries, so on a Saturday where I don’t have a lot of things to do, I’ll cut up my meats into (diced, sliced, strips) put it in freezer bags. When I’m in the mood for stirfry: [code] stirfy cook(){ bag = freezer->remove(meat); bag->put(bowl); bag->putin(ginger_powder.PINCH); //for better flavoring if(u->want(marinate)){ bag->putin(marinate.HALF_CUP); //I prefer korean bulborgi } u->go(class); //or whatever you want to do. u->turnon(rice_cooker); u->shake(bag); u->turnon(oven); pan->putin(oil); if(oil == hot){ bag->dump(meat); meat->into(pan); while(!meat->cooked()){ pan->flip(); } pan->putin(veggies); while(!veggies->cooked()){ pan->stir(); } } u->turnoff(oven); u->plate(pan->all); u->place(rice); return stirfry; } [/code] There you go.. the “hello world” version stirfying.. Don’t laugh too much at the syntax. It’s the thought that counts right?
Thanks linda! But I think there are some undeclared identifiers there … What’s the “oil == hot” overloaded to? What’s the body of the meat::cooked() method? If I flip a pan with hot oil in it, won’t the oil spill out onto the hot burner and ignite? (That’s what happened the last time I tried to cook).
error: line 2: meat undeclared. first use of this function. error: line 14: bag::dump() called with incorrect number of parameters.
I wrote that at like 3am!!!! I’m only trying to help you here, I figure a great debugger like you can probably debug the kinks out without my help. My next cooking program will be better okay? Maybe I should write my own book.. “Receipes in C for the geeks whose got better things to do than cook”
i suggest - purchase good bread, cheese, tomatoes, coldcuts, cucumbers, may i live on tomatoe sandwiches. i alternate the other ingredients in. this is cheap, fast and actually healthy. people say it isn’t enough for a big person, but hell, who says you can’t have two? other thoughts - soup in cans and nice crackers. soup just needs to be heated. no one ever died of eating cold soup, so you taste it by eating it. grocery stores sell “meals in a bag” in the freezer section. they cost about $8.00. enough for two servings. you pour into oven casserole dish and leave until timer dings. lastly - by pasta and spaghetti sauce! pasta takes ten minutes in boiling water stirring occasionally, sauce can be heated in microwave (with a paper towel on top to avoid splatter) in the bowl you will pour the pasta in. you definitely need to go to the store though skrud.
Well, Skrud, you see all the coding comparisons that have been made? Well, junk food is like a perl script. Some people get by with quick and dirty meals that are just not healthy and it becomes a very hard habit to break. Cooking a bigger meal requires some planning, just like with bigger software. A dinner party is like building enterprise applications - you have to plan well in advance, prepare, debug, and there will always be bug reports to deal with. You’ve just gotta de-stress, find a recipe that uses simple ingredients, and give it a try. In general, if something has gone brown, it’s cooked, unless it’s chicken, which should be white. Otherwise, it never hurts to ask. Salads are key, cuz they’re easy. Rice is pretty simple, though getting a rice cooker is always a good idea because it’s basically, pop in the rice, pour in the water, turn on and eat when it’s done. And in the end, if it gets fucked up, just order a pizza and try again the next day. If you don’t make a few failed attempts, you’ll never learn.
I have a rice cooker. I just don’t like the rice that my dad buys. But he won’t buy anything else, because my sister really likes that particular kind of rice, and she is capable of being much more manipulative than I.
There’s always frozen dinners if you’re that concerned…
You need to stock up on some cup noodle and instant ramen. :P
Don’t worry Skrud i was left in the kitchen at a young age and told to cook. btw i was feeding 8 people by the time i was 16. Its easy once you try to do a couple of times.
Skruddums do you like steamed rice? I can send some to you. My mom bought me like 40Kg (the bag comes up to my WAIST!!) of good quality white rice (perfect for steamed rice).
The best advice I can give anyone is to visit the kraft canada website. They have an amazing amount recipes in their database that are all very easy to prepare but are also very good. They are made for the average person not the gourmet chef so they keep a certain simplicity to them. The recipes also have comments from users with their input/ratings.
I also suggest signing up for their free weekly emails and free monthly magazine.
http://www.kraftcanada.com/EN
What about going to a bakery and picking up some prepared foods? I live close to a kosher bakery that sells a whole bunch of Jewish foods, and I can pick up some prepared knishes or verkanes for about 50 cents each. Two of those and some veggies and you have a nice healthy supper.