If genuine kindness and support is a “mind trick” then trick me, baby.
You have a great pancreas!
I’ve heard that about Aeronmelon!
I wish people would stop commenting on parts of Aeronmelon over which they have no control. I like their font choice.
I like their font choice.
How crass!
with or without alfalfa beans
As my life has progressed, there is a growing list of restaurant genres that I no longer visit, because I can make it so much better at home.
For instance, Italian. Italian restaurants tend to be very expensive, and I am nearly always disappointed, because I can probably make anything they offer better than they can. So why spend a lot of money for mediocre food, when I know how cheap it really costs, and how easy it is to prepare (generally)?
On the other hand, I am not in a place where I could easily smoke meat, so I have become a connoisseur of BBQ, because I can’t do that myself.
But expensive burgers? I can make a first rate, hand-pressed burger on a George Foreman grill in a few minutes, and incredible fresh cut fries in the air fryer (lightly dusted with garlic powder, rosemary, and coarse ground salt & pepper) for a fraction of the cost of going out. Spend the money on great buns, good cheese, sauteed fresh mushrooms, and thick cut bacon, and have the burger of your life, and it will cost a quarter of going out.
And I can watch a great movie while I’m eating.
Ah, the lasagna problem. My lasagna is better than the restaurants, but then I would have to put in the time to make a lasagna.
We were in a fancy restaurant and my partner leaned over to me and said mine is better. I also like cooking which probably helps.
You can get to a point in home cooking where basically everything you make is better than a restaurant if you have the right equipment to prepare it because you don’t have to worry about cost, time, or scale. Took me a few years and a lot of iteration for some dishes, but I think most home cooks should be able to cook a burger better than most restaurants and it should certainly be better than sysco patties.
One of the problems is that restaurants don’t feel quite the same need to be at least somewhat healthy. I often wonder “Do I really want to add another 150 grams of butter?” when restaurants chefs will gladly add a full pound.
I used to think restaurant food was better than my own, but as I’ve got older I think my body has finally figured out that what they’re serving there is not legitimately high quality.
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Yeah, the downside is that I can’t really enjoy chips in a lot of places now. Maybe I should bring my own herb salt with me, though I would normally add it before cooking.
Or they just wanted some oral that night.
65 dollars on 2 burger fries combos??
Some places are honestly getting crazy. Could probably run up a total like that at Five Guys. They’re death spiraling and prices are out of hand.
Five Guys has always been this expensive.
I haven’t eaten at one in 15 years, fuck those insane prices.
Let me preface this, unless it’s a kids’ birthday wish, I’m not willingly going there.
Youtube channel did an ingredient comparison, and while they are quite expensive, McDonalds if fucking you over way more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zOmh9F4xcs
TL;DW, it comes down to meat. Using grocery store ingredients, they made faithful comparisons to fiveguys, in and out, and McD.
The hamburger is by far the most expensive part and fiveguys does actually use more than the rest.
McDonalds big mac had 107% markup.
In and out Double, had 44% markup
The 5 guys regular burger was 84% markup
It cost them over $8 to copycat Fiveguys.
That said, a meal for 4 being over $100, we better be eating something fancier than fast food.
That said, a meal for 4 being over $100, we better be eating something fancier than fast food.
Exactly.
I’ve done the math over and over again - my average per-plate cost cooking at home is around $2.
Sometimes a buck, sometimes more.
I can knock out a better burger than 5 Guys or fast food with little effort and a lot lower cost. My burger is purchased as a volume, patties made while watching TV and frozen. Just gotta pull them out and cook. And I use my own burger spice that blows away anything from 5 Guys.
Planning is the key. I make meals that freeze well so I can split it up and then use as-needed, even for weekday lunches. When your daily lunch is $1-2 instead of $10+, it makes a big difference.
But just as important is I get to control the nutrition.
you’re not counting your labor
lets say cooking + dishes takes an hour (maybe 2)
if you make 30$/hour even ignoring possibly time and a half if you work 40 already and assuming picking up more hours is possible
it starts to not really be cheaper, so quality has to be the real benefit and control
otherwise work more and arbitrage the difference
I’d rather spend an hour cooking than spend an extra hour working so someone else can cook it for me. Quality can apply to time as well as ingredients.
Do people count their own time as labour now? This sounds like Corporations tricking you into buying their stuff since it is “cheaper” than Free somehow.
Like my half hour bath coat me $25 in washing myself? Should I outsource my bathing?
I get your meaning but at some point it is reasonable to take your own unpaid work into account.
My dad sometimes brags how he is able to save like 4€ on a grocery bag by going to a bunch of stores to compare prices and then going back to them to buy just the best deals. I mean that’s great but it takes several hours to do so, so if he had spent an hour working instead he would have made up for it. Chasing deals is like an extremely low-paying job.
everyone should because i assure you anyone with any possible control over your life surely does
also if your only take away is buy food from a corporation you missed the actual point of my comment
I use my own burger spice
Spill it.
It started as a 5 dollar burger.
I could feed myself for a month on that kinda money.
And a smartphone is required to order because the menu is a QR code.
If you’re referencing the post from yesterday, that was in China…
Sorry, no clue what you’re on about. I’m referencing ‘trendy’ restaurants is all.
Pretty sure the consensus in that thread was that no one in the west had seen any restaurants where the only accepted payment method was via QR code
Missed that one, sorry! I’d have listed several from KC :)
That sucks.
The gist of it was OP visited China, where he had been at least once before covid, and noticed changes like everything from taxis to restaurants requiring WeChat, weixin pay, a proprietary QR code format, passport verification, 2FA over WhatsApp (which requires a proxy to even use there), etc.
All OP wanted was some KFC to try their seaweed chicken and their shrimp burgers, but eventually he rage quit and went back to his hotel because it was taking so long to jump through all the hoops and it was eating up his data plan.
I was at a swanky casino restaurant the other night. The burgers were around $22. So yeah, $65 is unthinkable.
$22 burger, $6 fries, $6 shake: $34, x2 is $68, not including possible tip.
you could reasonably assume there was a couple beers on the tab too
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I once lived with two guys (a partner of mine, and his cousin), neither of whom ever did any cleaning whatsoever, so it all fell on me (the only woman, no surprise there.)
One day I took out the mop and started mopping the kitchen. The cousin started criticizing the way I was mopping, so I handed him the mop and told him, “If you’re so good at it, maybe you should be doing it instead.” He never criticized my cleaning again.
It’s such a weird phenomenon where people feel as though they’re helping by criticizing you and “just giving you advice to be more efficient” or whatever stuff, but if you ask them to help by actually doing something they get repulsed.
Some people have a (genetic?) predisposition to really like salt on things. I had a friend where most of their family salted things you wouldn’t expect and had lots of salty foods. Salt on melon slices for instance, snack foods like pickles and such. Dad died of a heart attack. No idea if it’s related.
Salt on melon is legit, if you apply only a light amount and let the salt spread through the watery flesh before eating it then it actually makes it taste much sweeter without being salty tasting.
Salt & chili powder is the best. A brand called Tajín is pretty good and is sold in pretty much every Hispanic grocery store
They’d use a shaker. I understand salt can enhance some sweetness, but I’ve never liked it on fresh fruit.
My gran loved salt, and would pour a pile of it onto her plate to dip things in. My mum’s always been more of a health freak than her mother, but as she’s gotten older her cooking has started including noticeably more salt.
My family is like that. Our heart disease is actually unrelated
That was my family, the food wasn’t salty per se but they’d put salt on most things, once on the table,including watermelon, actually not bad.
I’m ethnically East-Asian but grew up in the UK/Canada. Born in the lower class and I’m middle-ish myself now.
I watched a lot of Gordon Ramsey and I finally decided to shell out for a fancy meal with my brother at the Savoy. I swear, everything tasted way too salted … like every course except for the dessert. I was like, “damn, rich people love salt I guess?” or maybe it’s just what I grew up with that I underseason things but man it was weird.
I do quite a lot of cooking and am pretty good at it, but yeah, classic restaurants often just slap in a lot of salt (+cream and butter) and that’s supposed to be delicious. If you use any other spices, vinegars, soy sauces or whatever, the food at a restaurant like that will be salty bland.
Learning to recreate (and even improve) a restaurant dish is such a great feeling
Stop using SkipTheDishes and DoorDash.
A 17$ in-store order costs over 30$ delivered through Skip.
yeah im always hesitant to use these services because of this. it literally doubles the cost of your meal.
that said, when youre stuck at work* or somewhere without the ability to cook, it is nice to have such a variety in delivery.
*(i work nights and typically eat before i go in, so i dont bring a “lunch to work” and will order occasionally when im too busy before work)
Delivery was always more expensive, but the real costs were split between ordering and tipping the driver, so it didn’t feel as expensive.
But with services like doordash or uber, you see the upfront cost of everything.
Many restaurants around here which have their own delivery service started charging more for the food itself if you choose delivery. They don’t have a service fee per say, but they recoup that in the food price. So you end up paying as much as a third party delivery service.
If you pick up the food, you pay 1-2$ less per meal and save on the tip.
If you make the food you save $60 by the sound of it…
Absolutely, making the food is way less expensive and always has been.
I understand that it would cost more to have someone make it, but that is just a ridiculous amount.
Idk guys my ex wife basically acted like she was the only person who was capable of preparing meals other than breakfast, and I was young and just kinda accepted it. She always acted incredibly skeptical and negative toward me if I suggested making dinner.
After we divorced I had to learn to cook and got pretty good at it. My current wife appreciates my cooking and I cook just as much if not more than she does. None of my kids have died due to anything I cooked them, although you’d think they came pretty close by the way they act sometimes, especially when I was vegan.
After we divorced I had to learn to cook
So you’re saying your ex was right, but constant critique stopped you from getting better
I don’t think she was right. I was unskilled, not untalented. She was a good chef and could certainly have helped me improve, but she didn’t, she just acted really negative. Like its not like I did it and she criticized me, she just would not let me do it. I could cook eggs and breakfast, I made good omelets with lots of fixings, pancakes and sausages.
So its like she knew I could cook. I lost my beloved 17" cast iron skillet in our divorce. But in cases where I did cook dinner it was because she wasn’t there. She never tasted it to criticize me. I worked 50-60 hours per week, like many poor young families.
PS. That’s not my downvote
It is a special thing to be skilled in the kitchen.
Whenever I get (genuine) compliments and appreciation for something I’ve turned out, my gut reaction is to go “hey, no problem, it’s whatever, nothing special – literally anyone can make it like this with really basic instructions and stuff – it’s easy!”
I always have to remind myself that, while I was raised with humility as a virtue, that’s not necessarily the whole story - that I took an interest in food very early, am going on two decades cooking most of my own meals, am always experimenting in the kitchen, hunting (literally, sometimes) for new ingredients, acquiring new equipment and techniques, just constantly deepening in this area. It connects me to my surroundings, my forebears, my own body, the land, and (while it confuses militant vegans everywhere when I express this) the animals who walk/swim/fly on that land, who nourish us in return for our stewardship. People are attracted to this even if they might not know what exactly it is. it’s ineffable, a thru-line all the way back to the heart of human-kind.
I have to remind myself that it’s not particularly normal to spend hours holding produce and reading labels whenever I find a cool new store. Or, for that matter, to spend five years of one’s life as a manager at an indie natural foods store with “immersion in the local food scene” as the primary goal. I didn’t give a flying fuck about our EBITDA on a given day, or how much cash was in your drawer that night, but I sure did pretend well enough.
Truth is, I just wanted to move myself up the literal food chain – quite literally lmao – to get closer to the source. I enjoyed knowing what was going on before your average Joe, knowing where the trends were going, where the struggles and opportunities lay, who the up and coming producers were. Going out to farms, and to meet vendors and get nerdy and technical with my people about something we were all passionate about. (I did also just need a job, tbf.) And, guess what, EBITDA was fucking great; exceeded expectations because people are moved by passion and will buy things.
If you’ve read this far, cheers. I didn’t, and don’t, do all that because of some ambition. I’m not a chef or a restauranteur or an influencer. I do not own a crunchy grocery store - I don’t even work at one anymore! I’m a simple nobody who knows the location of every single fruit and nut tree within a mile radius of where I live, and that’s how I prefer it, and it’s enough! And I love it when my wife asks for my cooking. Because it reminds me, yeah, I have put in the work, and it matters to people, and it’s good!
I used to think the foodie thing might be a phase - but it’s clearly not. I’m obsessed. I mean, we’re literally fucking made of food god dammit!
It would have been hilarious if you had put “anyway here’s the recipe for a basic burger patty,” at the end of your text to mimic those websites nowadays that have to come with a 5000 word essay about the author’s upbringing and opinions on the future of culinary arts.
Anyway, I’m a freelance translator/interpreter and my primary client is this Japanese company that needs to have news releases by Western companies translated as well as US, Canadian, and EU food laws on a daily basis. So while I do understand a bit more than the average consumer, I’m nowhere near as passionate or “close-to-the-source” as you.
All the corporations are now talking about alternatives. Alternative protein, alternative cocoa, alternative wheat (more like some chemical to bind weaker flour with stronger ones, not a complete replacement of the plant), etc, because of supply chain constraints (climate change and wars). Do/Did you see shifting trends caused by such issues at the local level?
For example, I live in Okinawa and some of our prefectual specialties like seaweed are grown in the ocean. With rising ocean temperatures, if the heat itself doesn’t mess with the growth of the seaweed, the increased number of typhoons will. I feel like soon, locals will have to deal with slim pickings or find innovative ways of growing their products under new conditions.
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Food is my love language, but I feel like my family takes it for granted lately. They just expect these gourmet meals each night and it’s not special to them.
I’ve been there. Recommend matching your effort level to whatever level of enthusiasm they’re at. Whatever you do, don’t put in so much effort that you start to resent them.
I don’t resent them, honestly I cook like I do because it’s also just what I want to eat and saves a ton of money. It’s just clear they are spoiled by it, but I suppose I grew up spoiled in exactly the same way.
If you’re doing it for your own self I don’t see a problem at all. Pearls before swine, so it goes
I do most of the cooking. That’s because I dislike boxed or processed foods and my other half seems unwilling to learn basics about seasoning and temperature.
Sometimes it just works out that one person is better at it or enjoys it, but there should be load sharing. The cook shouldn’t have to do the dishes for instance.
I cook and do the dishes, but I don’t have to scoop the cat litter, so that’s a pretty fair trade to me.
I cook, do the dishes and clean the litter, but I dont have to pay a single bill, so it feels a pretty fair trade to me too
my gf loves to cook so i do the dishes
And that’s how he jedi-mind tricked you into not wasting so much money eating out. $65 for two burgers is daylight robbery.
She’d be blown away at how we work the kitchen. We don’t care who does the cooking, our recipes rock. We just need one of us to figure out what to make.
Whoever has the bandwidth cooks, or we split it, or we talk about it - like adults.
Wife and I made a list of meals, as many as we could think of. I put that list in one of those online randomizer wheels. At the start of every month, I spin the wheel for each day and put it on our shared calendar. This serves two purposes: We always have an idea on what to make, and it makes it easier for us to know what to get for groceries every week. Don’t always end up following the schedule perfectly, but it does a good enough job at helping to decide what to eat most nights.
Yeah, thats us too. Though we do have our specialties. He’s curries and soups, I do BBQ and meats (though he does schnitzel!). He was vegan for years so thats why I skew towards meats lol.
This is how you set the stage for destroying his ability to trust ever again.
She wouldn’t have done the same with pasta if the sandwiches were bad, so I guess it’s not a complete lie
I have a tub air fryer that i sometimes put oil in. Olive oil cooked french fries are really damn good.
Peanut oil also makes amazing french fries :)
Yeah ive heard that too so I tried it but I think we prefer olive oil.
