#finance stuff

Random thoughts on kitchen gadgets!

Unless you’re a chef, you don’t need a knife set; you need ONE EXTREMELY GOOD CHEF’S KNIFE. 70% of the knives in any given knife block don’t get used, and 20% only get used because the one knife you do use isn’t clean. Don’t put it in the dishwasher. Don’t let it jostle around in the random crap drawer and get the edge jostled. Hone it on a regular basis. You need to get your knife sharpened when it gets dull (every year or so), and this costs like maybe $7-12. This is the holy grail of knives, but this will do.

It is worth it to pay money for a good knife. Good knives make cooking easier by about eleventy billion percent. Good knives also mean you use less pressure while cooking, which means you’re less likely to cut yourself and have to go to the ER for stitches–an outcome that would probably swamp any savings you might have on the actual knife itself.

It is also worth it to watch some basic YouTube videos on knife skills for that same reason. (As a general rule, buy kitchen equipment at your skill level, not above it.)

By contrast, there is a lot of kitchen equipment that quite a few people actually really don’t need–food processors and stand mixers come to mind. Yes, many people use some of these things some of the time, and some people use some of these things all the time. But if you would only ever use your fancy KitchenAid stand mixer to make whipped cream twice a year, I have a horrifying suggestion for you: get a wire whisk and whip your cream by hand. It really doesn’t take as long as you think it will.

Likewise, food processors–I guess some people use these all the time? But many people get food processors because they should have them, and rarely use them, if ever, because it turns out that while they may chop things faster they’re a lot harder to clean than a knife, and if you have a good knife and decent knife skills, unless you’re cooking for a bloody army, you don’t need it and aren’t going to use it. At the fast and small end, you can use them for home-making pesto, which is definitely useful, but if you have a good blender you can do it there, too.

Here’s my set of kitchen gadgets that I use on a semi-regular basis: blender, rice cooker, waffle iron, immersion circulator. Some people will ditch the immersion circulator in favor of a slow cooker; most rice cookers double as slow cookers. I also have a travel rice cooker that I bring on business trips.

I started with really super-basic versions of all of these things, and then, as those super-basic versions gave up the ghost, replaced them one-by-one, first with really decent medium-quality versions of themselves, and then, as those lasted longer, with the holy grail versions. 

Random thoughts about food

Food spending is something I have only recently started to get a handle on, in large part because food is such a deep and emotional subject. I’m still not all the way there, but I’ve learned a lot in the last couple of years, and maybe the things I have learned will be helpful to others.

I’m going to beg your pardon for going into emotional things that may not seem relevant here, but I for me–and possibly for others, which is why I’m detailing it here–spending the right amount of money on food has been very closely related to my emotional relationship with food.

Food is very important. Money is a consideration in purchasing food, but it is not the only consideration. Food is the source of health. You need to be eating a properly balanced diet. If you aren’t, you’ll get tired more easily. You’ll feel sick. You’ll be more prone to developing certain diseases. These things are costly, and you need to take them into consideration.

Food is also (very often) a social activity. It is a time for families and friends to get together and talk about their day. It is (for me) an expression of love–something I can do for the people I care about that shows my caring, because I absolutely hate having to express myself verbally on these kinds of points. One of the ways that I personally say “I care about you” is to spend seventeen hours perfecting a recipe just so I can make something that is utterly delicious. This is particularly true for some members of my family with food sensitivities/dietary restrictions–being able to make delicious things that they would never imagine they could eat just see the look on their face makes me really, really happy.

Food is an emotional activity. Tastes can tap into memories. They can bring up nostalgia. They can bring up bad memories. Eating can be comfort; it can also be a way to hurt yourself.

What you put into yourself is very, very important–it should taste good, nourish you, and feed your soul. I just really, really believe in food, okay?

But. Our society sends us so many bullshit messages about food and our relationship with it. People get told that they can’t eat fats, or carbs, or this kind of meat, or soy protein, and if you eat too much you’re doing it wrong and if you eat too little you’re doing it wrong, and if you spend too much on food you’re an avocado-toast devouring wastrel who will never own a home, and if you spend too little on food you deserve the health disaster that is inevitably coming your way.

Over the course of my life, society and an array of health/diet-oriented books told me that my body was my enemy and the only way to transcend it was to ignore what it was telling me–to ignore hunger, to ignore cravings, to ignore the emotional response food brings in me, to treat these things as pariah, and to see myself as a weak, bad person because I hunger, crave, and respond emotionally.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve started working specifically with a food therapist, and I’ve started to unravel some of this. It has been a deeply emotional process.

And so let me say, with all the love I have in me, FUCK THIS SHIT. My body is not the enemy. Food is not the enemy. And yes, this is relevant to spending–learning to love myself and my relationship with food instead of hate it has helped me save money.

You’ll see why in a little bit.

A couple of years ago, I sat down to figure out how to spend less on food. At the time, I was spending an absolutely ridiculous amount on food–something like $125/week per person. (I’m going to use this as the measure of food–$$/week/person–because it’s most generalizable across the board. I think the national average is something like $50/week/person.) While this wasn’t breaking my budget, I have depressive episodes that really dampen my productivity and earning capacity, and I knew I was due for one, and *cough* I figured it would behoove me to tighten the budget where I could as much as possible.

That meant I had to figure out my pain points in food. At first blush, my thought was–I shouldn’t spend much less money than this, this is the kind of food I should be eating. I was buying lots of vegetables–organic, for the ones where it makes a big different. I bought organic meat, because it’s not laden with antibiotics. Et cetera.

Then I noticed a second thing: I was throwing out a lot of food.

Sure, I was making use of some of it. But I didn’t want to spend time cooking every day, and so I didn’t. Worse, I was purchasing the food I thought I should eat, and not the food I wanted to eat–meaning that my motivation to actually sit down and prepare the food I thought I should eat was weak, and so instead of making the planned uninspiring meal for the day, I would tell myself, “oh, I’ll make that for tomorrow” and then I’d get pizza.

In other words, I was lying to myself about what I actually wanted to eat, because I felt I should eat a certain way. Because I was lying to myself, I was spending money buying food that I was only ever going to hypothetically eat. Spending money for something that is going to get tossed is not a good financial decision. Because I couldn’t admit that I was lying to myself and didn’t want to eat the food I was purchasing, I was eating out more, which is both expensive and rather less healthy than just being fucking honest in the first place.

One additional thing that is specific to me, but that other people share, is this–even if I picked food I liked, and wanted to make, and usually would make, if I was having a really bad week depression-wise, I would not be arsed to take the 45 minutes to prepare it because depression sucks. This meant I was buying food while depressed that there was no chance in hell I would make.

In other words, the fundamental reason I was spending so much money on food is that I was buying food for a different person than I was. To fix the problem, I had to figure out who I was, and how to buy food for me and not this hypothetical always-health-conscious, never-makes-a-mistake, always-cooks-every-meal person I was pretending to be.

It’s taken me about eighteen months to get to the point where I have a food strategy that works for me. Here’s what I’ve come to as my guiding principles.

1. I deserve to eat food I want to eat.2. I deserve to eat well-balanced meals with a variety of foods.3. While I occasionally like going all out on cooking, I mostly want to spend about ten minutes on dinner prep because nobody has time for that shit on a regular basis.

My strategy has basically three components for me, but it will vary for everyone because what you like to eat is…up to you.

Component One: Protein.

I like eating meat. I particularly like fatty meats–chicken thighs over breasts, what have you. But I don’t need to, or even want to, eat a lot of it.

Solution: What I do is prepare meats in large quantity, and then portion them out into three to four ounce per person servings, and then freeze these. Thus, for instance, I’ll braise an entire lamb leg very slowly, and then weigh it into meal-sized bags. Or I’ll make a giant pot of butter chicken. Or turn a butt-roast into carnitas. Or cut up chicken thighs into pieces, and put three ounces per person into bags and freeze them. Or I’ll simmer several pounds of pork belly into chashu pork (https://www.justonecookbook.com/homemade-chashu/) and then set it aside in two ounce servings for person–two ounces because it is SO fatty that the satiety from a few ounces goes a very long way.

The night before, I take whatever it is I’m going to be making and move it from the freezer to the fridge.

Then for dinner, I microwave it. Or, in the case of the chicken thighs, turn on the oven broiler, skewer the chicken pieces, and make yakitori (recipe here: https://www.justonecookbook.com/yakitori/). Or, toss it into ramen broth. Or sometimes I’ll just scramble a bunch of eggs because eggs are delicious.

Things that go in the freezer are things that take 2-10 minutes of prep, max.

Three ounces is enough to satisfy me; two minutes is enough time that I don’t have to think about it.

At this point, I have a Costco membership, which means I can buy organic meat in bulk. That helps lower the price on things substantially.

Component Two: Fruits and vegetables.

I also like eating fruits and vegetables. That being said, I like variety, and unless you’re feeding an army, it takes freaking forever to get through the general amount of vegetables you can purchase from the store.

Solution: What I do is pick 3-4 vegetable side dishes every week. The rules are that the side dishes must vary in color and preparation method, and that I have to want to eat them.

So, for instance, this week my side dishes are: Quick salt-pickled cucumbers (these are pickled, and they’re green). Seasoned soy bean sprouts (these are blanched/boiled, and they’re white and yellow). Stir-fried eggplant (Using this recipe, http://www.koreanbapsang.com/2011/09/gaji-bokkeum-stir-fried-eggplants.html; these are purple). And a tomato salad seasoned with olive oil and red yuzu kosho (these are red and raw).

I also get fruits of different colors, too. The rules are the same–I have to get things I like. This week I have navel oranges and these utterly delicious peony grapes that make me want to break down and weep every time I eat them. It’s usually ¼ of an orange per person + about ½ handful of grapes at the end of each meal.

Component Three: Rice.

Look, I’m Asian, and yes, it’s stereotypical, but steamed rice is delicious and people have been eating it forever around the world, and plus, if you have a programmable rice cooker you can set it up way ahead of time and boom, rice is ready right at dinner time.

Here’s how a typical week works.

I do most of the work on Saturday.

On Saturday, I assess the state of my freezer. Do I need to add anything to my store of meals? If so, I’ll put that first on my list for the week. Sometimes I won’t need to add anything. I’ll round everything else out on the basis of what I have in there. My projected meals will look something like this: lamb / eggs / carnitas / pork belly ramen / yakitori / butter chicken / mapo tofu

I’ll also figure out my vegetable side dishes, and list all the ingredients needed to make them.

I go shopping. I come home. If I need to make something to add to the freezer, I make it. While I’m doing that, I also make my three to four vegetable side dishes and set them in the freezer. (I also make miso soup and some extra dashi; here’s why I make dashi.)

The assessment, planning, shopping, cooking, and parceling out the food I’ve just made takes me around 3-4 hours.

Thereafter, the production of dinner on every day other than Saturday looks like this:

Put whatever protein I have in the microwave/under the broiler/etc.Put rice in a bowl.Add small bits of vegetable side dishes to the bowl on top of the rice, taking up approximately 2/3rds of surface area.Put now finished protein on top of rice. Put on table.Microwave miso soup. Add seaweed to it. Plonk on table.Wash/cut fruit; put on plate.Take things for tomorrow’s dinner out of freezer and put it in fridge.

Dinner now takes approximately 3 minutes of morning prep to set up the rice, and 2-10 minutes to assemble. It consists of some kind of protein, rice, tons of vegetables, miso soup, and fruit.

There is a crapload of variety. It’s delicious. It’s nutritious. I don’t have so much of any one vegetable on my plate at any one time that I get tired of it, and I rotate weekly.

I have other things I do for variety’s sake–for instance, I made a huge quantity of this (https://www.justonecookbook.com/vegetarian-ramen/) up until just before the point where you add the soy milk, and then froze this in tiny packets as ramen base. Now if I want incredibly fucking delicious ramen, all I need to do is take my bag of ramen base out of the fridge, add soy milk and dashi, boil frozen ramen, add pork belly and a bunch of vegetables, and boom. FUCKING DELICIOUS RAMEN.

I’ll also sometimes make katsudon, because katsudon. And so forth.

In terms of cost, because I’m using the vegetables I buy for all the meals, I’m not buying a cabbage and throwing about ¾ of it because damn it is hard to eat an entire cabbage. (I grew up in a family of nine, and it was not hard for us to eat an entire cabbage then, but I am not currently in a family of nine.) Because I’m buying organic meat in bulk, I’m paying as little as possible for it, and because I’m freezing it until just before I use it, I’m not wasting it.

At this point, I probably only have to make a replacement for something in the fridge approximately once every 2 weeks. I’m eating better than I’ve ever eaten before. I’m eating out much less. On those weeks when I’m struggling with depression/have heavier workloads than most, I don’t even bother to try and replenish the freezer stuff, and I go to the Korean grocery store (I’m lucky enough to have one near me) and instead of making my side dishes, I just grab a handful of their pre-made ones, because my strategy is flexible enough to allow me to be the person I am on a regular basis.

The first few weeks when I started doing this, my costs–because I was putting two sets of things in the freezer every week, and because I had no freezer meals to draw off of–were fairly high, probably like $75/week/person, which is still higher than the national average, but less than I was spending before.

At this point, my costs per week are about $35/week/person. This is more than some people spend, but below the national average, and that’s pretty cool, considering that I’m still eating organic meats, and many organic vegetables.

Your solution to this may not look like my solution to this–your pain points are different, and you are different. But for me, I couldn’t start to get a handle on either my food spending or my eating habits until I started buying food for the person I was, not the person society told me I should be.

I also want to point out–again–that there are several items of privilege in this post that should not be assumed to be universal. First, in order to build up a solid store of freezer-stuffs, to the point where you can sustain a $35/week/person grocery bill, you need to be able to overspend the national average for a couple of months. Second, you have to be able to get yourself to a grocery store that sells organic stuff, and if you live in a food desert, it’s hard enough just finding a store that sells fresh vegetables, period. Third, I have a CostCo membership–I live less than a mile from a CostCo, and this isn’t open to everyone. Fourth, I live very close to multiple Asian grocery stores, and I really couldn’t eat delicious food regularly if I had to scramble to find broad bean paste or miso or the ingredients for dashi, or if I had to buy them from grocery stores that largely cater to white people and overcharge on these items by massive amounts if they even carry them. Fifth, I have a reasonably large freezer that is extremely reliable. Sixth, me and my family members are reasonably open to eating a wide variety of foods and have few food allergies or sensitivities. Seventh, I have one day a week that I can reasonably devote a large chunk of to food preparation.