What's in a title?

c-is-for-circinate:

luckyjak:

Man, I’m really starting to see why people, especially people who live by themselves, just don’t cook.

And I say this as someone who loves to cook.

But it’s expensive, and exhausting, and hardly not worth the effort half the time.

Half of the time, I go to make something and I don’t have all the ingredients.  I mean, why would I have cornmeal on hand? I live by myself, and I don’t make anything that needs cornmeal that often.  But that’s fine, I can go grocery shopping.  But when a recipe calls for half an onion, what am I supposed to do with the other half? Also, onions—like a lot of things—are cheaper to buy in a bag/bulk, but now I have a whole bag of onions!  And they go bad pretty fast, so…I have to start cooking with onions.

So, okay, day one, I make something with onions!  Yay, everyone is happy!  But day two I go to make something with onions, and, oops, I don’t have everything I need again!  So I have to run to the grocery store and spend another $20-$30 dollars buying ingredients.  

Then there are leftovers.

I’m sorry, but I’m used to living in a house of 5, not 1.  If I didn’t eat everything I cooked, someone else would.  But living by myself means the only one who is going to eat the food.  I made pancakes nearly a week ago and I’m still eating pancakes, because, oops, I’m the only one here to eat them.  (And after about three days of eating pancakes, let me tell you, you get kind of sick of eating pancakes)

Then, of course, things go bad.  Remember that bag of onions? OOPS, now they’re all bad, and I just threw $5 down the drain, essentially.  I hate being wasteful, too, but what other option is there?

Of course, then there’s the actual cooking time, and the fact that afterwards my kitchen is a mess that now I get to clean up.

Meanwhile, 5 minutes from my apartment there is every fast food imaginable.  For $8 I can eat a full meal, be full, and not have to do dishes.

Of course, it’s not all that healthy for you, but what other options are there?

Thoughts or suggestions?

Oh god yes, been here done this.  I definitely never got expert on it, but some tips I picked up:

• Staples that you always, always want to have on hand: flour, milk, butter, eggs are the obvious ones.  To that, add rice or pasta (or both—they’ll last forever, and the variety will make you hate food less), a bag of lentils, olive oil, garlic, tomato paste—and yeah, onions.  Which last basically forever if you can store them right.  (If your apartment gets very hot in the summer, the coolest, darkest closet you’ve got is still better than the fridge, where they’ll get too moist, and soft, way too quickly.  Half-an-onion goes in the fridge, where you have about a week to figure out what to do with half an onion.  You’ll find something.)  Bouillon is a little salty, but you won’t want to keep broth on hand, and it can be used as a seasoning if you do it in moderation.  (That better-than-bouillon stuff you keep in the fridge is actually a pretty decent compromise.)  Soy sauce, vinegar, one or two bottled sauces that you discover you really like.  These things will all take forever to go bad, if they ever do.  I also liked to have potatoes around, but those don’t keep as well, so I never got through a whole bag before they went bad.  Bread is good for sandwiches and toast, but you’re cooking dinner for one.  There will always be leftovers.  You will never eat sandwiches for lunch unless they’re made out of last night’s dinner.  Ever.

• You already have enough there to make half a dozen different meals, but that gets really boring.  What I always like to do was, I’d go shopping for fresh stuff once a week: meat and veggies.  Then I’d have some more exciting, tasty stuff to throw into my regular meals.  Lentil stew with zucchini and potatoes!  Lentil stew with Italian sausage!  Pasta with mushrooms and pork and pesto sauce—all of it really easy to make in 1-3 serving portions.

• Forget recipes.  Recipes are for when you’ve got guests over. Find a few things that you have down (like pasta sauce, or lentil stew, or stir fry oh my god stir fry is your best friend), and then realize that you can vary them a lot by throwing in whatever you like best this week.  Experiment!  Since stir fry is basically ‘cook some meat and also vegetables in a frying pan, throw sauce on it, and serve it over a starch’, you can try it with literally anything.  Alternately, make something like a big pot of pasta sauce, and use it in a lot of different contexts: on spaghetti, on chicken, on pork chops, on a tortilla with mozzarella cheese.

• I’d only ever buy one kind of meat at a time, and only already cut: pork chops instead of a pork loin, chicken breasts instead of a whole chicken, etc.  (If you are good at doing things like cutting up a chicken, go for it—it’ll be cheaper in the  long run).  As soon as you get them home, each breast or chop or chicken thigh (always cheap! great in stir fry!) gets separated.  I liked to use little plastic sandwich bags that I could write the date on, and then toss all the chicken into one gallon bag.  You never need to replace the gallon bag, and if you run out of sandwich bags, plastic wrap or even paper towels will do in a pinch.  Eat them whole or, more often, chop them into cubes or strips to toss into a different dish.  One chicken breast makes a huge meal for one person, which leads us to

• Leftovers!  Yeah, you’re going to eat a lot of them, and yeah, you get sick of them.  My suggestion would be to try and cut your big cooking down to 2-3 portions, instead of all the way down to one portion.  Then make a couple of things: stir fry one night, spaghetti the next, so you can vary up what you eat.  You’ll still be going all week on just a couple of things, but you’ll hate it less.  (Also: you likely already know this, but just in case anybody else doesn’t, cooked rice doesn’t keep for shit.  If you’re making something like stir fry, cook just enough rice for that night, then save the leftover veggies and meat and make new rice/pasta/thai noodles/whatever later.  If you have leftover rice, dribble a little water in the bowl, put a damp paper towel over the top, and then microwave it.  It won’t be near 100%, but it’ll be a hell of a lot better than otherwise.)

• Be willing to play around with stuff that comes semi-premade.  My favorite discovery in grad school was this store-bought tomato bruschetta thing that I could mix in tablespoon quantities with a basic white sauce (easiest damn thing in the universe to make, only takes a frying pan, and made me feel like I was doing Real Cooking) and turn into a single serving of a way tastier pasta sauce than I could make on my own, rather than having to open a whole jar or can.

• Have a couple of lazy meal options: if you’ve got bread, milk, and eggs, you’ve got french toast (and if you toss in a little cheddar cheese and some tomato, it’s totally dinner).  Make a big thing of chicken salad that will last all week.  Mix leftover rice with salsa and cream cheese and then toss it in the microwave.  Some nights you just will not want to put in the work.

• Some things can be made in bulk and then frozen in individual portions.  Lentil stew is one of the best cheap, tasty, infinitely modifiable veggie-based foods in the world, and if you wait for it to cool you can freeze it in ziplock bags.  A lot of people I know make pesto and then freeze it in ice cube trays—one block of pesto is good for one serving.  Hell, make a whole damn lasagna, just be sure to cut it up and portion it out before you freeze it.

Hopefully this will be helpful to you or somebody else around here.  Damn, I miss cooking for myself.

Remember: you don’t need to exactly follow a recipe.  If you don’t have all the ingredients, get creative.  If you’re feeling particularly contrary today, get creative.  Cooking for yourself means if you screw up, so long as it’s still edible, there’s nobody around to judge you.

apihtawikosisan:

shaunabrooke:

»>The RCMP are looking for any reason to arrested First Nations; who are trying to take a stand and put a stop to the testing that is going on as we speak!«<

“We’ve made our sacred fire. We’re going to stand our ground here.”

Seismic trucks won’t pass, says Elsipogtog war chief, calls for help from all Nations

BY MILES HOWE

ELSIPOGTOG, NEW BRUNSWICK – A sacred fire, which must burn continuously and be monitored for four days, has been lit by Mi’kmaq peoples from all corners of traditional Mi’kma’ki, who have gathered in the New Brunswick community of Elsipogtog. They, as well as non-Indigenous peoples from the local communities and beyond, have now begun to congregate in a field – with permission given by the owner – adjacent to the junction of highway 126 and highway 116 west.

The gathering, which now comprises about 40 people, is directly in the path of seismic testing trucks – or “thumpers” – that are conducting geological surveying on behalf of SWN Resources Canada. SWN is exploring for shale gas deposits. Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples worry that the seismic testing will lead to hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – of Kent County, much of which is under exploratory lease to SWN.

Elsipogotg war chief John Levi has noted that the gathering will remain peaceful, but that the seismic testing will not be allowed to continue past the sacred fire.

“We’re not going to let them pass. This is the reason why we’ve set up,” Levi told the Halifax Media Co-op. “We’ve made our sacred fire. We’re going to stand our ground here. This would be the spot here, so we’re asking for support from all non-Native and Native peoples.”

They WANT to stomp our asses, and have been pushing for a confrontation for over a year now. It started with Attawapiskat and has escalated since.

They will happily kill some of us to put us in our place.

This is real.

(via genebeanbelcher)

okay so traveling is awesome but i want to officially put a moraturium on being forced to do anything social immediately following a 12 hour bus ride

man the thing about having an allergy that only reacts occasionally is sometimes you’ll do something stupid like eat the thing you’re allergic to and not realize why you’re feeling like shit for like twenty minutes

amazonpoodle:

ROSA, WE HAVE YOUR BACK!

Hi everybody,

So I’ve been on-and-off Tumblr a lot recently, but for the last two weeks it’s been because of a family emergency. Rosa, my little sister (well, okay, she’s 23, but she’s little to me), had a serious fall while she was rock climbing with a friend in Moab. She fractured some ribs, got a concussion, and injured her spine really badly — she’s paralyzed from the waist down. I’ve been out in Colorado, first with Rosa at the hospital in Grand Junction to which she got coptered from Moab, and then to get her settled in for longer-term rehab in Denver.

My family and Rosa’s friends are running a fundraising campaign to pay for Rosa’s medical expenses (two months of inpatient spinal rehab alone is looking like it’ll cost us at least $40,000, and that’s even with insurance paying for 80% of the first month. Just the ambulance transport from Grand Junction to Denver cost $4,000); for my mom, my stepdad and me to take turns visiting Rosa at Craig Hospital in Denver this summer as all of us live 2,000 miles away on the East Coast; and to give Rosa some support post-rehab — accessible housing, continued occupational and physical therapy, the whole shebang.

Rosa is one of the most active, athletic, stubborn, badass people I know. She hikes, races, mountain bikes, skis, snowboards, rock climbs, and works as a guide for several different wilderness programs. Sometimes she does all of this at 10,000 feet above sea level. She’s got a ridiculous puppy named Hank that she’s training as a therapy dog. She’s in school for nursing. All of that stuff is what motivates Rosa and gives her joy, and all of it is still completely possible for her (she’s already got her eye on the Paralympics, not kidding), but she’ll need a lot of support to get there.

My family just started a fundraising website here. Any amount you could donate would be a huge help, and if you can’t donate money — believe you me, I understand being broke as a joke — I’d be so grateful if you’d give this post a reblog. Rosa and her girlfriend are reaching out to their network of people who also dig living at high altitudes; my stepdad’s got his academic peeps; my mom’s got her fellow social workers and therapists. I have you guys. <3

Thank you so much,

Z

gingerhaze:

Dedicated to Ross. Forever in my heart.

velvetblush asked: I saw your post about NG life and I feel like to share with you. NG Life is one of my favorite manga. The story cracked me up in the beginning and I think Keidai’s loyalty to Selena is kind of riddic xD. But throughout the story we can understand how tortured Keidai ‘s feeling between loving his best friend and and how he felt guilty for leaving Selena alone in the past *sobs*. I cried really hard in the end. All the characters are amazing and likeable :)

Oh man, me too! Like you start off all lol Romans, wow Keidai, ya goof and the next thing you know it’s all unexpected pathos and tears and blubbery exclamations of how he was so young when he remembered! small children shouldn’t carry memories of awful tragedy alone! But then you remember he has excellent friends and feel a bit better about everything. :’) I loved the ending too; I didn’t want to let go of the characters yet but it was really well done.

kyssthis16:

queennubian:

inmyhead16:

harbingeroffuckery:

escapedgoat:

Throwback: Remember these? they made your lips look super duper shiny, like you just finished eating a bucket of chicken. I remember the saccharine sweet scent and how silly I looked with my lips looking like a plastic couch cover.

oh wow, I had these

LMAO. Plastic couch cover. I’m dying!!

black beauty supply store swag

YASSSSSSSSSSS!!!!

(via amazonpoodle)

My feelings on this episode could most charitably be described as…mixed. There were, however, two beautiful moments I thought needed preserving.

satanic2chainz:

lickypickystickyme:

If grandmothers around the world had a rallying cry, it would probably sound something like “You need to eat!”

Photographer Gabriele Galimberti’s grandmother said something similar to him before one of his many globetrotting work trips. To ensure he had at least one good meal, she prepared for him a dish of ravioli before he departed on one of his adventures.  

“In that occasion I said to my grandma ‘You know, Grandma, there are many other grandmas around the world and most of them are really good cooks,” Galimberti wrote via email. “I’m going to meet them and ask them to cook for me so I can show you that you don’t have to be worried for me and the food that I will eat!’ This is the way my project was born!”

The project, “Delicatessen With Love”, took Galimberti to 58 countries where he photographed grandmothers with both the ingredients and finished signature dishes.

He acted as photographer and stylist during each shoot with the grandmothers, taking a portrait of both the women and the food they made for him.

From top to bottom: 

Inara Runtule, 68, Kekava, Latvia. Silke €(herring with potatoes and cottage cheese).

Grace Estibero, 82, Mumbai, India. Chicken vindaloo.

Susann Soresen, 81, Homer, Alaska. Moose steak.

Serette Charles, 63, Saint-Jean du Sud, Haiti. Lambi in creole sauce.

The photographer’s grandmother Marisa Batini, 80, Castiglion Fiorentino, Italy. Swiss chard and ricotta Ravioli with meat sauce.

Normita Sambu Arap, 65, Oltepessi (Masaai Mara), Kenya. Mboga and orgali (white corn polenta with vegetables and goat).

Julia Enaigua, 71, La Paz, Bolivia. Queso Humacha (vegetables and fresh cheese soup).

Fifi Makhmer, 62, Cairo, Egypt. Kuoshry (pasta, rice and legumes pie).

Isolina Perez De Vargas, 83, Mendoza, Argentina. Asado criollo (mixed meats barbecue).

Bisrat Melake, 60, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Enjera with curry and vegetables.

that third plate doe

y’all dunno how much I love lambi, with some diri djon djon 

(via gatheringbones)