Single and shopping

Thumper7

Funky_Bold_Ribena wrote: »

That would defeat the object; and you only get your noodles after 2 hours of hard work at the lottie. Tomorrow we are turning half a ton of compost, weeding, strimming, checking our canes for stability for the rest of the season and harvesting.

I'll see you 9am in my kitchen with sturdy boots and long trousers on. I'll even introduce you to my resident frog if you are lucky.

See, I would gladly do all that for a meal, as long as I didn't have to cook for myself. I will muster at yours at 9.00am (as long as its Scotland, I canny drive) and look forward to my noodles.

coolcait

Thumper7 wrote: »

...I've always found that half way through cooking that I don't want it.

...

I find that a lot! And I cook for a family.

I often wonder if you get 'full' on the cooking smells? Whatever the reason, I usually end up eating far smaller portions than everyone else - because 'I'm not hungry'.

And then I find myself being ravenous later on...

That said, I usually enjoy the 'frozen' meal when I've 'made one, froze one'. Maybe that's because it feels like a ready meal,
rather than something I've slaved over...

If I were single, I'd probably have a night or two where I batch cooked meals to go into the freezer. And 'reward' myself with a dinner that had already been cooked - either a takeaway, or something already in the freezer.

Not sure if that's an idea that would work for you. If I'm being honest, I rarely cooked when I was single. and I would have had no idea how to cook a 'batch'! :rotfl:

Gillyx

Slow cooker may be worth an investment? Loads of SC cook books, a group on FB. Just bung all the ingredients in and it's ready at the end of the day, no standing over a stove and you can make as many portions as you can fit in and then freeze I love mine!

eamon

A microwave to me is just another kitchen tool. Mine is a basic model and its used for defrosting home made frozen meals & the reheating. They are also good for vegetables except carrots. Thats about the maximum ability of a microwave imho. I tend to agree with earlier posters that unless you have average or above kitchen skills then feeding yourself in an economic & healthy fashion can easily get very expensive.

securityguy

Funky_Bold_Ribena wrote: »

There is no point cooking fresh and then microwaving it!

Could you point to the slightest scientific basis for your claim that microwaves "destroy nutrients"?

Funky_Bold_Ribena

securityguy wrote: »

Could you point to the slightest scientific basis for your claim that microwaves "destroy nutrients"?

http://www.greenmedinfo.com/article/microwave-heaing-reduces-anticancer-properties-garlic

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jsfa.1585/abstract

Here's two - you'll have to excuse me, I'm COOKING a roast dinner which meant harvesting some potatoes, swede, turnips, beetroot, kohl rabi, preparing them and putting them into a pan with oil, butter I made myself on Friday, some rosemary and garlic which I grew two summers ago and preserved in vinegar. And yes, the oven had to heat up and yes, it took time to prepare.

securityguy

Given I'm in the middle of jam making with fruit from the garden, you'll excuse me for not being hugely impressed by your boasting about your domestic goddess status.

Neither of those papers remotely say what you think they do. Neither provides the slightest evidence that microwaves have any effect beyond that expected by heating, nor do they claim to (or set out to show it).

The first paper simply shows that cooking in a microwave or an oven affects the chemical properties of garlic. Well, duh. Using an oven takes longer to have the effect, but using an oven takes longer to cook it, too. "Our studies showed that as little as 60 s of microwave heating or 45 min of oven heating can block garlic's ability to inhibit in vivo binding of mammary carcinogen".

The second paper finds that microwaves, boiling and pressure cooking have effects on one particular component of broccoli, while steaming doesn't to the same extent. Again, it says nothing about microwaving more generally, just that contact with boiling water is bad.

It uses a bizarre method for cooking in a microwave (you've read the paper, right?) in which a small amount of brocolli was microwaved, apparently uncovered, with 150ml of water, in a 1KW microwave, and compares this with steaming it at atmospheric pressure for 3m30s. The paper makes no claims about the microwaves themselves, merely that the proxy outcomes it's looking at are lost "probably owing to the high level of evaporation of water in which the leached compounds were dissolved." Again, duh: just cooked broccoli turns out to contain more water-soluble nutrients that massively overcooked broccoli.

So yeah. If you cook three florets of broccoli in 150ml of water, without covering it, for five minutes in a one kilowatt microwave, quite a lot of nutrients will be evaporated off. Got anything better?

Funky_Bold_Ribena

securityguy wrote: »

Given I'm in the middle of jam making with fruit from the garden, you'll excuse me for not being hugely impressed by your boasting about your domestic goddess status.

Neither of those papers remotely say what you think they do. Neither provides the slightest evidence that microwaves have any effect beyond that expected by heating.

The first paper simply shows that cooking in a microwave or an oven affects the chemical properties of garlic. Well, duh. Using an oven takes longer to have the effect, but using an oven takes longer to cook it, too. "Our studies showed that as little as 60 s of microwave heating or 45 min of oven heating can block garlic's ability to inhibit in vivo binding of mammary carcinogen".

The second paper finds that microwaves, boiling and pressure cooking have effects on one particular component of broccoli, while steaming doesn't to the same extent. Again, it says nothing about microwaving more generally, just that contact with boiling water is bad.

It uses a bizarre method for cooking in a microwave (you've read the paper, right?) in which a small amount of brocolli was microwaved, apparently uncovered with 150ml of water, which would mean that the food is in contact with boiling water throughout, in a 1KW microwave, and compares this with steaming it at atmospheric pressure for 3m30s. The paper makes no claims about the microwaves themselves, merely that the proxy outcomes it's looking at are lost "probably owing to the high level of evaporation of water in which the leached compounds were dissolved." Again, duh: just cooked broccoli turns out to contain more water-soluble nutrients that massively overcooked broccoli.

So yeah. If you cook three florets of broccoli in 150ml of water, without covering it, for five minutes in a one kilowatt microwave, quite a lot of nutrients will be evaporated off. Got anything better?

I'm sure I'll be able to find more when I have finished cooking; not actually AT the library on a Sunday afternoon believe it or not.

eschaton

Funky_Bold_Ribena wrote: »

We all have the same time; 24 hours at last count. Every day!

Very true, I'm sure you lead a hard life doing !!!! all apart from cooking and growing your turnips

Funky_Bold_Ribena

eschaton wrote: »

Very true, I'm sure you lead a hard life doing !!!! all apart from cooking and growing your turnips

Well, full time job, new business starting up, volunteered over 400 hours since Sept. Yeah, pretty lazy really.