I have to feed myself via groceries and cooking for the first time in my life...

Unfortunately it's all just photos of sandwiches made by Ned.

Do not settle for Easy Mac or any of that microwave bullshit.

http://www.unclebens.com/images/product/RRRP_sm.gif

http://www.baerdesign.com/10_05/images/c_organic.jpg

1. Learn to make rice, it's easy. Plus, if you pair it with beans, it is a complete protein.

3. Learn to make pasta, it's even easier. You can use sauce out of a jar but here is a recipe for really great sauce:

--cut up a couple of cloves of garlic
--heat up some olive oil in a pan for a minute and then put the garlic in (this is called sauteeing)
--after this gets slightly brown put in one can of tomatoes (blended or chopped up) and one can of tomato paste
--add salt, pepper, parsley, oregano, and basil
--be happy forever

Snag Bittman's How to Cook Everything as well.

cheap but versatile food shopping tips

hahaha, just kidding.

Get basmati rice -- it's great even with nothing on it. Baked potatoes are good. Peanut butter and jelly is good. Oatmeal is good. If you bake a chicken, don't throw that carcass out, make stock.

there's a quick and easy pasta dish in Bittman that's basically onion, bacon, and tomatoes over pasta. easy peasy and totally fucking delicious.

Ten-pack of Chimichangas - $5.

http://shopuncleharrys.dukestores.duke.edu/images/rice%20004.jpg

Kraft rice - $2.

Add in some hot sauce or sourcream, and you have dinner for five days. Just $1.40 each night.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html?ex=1327640400&en=a18a7f35515014c7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Pork brains? if there is anyone that actually eats canned pork brains, I want to hear from you right now.

De porkbrainsibus non disputandum est.

Try and make sure you eat a varied diet - that way you're more likely to get all that's involved in 'eating well', without needing a load of nutritionalist faff. The most commonly-seen piece of nutritional advice in the UK is "eat at least five portions of fruit and veg a day" (where juice only counts as one portion no matter how much you drink), and it's a good starting point, especially if you make sure you're getting a mix of colours and textures (e.g. one portion of red/orange vegetable, one portion of dark green vegetable, one portion of pulses, one piece fruit, one glass juice). Vegetables are cheaper than meat (especially good meat), and you don't need to eat meat at every meal anyway. Apparently you're supposed to eat fish at least twice a week (and one of those should be oily fish - tuna, mackerel, salmon, etc), but it is expensive.

To be honest most of my own cooking is based around 'chop things up, put in pan, stir', but it's quite a versatile model depending on what spices you put in, what mix of foods you choose, what size you chop things. There is also the advanced science of 'put green leafy-style veg in pot with a little water, put lid on and turn heat down once it gets to boiling, magically divine from colour when it is cooked'.

If you're cooking meat/poultry/fish with vegetables (in a sauce, in a soup, in a chili), it's often best to brown the meat/poultry/fish first - heat a little oil in a pan, sweat off an chopped onion in there ('sweating' is cooking in a pan with a little oil at a low heat and stirring until it turns translucent, as opposed to 'sautéing' which is cooking in a pan with a little oil at a higher heat and shaking so that it lightly browns. i was unaware of this distinction until today), turn the heat up a bit and add the pieces of meat/p/f, and stir them about until they look not-raw on every side. Only then should they join the vegetables/sauce/etc.

Haikunym's pasta sauce is essential and also highly customisable: you can add such things as thinly-chopped bell peppers, or mushrooms, or loads of thin-sliced red onion, or carrots, or all of these, before you put the chopped tomatoes in. (or you can start it off by frying up little bits of bacon as a base) You also do not have to eat it with pasta: it goes with most things. Make it with a load of bell peppers, zucchini and eggplant and it becomes a ratatouille and is a good complement to lamb or tuna, and very satisfying to eat with rice. Watch out when keeping it in the fridge, though - in my experience anything with cooked tomatoes in it will stain plastic tubs an orangey colour, so you might want to designate one plastic storage tub for tomato-based foods, or use a pyrex/ceramic bowl instead.

I believe in always heating the pan before you put oil in, and always heating the oil before you cook anything in it, but I don't know whether or not this is actually 'right'. I don't have a consistent party line on whether you should heat water before putting the vegetables/pulses/grains in when boiling, steaming or braising.

things i have noticed about cooking for one:
1. you end up with a lot of half-packs of perishable stuff. (or maybe i just overbuy)
2. you end up with a lot of leftovers. (or maybe i just overestimate my appetite)
So stir-fries and frittatas are your friends (esp as eggs are very good for you! good source of protein and that). Also making huge pots of soup or stew and then taking three days to eat them, although this goes against the 'variety!' thing somewhat.

I have no real grocery shopping tips beyond 'buy a variety of stuff!' but, yeah, do that. It's very easy to get into a rut of buying the same foods and cooking them the same ways all the time. Eating seasonable produce is also good, if you can get it.

okay that was a bit tl;dr. basically: vegetables, pulses and grains are all relatively affordable and will enable you to eat well, so eat them. well.

i was budget-minded though, so ate home-made stuff most of the time. wasn't raised on many packaged things, so it never really occured to me - except that one boyfriend introduced me to ramen noodles, and i had a weak spot for kraft mac n cheese. i had two cookbooks until i was, like, 27 (now i have lots). one called "meat and potatoes" and the "fanny farmer cookbook" - i almost never used the former and i think i just made cookies from the latter (though i grew to use it all the time, and still do.)

this is my anecdotal contribution

Thats what I am wondering too!

OVEN FRIES - cut up potatoes, put in bowl and stir with olive oil, salt, pepper, rosemary (okay, i didn't have any rosemary but if i could tell my younger self something, it would be this) or curry powder. place on (crappy) cookie sheet, bake at, uh, 400F? for 10 minutes, flip, bake more until not burnt

Yup yup yup. Easy/simple/yay.

Also don't underestimate the appeal of simple things! Tuna melts, which are toast plus tuna (from the can, add mayo if you like) plus cheese on top, chucked in the oven until the cheese melts; toast with sliced apples and bacon and a drizzle of honey, also baked in oven until the apples wilt a little (brown up the bacon beforehand in a hot frying pan and drain it on a paper towel); French bread or Portuguese rolls split open and spread with goat cheese and sliced tomatoes and prosciutto or salami; sliced tomatoes, sliced fresh mozzarella, and leaves of fresh basil layered together and drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar; all of these things are extremely good and require very little actual cooking. Helpful for lunches or tired nights.

also: i have made pilaf in my rice cooker

1) Find a friend with a Costco card, & get them to take you there. Buy a huge bag of basmati rice, a huge bag of Krusteaz pancake mix, and a 48-oz. plastic container of minced garlic, all of which are hilariously cheap and keep basically forever, as well as anything else you like that's supercheap in bulk.

2) Find some local natural-foods grocery that's offering a free knife-skills class, and take it. You will save massive amounts of time and probably some injuries from knowing how to cut things correctly. Oh, and you don't need a set of knives: you need one chef's knife, as good as you can afford (you can start cheap if you like), and you need to keep it very sharp. Maybe a bread-knife too. That's really it.

3) Flip through recommended cookbooks at a bookstore to see which ones have the most things you think you'd like to cook and eat. Then buy cheap used copies through Amazon. The Joy of Cooking is pretty essential, since it explains the simplest preparations for everything, and its recipes are totally solid. I use Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian and Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone all the freaking time. Your mileage may vary.

4) Buy things that are fresh, local and seasonal as much as possible, and figure out how to cook them simply, i.e. right now you probably shouldn't be making any cobblers with fresh blueberries unless you happen to live in Chile. Farmer's markets are your friend.

5) Legume stews are easy to make big batches of, and keep for a long time--longer if you freeze them for later reheating.

6) If you are buying cookware, especially if you're a beginning cook, you want a good nonstick coating on basically anything that's going to go on top of your stove (saves washing time), and you want cookware that's as heavy as you can afford (you want the heat to disperse widely and slowly). Everything should have lids. In decreasing order of essentialness: a big frying pan; a big pot; a couple of 2-3-quart pots; a small frying pan; a couple of Pyrex baking dishes; a wok; everything else. Stirring spoons? Get cheap wooden ones with long handles, or very hard plastic ones; nonstick coatings and metal stirrers don't mix well. Don't forget potholders of some kind; I use silicon gloves.

7) Rice cookers are a wonderful convenience. So are blenders and food processors, but they have to be as high-end as you can afford, because nothing will make you as miserable as a bad cheap food processor. If you like soup, a hand-blender is a great little tool.

Hope this is helpful.

Never. If you can create something tasty, filling and nutritious in a quick fashion then you've already got the right idea.

Buy things that are fresh, local and seasonal as much as possible, and figure out how to cook them simply

Indeed. Experiment. Going CSA in my case was a perfect blessing on all these fronts.

he also kept weird tins of eel or some shit under his bed and sat around in his underwear all the time playing some online warfare game.

asians are crazy

1. Someone upthread was right, eggs are yr friend. A scramble with the diced up veg/meat/cheese/herbs of your choice is cheap and really filling -- good breakfast if you're going to miss lunch. Break two or three eggs into a bowl, whisk with a few teaspoons of milk, scramble in a hot nonstick frying pan until they're as "done" as you like 'em. Add your other ingredients when eggs are about halfway cooked, and mix them in.

2. Soup that saved me many times when I was broke: cut up and brown two strips of bacon in a sauce pot. When bacon is a little brown but not done yet, add diced onions and garlic to the hot bacon fat (have the veg diced ahead of time) and stir them in hot oil until onions get translucent. Then dump in a can or two of black beans (with the liquid from the can), and diced tomatoes and bell peppers. Add 1/2 to 1 cup of water or canned chicken broth so it's not too dry. Season with a few dashes of cumin and the cayenne pepper or hot sauce of your choice. Put the lid on and simmer (a very low boil with little bubbles popping up occasionally) for about 20 mins. Halfway through you can mash up some beans with a fork or potato masher for a soupier consistency. After 20-30 mins of simmering, eat! I like to keep some of the vegetables aside to sprinkle on top of the bowls of soup, and usually stir in a generous spoonful of sour cream. Serve with corn chips or crusty bread.

3. One package of bacon will provide meals for weeks if you freeze it, since lots of good recipes only take a few strips. I usually open the bacon at home and portion it out 2-3 strips to a ziploc bag, and freeze them. Then you have enough for one meal at a time. The same is true of half or a quarter pound of sliced ham or turkey from the meat counter of the grocery store.

You don't need a whole lot of dried herbs and spices when you're first cooking, but it's nice to have some basics: ground cinnamon, nutmeg, a blend of peppercorns in a little grinder, thyme, bay leaves, maybe some cumin or tarragon. Buy small jars.

Keep your oils in a cool dark place but not in the fridge. Keep an open box of baking soda by the stove to put out grease fires. Don't use the High setting on a burner for anything except to boil water. Let your pans heat up on medium for a few minutes and they will be plenty hot. Get wooden or silicone coated spatulas and spoons to use with your non-stick pans, otherwise you will scratch the finish to bits and they won't be non-stick anymore.

actually.. i had a gift certificate for macys and was gonna get a frydaddy, but i ordered an ice cream maker instead.

I said canned. Canned pork brains make me queasy. Especially presented by a soap company.

I substitute teached again today, and caught the gym teacher scarfing down a Top Ramen noodle bowl at 10:15 a.m., when he thought he had the faculty room all to himself!

Right. It's the saturated fats. Pork brains, here I come!

Someone gave me a rice cooker and I regifted it. I can't change the way I do things at this late date. If cooking rice in a pot on the stove makes me white, then it can go get in line with all the other billion things that make me white.

That sounds fucking gorgeous Laurel! I have found something for this week!

Y'know, Top Ramen can be made into a quasi healthy meal. When poor, I sometimes use the noodles, but not the packaged flavorings. With miso, and drop an egg into the boiling water, and some garlic.

Do not underestimate the power of sliced spring onion or chillis! The egg things sounds great though!

Great thread by the way! Any good recipes for stews? Any kind, vegetarian or otherwise!

DOG LATIN IS OFF THE INTERNET BECAUSE OF YOU

Anyway, yup, the Top Ramen can be made very glamorous with just about anything, like grated ginger, carrots, any produce that is lingering in the bottom of the fridge. The egg is great because it's fun to watch it cook in boiling water, as opposed to frying/scrambling. It's the closest I'll ever get to poaching an egg, I guess.

Dog Latin started this exact same thread about 6 months ago before Ned hijacked it to post pictures of sandwiches on his table and his organic vegetable box. ailsa has linked to it upthread.

And today he's posted on ILM saying he's had it because "I may not always be right about every single fact but at least I try and contribute worthwhile posts which is more than can be said than for people like them. They feel that because they've been here for a certain amount of time they can swan about with this holier than thou attitude, taking the piss out of peoples posts while contributing nothing to encourage music discussion."

That seems to apply to his earlier version of this thread as much as it does to ILM.

FWIW, the intent was less hijacking and more 'see, it's not that hard to do at home.'

xpost

Starting a successor thread with "and yes, an excuse to post more of my food photos" might not have been the best way to get that intent across.

-- Ned Raggett (ne...), January 30th, 2007 9:46 AM. (Ned) (later) (link)

Now you know why I stay away from those end-my-virginity threads.

Based Cooking

Founded to provide a simple online cookbook without ads and obese web design.

bookmarked. It looks good! Sometimes if you are short of time and ideas the last thing you want to do is wade through the google search recipe hellscape, done that too many times.

Cool how one of the ingredients in the Caesar salad recipe is ‘Caesar salad dressing’.

Some recent purchaes:
Drake's Fruit Pies Cherry
Chomps Original Beef Stick
Hostess Golden Cupcakes with Creamy Filling
Starbucks French Roast Ground Coffee
Mt. Olive Kosher Dill Spears

"Founded to provide a simple online cookbook without ads and obese web design." - ive been searching for this for years!

I tried to add what I can to the cheeseboard