Gauge
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Joined: 6/17/2005 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: UllrsIshtar quote:
ORIGINAL: Gauge Does it take time to learn? Sure it does. Can you get a basic idea of what you like to eat and ideas on how to prepare a healthy version within a weeks time? Of course you can. This depends on your willpower and determination. - I submit that we may be saying the same thing differently. And I submit that that is absolute nonsense, and is only applicable to people who already know how to do it. Switching from frozen pizza, chicken pot pies, and tv-dinners, to making your own pizza dough, your own chicken pot pie, your own mashed potatoes, grilling your own steak, chicken, and fish, steaming your own vegetables, making your own granola, and learning how to do seasoning means going from spending 1 hour a week on food prep to 10 hours a week on food prep -if not more than that when you factor in researching and reading recipes. Doing that in the span of a week, especially when you factor in grocery shopping, is unrealistic. You're talking about learning either 21 recipes (if it isn't far more than that) in the span of a week, or switching to eating the same meal 5 times a week, weeks in a row. Even an experienced home cook wouldn't try to learn 21 new recipes in a week, let alone somebody who doesn't even have the basics down. You comparing it with kicking drinking is as bad a comparison as quitting smoking is, because you're comparing quitting something by cutting it out completely to learning to substitute a limited skill set and vast repertoire of items with a vast range of skill sets and another vast repertoire items. Learning a handful or recipes a week is a realistic goal. As is relying on those recipes disproportionately heavy for a while. Switching from 5 minute meals to 30-90 minute meals overnight, while keeping a varied and non-boring diet that's within budget and satisfying physically and emotionally in the span of a week is not. It is not nonsense. While you are correct that no one is going to become a Michelin Star chef within a weeks time, you can learn basics in a week if you put your mind to it. Perfecting it is a different story but the basics? Take chicken thighs, put in oven pan, season with some herbs and salt and pepper, cook in oven for 1 hour at 375 degrees. Pretty complicated. Make salad, take different greens and put them together in bowl, dress and serve. Or hey... they have bag salads. Frozen veggies are a cinch... Put pan on medium heat, add small amount of water and frozen veggies, cover and cook for 15 minutes or until hot. Mashed potatoes... bring water to boil in a medium saucepan, cut potato in half and cut the halves in half, add salt to water, put in potatoes, cook until fork tender. Add a little butter and a little milk to the potatoes and mash with a fork or a potato masher. Don't put fear into a novice cooks heart because cooking can appear to be quite complicated but it is not it. The food you make can either be simple or complicated but even the complicated stuff is pretty simple once you are good at the basics. My advice, get a Betty Crocker Cookbook. BEST COOKBOOK EVER. It will teach you easy recipes and techniques and take the mystery out of tasty food. As far as my comparison of cutting out junk food to my drinking being a bad comparison, I do believe you brought up the smoking one. My point of the analogy was simply to show that keeping the junk around when you have decided to stop eating it is useless. Obviously I will not convince you that you can pick up basic cooking within a week and that is fine. I don't need to or want to convince you. Basic stuff with tutorials are readily available on Youtube, on Food Network's website and other places like Recipe.com. To fill the gaps until you learn more recipes and techniques, there are a great deal of ready made healthy choices available without having to rely on junk to fill those gaps. The most important thing to remember is read the labels! I am not here to argue, I am here to help. Cooking is not difficult to learn to do.
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"For there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men." Herman Melville - Moby Dick I'm wearing my chicken suit and humming La Marseillaise.
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