This is kinda off topic, but I am curious about the garbage-collection situation that underlies the rotting-food problem.
Where I live in the UK, here is how it works. The local council supplies each house with some large plastic bins with hinged lids. Where I am, there are three: one for compostable things, one for recyclable things, one for everything else. Those go outside the house. Inside the house, you collect garbage in smaller quantities (in plastic bags, for non-compostable non-recyclable stuff; in paper bags, for compostable stuff) and dump them into the outdoor bins when the indoor ones fill up or when collection time approaches. People come around to empty the outdoor bins once a week (alternating between the compostable+recyclable bins and the everything-else bins, so each one gets emptied every two weeks).
This means that rotting food doesn’t have to sit around indoors. You can dump it in the outside bins as soon as it becomes annoying.
It depends on having somewhere outside where you can put those bins. If you live in a house with a driveway, they can go there. If you live in an apartment block, typically the whole building has extra-big bins into which you can chuck your garbage. (Those are usually outside, or at least in an outbuilding.) If you live in a small house with no driveway, there’s usually somewhere outside where they can go.
Garbage in the outdoor bins doesn’t bother the neighbours or attract animals because the bins have lids that close pretty securely. I guess if we had bears (which have very sensitive noses and are easily strong enough to knock the bins over and get at what’s inside) it would be an issue, but nowhere in the UK has bears and I don’t think they’re common even in the US.
Presumably your situation differs from this in important ways. Can you say a few words about how?
By way of apology for the digression, a couple of remarks about the questions at the end of the OP:
I wouldn’t expect any single book to cover all those things. Get cooking advice from cookery books and medical advice from medical books.
Cooking techniques are easier to learn when you can see someone else doing them. Have you looked on e.g. YouTube? (E.g., if you search for “sauteing” lots of videos on the subject appear. I watched a few of them; none of them seemed perfect to me, but I think someone watching a bunch of these and trying the process out for themselves would likely do pretty well.
Google tells me that there are no raccoons in the UK, so my guess is that’s the whole difference (the rest sounds pretty much exactly like how trash collection works in every US state I’ve lived in). Raccoons are everywhere in the US and can both remove garbage can lids and knock cans over to get to what’s inside.
This is kinda off topic, but I am curious about the garbage-collection situation that underlies the rotting-food problem.
Where I live in the UK, here is how it works. The local council supplies each house with some large plastic bins with hinged lids. Where I am, there are three: one for compostable things, one for recyclable things, one for everything else. Those go outside the house. Inside the house, you collect garbage in smaller quantities (in plastic bags, for non-compostable non-recyclable stuff; in paper bags, for compostable stuff) and dump them into the outdoor bins when the indoor ones fill up or when collection time approaches. People come around to empty the outdoor bins once a week (alternating between the compostable+recyclable bins and the everything-else bins, so each one gets emptied every two weeks).
This means that rotting food doesn’t have to sit around indoors. You can dump it in the outside bins as soon as it becomes annoying.
It depends on having somewhere outside where you can put those bins. If you live in a house with a driveway, they can go there. If you live in an apartment block, typically the whole building has extra-big bins into which you can chuck your garbage. (Those are usually outside, or at least in an outbuilding.) If you live in a small house with no driveway, there’s usually somewhere outside where they can go.
Garbage in the outdoor bins doesn’t bother the neighbours or attract animals because the bins have lids that close pretty securely. I guess if we had bears (which have very sensitive noses and are easily strong enough to knock the bins over and get at what’s inside) it would be an issue, but nowhere in the UK has bears and I don’t think they’re common even in the US.
Presumably your situation differs from this in important ways. Can you say a few words about how?
By way of apology for the digression, a couple of remarks about the questions at the end of the OP:
I wouldn’t expect any single book to cover all those things. Get cooking advice from cookery books and medical advice from medical books.
Cooking techniques are easier to learn when you can see someone else doing them. Have you looked on e.g. YouTube? (E.g., if you search for “sauteing” lots of videos on the subject appear. I watched a few of them; none of them seemed perfect to me, but I think someone watching a bunch of these and trying the process out for themselves would likely do pretty well.
Google tells me that there are no raccoons in the UK, so my guess is that’s the whole difference (the rest sounds pretty much exactly like how trash collection works in every US state I’ve lived in). Raccoons are everywhere in the US and can both remove garbage can lids and knock cans over to get to what’s inside.
Huh. I hadn’t realised raccoons were such a nuisance. Thanks.