i am lukewarm on eggs. I like them enough to eat a few of them, and you can stir certain vegetables into them and add cheese if you have some and salt and pepper and they can taste nice, maybe every few days but then I have to get creative to use the last few eggs in the carton before they go off. if i make a concerted effort, I can eat a carton of 10 eggs in 3 batches spread over 9 days, and they do last longer than that. maybe I could make every day divisible by 3 egg day. Today’s the 179th day of the year (well, now that it’s 2am, it is), so if I went out tomorrow (which will still be the 179th, but it’s tomorrow because i’ll have slept between now and then) to pick some eggs up, I could start tomorrow. If not, I could start on the 182nd.
there’s a store that’s only 1km walk and a bus ride away where I can buy many things very cheaply and the quality is better than anything else in the town. Cans of soup for €1 a piece instead of €4 (hmm, i wonder what their canned beans are priced like. If it were €1 it might be worth it, though when you can get an entire kilogram of dried beans for less, it feels like a waste to spend €1 on one meal). sometimes when I go there I buy sausages. These are more expensive, about €3, but cheaper than I can find elsewhere and the quantity will last me about a week, since I use them sparingly to make them last longer. I shop there when I can, but most days I don’t have the energy to spend a couple hours taking busses and walking with a heavy load (the savings in buying their products vastly outweigh the cost of the bus tickets), so I also shop at places that are nearer to me, where the selection is poorer and the prices are higher. at these stores, i’m careful what I buy and tend to buy things where the price difference is smaller
The cheapest source of vegetables isn’t these foreign stores. It’s the market across the street where the farmers from neighbouring villages come in the morning with carrots that look like they’ve just been pulled out of the ground. You have to get up early if you want to buy anything, and the prices change every day—and if you don’t know the seasons as well as everyone else seems to, they will stop going down and start going up just when you were thinking you’d buy at the next price drop. I don’t know the seasons well, but I could probably find something with googling—except I get a feeling that questions like “when is strawberry season here?” is considered common knowledge. Once, I was playing “guess the fruit” with a six year old, and he was giving me hints for the fruit he’d thought of. The first clue he thought of was not “it is yellow” or “monkeys eat it” but “it’s ripe in winter”. (Bananas, grown in the southern hemisphere, are ripe in our winter. it made sense once I thought about it, but I’d never thought about it.) but maybe I can find a website aimed at slow six year olds who don’t yet know which two weeks are strawberry season, and whether sour cherry season comes before or after black cherry season.
about number 4. i do need to find a way to do some self modification for that. it’s kind of ridiculous. the goal of frugality is living within my means and someday, trying to get to the point where i have 1 months expenses saved up in my bank account so that i have a small cushion if my money’s late or i don’t get paid or an emergency comes up. buying food, eating nothing, letting it go bad, and throwing it away isn’t frugal. Actually, it reminds me of something the Cullens would do (I’m a big fan of Luminosity and Radiance. Never read Twilight, but mom sent me to the DVD since she knows nothing about my tastes heard it was popular, so I downloaded subtitles for it in one of my target languages (Macedonian) so i could watch the gift and call it language practice.)
heartburn can be medicated. i’ve looked up some medications that i can get without a prescription at the local pharmacy. (All medications here have to be bought from a pharmacist, even aspirin, but some don’t need a prescription) I am painfully shy, and having to ask for something by name is a trial for me, but I have been meaning to get down and buy some antacids. it’s probably stress related heart burn anyway. I can afford to spend a few euros on antacids. I am poor, but I actually live more frugally than strictly necessary, because I want to improve my situation and frugality can help with that (though neglecting my health is not frugal in the long run or even in the short run, I know. I need to cut that out.)
6) i’ve done a lot of thinking recently because knowing why is the first step. After my parents divorced, when I was about ten, I was terrified we’d have to go back to living with my father if we failed to make it on our own financially and knew that we were poor, so I tried to do all that I could to prevent that from happening. I knew I was too young to get a job, too young to legally babysit, and I knew I wouldnt have earned much anyway. So, I stopped wanting things. I stopped whining about the toys I saw on tv, I stopped eating breakfast, knowing that my overworked mother would see the opened and partially empty box of cereal and not replace it until it was nearly empty because she would see that I had something to make myself when I got up before going to school. I stopped eating lunch, because the agreement was that I would ask for more money to buy school lunch when I needed it, and I knew she wouldnt remember how recently she’d given me the money. So I kept the money and spent it as infrequently as I could, knowing that the longer i stretched it, the longer my mother would have to go without giving me more. I probably did save her some amount of money this way, but i didnt really have all the facts, and the teacher’s reports that i’d stopped responding to my name and mostly stared off into space all the time led to doctors appointments which definitely costed more than school lunch. Dinner was eaten together when she came home from work. Sometimes I cooked, sometimes she did, and I ate dinner every night. I don’t remember much about that year, but I spent most of it dizzy and spaced out. after a while, my body got used to it and i didnt have much appetite anymore. It was logical in its own way, but i didnt have all the facts, and i was very young. and then as a young adult, i was again scared that if i couldnt make it on my own financially i’d have to go back to living with my mother, so i went back to skimping on food. it’s like an eating disorder, but i don’t obsess about calories and couldn’t care less what I weigh.
freezers are indeed useful. someday, i shall have one.
i already use a piece of paper on a tray to catch crumbs if i’m just eating bread or something. pasta i eat out of the pan (i am cooking for one, after all, why dirty a plate?) my cup is rinsed well the first time i’m going to use it that day. who knows how many flies visited it over night (no fly screens either, and it’s summer), but after that i dont wash it between uses. i’ve used disposable plates and forks in the past, and though i feel guilty about environmental concerns, if i can’t eat any other way, then i can’t. i’d really like to find some paper plates instead of plastic, because the only plastic ones i can find melt in the microwave, which renders them useless to me. when i cook in the oven, i use aluminium foil instead of a pan, if i can get away with it.
dishes: i do rinse them, and then i come back to them a week later and they are slimy. (solution: come back the very next day. i try, and i can succeed for days at a time sometimes, but then something comes up and i’m back to having a sink full of petri dishes.
vegetables you mentioned that I know what they are called here and remember seeing in a store, even if rarely, and think i like or have questions about whether i would like it or not:
spinach - <3 but hard to find out of season
kale—it’s called “kale cabbage” here, which has scared me off it, since i dont like cabbage. does it taste like cabbage? my real problem with cabbage is that it is huge and i cant eat an entire cabbage before it goes bad, and i dont like it pickled. i can tolerate the taste here and there, but ill never be enthusiastic about eating a lot of it at once.
peppers = capsicum. - will eat them, and wil sometimes like them, but am not crazy about them. they do go nice in pasta sometimes.
we don’t have celery here, but we do have celeriac. it is large and hard to use all of it in time, but i do like it. the problem is you only need a tiny bit to get the right flavour.
turnips—are called “white carrots” here and are good in soups, but it is impossible to cook soup for one person and i dont know any other ways of preparing them. can they be eaten raw?
squash—like, but they are usually large, and i dont know whether they can be eaten raw or how to turn them into the tasty mashed stuff (i dont have a masher), or if they can be prepared non-mashed.
leek—is a readily available, mostly green, gigantic, cylindrical onion. i like onions, but do not know if i could consume an entire leek. i imagine that slices of it would be good on just about anything though.
broccoli—is only sold in 500g batches, is hard to find, and somewhat expensive. i love it, but have trouble using up so much of it.
cauliflower -is cheap, white coloured broccoli that is sold by the head. impossible to use an entire head without it going bad if you are only one person.
Do most vegetables go well with each other? (in a stir fry, on top of pasta, etc.)
I like reading recipes online, but sometimes get frustrated when they list ingredients that are unavailable to me (happens more often than not.) but i’ll look around some more.
Websites explaining produce seasons totally exist. I don’t know where you live, but I’m sure you can find the info.
If you leave soapy water standing in your dishes, the soap should cut down on slime growing on them.
Spinach is available canned! Get it that way and season doesn’t matter.
Kale is not like cabbage. It’s a leafy green, sort of like turnip greens or mustard greens.
Celeriac is good roasted and then put in soup. Find smaller roots of it, and when you cut the ugly off, cut a little deeper; if you don’t put much in the soup besides celeriac you should be able to eat it in as little as two sittings.
Turnips don’t look anything like carrots; do you mean parsnips? Wikipedia says you can eat parsnips raw.
Yellow squash comes small. I usually have it with fish, and use half of one in a meal; if I’m having only squash for a meal I can definitely eat a whole one. I like to slice them up thin and then roast them (line pan with foil, coat with olive oil, pop in the oven at 425º for 15-20 minutes).
Leeks are not as much food as they look like. You can roast them (it’s wise to parboil first though), or put them in soup.
Broccoli is amazing roasted, in soup, or with pasta. Cauliflower is good in soups, curries, or casseroles. You really need to find out why your fridge won’t let you keep leftovers for a normal amount of time and fix that; I can easily eat a batch of cream of cauliflower soup that contains an entire head of cauliflower over a few days, but if you can’t keep soup around for a few days you may be in trouble. Cauliflower and broccoli are also edible raw, optionally with dip.
Many but perhaps not most vegetables go well with others. My brain isn’t generating a useful algorithm here but I can give you my best guess/experience regarding any combinations you think look likely.
There is a lot of information available about substitutions online. I am an improvisational cook and can probably help you out if you’re missing something for a recipe (I have good instincts about when you can leave it out, when you can replace it with something else, and when you can’t make the recipe at all without the ingredient).
Many but perhaps not most vegetables go well with others. My brain isn’t generating a useful algorithm here but I can give you my best guess/experience regarding any combinations you think look likely.
There exists a book about this. I wouldn’t be surprised if there existed a genre of books about it, even.
googling “when is ripe” in hungarian gave me a site with a chart (but not all the fruits and veggies i could think of) as the first link. im sure further links down the google results page would include the missing ones.
i will try making the water soapier. also, evaporation plays a problem if i leave it too long. but i want to get in the habit of cooking often enough that i wont have to worry about that. i remember i used to wash any stray dishes while waiting for water to boil. i have lots of tricks like that i seem to have to rediscover again and again. a couple years ago, i had an epiphany that soapy water made things clean, not soapy, and that helped for a while, until i forgot again. i mean, i never stopped using soap, and i used soap before that point, but there was a moment when i understood at an intrinsic level that the soap applied to a dish could be removed from that dish, and the dirt would be removed along with it, through the application of water, and that all dirty things could be made clean, that nothing was dirty beyond repair. whereas othertimes i remember that i don’t like the taste of soap and i sink into a vague suspicion that i’m just adding soap to the dirt and making soapy dirt and wonder what makes me so sure that adding soap to a spoon will make the food that later comes onto that spoon more edible. The manner in which I wash dishes doesn’t really change, but by mental approach to it changes from disgust at the wrongness on the dishes to delight at the opportunity to right a wrong.
Spinach canned. Hm, so it does. I’ll keep an eye out for it. My mental image of the aisle in the store that sells canned food mostly contains corn, peas, and beans, along with a few types of soup (mostly goulash soup, the one i like best), but googling in hungarian tells me there is indeed such a thing as canned spinach. i’ve seen it frozen, too, in small enough quantities that it could conceivably be eaten in one sitting. and i think frozen spinach would keep for at least a day in the fridge as well.
oh, the english wikipedia page for turnip shows something completely different. the dictionary I was using was wrong. I’m not really familiar with turnips, I guess. What I call white carrot is, according to wikipedia, actually parsley root, which looks somewhat like parsnips, but doesn’t taste like them. it’s not really carroty in flavour either, just shape. you put it in soups and stews, and chicken noodle soup should have at least one of them and at least one carrot as well.
the roasted squash sounds easy and good. i think i have a vague memory involving squash, zucchini, tomato and pasta with a creamy sauce. which sounds easy to make.
i’ll give leek another chance. :)
cream of broccoli soup is wonderful. i tried to make it once, but it wasnt very creamy when i made it, and i used too much broccoli (and therefore too much water and too much of everything else), but it was good.
I remember finding a recipe once online that if I took out everything that I was confused by/didn’t think I could get here/didn’t like, I was left lentils and water. i didnt like lentils and water all by themselves, and realised that anything i could add to it would be something of my own creation, not resembling the original recipe at all. it’s not usually that bad. usually it’s something like “capers” (which seem to be something pickled, but i only like pickled cucumbers) or “cheese-whiz” or takes an english cookbook off the shelf and flips through randomly “parmigiano-reggiano (a small handful)”, “radicchio”, “swiss chard.” The book was a present from my mother, but almost every recipe contains something we don’t have here, or something i don’t like, or something expensive. I’ve mostly given up on the cookbook as useless. :)
Capers are pickled flowerbuds, and can probably be safely left out of virtually anything. Parmigiano-reggiano is a cheese; you can sub parmesan or another hard grated/shredded cheese if you can’t find it. Radicchio and swiss chard are both leaf vegetables and could probably be reasonably substituted for others in that reference class. Cheez whiz is an abomination.
Also, now I want to try parsley root, but Wikipedia indicates it will be hard to find here! Rar!
Thanks for the information. :) I suppose that in general, then, “unheard of leaf vegetable that’s being suggested for a salad” can be replaced with “regular salad leaves” and “unheard of vegetable being suggested for pasta” can be replaced with “vegetable i like in pasta” and “some cheese that i dont know what it tastes like” can be replaced with gouda, which is good on everything.
I wonder if leaf parsley’s roots taste the same as root parsley’s. Wikipedia says they are smaller, since they’re not being grown for the root, but I think since it’s pretty much the same plant, it should taste at least similar. I don’t know if you garden, but if so, you might plant some regular parsley and when the time comes to dig them up see how much root there is. Otherwise, if you shop at farmer’s markets, you might ask the parsley-seller about the roots. Types of carrots (in Hungarian anyway) are sugar beets (called sugar carrot), parsley (called white carrot), and carrot (called orange carrot)
I suppose that in general, then, “unheard of leaf vegetable that’s being suggested for a salad” can be replaced with “regular salad leaves” and “unheard of vegetable being suggested for pasta” can be replaced with “vegetable i like in pasta” and “some cheese that i dont know what it tastes like” can be replaced with gouda, which is good on everything.
maybe I can find a website aimed at slow six year olds who don’t yet know which two weeks are strawberry season, and whether sour cherry season comes before or after black cherry season.
If you tell us where you are, one of us will almost certainly track this down. Most of us like researching things, and this sounds like a fun challenge.
freezers are indeed useful. someday, i shall have one.
You should do the actual math to see how much you will (or won’t) save by having a freezer—it might pay for itself quicker than you think.
You don’t have to get a full-sized refrigerator/freezer unit. I’ve seen small freezers here for less than $100 that would handle one person’s food pretty well, and you might be able to get one for less than half that, secondhand. (Does Craigslist have listings in your area? How about freecycle?)
although it doesn’t list strawberries. for july, it says: sweet cherries, gooseberries, black currant, watermelon, sour cherry, peach, currant, apricot, plum. the ones that are in the middle of their season will be cheapest. the ones just starting or just ending will be expensive. so my bet is that sour cherry is cheapest.
for vegetables: zucchini (meh), kohlrabi, lentils, sunflowers, capsicum (bell pepper), tomato, pattypan squash, pumpkin, green peas, and horseradish.
If I can figure out what’s wrong with the fridge (and whether it has an easy solution), I could make cherry soup http://www.chew.hu/meggyleves.html (recipe in English)
i dont know if they have vanila sugar where you are, but it’s equivalent to a tsp or tbsp (but definitely not a cup) of a vanilla i think. you could just keep adding small amounts of it until it tastes good. :)
on the veggies list, the only things on that list that i’ve cooked with before and would know how to make something edible are: lentils, tomato and capsicum (Both of whom are just starting their season and arent at their cheapest yet)
but there may be other fruits and vegetables not on this list.
There’s a divergence between American English and British English here; in BrE “capsicum” can mean a bell pepper, but in AmE it only means a chilli pepper. (In neither does “capsicum” mean the substance that gives the hot peppers their hotness; that’s called capsaicin, capsicin, or capsicine.)
Hungary (southern plains, specifically, but it’s a small enough country that it doesn’t matter. My city is the one that gets an average of 2000 of sunlight a year, the highest in the country.). I noticed a while ago when strawberry prices stopped going down and started going up that strawberry season must be ending, but I didn’t attach a date to this noticing in my mind, so when next year rolls around, I still won’t know. (Though I remember they never went below 665 HUF/kg (about $3. I would’ve bought if they went down to 565. This information may or may not be useful next year due to inflation)
Just checked Freecycle. There are three in the country, but none in this city. Deliapro (southern classified ads) has people selling stuff used. currently, someone’s selling a gigantic one (230 litres) for about $75, someone else says they’re selling various kitchen appliances for $40 and up. i dont want a large one. I wouldnt have space for it anyway. But I could fit a 30-60L one somewhere. I live in a 1.5 room apartment, and the kitchen is tiny, but there is a space in the pantry where I could fit a small freezer.
The fridge I have is a bar fridge. There is a freezer compartment, but the door broke, so I fixed it with duct tape (which means I can’t open it). Before the door broke, it would fill with snow on a weekly basis and was tiny anyway (it would fit one frozen pizza.) so I gave up on it and just use the fridge.
In re carrying a heavy load: do you have a backpack?
In re kale: I wouldn’t say it tastes like cabbage, but when raw, it does have a flavor which is hard too describe but too bitter for some people.
Squash and turnip can be baked. I can’t remember whether you have an oven.
What you describe about food is what I call poverty-based anorexia—I’ve heard of one other case. I’d be surprised if there aren’t a fairly large number of people who have it.
i am lukewarm on eggs. I like them enough to eat a few of them, and you can stir certain vegetables into them and add cheese if you have some and salt and pepper and they can taste nice, maybe every few days but then I have to get creative to use the last few eggs in the carton before they go off. if i make a concerted effort, I can eat a carton of 10 eggs in 3 batches spread over 9 days, and they do last longer than that. maybe I could make every day divisible by 3 egg day. Today’s the 179th day of the year (well, now that it’s 2am, it is), so if I went out tomorrow (which will still be the 179th, but it’s tomorrow because i’ll have slept between now and then) to pick some eggs up, I could start tomorrow. If not, I could start on the 182nd.
there’s a store that’s only 1km walk and a bus ride away where I can buy many things very cheaply and the quality is better than anything else in the town. Cans of soup for €1 a piece instead of €4 (hmm, i wonder what their canned beans are priced like. If it were €1 it might be worth it, though when you can get an entire kilogram of dried beans for less, it feels like a waste to spend €1 on one meal). sometimes when I go there I buy sausages. These are more expensive, about €3, but cheaper than I can find elsewhere and the quantity will last me about a week, since I use them sparingly to make them last longer. I shop there when I can, but most days I don’t have the energy to spend a couple hours taking busses and walking with a heavy load (the savings in buying their products vastly outweigh the cost of the bus tickets), so I also shop at places that are nearer to me, where the selection is poorer and the prices are higher. at these stores, i’m careful what I buy and tend to buy things where the price difference is smaller
The cheapest source of vegetables isn’t these foreign stores. It’s the market across the street where the farmers from neighbouring villages come in the morning with carrots that look like they’ve just been pulled out of the ground. You have to get up early if you want to buy anything, and the prices change every day—and if you don’t know the seasons as well as everyone else seems to, they will stop going down and start going up just when you were thinking you’d buy at the next price drop. I don’t know the seasons well, but I could probably find something with googling—except I get a feeling that questions like “when is strawberry season here?” is considered common knowledge. Once, I was playing “guess the fruit” with a six year old, and he was giving me hints for the fruit he’d thought of. The first clue he thought of was not “it is yellow” or “monkeys eat it” but “it’s ripe in winter”. (Bananas, grown in the southern hemisphere, are ripe in our winter. it made sense once I thought about it, but I’d never thought about it.) but maybe I can find a website aimed at slow six year olds who don’t yet know which two weeks are strawberry season, and whether sour cherry season comes before or after black cherry season.
about number 4. i do need to find a way to do some self modification for that. it’s kind of ridiculous. the goal of frugality is living within my means and someday, trying to get to the point where i have 1 months expenses saved up in my bank account so that i have a small cushion if my money’s late or i don’t get paid or an emergency comes up. buying food, eating nothing, letting it go bad, and throwing it away isn’t frugal. Actually, it reminds me of something the Cullens would do (I’m a big fan of Luminosity and Radiance. Never read Twilight, but mom sent me to the DVD since she knows nothing about my tastes heard it was popular, so I downloaded subtitles for it in one of my target languages (Macedonian) so i could watch the gift and call it language practice.)
heartburn can be medicated. i’ve looked up some medications that i can get without a prescription at the local pharmacy. (All medications here have to be bought from a pharmacist, even aspirin, but some don’t need a prescription) I am painfully shy, and having to ask for something by name is a trial for me, but I have been meaning to get down and buy some antacids. it’s probably stress related heart burn anyway. I can afford to spend a few euros on antacids. I am poor, but I actually live more frugally than strictly necessary, because I want to improve my situation and frugality can help with that (though neglecting my health is not frugal in the long run or even in the short run, I know. I need to cut that out.)
6) i’ve done a lot of thinking recently because knowing why is the first step. After my parents divorced, when I was about ten, I was terrified we’d have to go back to living with my father if we failed to make it on our own financially and knew that we were poor, so I tried to do all that I could to prevent that from happening. I knew I was too young to get a job, too young to legally babysit, and I knew I wouldnt have earned much anyway. So, I stopped wanting things. I stopped whining about the toys I saw on tv, I stopped eating breakfast, knowing that my overworked mother would see the opened and partially empty box of cereal and not replace it until it was nearly empty because she would see that I had something to make myself when I got up before going to school. I stopped eating lunch, because the agreement was that I would ask for more money to buy school lunch when I needed it, and I knew she wouldnt remember how recently she’d given me the money. So I kept the money and spent it as infrequently as I could, knowing that the longer i stretched it, the longer my mother would have to go without giving me more. I probably did save her some amount of money this way, but i didnt really have all the facts, and the teacher’s reports that i’d stopped responding to my name and mostly stared off into space all the time led to doctors appointments which definitely costed more than school lunch. Dinner was eaten together when she came home from work. Sometimes I cooked, sometimes she did, and I ate dinner every night. I don’t remember much about that year, but I spent most of it dizzy and spaced out. after a while, my body got used to it and i didnt have much appetite anymore. It was logical in its own way, but i didnt have all the facts, and i was very young. and then as a young adult, i was again scared that if i couldnt make it on my own financially i’d have to go back to living with my mother, so i went back to skimping on food. it’s like an eating disorder, but i don’t obsess about calories and couldn’t care less what I weigh.
freezers are indeed useful. someday, i shall have one.
i already use a piece of paper on a tray to catch crumbs if i’m just eating bread or something. pasta i eat out of the pan (i am cooking for one, after all, why dirty a plate?) my cup is rinsed well the first time i’m going to use it that day. who knows how many flies visited it over night (no fly screens either, and it’s summer), but after that i dont wash it between uses. i’ve used disposable plates and forks in the past, and though i feel guilty about environmental concerns, if i can’t eat any other way, then i can’t. i’d really like to find some paper plates instead of plastic, because the only plastic ones i can find melt in the microwave, which renders them useless to me. when i cook in the oven, i use aluminium foil instead of a pan, if i can get away with it.
dishes: i do rinse them, and then i come back to them a week later and they are slimy. (solution: come back the very next day. i try, and i can succeed for days at a time sometimes, but then something comes up and i’m back to having a sink full of petri dishes.
vegetables you mentioned that I know what they are called here and remember seeing in a store, even if rarely, and think i like or have questions about whether i would like it or not:
spinach - <3 but hard to find out of season
kale—it’s called “kale cabbage” here, which has scared me off it, since i dont like cabbage. does it taste like cabbage? my real problem with cabbage is that it is huge and i cant eat an entire cabbage before it goes bad, and i dont like it pickled. i can tolerate the taste here and there, but ill never be enthusiastic about eating a lot of it at once.
peppers = capsicum. - will eat them, and wil sometimes like them, but am not crazy about them. they do go nice in pasta sometimes.
we don’t have celery here, but we do have celeriac. it is large and hard to use all of it in time, but i do like it. the problem is you only need a tiny bit to get the right flavour.
turnips—are called “white carrots” here and are good in soups, but it is impossible to cook soup for one person and i dont know any other ways of preparing them. can they be eaten raw?
squash—like, but they are usually large, and i dont know whether they can be eaten raw or how to turn them into the tasty mashed stuff (i dont have a masher), or if they can be prepared non-mashed.
leek—is a readily available, mostly green, gigantic, cylindrical onion. i like onions, but do not know if i could consume an entire leek. i imagine that slices of it would be good on just about anything though.
broccoli—is only sold in 500g batches, is hard to find, and somewhat expensive. i love it, but have trouble using up so much of it.
cauliflower -is cheap, white coloured broccoli that is sold by the head. impossible to use an entire head without it going bad if you are only one person.
Do most vegetables go well with each other? (in a stir fry, on top of pasta, etc.)
I like reading recipes online, but sometimes get frustrated when they list ingredients that are unavailable to me (happens more often than not.) but i’ll look around some more.
Websites explaining produce seasons totally exist. I don’t know where you live, but I’m sure you can find the info.
If you leave soapy water standing in your dishes, the soap should cut down on slime growing on them.
Spinach is available canned! Get it that way and season doesn’t matter.
Kale is not like cabbage. It’s a leafy green, sort of like turnip greens or mustard greens.
Celeriac is good roasted and then put in soup. Find smaller roots of it, and when you cut the ugly off, cut a little deeper; if you don’t put much in the soup besides celeriac you should be able to eat it in as little as two sittings.
Turnips don’t look anything like carrots; do you mean parsnips? Wikipedia says you can eat parsnips raw.
Yellow squash comes small. I usually have it with fish, and use half of one in a meal; if I’m having only squash for a meal I can definitely eat a whole one. I like to slice them up thin and then roast them (line pan with foil, coat with olive oil, pop in the oven at 425º for 15-20 minutes).
Leeks are not as much food as they look like. You can roast them (it’s wise to parboil first though), or put them in soup.
Broccoli is amazing roasted, in soup, or with pasta. Cauliflower is good in soups, curries, or casseroles. You really need to find out why your fridge won’t let you keep leftovers for a normal amount of time and fix that; I can easily eat a batch of cream of cauliflower soup that contains an entire head of cauliflower over a few days, but if you can’t keep soup around for a few days you may be in trouble. Cauliflower and broccoli are also edible raw, optionally with dip.
Many but perhaps not most vegetables go well with others. My brain isn’t generating a useful algorithm here but I can give you my best guess/experience regarding any combinations you think look likely.
There is a lot of information available about substitutions online. I am an improvisational cook and can probably help you out if you’re missing something for a recipe (I have good instincts about when you can leave it out, when you can replace it with something else, and when you can’t make the recipe at all without the ingredient).
There exists a book about this. I wouldn’t be surprised if there existed a genre of books about it, even.
neat
googling “when is ripe” in hungarian gave me a site with a chart (but not all the fruits and veggies i could think of) as the first link. im sure further links down the google results page would include the missing ones.
i will try making the water soapier. also, evaporation plays a problem if i leave it too long. but i want to get in the habit of cooking often enough that i wont have to worry about that. i remember i used to wash any stray dishes while waiting for water to boil. i have lots of tricks like that i seem to have to rediscover again and again. a couple years ago, i had an epiphany that soapy water made things clean, not soapy, and that helped for a while, until i forgot again. i mean, i never stopped using soap, and i used soap before that point, but there was a moment when i understood at an intrinsic level that the soap applied to a dish could be removed from that dish, and the dirt would be removed along with it, through the application of water, and that all dirty things could be made clean, that nothing was dirty beyond repair. whereas othertimes i remember that i don’t like the taste of soap and i sink into a vague suspicion that i’m just adding soap to the dirt and making soapy dirt and wonder what makes me so sure that adding soap to a spoon will make the food that later comes onto that spoon more edible. The manner in which I wash dishes doesn’t really change, but by mental approach to it changes from disgust at the wrongness on the dishes to delight at the opportunity to right a wrong.
Spinach canned. Hm, so it does. I’ll keep an eye out for it. My mental image of the aisle in the store that sells canned food mostly contains corn, peas, and beans, along with a few types of soup (mostly goulash soup, the one i like best), but googling in hungarian tells me there is indeed such a thing as canned spinach. i’ve seen it frozen, too, in small enough quantities that it could conceivably be eaten in one sitting. and i think frozen spinach would keep for at least a day in the fridge as well.
oh, the english wikipedia page for turnip shows something completely different. the dictionary I was using was wrong. I’m not really familiar with turnips, I guess. What I call white carrot is, according to wikipedia, actually parsley root, which looks somewhat like parsnips, but doesn’t taste like them. it’s not really carroty in flavour either, just shape. you put it in soups and stews, and chicken noodle soup should have at least one of them and at least one carrot as well.
the roasted squash sounds easy and good. i think i have a vague memory involving squash, zucchini, tomato and pasta with a creamy sauce. which sounds easy to make.
i’ll give leek another chance. :)
cream of broccoli soup is wonderful. i tried to make it once, but it wasnt very creamy when i made it, and i used too much broccoli (and therefore too much water and too much of everything else), but it was good.
I remember finding a recipe once online that if I took out everything that I was confused by/didn’t think I could get here/didn’t like, I was left lentils and water. i didnt like lentils and water all by themselves, and realised that anything i could add to it would be something of my own creation, not resembling the original recipe at all. it’s not usually that bad. usually it’s something like “capers” (which seem to be something pickled, but i only like pickled cucumbers) or “cheese-whiz” or takes an english cookbook off the shelf and flips through randomly “parmigiano-reggiano (a small handful)”, “radicchio”, “swiss chard.” The book was a present from my mother, but almost every recipe contains something we don’t have here, or something i don’t like, or something expensive. I’ve mostly given up on the cookbook as useless. :)
Capers are pickled flowerbuds, and can probably be safely left out of virtually anything. Parmigiano-reggiano is a cheese; you can sub parmesan or another hard grated/shredded cheese if you can’t find it. Radicchio and swiss chard are both leaf vegetables and could probably be reasonably substituted for others in that reference class. Cheez whiz is an abomination.
Also, now I want to try parsley root, but Wikipedia indicates it will be hard to find here! Rar!
Thanks for the information. :) I suppose that in general, then, “unheard of leaf vegetable that’s being suggested for a salad” can be replaced with “regular salad leaves” and “unheard of vegetable being suggested for pasta” can be replaced with “vegetable i like in pasta” and “some cheese that i dont know what it tastes like” can be replaced with gouda, which is good on everything.
I wonder if leaf parsley’s roots taste the same as root parsley’s. Wikipedia says they are smaller, since they’re not being grown for the root, but I think since it’s pretty much the same plant, it should taste at least similar. I don’t know if you garden, but if so, you might plant some regular parsley and when the time comes to dig them up see how much root there is. Otherwise, if you shop at farmer’s markets, you might ask the parsley-seller about the roots. Types of carrots (in Hungarian anyway) are sugar beets (called sugar carrot), parsley (called white carrot), and carrot (called orange carrot)
Yes, this.
If you tell us where you are, one of us will almost certainly track this down. Most of us like researching things, and this sounds like a fun challenge.
You should do the actual math to see how much you will (or won’t) save by having a freezer—it might pay for itself quicker than you think.
You don’t have to get a full-sized refrigerator/freezer unit. I’ve seen small freezers here for less than $100 that would handle one person’s food pretty well, and you might be able to get one for less than half that, secondhand. (Does Craigslist have listings in your area? How about freecycle?)
Anyway, a quick googling of “mikor érik” (when is ripe) got me to this page: http://www.hazipatika.com/topics/zoldseg_gyumolcs/seasonality (warning, not in english)
although it doesn’t list strawberries. for july, it says: sweet cherries, gooseberries, black currant, watermelon, sour cherry, peach, currant, apricot, plum. the ones that are in the middle of their season will be cheapest. the ones just starting or just ending will be expensive. so my bet is that sour cherry is cheapest.
for vegetables: zucchini (meh), kohlrabi, lentils, sunflowers, capsicum (bell pepper), tomato, pattypan squash, pumpkin, green peas, and horseradish.
If I can figure out what’s wrong with the fridge (and whether it has an easy solution), I could make cherry soup http://www.chew.hu/meggyleves.html (recipe in English)
i dont know if they have vanila sugar where you are, but it’s equivalent to a tsp or tbsp (but definitely not a cup) of a vanilla i think. you could just keep adding small amounts of it until it tastes good. :)
on the veggies list, the only things on that list that i’ve cooked with before and would know how to make something edible are: lentils, tomato and capsicum (Both of whom are just starting their season and arent at their cheapest yet)
but there may be other fruits and vegetables not on this list.
In English, capsicum is what makes hot peppers hot. The large peppers that aren’t hot are called peppers, sweet peppers or bell peppers.
There’s a divergence between American English and British English here; in BrE “capsicum” can mean a bell pepper, but in AmE it only means a chilli pepper. (In neither does “capsicum” mean the substance that gives the hot peppers their hotness; that’s called capsaicin, capsicin, or capsicine.)
Capsaicin is the chemical that makes peppers hot; capsicum is a genus.
Hungary (southern plains, specifically, but it’s a small enough country that it doesn’t matter. My city is the one that gets an average of 2000 of sunlight a year, the highest in the country.). I noticed a while ago when strawberry prices stopped going down and started going up that strawberry season must be ending, but I didn’t attach a date to this noticing in my mind, so when next year rolls around, I still won’t know. (Though I remember they never went below 665 HUF/kg (about $3. I would’ve bought if they went down to 565. This information may or may not be useful next year due to inflation)
Just checked Freecycle. There are three in the country, but none in this city. Deliapro (southern classified ads) has people selling stuff used. currently, someone’s selling a gigantic one (230 litres) for about $75, someone else says they’re selling various kitchen appliances for $40 and up. i dont want a large one. I wouldnt have space for it anyway. But I could fit a 30-60L one somewhere. I live in a 1.5 room apartment, and the kitchen is tiny, but there is a space in the pantry where I could fit a small freezer.
The fridge I have is a bar fridge. There is a freezer compartment, but the door broke, so I fixed it with duct tape (which means I can’t open it). Before the door broke, it would fill with snow on a weekly basis and was tiny anyway (it would fit one frozen pizza.) so I gave up on it and just use the fridge.
In re carrying a heavy load: do you have a backpack?
In re kale: I wouldn’t say it tastes like cabbage, but when raw, it does have a flavor which is hard too describe but too bitter for some people.
Squash and turnip can be baked. I can’t remember whether you have an oven.
What you describe about food is what I call poverty-based anorexia—I’ve heard of one other case. I’d be surprised if there aren’t a fairly large number of people who have it.