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Food is an intimate window into everything

visakanv
July 10, 2016

Food studies

Alcohol

Coffee / Caffeine [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Nicotine [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

Dopamine [1, 2, 3, 4] Serotonin [1]

Sugar

Yoghurt [1]

I like…

  • Fat Boy’s burgers and milkshakes
  • Choupinette’s Eggs Benedict
  • Aston’s hickory BBQ chicken (with potato salad + onion rings)
  • Morganfield’s ribs
  • Fish & Chips
  • Chicken Rice
  • JJ Thai – green curry chicken, mango salad
  • Guzman Y Gomez – pulled pork, guacamole, sour cream

Reviews

Nespresso

Purple – Pretty smooth and dark, I like it.

Munch.sg – I tried the John Dory, which was pretty nice. Like a grilled version of decent fish&chips. Would’ve liked more meat, but I always say that. I tried Thai salad and Waldorf salad, both of which were a little underwhelming. (The Thai was slightly better.) I would probably order again, and I’d try something different next time.

Grains

  • Their salmon and pasta is my favorite
  • Grilled Beef with Brown Mushroom sauce
  • Thai vinaigrette dory

Chicken Rice Combo Set (with broccoli, beancurd, pork ribs, fried shrimp with thai sauce)

one-north

Salad Stop – I think my favorite is the one with the grapes… suddenly can’t remember the name. Jai Ho is ok but the chicken is typically a bit dry.

Yishun

Chong Pang Nasi Lemak – it’s pretty nice but not amazing. 6.7/10

Sting Ray – okay also. I enjoy it because I eat it whenever I crave it. 6.3/10

Blue Star Prata – this one typically hits the spot for me. The Milo is reliably nice and thick, too. 8/10

Chong Pang Market – solid char kway teow and carrot cake. Haven’t tried the oyster omelette but it should be good too. The barbequed chicken wings and satay are pretty legit, 8.5/10. Soya bean milk is cheap and plentiful, and tastes good. 8/10. (They put so much sugar tho. Should ask for siu dai.)

Handlebar – went once when dark, it was pretty nice as far as I can remember. Should go around slightly before sunset.

Flaming manggos – nice homely-ish ambience, I think some of the wealthier folks in the area hang out here.

Shami banana leaf – alright I guess. Good enough to hit the spot when you need a south indian food fix.

Food issues

I grew up with all sorts of food issues, was very picky eater, only ever ate filet o fish, fish&chips, chicken rice, that sort of thing. I eventually got quite depressed about my shitty, dysfunctional relationship with food and decided that I was going to fix it.

I started by watching videos about the history of food, and by buying ingredients and just fucking around with them. I started by making some shitty scrambled eggs, and by cutting up things like cucumber and capsicum, which you can pretty much just rinse, cut up into ‘fries’ and eat as finger food.

I think I might’ve cried the first time I made myself a good meal and ate it, because it seemed so impossible before. I disagree with the “eat heavily seasoned stuff” idea. I think the important thing is to develop a personal, intimate relationship with ingredients. Get him to buy a cucumber, wash it, cut it, and maybe eat it with whatever dressing he likes. Then slowly level up from there. It’s a lot less intimidating to eat something when you prepare it yourself, and you give yourself permission to just nibble a little bit at some sliced fruit and toss it if you don’t like it.

This was one of the videos I remember watching – it’s really all about changing your relationship and attitude towards food, cooking, etc from something icky/gross/scary to something interesting and inviting.

I wrote a thread about this:

Sugar

I’m reading more about food and blood sugar and insulin.

An interesting question (that I never worried too much about because I’ve typically had the opposite problem): why do people who are already fat/overweight continue eating heavily despite being unhappy?

“I’m fat because I eat too much and exercise too little”…

But why?

“Because I’m greedy and lazy, damnit.”

“BUT WHY?”

Once we reach something that sounds like a moral failing, we stop questioning. You’re greedy and lazy because humans are greedy and lazy by default- original sin- and you’re just a worse human being than others. The guilt and shame (or anger and resentment and frustration) just drives you to more of the same behavior.

But why are people greedy? Why are people lazy? These are legitimately interesting questions that are legitimately underexplored.

I can’t summarize everything in a status update… but from my reading and understanding, they all seem to be grounded in very, VERY deep rooted coping mechanisms, reactions to a sort of fundamental misfit or mismatch with the reality you experience. They seem to be rooted in things like fear, anxiety, worry, deep-rooted subconscious assumptions about how life is going to be.

The same seems to apply for alcoholism and smoking and drug addiction. I’ll probably be devoting my next 50-100 word vomits or so to exploring and figuring this shit out as it applies to me.

It makes it painfully obvious that most advice for people with chronic problems (whether overeating or procrastination) is actually non-advice. “Stop overeating”. Chronic problems are symptoms of other things. A JC student messaged me to ask about their subject combination. I told them it didn’t matter, what mattered was that they managed their time effectively. They told me they were bad at it because they didn’t have any self-love.

Nicotine increases blood sugar levels. Nobody told me this. When you smoke first thing in the morning, you feel less hungry because the blood sugar goes up. Skip breakfast, and your blood sugar levels are gonna be crazy volatile throughout the day. Which you regulate with… more smoking

“i smoke because i’m stressed” might really be shorthand for “i’m stressed -> I have no appetite -> I skip breakfast -> I have low blood sugar -> the world is a fuzzy blur and I always feel like I’m going to pass out -> “cigarettes give me a semblance of function”

Cigarettes, diet, blood sugar, anxiety, procrastination

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html 

Cooking

I’ve always been afraid of cooking. I’ve decided to get started.

2016-09-11 – Today I bought a piece of salmon from Cold Storage. I didn’t really know how to choose, so I just picked one almost at random. Then I brought it home and put it in the fridge. I looked up “how to cook salmon” on YouTube and found this video from Greg’s Kitchen. Surprisingly simple. Just put olive oil on the pan, heat it up till there’s some sizzle and smell, then put the salmon on it for about 3-4 minutes while you watch the color change from pink to white-ish. Then flip it. I served it with cucumbers and tzatziki and a drizzle of lime, and it was great. I’m very happy. Tomorrow I’ll try and cook some minced beef with spaghetti, and slowcook some chicken, carrot and potatoes.

–

DaveSapien 3 hours ago

My advice (to the question, not the brilliant article), is to learn how to cook. A good or great diet, with fun food as well as easy healthy food is one big way to improve everything about your life. Its truly amazing what a difference it can have.
reply

mbrock 1 hour ago

http://thestonesoup.com/blog/
You don’t have to read the heartfelt blog posts if you don’t want to, just scroll until you see a recipe.
Note that they all have five ingredients or less (excluding salt & pepper).
They’re also all really nice and tasty, as far as I’ve tried them.
I like this because it sees food as just simple combinations of cooked edible things. You don’t have to combine dozens of spices or do anything super fancy.
Just get a chef’s knife that doesn’t suck. If you want to, look at some videos of chopping techniques, especially for specific tricky things like onions—you can do it so much faster and better with a simple technique, astound your friends!
And do some basic “mise en place,” which is just the French word for “preparing your stuff ahead of time even maybe using a few different bowls.” If any moment of cooking a meal stresses you out, notice that and think about if you can do it in a way that isn’t stressful. Like, if you’re suddenly chopping an onion while you’re watching garlic in a skillet, you should have prepared all that stuff beforehand.

Be fundamentally nonchalant about measures and times, for almost everything, except in baking. (Rice/water ratios etc are good to follow if you don’t want soggy/hard rice.) Recipes say “2 tablespoons” because they need to give some indication, but it will probably be fine if you put in more or less. It’s nice if you can look at a recipe, get the gist of it, and then just go with your intuition—if you’re wrong, you learn something.

jarcane 2 hours ago

As a former professional cook, my advice has remained consistently “Watch every damn episode of Good Eats you can get your hands on.”

Alton Brown’s recipes aren’t always my preferred method, but he’s an excellent teacher, and great at explaining the science and the “why” behind how cooking works instead of relying on pure folk wisdom like most cooking teaching.

Honestly, if you watch all 10 seasons of Good Eats you’ll probably get more out of it than you would a culinary degree from all but a handful of schools.

Interesting. Does it cover the French kitchen? How about the world kitchen?

Indirectly yes, but it is more focused on ingredients and techniques, rather than cuisines and recipes. For example there will be an episode about butter, which just talks about exactly what butter is, how it behaves in different situations and everything you can do with butter and another episode episode about braising, that just breaks down what braising is and how it works. Once you have all those basics down pat, you can go on and make and adapt recipes from other sources with far greater skill and confidence.
paloaltokid 1 hour ago

Here’s a way to get started:

* watch YouTube videos Jamie Oliver – he has lots of great intro videos, including all the equipment you’ll need. You can always get one of his books. His video on knife skills really helped me out.

* get “The Joy of Cooking”. It’s a treasure trove of recipes which you can learn from.

* learn basic knife skills. You need 3 knives – a chopper, a paring knife, and a bread knife. Others will help you both those 3 are the essential.

* start simple and work your way up. You should be able to make eggs in just a few minutes. Learn a simple breakfast recipe, a simple lunch recipe (like a fancy sandwich) and a simple dinner.

* watch a few cooking shows. Even an entertainment show like Chopped will give you some ideas for how chefs look at a pile of recipes and compose something.

* if you drink, learn a few basic cocktails. also learn the basic red & white wines.

With a little bit of practice you’ll realize that you just need to have a few stock ingredients on hand to be able to take care of yourself every day and cook for friends and family.
The feeling you get the first time you cook a meal for someone else is a great one. 🙂
sgift 3 hours ago

Take a cooking book, search something you like, buy the parts, start. Really .. cooking is not hard. When you are more advanced you can improvise and experiment, switch ingredients for others and so on, but that’s optional. For 99% of all things you want to cook there is a recipe out there that was already tested by someone else.
If you really do not know how to start there are always cooking classes. They can be fun, but they are not strictly necessary.
reitoei 50 minutes ago

Pick up Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course (classic version) and start trying some of the recipes. You’ll pick this book up for next to nothing second hand (if someone is foolhardy enough to part with it in the first place).
I grew up in a household where everyone cooked, it was (and still is) a massive part of our family. This book was the cornerstone of my ‘education’ even before I was a teenager. My Mum always had her nose in it. I cannot recommend it enough. It’s also worth seeking out some of Delia’s cooking shows, there are probably a ton of them on YouTube.
Follow her instruction and you will not go wrong. I guarantee it.

MIKarlsen 2 hours ago

I feel like one of the basic premises for doing this is understanding the different nutrients and their contribution to your health and energy-levels. In addition, the price-factor is also something that means something to me as a student.
Apart from cooking – which as a few people mention is pretty easy once you realize it’s more about common sense and taste than chemistry – the fact the most people think that fat will actually just turn into fat on your body, and that dieting is the way to go, is something I imagine is misrepresenting the importance of being able to put together a healthy and nutricious meal.
Unfortunately, I don’t know any good english books on the subject, but I imagine there are plenty of shorter books that will explain how fat, carbs, protein and vitamins play a part in respect to your wellbeing. I would start here.
Next, I would take a look at my wallet and my daily schedule, and figure out when buying take-away is going to be the most realistic option (both in regards to price and context), and when I have the ability to prepare lunch or dinner from home. If you have access to a fridge, a simple lunchbox with carrots and chicken provides a sturdy and surprisingly satisfying meal. Both carrots and chicken can be prepared in large batches, and both holds up for 4-5 days which is a typical workweek. In the morning, you simply fill a box with ingredients, and you have one cheap, nutritious meal down. I usually spice something like this up with a handful of almonds or nuts, and perhaps purchase some milk or juice to go with it.
I don’t even know if this makes any sense, but I have this stereotyped view on americans as people who rarely cook their own meals, partly due to the fact that it’s cheaper to buy take-away due to lower salaries effect on the price-levels (I can see that being a factor in Europe).
If you’ve never been comfortable cooking yourself, I can see that this might be a daunting task. I know people who are afraid to cook without a recipe, which is something that I hardly ever bother to spend time finding anyway.