The brokerage firm that’s faced the most scrutiny from regulators in the past year over the shorting of mortgage related securities seems to have had good timing when it came to something else: the stock of British oil giant BP.
According to regulatory filings, RawStory.com has found that Goldman Sachs sold 4,680,822 shares of BP in the first quarter of 2010. Goldman’s sales were the largest of any firm during that time. Goldman would have pocketed slightly more than $266 million if their holdings were sold at the average price of BP’s stock during the quarter.
If Goldman had sold these shares today, their investment would have lost 36 percent its value, or $96 million. The share sales represented 44 percent of Goldman’s holdings — meaning that Goldman’s remaining holdings have still lost tens of millions in value.
Doesn’t look like anything criminal or untoward was done, just lucky.
sherifffruitfly
Maybe they used the time machine like in Paycheck to look into the future!
Morbo
Rather be lucky than good.
geg6
Well, this is the kind of thing they are supposed to be able to do. I don’t begrudge them this if it was all on the up and up (being that it’s GS, I’ll withhold judgment on that).
That said, I still think every single person who works for or sits on the board at GS should be hung from a streetlight on Wall Street and left there to rot slowly for all to see and take a lesson from.
slippy
With Goldman, you can never be sure. You say “lucky.” I say, “well-informed.”
In retrospect I am sure savvy players (not the fumbling imbeciles they pretend to be when something goes wrong, but actually smart people who understand how the fuck things work) could see that BP’s management was out of control and throwing all caution to the wind.
dmsilev
Nonononono. Clearly, this indicates that Goldman sabotaged the wellhead…
dms
geg6
And I’m going OT again to point out a post on Pandagon that I really liked and which makes a point that is not often discussed in all the discussions of American obesity and eating habits.
http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/actually_cooking_is_hard_and_i_smell_sexism_in_claiming_otherwise/
We here at BJ love to talk food and cooking and I thought a discussion of this might suit our commentariat and serve as a way to avoid more discouraging discussion of the criminal actions of the Israeli government. ;-)
SP
“Goldman’s remaining holdings have still lost tens of millions in value”
I hate this excuse as if it’s supposed to make us feel bad for them. They said the same thing about the fraud they’re being prosecuted for- of course no one ever sells every single share of crap, that’s too obvious/risky. But the fact that you could have made $1B and instead only made $500M while others lost millions doesn’t generate much sympathy.
Citizen Alan
Really? Really??? The fact that the single most corrupt actor on Wall Street seems to have had advanced warning that BP might soon suffer a bit of catastrophically bad PR doesn’t strike you as at all suspicious? It doesn’t give even the slightest bit of credence to theories about deliberate sabotage?
wrb
This time.
The little bastards learn.
Look into the rodent mind:
“What if we had shorted BP just before this happened?
How can we be sure we do next time?
If we bought a submarine… and some explosives…”
russell
Where was Lloyd Blankfein on April 20, 2010?
BenA
If a video of Lloyd Blankfein came out of him in a Penguin shaped submarine shooting an umbrella torpedo at the well head… well.. let’s just say I wouldn’t be suprised.
On another note… why haven’t we seen sky rocketing gas prices out of this. There are probably countless reasons why this gulf spill doesn’t effect our gas prices… but usually the industry uses a disaster like this as an excuse to jack up prices.
Brian J
@Citizen Alan:
Where’s the evidence that there was advanced warning of what was going to happen? As far as I can tell, there isn’t any.
Besides, if there was some special information, they weren’t the only ones who had it. As the bottom of the Raw Story piece says, they weren’t the only ones who sold:
There’s plenty of reasons to dislike Goldman Sachs, but this doesn’t appear to be one of them.
someguy
@Citizen Alan:
A brilliant theory, because BP and its contractors were looking to get themselves destroyed, to undermine their 5 year, hundred million dollar green ad campaign, for all their executives, along with anybody associated with the rig, to face long prison terms. Who does it benefit? Why… um… Exxon!
[But maybe that is the point… the fact that BP would tear itself apart and its executives would be willing to go to jail is *completely* consistent with the existence of a massive conspiracy, because the conspirators would try to make it look like that to hide the existence of such a conspiracy… nothing would hide that better than bankruptcy, and a ton of executives spending the next few years in jail. Why, it’s 9615-dimensional chess!]
The Moar You Know
Somewhat on-topic: Moody’s says “whoops”.
Lupin
I wonder how long Bankfein has until Satan comes to collect.
The Moar You Know
@Citizen Alan: You can’t be serious.
If you are, you have to be able to answer this question to make an assertion like this…why would BP do such a thing?
MattF
GS apparently hired someone with a brain. When BP started its ‘green’ PR campaign a few months ago, the correct response was, evidently, ‘A green fucking oil company? Sell!!’
scav
@Citizen Alan: well, not that I’d give them the benefit of much doubt, but I’d first check to see how much they needed capital for shoring up themselves.
slag
@geg6: I’m in the process of trying to learn how to cook (beyond macaroni and cheese, that is), and yes, it is hard. And yes, it takes time. A lot of time.
I spend a lot (!) of time searching the interwebs for recipes, trying to translate those recipes into a mac and cheese-level english, and then finding those ingredients while having lengthy conversations with the produce guy about what exactly people mean when they say “fresh peas” (how many different kinds of peas are there in the world, anyway?). And that doesn’t even include the cooking part, which is very time-intensive for me because I haven’t practiced it. Beyond which, there’s the cleanup process at the end, which seems to go on forever…
Honestly, I don’t know how people can work 50+ hours a week and still manage to cook dinner for themselves every evening. I never could.
Erik Vanderhoff
Clearly Goldman Sachs was in collusion with the environmentalists to blow up the oil rig.
Daddy-O
I don’t believe in luck at that level. Especially when Goldman Sachs has a nano-second response computer program gamed to the Wall Street market. One of many tools at their disposal.
We are all conspiracy theorists now. Why else even mention it?
Citizen_X
@BenA:
“Holy oil slick, Batman! The Penguin’s behind it all, and he’s…Lloyd Blankfein!”
Ash Can
@geg6:
Yup. Sell orders can be triggered by any number of factors. The fact that, as Brian J mentions, other firms were doing the same thing makes me think that, at a company visit or on a conference call, someone in BP management gave some indication that earnings estimates might not be met, unforeseen expenses were cropping up, something like that. This would be information that’s (at least theoretically) available to everyone, so there’s no infraction.
However, if evidence of inside information were to turn up, the SEC would — or at least should — jump on GS.
Daddy-O
@Moar:
What makes you think BP is responsible? There are plenty of other guilty parties rife with motive and potential.
We simply don’t know. But it doesn’t look good…
LittlePig
@Citizen Alan:
—
Not at all. Again, these people are evil, not stupid. Anyone connected with the industry knew that no new technology had been developed since the last time this happened (’79), so just like the last time, a relief well is the only way out. BP’s safety ratings had been going consistently down, after starting out as one of the least safety conscious deep well drillers.
I’d say that’s good risk management. They understand risk management, they just don’t have to *do* it because the U.S. Treasury is their backstop.
Terrell
I don’t think this is much to do about anything. BP’s shares increased by 33% in 2009. With that type of gain, it is likely that GS simply sold some stock to take some profits off the table.
J.W. Hamner
@Erik Vanderhoff:
If you can work in Islamo-fascism, I think you might have a book deal waiting!
ruemara
Riiiiight, just lucky. Suddenly, all the conspiracy theories about corporate attempts to sabotage Obama’s presidency seem just a hair less crazy.
Can we tax ‘luck’?
Brian J
@Terrell:
Yes.
But besides that, the sell date, according to the Morningstar link provided by Raw Story, was March 31, 2010. The oil spill started on April 20, 2010. Unless someone is accusing that Goldman Sachs had some very specific information that something was about to go wrong, I am not sure what the problem is supposed to be. The fact that other firms sold office the vast majority of their BP holdings indicates that Goldman didn’t have information to themselves.
ArchTeryx
@ruemara: We can sure as heck tax windfalls, which amounts to the same thing.
scav
I’m really worried that so many murky forces impacting our lives now appear to already have invented time travel. And now we seem to have GS Davros chortling about how we must destroy the GOM to save Daleks from Sozialism so bring out the Reality Bomb!
Brian J
@Erik Vanderhoff:
Let’s not discount the role Rahm Emmanuel might have/probably played in this disaster. I mean, he’s Rahm Emmanuel. That’s all that needs to be said, right?
Allison W.
@geg6:
”
I read that post over at TP yesterday and I was one of the people that called BS on that ‘cooking is difficult’ nonsense and I am not a Conservative.
I don’t get it. Who are these people cooking for? The vast majority of Americans are not foodies. We like to keep it simple and are not all looking to be the next Top Chef. We also tend to eat the same things over and over again so I don’t get this desire to make something different every night. Growing up you ate what your momma gave you and if she doesn’t feel like cooking the next day or she has no time, you eat leftovers.
It has always boggled my mind when people say they can’t cook. I say if you can read and follow directions – you can cook. You can find recipes on the internet and if you don’t have the internet, there is the library, and if you don’t have a library, there are pretty cheap cookbooks at the supermarket and some companies offer recipes on the back of their product. There are instructions for doing something simple as boiling an egg. Don’t try to be the McGyver of cooking, follow the recipe and you’ll be fine. Really, anyone who says cooking is difficult is more likely, IMO, lacking interest or patience.
El Cid
@Allison W.:
Providing it was good the first time and stored right, I love leftovers. Who wouldn’t want to have a good chicken casserole or lasagna or beef stew several nights in a week if they liked it the first time?
mr. whipple
@Allison W.:
Ditto.
Violet
@Allison W.:
I don’t get it either. I didn’t grow up with much in the way of cooking role models, although we had home-cooked meals most nights (extremely simple stuff and I was rarely allowed to help cook). But I always loved to cook. As my aunt (who lives thousands of miles away, so no, she wasn’t a hands-on cooking role model except once a year at Christmas) says, “If you can read you can cook.” She means, read the recipe, follow it, and you’ll do reasonably well.
So that’s what I did. I read the recipes on the side of the cereal box and learned how to make bran muffins. I read the chocolate chip bag and made Tollhouse cookies. I read cookbooks and learned how to make a bunch of other stuff. I’m not the greatest cook in the world, but I learned almost all of it from reading recipes and trying it out.
These days I cook simply, but it’s fresh food and much better for me than what I can buy pre-made. I use occasional helping items, like pasta sauce in a jar, or curry sauce in a jar, but mostly I do it myself. I read the recipe and I cook.
It’s really not that hard. But you have to want to do it. You have to dive in a try.
Punchy
Pretty sure mearly selling the shares isn’t evidence of malfeasance….However….if they SHORTED BP just prior to April 20th, and therefore are making a killing on this spill….well, that’s something different. A lot diff.
Maybe GS dumped a few houses on the wellhead to cause it to malfunction.
MikeJ
@Punchy: Why is it any different if they shorted? They made a bet, they have to cover it one way or the other. I don’t see that it matters that they betted it was going down or they betted that it just wasn’t going up any more.
Uloborus
@Citizen Alan:
I didn’t even KNOW there were ‘sabotage’ theories. That’s the most bizarre response to this disaster I’ve heard so far. That’s weirder than the ‘BP is covering it up’ meme.
Randy P
I heard about Goldman-Sach’s slimy fingers in another pie today: higher education. My wife was reading a letter from a friend about shake ups at Argosy University and weird new policies that were turning the faculty upside down. Then she got to a line about how there was suspicion that this related to their corporate owners, GOLDMAN-SACHS, fiddling with the bottom line preparatory to selling them off…
Uloborus
@Randy P:
Now that I believe. Standard corrupt financial processes by greedy shortsighted scumbags.
wrb
@Uloborus:
Oh yea, Rush was out with one within days- hours maybe.
His involved the fact that the climate bill was due to be unveiled on about the same day and, I think (I might be confusing different theories) crack Greenpeace commandos.
schrodinger's cat
@Allison W.: Agreed, I taught myself how to cook, from books and by trial and error. I find baking harder than cooking because you can’t improvise have to rigidly follow the proportions. When I was living on my own for the first time, I could barely boil water to make tea. I had no interest in cooking but I loved to eat, so I had to learn how to cook to feed myself the food that I liked. BTW my mother is an excellent cook, so was my grandmother. So I grew up knowing what great food should taste like. I can imagine if you grew up in a family that lived on take-out and eating out it would be difficult to start cooking when you are own your own.
jonas
I don’t follow CNBC, but there has to be footage out there of Jim Cramer having one of his well-modulated conniptions about how well BP stock is going to hold up through this disaster.
Randy P
@geg6: My wife does get a little weary of being the one to make 90%+ of the meals, but we both know that the part I hate the most is the one where you look at your pantry and think of something to make. Looking at the same shelves, she’ll come up with three or four creative beautiful dishes, and I’ll say “there’s nothing here, I’ve got to go shopping”.
I don’t mind the actual act of cooking. I’m happy to be sous-chef.
flukebucket
I loved this from the article
slag
@Violet:
This absurd presumption is exactly why some people don’t know how to cook. Because so many cookbooks are written with a presumed level of awareness that is beyond people who have never cooked before.
When I read, “bring it to a boil”, I stop and wonder what that means exactly. Does that mean just a few bubbles coming up from the bottom or a whole lot of bubbles coming up from the bottom. And what is a “rapid boil” anyway and how does it distinguish from just a boil. And what is “mincing”? And how does it differ from “chopping”?
Does a lack of knowledge of these intricacies ruin an entire meal? Maybe not. But the whole thing is off-putting and fraught with uncertainty. Beyond which, you don’t always know where you went wrong. And it only takes a few mistakes to make one realize that macaroni and cheese tastes fine every time.
Learning to cook is a serious investment of time, money, and energy. And once you realize that you can get a meal at KFC for $4.99 (or whatever it is now), the ROI is really dubious. It’s no wonder people don’t really try. Cooking has become a leisure activity.
Punchy
@MikeJ: Big diff. Selling the stock means you’re out of it, period. If you turn around and short it after selling it, you’re making hand-over-fist on the way down, too. You’ve made money going both directions. THAT may have been cause for concern, tho there’s zero chance this accident was anything but an accident.
Randy P
@slag: I’m no cordon bleu chef, but I’m no longer afraid of the kitchen or of slavishly following recipes. I now look at recipes as suggestions. Few of these things really matter. “Mincing” vs “chopping” is how big the pieces are. It rarely matters. Try it both ways. Personal preference. Same thing with amount of boiling.
The only time I get worried about stuff with that is if I’m trying something that I know involves delicate chemistry, like curdling milk (I love Indian food so I’ve actually made my own paneer, a fresh cheese that basically starts out by making your own ricotta). There I get worried about issues like how much bubbling the milk is supposed to be doing.
But even with chemistry there’s a lot of leeway. The first time I tried to make hollandaise sauce (like the paneer, it was a “what the hell, let’s see if I can do this” experiment) I was absolutely appalled at how much butter the recipe wanted me to use. I refused, cut the amount down by 1/2 to 2/3. And it came out fine.
The thing about experiments is if they fail, so what? It will probably be edible, and also probably be funny. You’re not competing for any prizes.
I guess what I’m saying is it’s more about not caring if you fail, than about having chef instincts.
Having said that, there’s definitely talent. Among my wife’s talents, she has some intuitive affinity for herbs and spices. She just knows what to add and how much to make something interesting. Even with a recipe my stuff doesn’t taste that good.
mr. whipple
“Mincing is a cooking technique in which food ingredients are finely divided.”
Google, .4 seconds.
I’m exhausted.
artem1s
some pictures by local photographer of the damage
http://nativeorleanian.com/bp-smoke-mirrors-and-oil-2/
schrodinger's cat
@slag: I do agree that cooking is major investment of time and energy but ROI is tremendous in terms of wellness and nutrition. I also agree, it is difficult initially but it gets easier the more you do it.
Its not that hard actually, if it looks good and smells good, it will usually taste good. Also some cookbooks are better than other and KFC chicken, well the less said about it the better.
schrodinger's cat
@Randy P: If you haven’t already you should try Madhur Jaffrey’s cookbooks, they are wonderful and her directions are easy to follow.
schrodinger's cat
@mr. whipple: How is Mr Whipple?
scav
@slag: Parts of it are certainly easier learned in an apprenticeship role, fortified by a lot of inevitable practice — but there’s actually a lot more slop in it than the cookbooks make out. My mother spent hours trying to slow my great-grandmother down to capture all the handfuls of that until it looked right codified. Codified on a different day and essentially the same thing would have have different numbers. Part of the problem too is that it’s gotten a little too competitive and perfectionist. There have been a lot of burnt roasts consumed over the centuries.
scarshapedstar
Hoocoodanode and all, but I betcha they were telling their customers to buy BP so that they got a good selling price.
mr. whipple
@schrodinger’s cat:
He’s adjusting to his diet nicely. I don’t see any results, but it’s probably one of those things that take years. Thanks for asking!
slag
@mr. whipple:
What an unbelievably useless statement to someone who doesn’t already have some idea of what it really means. And the fact that you don’t realize how useless it is says everything. You don’t recognize the foundations of your own understanding. You might as well run around complaining that you just can’t understand why people can’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps. You were able to do it, after all.
Cheryl from Maryland
@schrodinger’s cat: My father is a picky eater, so there wasn’t a great deal of variety in our meals, so I didn’t know good food. But I taught myself to cook because fast food smells like old grease; FSM knows what is would be doing to my innards. I can get dinner on the table in 30 minutes, including Balloon Juice reading time. I think part of the problem is that people expect their cooking to be perfect from the get go. Like any skill, it does take time to learn, and you have to accept difficulties in the beginning. But, if it doesn’t work out, learn from your mistakes, and then make a sandwich. Soon you won’t be eating sandwiches (or you learn how to make a turkey sandwich with blue cheese mayo, apple slices and chutney. Yummy).
mr. whipple
@slag:
Google, .19 seconds: Mincing Video
It’s only as hard as one wants to make it.
slag
@Randy P:
This is true. But as we read here, there is a presumption that cooking isn’t hard (all you have to do is know how to read). Well, if it weren’t hard, you wouldn’t have to practice. You wouldn’t have failed experiments. That’s the point that people need to understand. Just saying something is easy doesn’t mean it’s easy for everyone. And nothing says “elitist” faster than assuming that it does.
Truth be told, you can learn a lot from books. You can learn to program a computer from books. But that doesn’t make it easy. In fact, in a lot of ways, programming a computer can be easier to learn than cooking because so many computer books are written under the presumption that their subject matter is hard. And that the terms they use require detailed definition. And that not everyone just knows how to do it. Cooking would be easier for more people if more of the books were written with that same frame of mind.
slag
@mr. whipple: And you should just go pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Citizen Alan: If that was the case, why hang on to 56% of the shares still?
Randy P
@slag: Look, I think I know what you’re saying. You’re saying the experienced cook knows that “normal” bits are 10 mm +- 2 mm, and that “minced” bits are 3 mm +- 0.5 mm, and you have no basis for whether to know whether the bits you’ve got are “big” or “little”.
It doesn’t matter. If you’re supposed to cut something, cut it. You’re the one eating it, so when you’re done cutting it, whatever size that is, that’s the right size.
Trying a soup recipe? Find those chunks you made are too big for YOUR TASTE? Fine. Next time say to yourself “I like my soup chunks smaller”.
J.W. Hamner
@slag:
This is certainly true, and indeed people often oversell how much “money you save” by cooking for yourself… when, in fact, you’d have to work pretty damn hard to put together a meal of an equivalent number of calories for less than your average fast food combo meal.
Ultimately that doesn’t make cooking “hard”… it just makes it a bad investment if the only things you are worried about are calories per dollar and minutes spent in the kitchen.
However, more and more evidence is showing that by choosing to min/max those particular factors of time and money spent getting food, you are making some pretty bad trade-offs in terms of health.
QuaintIrene
And the funny thing is Whole Foods is stuffed with prepared foods and meals.
MattR
@slag: May I suggest the book “Where’s Mom Now That I Need Her”? It is not exclusive to cooking, but it breaks down the basics pretty well – how to buy fruits and meats, what various cooking terms mean, some basic recipes, etc..
Scott P.
As a kid, we grew up poor, so we ate leftovers 80% of the time, and my mother wasn’t a great cook, and I’m a picky eater, so I hated them, and so I don’t like to eat leftovers to this day.
For related reasons, I will no longer wear plaid.
scav
@mr. whipple: reminds me of this from Julia’s recipe for Plain boiled rice.
And I say this as someone who only in the last year managed to get rice to work consistently. Hence my knowing Julia’s recipe by near heart.
MikeJ
@mr. whipple: All this time I’ve been skipping around the kitchen saying, “tra la la la la..”
It got no reaction out of the onions.
Scott P.
Not so good if you’re a perfectionist.
scav
@slag:
Well, if that’s your low bar for easy . . . Holy Shit.
Linda Featheringill
@slag: Cooking is hard.
You might try a cookbook for beginners. Some things are quite edible and don’t require a lot of effort.
And the gourmands would probably want to shoot me, but I think that most peas are interchangeable. Use what you have. [this is not true of beans, by the way].
Just remember to add your seasoning to be fat before you add the meat and cook the whole thing at a lower temperature. Set the heat where you think it should go and then turn it down a notch. Bon Appetit!
scav
@MikeJ:
In chorus. The Onions were Laughing.
MikeJ
@Scott P.:
If you’re a perfectionist who hasn’t learned that you will have abysmal failures before you get things perfect you need to learn it now or shoot yourself.
If you only do things that you’re perfect at the first time, you’ll never do anything more than crawl and shit your your pants. Which might explain the GOP.
srv
Warren Buffet explains how no one could have known your milkshake was crap.
Apparently, Berkshire was the largest holder of Moody’s.
slag
@schrodinger’s cat:
Agreed. But caring about wellness and nutrition are luxuries, to some extent. Especially when you’re just trying to get ready for the next day’s shift.
The issues at work here aren’t exactly mystifying. Learning to cook takes time and energy (and yes, money, especially if you screw it up a lot). And people don’t have a lot of time and energy (or money) to spend on it. I honestly wouldn’t know anything about the quality of KFC’s chicken, but I strongly suspect that this exact combination of circumstances is what keeps them in business.
tavella
Preparing tasty food takes a lot of time, investment, and energy. If you know what you are doing the individual investment per meal isn’t that big, but the investment is there.
For example, Monday night I prepared lemongrass chicken over rice vermicelli with green onions and chopped peanuts. Not that complex, but I had to have in my pantry rice vermicelli, fish sauce, roasted peanut oil (very different from peanut oil), unsalted peanuts. I had to have a car to get fresh lemongrass and green onion; using a bus would mean that it would require a great deal more time and planning, that’s more time and more energy. I had to know how to cook skewers of chicken in a pan, at what temperature, and how to know by smell and color and texture if the chicken was safely cooked. Hell, if you’ve never cooked, knowing how to slice the chicken and thread skewers, slice lemongrass, chop green onions can be intimidating. I knew automatically that ‘slice’ in the recipe meant to cut very thin disks of lemongrass, and to use only the base, but I’ve cooked with lemongrass before. I had to know how to steam rice vermicelli; all noodles are not the same and rice vermicelli will turn to a lump of paste or disintegrate if you treat it like spaghetti.
I cooked half of it, ate half of that. The other cooked quarter I will have tonight, but that meant I had to have a refrigerator that worked, and freezing the other half meant a freezer that had space.
I’m an excellent and experienced cook, so it turned out very tasty; in the hands of a less experienced cook, it might have been half-raw chicken over a lump of rice paste. This is what intimidates people. And that’s just people that do have the time and space and money and equipment and supplies. If you are in a house with a stove that only part works, a freezer that doesn’t properly freeze, if you commute two hours each way by bus and walking… picking up a bucket of fried chicken on the way is easier and allows you to spend what free time you have doing something you enjoy. I’m not going to bash people for that.
scav
@srv:
speaking of remedial cooking . . .
Randy P
@MikeJ:
I think you have to also wear a white chef’s hat and wail in an Inspector Clouseau accent, “I cannot work untair zeese conditions!”
(I’m trying to riff on your joke but to be honest I think you just won the thread and I should just leave it alone)
Allison W.
@slag:
Nope. Nice try. Cooking is a science, but its not rocket science. What you don’t know – look up. Again, lack of patience and interest.
jeffreyw
Aaaahhh!1! A foodie thread! Cooking! And I missed it because…I was cooking! LOL
licensed to kill time
You know what the hardest part of cooking a full meal is? Getting everything to come out done at the same time. That takes practice and repetition.
Well, it was hard for me, anyway.
schrodinger's cat
@slag:
I have to agree with what you are saying. In poorer countries if you are poor, you starve, here you eat calorie dense but nutritionally poor processed foods.
BTW best fast food I have ever had, Chipotle’s fast, cheap and good for you!
Serious cooking needs effort, planning and a well-equipped kitchen and a well stocked pantry. I tend to cook on the weekends for the entire week.
Randy P
@Scott P.:
Even after Thanksgiving?
You remind me of an Irish guy I knew. I’m addicted to a Vietnamese soup called pho which involves a lot of cow parts I wouldn’t normally eat (knowingly. We won’t talk about hot dogs.) When I tried to invite him to join me for a pho outing, he said “me mudder made me eat tripes and there’s no way I’m going to eat them now!’
Your mother cooked a lot of plaid food? The refrigerator was upholstered inside in plaid and you associate it with bad leftovers?
catclub
@Uloborus:
Rush Limbaugh started the sabotage theories, claiming that government ninjas directed by Obama did it to kill offshore
oil drilling.
They probably get less sensible from there.
geg6
@slag:
slag, I’m totally down with you on this.
Let me say from the start that I’m a serious amateur cook and have been since I was a little girl with a mother who was the same.
So I started out with a lot of knowledge and expertise that I absorbed from her, along with the Julia Child and other cooking shows she watched obsessively in her free time. I was not one who had to even begin to wonder how to dice or what a rolling boil is or even how to pick out a good shallot.
And I still find cooking a difficult task with a job that keeps me at work at least 50-60 hours a week. I generally do it only on the weekends because I’m too exhausted and drained to attempt it.
Sure, anyone can put out some sort of slop to eat if you want to discuss how easy cooking is. But real cooking takes time, knowledge, expertise, effort, and money (and I don’t mean “Top Chef” quality “real” cooking, just making food that delicious, that smells and looks wonderful, and that is nutritious).
Just take the shopping aspect of it, for instance. I’m single and live in an apartment, so I don’t and can’t keep a lot of fresh ingredients around nor do I have a garden (other than my herb garden). If I want to cook something, I can’t just look in my fridge and find enough fresh foods to throw something together when I get home without hitting the store or farmer’s market on my way. This can add up to an hour to my commute, since both the nice grocery store and the farmer’s market are quite a bit out of my way, through high traffic areas. If I leave work at 6 and don’t get home until 7:30, how fired up am I to whip up dinner at that point? If I was a single mother with a couple of kids or a working mom with a husband who works two jobs to make ends meet, how much worse would that be? What if those jobs were minimum wage or slightly more? How expensive would those shopping trips be? Has anyone compared the prices of fresh foods with those of processed foods?
And then, of course, there’s my expertise and knowledge. I have it. Most people I know, especially young people, have none because they have grown up on pizza delivery, takeout from Applebee’s, or the drive-through at MickeyD’s. Where are they supposed to absorb the knowledge I absorbed from my mother and older sisters who cooked dinner for the family when my mother was working on a breaking news story and couldn’t be home?
I find it very disturbing and judgmental that there are too many people here and IRL who don’t seem to understand all the difficulties people with no experience with cooking have or who don’t have the proper markets available to them or at a cost they can afford. Even the advice to get a cookbook and just follow a recipe is really dismissive of the lack of knowledge many people have. How do you know which recipe or cookbook to choose for ease, cost, and speed when you know little or nothing about cooking?
It’s more difficult than people here are letting on. I consider myself quite expert and I am under no illusions that cooking tasty, inexpensive, attractive, and nutritious meals is an easy task.
Brian J
@J.W. Hamner:
Depends on what, exactly, you want to cook. Grilling up some chicken, maybe with some sauce, and adding some potatoes and some sort of vegetable, shouldn’t take long. But the more detailed you get, with a greater number of instructions and far more ingredients that you might not have on hand, the more expensive and time consuming it becomes. If you don’t have as much leisure time and/or don’t have as many people to cook for, it might make more sense to eat out or order in.
Tazistan Jen
@Allison W.:
What I don’t get is people who can’t put themselves into someone else’s place and see that things would look different. I am responding to this particular post because it was the first one, but several people have said pretty much the same thing.
You all really can’t imagine that some people would find it hard to pick out and buy a cookbook, choose and read through a recipe, list the ingredients, go to the store and buy the ingredients, look up and watch a mincing video on YouTube, and attempt to cook a meal? Wouldn’t this seem intimidating to someone who has never done any of it before, and is working long hours for not much pay? Aren’t there a lot of skills in that list that we on Balloon Juice take for granted but not everyone has?
Allison W.
@tavella:
Your meal sounds delicious, but again, most Americans (including the poor – the main subject of this topic) do not cook meals like this. Instead of lemongrass chicken, it’s baked chicken, instead of vermicelli they have yellow rice that’s made yellow using Goya seasoning or a pre-made mix from a box. This is why I say the ‘cooking is difficult’ excuse is not valid, especially when it comes to the poor. It’s not valid for anyone really. Keep the recipes simple or stop hanging with foodies
P.S. I am not bashing foodies, I am growing into one myself, but I’ve been there and I’m not buying the author’s argument.
tavella
Well, it’s no fun being a good cook if you can’t glow with contempt about people who don’t have your experience base or research skills. Apparently, at least if you are Allison W.
geg6
@Tazistan Jen:
We had a mind meld here. Pissed me off, too. ;-)
schrodinger's cat
@Tazistan Jen: May be we should teach cooking in school, and not just to women. Making a nutritious meal is a an important skill for anyone to have.
Brian J
@geg6:
This is only tangentially related, but still amusing. When a few friends and I first lived off campus during our junior year, we lived in a townhouse that was part of a students only complex, which came partly furnished. But we still had to bring a bunch of stuff of our own. I happened to bring a lot of stuff for the kitchen, including a dish strainer. One of my friends, who was a nice guy but obviously spoiled by his parents, asked me and another friend if it was for clean or dirty dishes, no joke. He was also the guy who, when it was his turn to load the dishwasher, only filled it halfway and push the liquid soap in there.
geg6
@Allison W.:
What if you’ve never baked a chicken or your oven doesn’t keep the right temperature? And processed rice mixes are NOT nutritionally the same as regular rice or brown rice or wild rice. Might as well eat at Applebee’s.
Allison W.
@Tazistan Jen:
No. If you are too tired to cook that’s fine. Too tired to learn to cook? No. And I will repeat: stop trying to be the next Top Chef, unless you have a family of serious food snobs, keep it simple. Not every dish has to be made from scratch or be worthy of praise from Julia Childs. If you want to get fancy, do it on Sunday’s or holidays or at bbq’s like my family used to.
I cannot repeat this enough: Keep your meals simple and cooking will not be intimidating.
scav
@Tazistan Jen: There’s definitely a knowledge gap because we’re dealing more and more with a group of people that have never seen home cooking done. Hence my bringing up apprenticeship. The kids of immigrants to this country seem to have better health, or at least are less obese, than later ones which is an interesting factoid. Cause it looks like it’s not just poverty, it’s something cultural. Paper.
Still, cooking is not rocket science and can be done with fairly simple tools in simple conditions, despite all the gadgets that have evolved over time.
MattR
@tavella: This was a great summary. The only thing I would add is that, like with most things, people who are inexperienced are afraid to make mistakes or do something “wrong” because they don’t know what the results will be. Most of the time it is no big deal, but occassionally it can really screw up the dish. But if you don’t know which is which this can be very intimidating.
Allison W.
@geg6:
OMG! you really don’t get it. I’m telling you what you would find at the dinner table of a poor person and you are telling me the rice is not nutritional – so what? this is what a lot of them eat. Your other questions must be snark – rich or poor, you don’t know this look it up. That’s common sense.
schrodinger's cat
@Brian J: I was a terrible cook initially, I must have made every mistake in the book. I had two wonderful housemates, who made great food, that was not too fussy. When my experiments were disastrous, they shared what they had made, so I didn’t go hungry. Watching them gave me confidence, if they could do it so could I and in time I did.
Randy P
I think what I’ve been taking for granted here is being in a supportive household. It’s OK to fail. It’s OK to share a laugh if the results are funny. It’s OK to put something bizarre on the table. The effort is appreciated and like I said, it will probably be edible.
What if you aren’t? What if your spouse is (a) inclined to criticize everything you do and (b) not inclined to help? I can see there being little motivation to learn by doing in that environment.
I’m not a foodie. When cooking for myself, I go with Dave Barry’s classification of cuisine into “Food” or “Food Heated Up”. And I happen to like Goya yellow rice.
@Brian J: I did that with the dishwasher a lot more recently than college. We were out of the dishwasher soap. I called the resulting kitchen full of foam my “I Love Lucy” moment.
But again, it was fine because failure isn’t a big deal in our house. It was hilarious. I laughed the hardest. It’s still funny.
MikeJ
@Punchy: What’s wrong with making money? Honestly, I don’t understand why it would be an issue.
flukebucket
@slag:
Slowly but surely you are helping me better understand my daughters.
But when it comes to cooking just remember that whether you dice, slice, mince, chop, puree, bake, boil or barbecue in the end it all turns to shit anyway.
In times like these I really miss BoB. He could tell you very quickly how cheap it is to make a pizza or a beef stew to serve over rice.
geg6
@Allison W.:
Did you even read the article or the one it riffs from that is linked to my link? I have to ask because you seem to be saying that cooking any kind of crap is just fine. The whole point of the Pandagon post (and the one in Salon that it referenced) is how hard it is for many Americans to eat nutritiously and inexpensively.
If you are advocating that people use convenience foods like rice mixes, you aren’t really concerned about what gets cooked. In which case, why bother with the effort when you can stop and get takeout with the same amount of processing, salt, and fat.
No one is talking about Top Chef cooking here. They are talking about the basics, including the nutritional value.
licensed to kill time
__
When I first roasted a chicken, not to mention a turkey, I was a nervous wreck. There’s nothing like taking a bird out of the oven and cutting into it to find it still raw in the middle.
This leads me to another thought: how the news media has done a fine job of making everybody paranoid about food and food prep. Everything’s gonna kill ya, your kitchen sponge, the way you defrost meat, the chicken juice on your cutting board (we call it ebola in our household, as in “watch out, there’s ebola on that knife!”) you name it, it’s dangerous! I hate being afraid of chicken.
Allison W.
If anyone wants to genuinely learn the science of cooking – watch Alton brown on the Food Network. If you don’t have cable – he has a book which you can probably find in the library. You don’t have to make any of his recipes, but the guy teaches you the science of cooking.
Tazistan Jen
@schrodinger’s cat:
That is a great idea. Also, handling finances. So many people haven’t got the first clue.
geg6
@Allison W.:
No, you’re the one that isn’t getting it. Read my link and the link to the original Salon article in it. The whole point is how can poor and working class people eat BETTER.
Jeebus.
slag
@geg6:
This is a really interesting point. We tend to talk about cooking as a pre-determined harbinger of good health, but really, there are a ton of things people can cook from home that will not be much better for them than a lot of takeout stuff. Cooking healthy foods (which seems to be the whole purpose) is the hardest part. If I put a frozen pizza in my oven at 425 for 10 minutes, am I cooking?
schrodinger's cat
@licensed to kill time: OMG cooking turkey for the first time was scary, four hours before the guests were going to arrive, the damn bird was still frozen and I had 15 people coming for dinner!
Two of them vegetarians and one who didn’t eat turkey. I thawed the turkey in the bathtub! Kittehs wuz very curious. It all turned out OK in the end!
geg6
@slag:
I would venture to say that, according to Allison W., you are.
schrodinger's cat
@slag: No, that would be reheating. Pizza is one thing I can’t seem to get right, its either overdone or has a soggy crust. I am going to try grilling it this summer.
J.W. Hamner
@Allison W.:
There are two different distinctions being made in this discussion that are both using the word “hard.”
I don’t think anyone can reasonably argue that there are not a ton of simple meals that can be made with a minimum of technical proficiency and without cooking knowledge… people like Mark Bittman and Rachael Ray have careers based on the concept.
However, there is another kind of “hard” that is about spending the time picking out a recipe, shopping for the ingredients, preparing said ingredients, and then cooking them all up.
I think it’s quite clearly a lot easier… and probably cheaper… to just get a meal out, or throw something in the microwave.
I don’t think it’s quite fair to completely ignore the time and money commitment that cooking requires, even if people can easily learn to feed themselves well, without knowing how to fix a broken hollandaise.
russell
Yay YouTube!
Last year my wife and I joined a CSA, only for fish. We live near the ocean.
We went the first week to pick up our fish only to find it was a whole fish. It was gutted, but other than that it was exactly as pulled from the ocean.
So, we taught ourselves to fillet cod, pollock, and flounder from YouTube videos. The whiting we cooked whole.
By the end of the season we were pretty good at it.
I’m not sure if it really takes all that much time or money to learn to cook, but it does take attention. Lots of folks work 50+ hours a week these days, plus another hour or two a day getting to and from.
So, spare attention cycles to learn fun new skills like cooking from scratch using fresh ingredients may just not be there.
My wife’s a great cook so I don’t cook so much anymore. When I was single I had a collection of dishes I could make in one pot in 20 minutes, but they were stuff like soba noodles + steamed broccoli + feta cheese + sesame oil and seeds. I’m not sure that sounds good to everyone.
Matt
This “cooking is hard for poor people” just doesn’t cut it. Maybe “cooking is hard for poor white Americans”. Back in Idaho, the white people’s carts are filled with soda and packaged foods, but the Mexicans’ are full of all sorts of good stuff. If cooking has become hard, it’s because Americans have been trained to be helpless.
soonergrunt
OT–under the heading of What the Fuck, Over?!
12 dead in U.K. shooting rampage.
I didn’t think this was possible there after the Dunblane Massacre in 1996.
Article ends with the obligatory “I can’t believe he would do that — he was a quiet little fellow.”
geg6
@slag:
Even using an easy and quick recipe can be not as easy as it seems.
I have a fantastic marinara that I make. Has about 4 or 5 ingredients and is done in the time it takes to boil the water for the pasta and cook it. But you have to use good ingredients (simple cooking is often the most expensive because the ingredients are much more important). So, for a poorer person, the olive oil may be too pricey and there is nothing than can substitute for it. I tried using small, finely chopped yellow onion instead of the more expensive shallots and the taste was bitter. You can use fresh tomatoes instead of the imported can of San Marzano tomatoes and it tastes fine, but don’t use a can of Hunt’s or it adds even more bitterness than the onions.
Someone could try this same recipe using cheaper ingredients and be very disappointed in my recipe and cooking expertise because it would taste like bitter, acidic garbage. And then try it using the good ingredients and eat it every day of his or her life because it’s so delicious.
licensed to kill time
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yeah, turkey’s like the great mystery until you’ve done it a few times, and since it generally only gets cooked once a year you don’t really have that much chance to practice. I guess that’s why gramma’s turkey is usually the best, because she’s been practicing for a long time.
geg6
@Matt:
See post #6, which began the discussion. Also made the point we were discussing Americans in post #104.
That said, you’re point is correct. Poor people the world over eat better food than American poor people do. The difference is that Americans get a higher calorie count out of their foods, if little nutrition.
Ash Can
@schrodinger’s cat:
LOLZ! That has all the makings of a boffo YouTube video.
Fair Economist
Nothing like it in what sense? In the sense that it’s incredibly easy to fix it by putting it back in the oven?
I’m with the people who say cooking is easy. Typically we broil a meat in the oven (check every 5 minutes until done), microwave a vegetable, and serve a salad. 5 minutes of work and 10-15 minutes of paying attention to the oven. Maybe add a second microwaved vegetable. Hot fresh food tastes good just like that. Sometimes we’ll put a sauce on the meat or some spice on the vegetables (basil, thyme, whatever, it all works). Fancy or complicated food takes work, but cooking per se doesn’t.
J.W. Hamner
@geg6:
Now this I don’t buy. It strikes me as a foodie/experienced palate thing, and not a legitimate criticism of “easy meals”. Remember, our baseline is not the “best pasta sauce at your favorite Italian bistro” but convenience foods… and I have a hard time believing that a marinara sauce that beats a microwave meal can’t be made with Hunts tomatoes, vegetable oil, and a yellow onion.
R-Jud
@soonergrunt:
Yeah, this is pretty crazy: 12 dead and at least 25 injured. I winced when a lady on the news said “This is the kind of thing that happens in America, not here.” Cumbria is a beautiful county and probably full of holidaymakers at the moment, since UK kids are off school this week (we were looking to head up there next week ourselves).
schrodinger's cat
It is possible to make nutritious food that tastes good on a budget, but it does take some planning and effort. In my opinion it is worth the investment in time and money, because one can’t put a premium on one’s health. I tend to cook on the weekends, I plan what we are going to eat, before I go to the grocery store and cook for the entire week. It usually takes most of my Saturday afternoon and evening. Also one way to transform ingredients that are not fresh, i.e canned tomatoes, frozen veggies etc, using herbs and spices in abundance, also fresh limes/lemons and garlic.
licensed to kill time
@Fair Economist:
In the sense that you’ve worked your ass off trying to get everything to come out done at the same time and people are sitting around the table and you cut into the damn thing and it’s raw in the middle. “Oops! gotta put it back in the oven for god knows how long, take some mashed potatoes before they get cold…”
Yes, it gets easier with practice. I’m talking about the learning process.
schrodinger's cat
@Ash Can: I should have done that! I was in panic mode and freaking out completely, my sink was too small to fit the 17-20 pound turkey. I had to put it under running water to get it to thaw quickly hence the tub.
geg6
@Fair Economist:
Well, it’s nice that you have the money and time to shop to buy non-processed meats and vegetables and have obviously done enough cooking and have the required appliances to get it done right.
The point is that not everyone in America is as fortunate as you are as to have the easy access to a market, the time in your day to shop and cook (even in a microwave), the money and access to buy fresh vegetables, and the comfort of knowing if you burn the crap out of that meat in the oven because you don’t really know how to cook or your appliances aren’t reliable that you haven’t thrown an entire day’s paycheck down the drain.
someguy
We clearly need a new government program to teach people to cook and shop and mind their nutrition.
We could call it “home economics” and implement it in the high schools.
Wait a minute…
Naaah. The wingerz would never buy it.
geg6
@J.W. Hamner:
Um, no. It’s not a foodie thing. Bitter acid as a sauce isn’t appetizing even on a McDonald’s hamburger. And that is what it tastes like. Bitter.Acid.
slag
@Matt:
Hard is not the same as impossible. But apparently, when I’m thinking to myself, “why is this so hard for people to understand?”, I should be thinking, “why is this so impossible for people to understand?”. Because it seems to be a more accurate question.
someguy
@geg6:
An entire day’s paycheck? WTF are these hypothetical poor people eating? Kobe fucking beef roast? Christ. Even my local butcher sells grass fed organic sirloin for $14/pound…
geg6
I just want to say I am more than a little amazed at how little understanding of the poor or working poor’s lives is being displayed here. Especially the urban poor/working poor.
We BJers really are a bunch of overprivileged elitists.
Hiram Taine
@licensed to kill time: Yep, getting everything to come out at the same time is definitely a learned skill, I know people who have been cooking for decades that still have a hard time with it.
It’s interesting to me that no one has mentioned cleanup time, cleaning after someone that is a messy (but good) cook can be a real put off to cooking, it can be quite time consuming and, unlike cooking, it’s not at all creative, just sheer drudgery.
geg6
@someguy:
I know people that take home (not earn, but take home) less than $30 or $40 a day (some of them are my students’ parents). To lose a chicken that you’ve paid $8 or $9 for or a cheap cut of beef that cost the same is a disaster for them. A literal disaster. It may not be the entire paycheck, but I guarantee they were counting on that lasting the week due to the indulgence of the price.
licensed to kill time
@Hiram Taine:
Urgh, cleanup. In our house the rule is “One cooks, the other cleans”. It’s a rotating job.
J.W. Hamner
@geg6:
I’m sorry, I just don’t agree with your assessment… here’s a recipe highly rated by 746 people that doesn’t call for San Marzanos or shallots. Nothing there is particularly pricey… even with olive oil, you don’t have to spend more than $10 for a liter of it… and even if you consider that a “privileged” purchase, there is no way you’ll convince me substituting canola oil is going to make it taste worse than McDonalds.
Hiram Taine
@someguy: By the time a single mom pays taxes, insurance, childcare and transportation for work there’s not always that much left. I watched my three grandkids for my daughter summer before last while she worked because if she had paid childcare it wasn’t worth her even keeping the job, and she’s married with a husband that makes a very good middle class income.
It’s the difference between gross and net, a lot of people have a very low net paycheck.
scav
@slag: well, your definition of easy was pretty impossible further up. I’m not saying you don’t have some points, but insisting on the impossibility of failure in learning to cook? Poor people all over the world are managing to cook meals they enjoy, some of them without access to supermarkets and running water to put another baseline on it.
geg6
@J.W. Hamner:
You want to nitpick the recipe. Jeebus.
It was just a fucking example of other fucking difficulties in cooking once you correct for the fucking difficulties of time and fucking ease of preparation that poor and inexperienced cooks also find to be barriers to cooking at home.
I was wrong to begin the whole conversation. This has turned into one of the stupidest arguments I’ve ever had, mainly because no one has gone and read the article (or articles) and the one person who has thinks processed foods are just as good as fresh, but somehow better than fast food.
Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!
bemused
Some people hate to cook because they don’t really care what goes in their stomachs as long they can just pop some frozen thing in the oven or get take out every day. I would hate eating like that all the time so therefore I cook.
People’s tastes in food change over time if they are exposed to different things but it can take awhile for some. I know people who love cheap white sliced bread, processed bright yellow ‘american’ cheese & other poor excuses for food. They are so used to the taste of preservatives & god knows what all in that stuff, they think real food without all that garbage is strange tasting.
It’s a damn shame there are no cooking classes in most schools anymore. Kids would at least learn to cook some simple meals. I remember having cooking lessons in 4-H as a kid too. Far fewer kids get even that basic training anymore.
Lysana
@someguy:
I had that course for three years in junior high back in the 70s. One semester per year, the other spent in wood shop/drafting classes. Mandatory. I learned how to sew by hand, use a sewing machine, set the table, and make a meal from scratch alongside basics of hygiene, floral arrangement, and how to balance a checkbook (by hand!) over those three years. I still have the pillow I made, the wrap skirt being far too small for me now.
Trust me, you start in junior high on that stuff. Get enough of it in before the entire crew is a bundle of hormones.
BenA
@geg6:
I understand what you are saying, and access to affordable produce is an issue for a lot of urban markets… that being said there’s no way going to a fast food place is cheaper than cooking at home. A box of pasta costs .75 cents and a can of cheap tomato sauce isn’t much more. Rice is cheap. Even chicken. Even the KFC example mentioned above: $4.99 for a couple of pieces of chicken: You can almost buy a whole chicken for $4.99.
This is especially if you are feeding a family. You can cook for 4-5 people much cheaper per person than just cooking for one person. You waste a lot less too.
My parents were living hand to mouth while my mother went to school when I was a kid. We lived on pasta and rice.
Time and exhaustion probably play a more important roll. Of course it also might be a vicious circle: You don’t feel like cooking because you are tired…. you’re tired because you have bad nutrition and eat fast food.
geg6
@BenA:
This, but only partly. The other point is that pasta and rice are not all there is to good nutrition.
I know what it is like to live as the working poor. For most of my childhood, that’s what we were. For a long period in my late 20s/early 30s, that’s what I was. I’m still not wealthy or even slightly well-off. So I know something about this.
But apparently, because my mother watched Julia Child and never served processed foods (even if we kids had to cook them because she was working), I’m some sorta foodie. I hate to break to everyone, but if you cook from Julia Child’s The Art of French Cooking, the ingredients are all fresh but very inexpensive and mostly easy to find. But the four or five hours it takes to make it makes it impossible for almost any working mother like my mom to make it unless you have four daughters like she did.
Jenn
It sounds like some folks are conflating issues, and thereby talking past one another.
There’s the “is it possible to cook a tasty healthful meal for little money or time?” issue.
The “do you have the know-how and equipment with which to cook such a meal?” question.
And the “do you have access to the stores in which to buy the food?” kicker.
Among others. Those are 3 very different sets of issues. One of my dearest friends can’t look at her cupboards and see meals there; when I’m over visiting, frequently I end up cooking. (I’m a soup maven — there is nothing easier than a good soup!) She’s always amazed at what can be made from the odds and ends in her cupboards. Part of the issue, too, is that cooking feels difficult and time-consuming to her, even though it doesn’t have to be, so she psychs herself out before she’s able to get going, and gain the experience that really can make this all go quickly.
Yeah, it is really easy to whip together a tasty, healthful meal in a short period of time.
BUT that’s predicated on being able to get to a grocery store, having equipment on which to cook, and knowing what to buy and how to prepare it, and having the time and emotional wherewithal to learn if you don’t already. Which, if you’re on the poverty treadmill, can be difficult.
malraux
Yeah, I think this thread clarified a lot for me. Using packaged processed foods in a home kitchen isn’t all that different from ordering packaged processed foods cooked in an industrial kitchen. But apparently a lot of people don’t see that. But hey, I can find a video of someone dicing an onion, so clearly everyone has the knowledge of knife care and maintenance, proper technique, etc that go into something as simple as cutting an onion.
J.W. Hamner
@geg6:
Look, all I’m saying is that it’s possible to cook simply and cheaply in a way that tastes better than convenience food. This isn’t meant as a way to say “poor people are lazy”… as I think figuring out what to cook on a budget by using sales and whatnot is extremely hard and time consuming… your argument just seems extremely fatalistic and without hope to me. Like the only option is to get everyone out of poverty or start mandating menus for people under a certain income level… I’d like to think there is some hope in trying to educate people and getting them into a better relationship with their food.
BenA
@geg6:
I’ve been there as a kid… and somewhat as a young adult. I agree with you and rice and pasta isn’t great nutrition in and of itself… but it’s dirt cheap.
I’d say the single biggest difference between being urban poor and being rural poor (which is how I spent about half my childhood) is access to fresh fruits and veggies. Which I had in abundance as a kid. My father, who worked 7 days a week, cooked because my mother was an AWFUL cook… and we ate really well on a very low income because of this.
I don’t quite understand the aversion some people have to cooking though… but I do understand the “It’s hard” argument. It is hard, until you get it… and then it becomes almost obviously easy. I love to cook, even though my wife does most of it.. and I feel lucky I had a father who cooked because it probably elimated a who set of pre-conceptions I didn’t have to deal with.
Reading is hard when you don’t know how, as is riding a bike… cooking is kind of the same thing and I think this is where a lot of the frustration comes in from people who can’t cook… and the disbelief of people who can. I can’t skate, both my kids and my wife think it’s easy… and don’t get why it’s so difficult for me.
licensed to kill time
__
This is quite true. As someone who has spent a lot of time in places like that, I’d also point out that it’s highly time and labor intensive. Women spend all day fetching water, walking to the local bazaar or market to haggle over prices, sitting on mud floors grinding spices and chopping food, often cooking over a wood fire or a single kerosene burner. It’s often the main thing they do all day, hours and hours of work. When eating is the high point of the day, a lot of effort is put into it.
geg6
@J.W. Hamner:
Well, I agree with your goal and I’m not trying to sound fatalistic and hopeless about the situation. What I’m trying to get across is that it just isn’t as easy to do as people seem to think it is. It is very difficult for many, many people for many, many reasons. I wish we just could get everyone access to fresh vegetables and fruits, whether at the grocery store, a farmers’ market, or a community garden. That would solve a lot of the problems of the poor and working poor when it comes to cost, access, and nutrition. Even time and expertise, when you think about it. Raw fruits and veggies are delicious.
Elisabeth
@Lysana:
Ha! I made a wrap skirt, too. I have no idea where it is. I also learned to keep the cabinet doors closed because it’s a safety hazard. To this day (30 years later), I’m anal about those doors being closed.
BenA
@Elisabeth:
The tall and clumsy thank you. The corner of those things hurt like heck.
Matt
This thread winding down, perhaps a hackneyed observation is in order: Spare time needed to prepare meals can be found in time currently used to watch tv/read blogs.
geg6
@Matt:
Nahhh. I do most of my blog reading at work. ;-)
Violet
@geg6:
Just getting back to this thread. Wanted to say that I appreciate that cooking can be intimidating, although in my opinion it’s not really difficult. By saying “if you can cook, you can read” I don’t mean to discount the challenges inherent in getting the food to one’s house and keeping it there, especially in poor, urban neighborhoods. When one counts the time it takes to cook, the shopping part has to be included. I wish there were more fresh fruit and veg available to people living in poor, urban neighborhoods. We should have tax incentives to make that happen…but that’s another topic.
I think the availability of cheap, filling food makes it easy for people to choose not to cook. I say this as someone who lived for several years where if I didn’t cook, I didn’t eat. Bread was the only pre-made thing I had access to, and that usually ran out or went bad before I could get more. There were days when I would have done just about anything to avoid cooking, but I was hungry. So I cooked. I worked long hours and I was tired. But I cooked. Because I had to eat. And if I’d had a choice, I’m sure I would have been at McDonald’s a few times. I was tired. I was poor. I was hungry. McDonald’s fits that situation very nicely. So I do get why people go there, especially when they don’t have a supermarket nearby.
But having had that experience, I see the other side. I didn’t know the first thing about cooking at the beginning. I didn’t have google or even a cookbook. I’d never cooked real meals before. But I was hungry, so I learned. I didn’t have a choice. And I was super poor so I ate everything I cooked, even when it went badly. I couldn’t afford not to. So I get how a botched meal means money down the drain. I had a few things go terribly wrong. And when it went bad, there was no supermarket nearby or prepared foods. I either tried again, or if the larder was empty, I went hungry. And there were a few nights I went hungry.
And you know what? I learned to cook. I also learned not to waste anything. I learned what keeps, what doesn’t, how to buy what I need, how to budget for a week or two until I got to the market again. I learned, without anyone telling me how. I learned because I had to. I would have been very hungry had I not.
So I see both sides. I know what it feels like to be tired, hungry and poor. I also know what it feels like to learn to cook without anyone to help. And if it’s possible to do without a cookbook, it’s even more possible to do in the days of google.
But for most Americans, it’s a choice. The number of people living in the US who have to cook or not eat is probably very small. And on nights when you’re tired and hungry, that fast food sure is a nice, easy, fast option. So I get that too.
I’m with the people who suggest teaching budgeting, finances and cooking in schools. Those three things would probably do more to help our next generation than learning a lot of things they’re required to learn. And I’m for tax incentives to get fresh produce into the poor urban areas. And I’m for a lot of other things along those lines. But that’s another topic.
scav
@malraux:
actually, no, all that crap isn’t really needed for cutting an onion. The important things are getting the skin off and keeping your fingers out from under the knife blade. After a few tries, you figure out ways to make it easier for you and the results may get prettier — I think the crying bit is pretty much inevitable. Because plain cooking isn’t really about that knife care, size of mincing crap. Most of that is haute-haute cuisine or status-chic-competitive-cooking or production-line cooking, all of which have their place, but they are not the sine qua non of putting food on the table. While preparing meals at home isn’t always practical or practicable given lifestyles and local environments and may involve a lot of effort, the bulk of the fundamental techniques are not that much more difficult than those need to drive a car or figure out just what button does what on a VCR or TIVO or whatever. I’m not saying home cooking is a cure all and required, let alone the better option for all people under all circumstances. Yeah, there’s a learning curve. And as one learns more stuff, one can do flashier and flashier things. They sometimes make the food taste better, they sometimes are just fribbles — oh look, I peeled the asparagus. But you can cook a fair number of meals with basic unglamorous techniques.
malraux
See, that’s exactly what I mean. Onion slicing shouldn’t involve any crying. If you’re crying, you’re doing it wrong. If you don’t want to have crying eyes or risk taking off a finger, yes you need a surprisingly diverse set of skills.
Lysana
@malraux:
How is “cut the onion under running water” a diverse set of skills?
malraux
@Lysana: That strikes me as a horrid solution. The solution to a dull knife isn’t to add a lubricant.
Jack
Learning to cook is only part of the problem, but ties in to the rest of it. Time is one of the biggest bits. Unless you live within walking distance of a shop, getting the food itself costs £4 in bus fare and takes at least and hour and a half of your time. Oh, and the wonderful experience that is lugging 30 kilos of shopping through two bus changes, half a miles walk and two flights of stairs.
This means you’re buying for the whole week at least, and either have to spend an entire day cooking to get enough portions to last you the week or take another hour at least out of your day each day to cook. Providing that you’re organised enough to use everything at the right times before it goes out of date of course.
This is where knowing how to cook comes in. Yes, there are a few dishes that are easy to create, don’t rely on perishables and are hard to fuck up, I found out through my first few terms of college that you get bored of those five dishes fairly quickly. Others are easy to fuck up. I’ve got foodies in the family who have trained me to make perfect bolognaise, but I can still screw it up and end up with something fairly unappetising, especially when I’ve cooked nine portions to try last me as long as possible.
Without that kind of training, it would be hard to convince myself to bother. If i thought there was a good 80% chance that I’d just not really want to eat whatever I’d just cooked up, that it simply wasn’t appetising, I’d have a hard time convincing myself to go chop onions, veg, fry meat, mix together, cook for an hour and a half and then spend another half hour cleaning up when I could eat an equally unappetising, barely more expensive but far easier tesco value ready meal or just wolf down a few spoonfuls of peanut butter and eat something at the canteen tomorrow.