this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
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If food is as much of a time sink as sleep you either sleep too little, or eat way too much
If you considering purcahsing and travel time to the store, recipe research, cooking the recipe, eating the food, cleaning the kitchen and the dishes, it adds up to a lot of time each day/week. Maybe not as much as sleeping but as a single adult living alone i probably spend at least 2-3 hours worth a day on the above tasks.
Store is like 2 hours a week. Less if you live at a place where groceries can be delivered. Just get your weekly food at once. Save on gas and time.
Cleanup is usually 15 minutes for my family. Including the mess my toddler makes.
That won't leave hours a day if you ask me.
Maybe 2.5 hours a day if you include breakfast and lunch. I can't live on 2.5 hours of sleep.
Food can also be 5 minutes a day if you use paper plates and microwave pizza pops for every meal.
You’re paying with something else if it’s not your time.
Eating proper nutritious meals and not having others to share the burden with adds time. 15 minutes of cleanup for 4 people would be an hour for a single person, granted there is less overall to do, but now you need to each task alone.
I dont know why people downvote the user above so much but he’s got a point about efficiency.
You can easily cook for 2-3 days by making bigger portions during working days for example. That means you cook 2-3 days per work week max. Theres a lot of healthy dishes that take 20-40 min to make. You go to the store once for the whole work week which including planning takes 1h and saves time and money as you dont buy crap by going all the time for small things. This means you spend on average no more than 2h30 min in food related stuff. This assumes you get food at work for lunch and breakfasts are fast so not including these (like toast or scrambled eggs or protein shakes). Im asuming you enjoy eating your food so not counting that. So basically 30 min a day are wasted on food stuff during the work week.
Weekends are weekends you have more time to cook more special dishes or go out. I count that as leisure time.
Cleaning the house takes 3h max (30 min bathroom, 30 min floors and 2h extra for washing clothes) providing you clean after you eat and if you dirty something.
I get its annoying to do all these tasks and sometimes your tired and postpone them or take more time than it should but if your organized it’s not that much particularly if you split them with more people.
Meal prep is an end to a means, you’re not getting the variety that your body needs and quite frankly, a lot of people don’t like microwave food, let alone 5 meals in a row.
If you aren’t spending your time doing it, you’re either buying pre preprocessed stuff, or are giving up fresh quality food for microwaved repetitiveness.
Thats simply not true. You can cut a lot of different vegetables fry some meat and do some rice on the side quite fast. Change meat for fish use potoatoes instead of rice, make a salad, … Thats healthy and nutritious. You dont need to eat the same everyday. You can spend more time in more complex dishes also.
What part exactly requires hours to make and is needed for a healthy diet? How is microwaved food bad (a quick search shows the loose in nutrients is minimal)? You can find many south european cultures dishes which are easy to make and these tend to be among the longest lived individuals in the planet. What nutrients are missing in these simple dishes? How can thse people live so many years in these unhealthy diets that miss variaty?
I think people take pride in cooking long recipes and thats great for when you have people over for passing time but neither is needed for esting healthy tasty food. If so please find new recipes.
Microwaving food removes all texture and transforms the food.
The fact that you think it’s the same as cooking everyday is quite frankly astonishing. Yeah if you don’t care about taste, texture, flavour, etc. microwaving meal prepped food scan save you a bunch of time.
How would meal prepping 5 different meals to deteriorate in the fridge be even remotely similar to making it that day? You’re giving up almost everything to save 30 minutes a day. Thats a terrible deal lmfao.
I think you misunderstand the idea. I dont mealprep 5 meals as I find that extremely boring. I just cook a bigger portion so I only cook every 2-3 days and reheat the day after.
Im sorry but I can barely notice the difference with microwaved food and I find hard to believe someone would find it so noticeable. Maybe if you eat steak or something sure but for most foods come on. Also were talking healthy food here like lentils, soups, etc. Can you really notice its heated? It depends of the food of course. If you’ve been going out to a restaurant Im sure youve been fed microwaved stuff at some point withour even noticing it.
Putting plates in the dishwasher is hardly more work than using disposable plates, aspecially after you consider the additional trips of taking the trash out
It doesn't take that long if you clean as you go. Something has to simmer, boil, or bake? Clean during that time.
When I cook, the only thing left after I eat is cleaning the pot/pan used to cook with (which was soaking in hot soapy water while I eat). I also just meal prep food for the whole week on Sundays. Maybe 3-4h of total work if I'm doing more complex recipes.
There are a fuck ton of quick, easy, tasty, and healthy recipes out there.
How do you not include breakfast and lunch as food prep?
Can't speak for them, but I'm not a breakfast person and I eat lunch at work, either in the cafeteria or eating out (or not at all, that also happens on occasion). So I really only need to prepare one meal a day during the week. And even if I get more fancy for that, it takes maybe one hour to make and clean up, not several. I'm genuinely curious what you all are regularly cooking that it takes this long.
Store is 2 hours a week? For me it’s more like 1 hour every other week. What are y’all doing at the store that it takes so long.
Driving to and from
No loading / unloading the dishwasher, cleaning pots and pans. Ingredient prep like chopping etc cooking....
I DK dude seems like you are microwaving everything or just wiping a table down and don't do much in the kitchen....
Shopping, cooking and cleanup are part of food.
Each meal can easily be considered 1-2 hours of labor.
That's if you're doing it inefficiently as possible, or are just starting.
Fill the sink with water and soap and wash up as you cook, and let your cooking pan/pot/whatever soak while you eat so cleanup only takes a few minutes.
Hell, if you git gud enough, you can cook 2-3 meals in that time period and have food for the whole week.
Most meals should only take about 30m of actual activity, especially if you choose recipes that are single sheet pan/skillet, or slow cooked.
Cutting corners on quality and standards saves time yes.
How can it be not going to the store everyday and meal prep cutting corners on quality and standards?
Its just being efficient. I go to the store once and I dont meal prep for the week thats boring but do bigger portions so I have food for more than one day.
Is heating the food from yesterday somehow bad now? People are entitled to their opinion but regeated food that is not old smells and tastes fine sometimes even better like pasta.
Lol @ leftovers. Try that in a household of 5 people, 3 of them always hungry teens.
You just cook more. You plan for it. When you cook a meal you think how much you need to put then put 2x surely it will last 2x the time. Else adjust next time ti even more! The trick is it doesn’t take double the time cooking double the food.
You obviously haven't cooked for the scenario I presented. I'd need another stove/oven.
It depends of the meal but sometimes I use 2 big pans and a big pot to cook if its a lot. Its true a normal sized pan and pot would not work though.
No ones said groceries everyday, but 2 hours divided by 7 days is about 20 minutes a day.
It is efficient, but you won’t have texture in your food, you are absolutely giving up something to save on that time. Even cutting your potatoes and cooking them everyday wouldn’t be the same as cutting and cooking that day. And buying pre prepped is more pricey as well, so you’re spending money to save time.
Yes, microwaving food isn’t Magic, it destroyed texture and changes to structure in a lot of food as well.
If time is tight you can buy online. I think you can buy for the work week in 1h. I dont mind to go to the shop on the weekends and be more spontaneous. For me the worst part is the work week as time is actually more tight there.
Microwaves food doesnt taste as good as freshly cooked but it comes quite close if you cook it the day before.
Its funny at work we had some voluntary health tests to help people get healthy. The ones cooking healthy meals that get microwaved all the time and do sports all had healthy ranges. The ones complaining about microwaved food being not tasty, having a paladar, you name it and eating fatty food and not working out many had already cholesterol before being 30… Its an anecdote but I think sometimes people like to make things harder than they are. Just make simple food, reheat it, sleep well and train. If you eat healthy and you dont exercise your gonna get bad. Same if you dont sleep and same if you only eat crap or tasty salty sweef fatty food.
Buying online is more expensive than in store, again giving up something instead of time.
Not even freshly cooked, a microwaved pizza and one warmed up on a cast iron are two entirely different experiences and time factors. You’re giving something up when you want to save that time, and most of the time it’s just money, but that’s not a solution for everyone.
If you make 70 an hour and takes you 1h to go and delivery is like 10 your saving like 30-40 or something after taxes. If you need to drive mught as well consider the fuel and depreciation of your car. I personally feel it’s faster to go for me as I just walk than to use their websites or apps and have ti wait thogh but its a valid option for some
What percentage of the populations makes $70 an hour? Holy hell.
Mate, you're so right, can't believe some of the takes on this! If I want to cook something a bit more involved, I nearly always make a big pot and freeze portions. People are complaining about texture, but it's easy enough to: make a base out of your protein, sauce, spices and seasoning, and the sturdier veggies (eg Bolognese, chilli, curry, random sauce for pasta, their texture won't suffer noticeably); freeze; then reheat and serve with a freshly cooked relevant carb (pasta, rice, couscous), and some kind of fresh green like salad or steamed broccoli. Or not! If you're short on time just have your defrosted meal with toast and it's still 80% as nutritious as a fresh home cooked meal This is coming from someone who worked in kitchens, including moderately fancy ones, for years, so I know how to do the opposite approach too. But now I have two kids, cooking something effortful without planning for leftovers feels like too much of a time-luxury.
Did I say anything about cutting quality and standards?
Soaking dishes is a corner cutting, making multiple meals to microwave or reheat is lowering your quality and standards.
Single pan dishes have all the same texture, it’s lower quality as well, etc.
Yes, every suggestion you had is one of those.
What corners do you cut with soaking the dishes? In what universe is doing the same thing you'd be doing anyway, just at the same time as another thing, cutting a corner? Pedants are everywhere in this damn thread lmao
You can wreck cooking equipment by soaking them. You just replace it more often and you won’t even put the reason why it’s happening together.
Doing things correctly while not wrecking stuff is being pedantic according to who?
I'd suggest stop using paper cooking equipment. Cast iron, sure, probably don't soak it, but you also shouldn't be using cast iron for things that may need soaking. Anything else, if you wreck it by soaking it... Get better stuff, man.
lol, it’s the cheap stuff you soak since you don’t care about it.
If you soak expensive equipment, holy hell you’re just wasting money, buy the cheap stuff and ruin that.
Soaking a sheet pan is a great way to get it rusty, soaking any multi material pot can cause water to get places it shouldn’t and expand and break stuff.
You don’t soak cooking equipment unless you plan on tossing far sooner than other stuff, sorry. You can water your money replacing equipment every few years while other last decades. It’s a simple concept, time or something else like money, you aren’t saving anything by soaking dishes, despite the lies people perpetuate about soaking. It’s corner cutting that costs you later.
How is soaking dishes corner cutting?
Good food can be reheated and still be good. Meal prep is pretty widely practiced, so there are great recipes out there. And people have been eating leftovers since there have been people.
I mean, if you're really bad at cooking I could see those being issues, but that's why you keep practicing until they aren't issues.
Guy thinks you gotta cook like at a 5 star restaurant every day, or you're cutting corners or sacrificing quality lol.
It could be, maybe, just maybe, and here me out here, that the comic is not the absolute, actual depiction of one's day to the second, just a generalism to get through the point. Which can be done through not too dense heads which are able to do a bit of imagination and not taking a comic literally. Geez.
You might be on to something. Try applying it to my previous comment.
Nice try.
Real life hack is a feeding tube while sleeping.
Just ascend to my level and breath through your anus and absorb nutrients through your skin via a transdermal nutrient goo
I eat while on work.
If it's time spent, you just have to be French.
(From a French spending the end of the year with familly and friends).