Economic woes = fake food?

[so lucky]

This is a good idea. I have driven by plenty gardens just getting overgrown with weeds, while the tomato vines were full of ripe then rotting fruit. I guess the gardener just gets tired of dealing with it after a few months. A situation like this might really make the garden owner happy, and provide the helper with lots of fresh produce. A win/win if there ever was one.

 

[heatherlynnky]

ORChick, for me it was popcorn. I can remember asking my mom for popcorn when I was a kid and being told it was too late. And since it wasn't really that late, I figured popcorn must have been hard to make and take a long time. I'm not sure how old I was when I learned how easy it was to make. I think, for my mom, it was more that she didn't feel like making it.

I think for so many that is where the problem started and now too many simply do not have any skills or desire to learn or just feel overwhelmed. My mom cooked on weekends because thats when there was enough time. We ate so much crap it was not funny. Speghetio's anyone? or ramen soup every night. So when I started to cook I had already grown up almost never seeing my mom cook and I had zero skills. I can cook very well now but that more comes from a deep desire to do so on my part. It becoming easy enough to do all the time and fitting in the schedule is from tips from others and experience. It has been a long road and still is one. I am now working toward a clean diet on a $400 a month strict budget and feeding 8. Not always easy but the information to do all this is out there. The information is even free, just not always easy to find and not a quick thing to learn. Its a slow evolution.

I have a friend who had no desire to cook and really even out of the can spaghetti can be ruined by these sweet lady. We are leaders in a girls group and we have a class on economics and on cooking. Two of us are the "cooks" of the group and both of us are pretty whole foods oriented so the girls and my friend are going to be getting lessons in this. She has already asked if we can have an adult get together where we all teach her some basic skills. Its sorta sad the complete lack of knowledge this lady has in the kitchen or even budgets. Once upon a time a mom would have taught these things. Hopefully we all do better than the last couple in passing this stuff down.

 

[Steveca]

There is a program around here for this type of thing, but for apple trees only, as far as I know - for now. An apple tree owner can call the organization when the apples are ready to pick, somebody comes and picks them and if the owner wants them, they can have 25% of the apples.

 

[heatherlynnky]

You might consider also checking with someone before gardening season starts. My mom got someone to come out and help with the work and then shared the bounty with them. THey had no room for a garden and mom has a bad back. It was a good trade.

 

[me&thegals]

My mom was a great cook--did pretty much everything from scratch. She didn't teach me how to cook or can, however. It was just easier to do it herself. Still, because I'd always seen it done it wasn't a fearful, mysterious, difficult-looking task, and I was able to teach myself just fine.

I think that is what might be missing in my generation--the belief that it's NOT rocket science or a mysterious lost art form. It's just something humankind has been doing absolutely forever, until the recent past: Cooking, baking, canning, gardening, preserving.

 

[ORChick]

My mom was a great cook--did pretty much everything from scratch. She didn't teach me how to cook or can, however. It was just easier to do it herself. Still, because I'd always seen it done it wasn't a fearful, mysterious, difficult-looking task, and I was able to teach myself just fine.

I think that is what might be missing in my generation--the belief that it's NOT rocket science or a mysterious lost art form. It's just something humankind has been doing absolutely forever, until the recent past: Cooking, baking, canning, gardening, preserving.

I agree with this, for the most part. But maybe not the canning - that has really only been around for about 2 centuries, and I'm not sure when it was adapted to household use.

http://homecooking.about.com/od/foodhistory/a/canninghistory.htm

 

[ThrottleJockey]

My mom was a great cook--did pretty much everything from scratch. She didn't teach me how to cook or can, however. It was just easier to do it herself. Still, because I'd always seen it done it wasn't a fearful, mysterious, difficult-looking task, and I was able to teach myself just fine.

I think that is what might be missing in my generation--the belief that it's NOT rocket science or a mysterious lost art form. It's just something humankind has been doing absolutely forever, until the recent past: Cooking, baking, canning, gardening, preserving.

I agree with this, for the most part. But maybe not the canning - that has really only been around for about 2 centuries, and I'm not sure when it was adapted to household use.

http://homecooking.about.com/od/foodhistory/a/canninghistory.htm

I disagree. Sauerkraut and kimchi are basically preservation methods that are canning in it's simplest form and both have existed for far more than 200 years.

 

[moolie]

My mom was a great cook--did pretty much everything from scratch. She didn't teach me how to cook or can, however. It was just easier to do it herself. Still, because I'd always seen it done it wasn't a fearful, mysterious, difficult-looking task, and I was able to teach myself just fine.

I think that is what might be missing in my generation--the belief that it's NOT rocket science or a mysterious lost art form. It's just something humankind has been doing absolutely forever, until the recent past: Cooking, baking, canning, gardening, preserving.

I agree with this, for the most part. But maybe not the canning - that has really only been around for about 2 centuries, and I'm not sure when it was adapted to household use.

http://homecooking.about.com/od/foodhistory/a/canninghistory.htm

I disagree. Sauerkraut and kimchi are basically preservation methods that are canning in it's simplest form and both have existed for far more than 200 years.

Sauerkraut and kimchi are preserved by a natural process known as lactic fermentation.

Canned food is preserved by heating the food to a specific interior temperature for a specific period of time to kill microorganisms and to exhaust the air, creating a vacuum seal.

They are not the same at all, regardless of how long each method has been around.

 

[ORChick]

I agree with this, for the most part. But maybe not the canning - that has really only been around for about 2 centuries, and I'm not sure when it was adapted to household use.

http://homecooking.about.com/od/foodhistory/a/canninghistory.htm

I disagree. Sauerkraut and kimchi are basically preservation methods that are canning in it's simplest form and both have existed for far more than 200 years.

Sauerkraut and kimchi are preserved by a natural process known as lactic fermentation.

Canned food is preserved by heating the food to a specific interior temperature for a specific period of time to kill microorganisms and to exhaust the air, creating a vacuum seal.

They are not the same at all, regardless of how long each method has been around.

Looks like you are up earlier than I, Moolie - though that's not difficult!

Yes, by canning I meant "heating, and thus causing a vacuum to form", and not (as I know some people think of it) food preservation in general. Obviously food has been preserved since the earliest days - drying, fermentation, smoking, even freezing during the winter. But being able to preserve food in a jar through heating, and a vacuum, has only been around since Napolean's time. He sponsored a contest, wanting to find a good way to preserve food for his armies. I guess one might say that canned (bottled) foods were the first MREs