6 ms·

Why do people say it only takes 10 more minutes to make the food? They never factor in the time it takes to mentally prepare what you are going to make, go out

by jtchang 11y ago

Why do people say it only takes 10 more minutes to make the food? They never factor in the time it takes to mentally prepare what you are going to make, go out and get ingredients, prep the food, then clean up afterwards. It is never just 10 more minutes.

douche 11y ago
I'm always kind of surprised when I encounter people that go purchase ingredients for nearly every meal. Then again, where I grew up, unless it was something like bread, milk, or eggs, going to the store meant driving half an hour. We had a chest freezer full of beef and broccoli and a a basement room full of jars of green beans and tomatoes. Not really a realistic option living in an apartment or a suburb with postage-stamp yards, I suppose Lots of family time planting, weeding, picking and processing all those damned vegetables, though...
pbreit 11y ago
Blue Apron has been a revelation for us in this regard. We went from rarely eating lousy food together to frequently eating great food together. Even when I try to recreate the meals on my own it's a hassle. Also, something like this can really help: http://www.buzzfeed.com/christinebyrne/clean-eating-2015 http://www.buzzfeed.com/christinebyrne/clean-eating-2015
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - mratzloff 11y ago
    Your condescending comment missing the point. Not all of us live in "walkable neighborhoods of low-rise apartments with little shops on the first floor," nor necessarily want to. I live in a single family house in a residential area of Seattle. I'm pretty happy here, but I have to drive 10 minutes to one of a few nearby grocery stores. Grocery shopping is my least favorite thing to do on the planet, so if I can pay a service to do it for me and think up meals for me to cook, I'm sold.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - matwood 11y ago
      I agree with you about grocery shopping being horrible. My local store offers an online service where I can pick what I want and just swing by and pick it up on the way home for a $5 fee. That has saved tons of time, but having to always think of things to cook can be annoying. I may give Blue Apron a shot and see how it works. It's just so easy to eat a frozen pizza or get take out instead of dealing the mental work of planning a meal after working all day.
    - pbreit 11y ago
      I didn't see the comment but sounds ill-informed. I can walk to Trader Joe's but that's not the point at all. First, it's figuring out what you want to eat. Then finding a recipe. Then getting the ingredients. Then figuring out the recipe since there's so much inconsistency on recipe quality. Etc. Blue Apron is $10/portion which is pretty reasonable. The recipes are easy to follow and fairly healthy. We don't get much choice but have been very pleased so far with all the meals for 6 months or so. I've picked a few which I can now prepare by myself with good results. One of the reasons I like Blue Apron vs Din (even though Din meals are much better) is that I actually do feel like I am learning to cook from scratch.
      - eropple 11y ago
        I'm glad it works for you, but $10/portion is crazy to me. I cook from scratch and average around $5/portion, and it adds up. (I cook in bulk a little more than Blue Apron wants you to, though, as it's mostly cooking for me.)
        pbreit 11y ago
        For something that approaches restaurant quality and might include beef, lamb, seafood or fresh pasta, it's a decent price point, imo. Hardly "crazy" I would say.
  - comrh 11y ago
    The packaging is kind of crazy but they aren't "mostly-prepared", they only ship you the ingredients.
  - harryh 11y ago
    I live in Manhattan, one of the most walkable places in the US. And I love Blue Apron. It saves me an enormous amount of time in planning & shopping, it's close to the same cost as shopping, and I end up making things I never would have thought of myself. I'll be the first to admit that it's cooking with training wheels, but I'm a busy professional with a young child. Anything that can save me time and stress is well worth it.
- mratzloff 11y ago
  Oh man, I wish I could up vote this comment more than once. I had never heard about this service but it looks perfect for me. I love to cook but hate grocery shopping or planning meals. I'm starting to get into other services like these. For example, I've started to use Trunk Club for clothing with good results.
  - harryh 11y ago
    I just sent you a free week to try it out. I've been a customer for close to 3 years and love it.
    - mratzloff 11y ago
      Beautiful. Thanks!
    - onecommentjust 11y ago
      The guy you replied to doesn't have an email address in his profile. How did you "send him a free week to try it out"? Does Hacker News have some sort of user-to-user communication that I'm not aware of?
      - harryh 11y ago
        I googled his username and found his github which has his email.
- stouset 11y ago
  My bullshit detector is pinging wildly on the linked diet. Gluten-free, measured salt intake, 6 glasses of water per day, and the list goes on. No thanks — I'll take my diet advice from people that follow the science, not pop trends.
  - pbreit 11y ago
    Fair enough but it's mostly just whole foods and quite a bit better than a lot of people's diets.
roflchoppa 11y ago
Have you considered meal prepping? It takes me maybe an hour to prep almost a weeks worth of food, which is lunch and dinner. Well ill have to be honest, i just eat the same thing over and over again. Chicken, Quinoa (or rice if you want) Broccoli, potatoes, lentils. My digestive system loves it.
brandonmenc 11y ago
> go out and get ingredients, prep the food, then clean up afterwards Plan food for the whole week. Buy the ingredients in one trip. Clean as you cook. Take one day a week to pre cook and freeze as much as possible. Cook three or four nights a week and eat leftovers for the remainder. Build a repertoire of around ten meals you train yourself to bang out quickly and without thinking. If you're cooking for your kids, make them help with the cooking and the clean up. (This is how I learned to cook.) It's not rocket science.
- ebiester 11y ago
  This has always been weird for me. After a few days, the vegetables are not as fresh. Why would you buy Friday's vegetables on Sunday? Then again, I'd say 40% of our grocery budget is vegetables, if not more. Perhaps we're not the average case.
  - brandonmenc 11y ago
    There's nothing wrong with making a quick stop in the middle of the week to pick up leafy greens and other perishables. But quick is the key. I also really like frozen vegetables - green beans, broccoli and cauliflower florets, etc. I don't understand the stigma against them, particularly if they're organic.
  - moron4hire 11y ago
    Vegetables take longer than a week to become inedible. It's the week-and-a-half mark where they start to get limp and questionable. It's the two-week mark where they start to rot completely. If you have a problem with rotting vegetables (bought from the grocery store, fresh out of a garden are much more durable), then you're keeping them longer than you think. Meat goes bad much more quickly. If I'm not eating meat within two--maaaybe three--days of purchasing it, I will freeze it.
    - Symbiote 11y ago
      Just before vegetables are approaching the rotting stage, they're still fine for a hearty soup. Scrub them if they're dirty, chop them into rough 1cm cubes, cook in a litre of stock, and blend (or not) when they're cooked. Since I live alone, I tend to buy vegetables once a week, and meat on my way home if I'm sure I'll use it — I'm prone to wasting it otherwise. I go past at least four small supermarkets on my way home from work (30 minutes by bicycle). I have some frozen fish too, since it's quick to defrost, and bacon, since it keeps for ages. I have no problem making a vegetarian meal (chickpeas, tofu etc -- these keep indefinitely).

by jtchang 11y ago

douche 11y ago

I'm always kind of surprised when I encounter people that go purchase ingredients for nearly every meal. Then again, where I grew up, unless it was something like bread, milk, or eggs, going to the store meant driving half an hour. We had a chest freezer full of beef and broccoli and a a basement room full of jars of green beans and tomatoes. Not really a realistic option living in an apartment or a suburb with postage-stamp yards, I suppose Lots of family time planting, weeding, picking and processing all those damned vegetables, though...

pbreit 11y ago

Blue Apron has been a revelation for us in this regard. We went from rarely eating lousy food together to frequently eating great food together. Even when I try to recreate the meals on my own it's a hassle. Also, something like this can really help: http://www.buzzfeed.com/christinebyrne/clean-eating-2015 http://www.buzzfeed.com/christinebyrne/clean-eating-2015

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- mratzloff 11y ago
  Your condescending comment missing the point. Not all of us live in "walkable neighborhoods of low-rise apartments with little shops on the first floor," nor necessarily want to. I live in a single family house in a residential area of Seattle. I'm pretty happy here, but I have to drive 10 minutes to one of a few nearby grocery stores. Grocery shopping is my least favorite thing to do on the planet, so if I can pay a service to do it for me and think up meals for me to cook, I'm sold.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - matwood 11y ago
    I agree with you about grocery shopping being horrible. My local store offers an online service where I can pick what I want and just swing by and pick it up on the way home for a $5 fee. That has saved tons of time, but having to always think of things to cook can be annoying. I may give Blue Apron a shot and see how it works. It's just so easy to eat a frozen pizza or get take out instead of dealing the mental work of planning a meal after working all day.
  - pbreit 11y ago
    I didn't see the comment but sounds ill-informed. I can walk to Trader Joe's but that's not the point at all. First, it's figuring out what you want to eat. Then finding a recipe. Then getting the ingredients. Then figuring out the recipe since there's so much inconsistency on recipe quality. Etc. Blue Apron is $10/portion which is pretty reasonable. The recipes are easy to follow and fairly healthy. We don't get much choice but have been very pleased so far with all the meals for 6 months or so. I've picked a few which I can now prepare by myself with good results. One of the reasons I like Blue Apron vs Din (even though Din meals are much better) is that I actually do feel like I am learning to cook from scratch.
    - eropple 11y ago
      I'm glad it works for you, but $10/portion is crazy to me. I cook from scratch and average around $5/portion, and it adds up. (I cook in bulk a little more than Blue Apron wants you to, though, as it's mostly cooking for me.)
      - pbreit 11y ago
        For something that approaches restaurant quality and might include beef, lamb, seafood or fresh pasta, it's a decent price point, imo. Hardly "crazy" I would say.
- comrh 11y ago
  The packaging is kind of crazy but they aren't "mostly-prepared", they only ship you the ingredients.
- harryh 11y ago
  I live in Manhattan, one of the most walkable places in the US. And I love Blue Apron. It saves me an enormous amount of time in planning & shopping, it's close to the same cost as shopping, and I end up making things I never would have thought of myself. I'll be the first to admit that it's cooking with training wheels, but I'm a busy professional with a young child. Anything that can save me time and stress is well worth it.
mratzloff 11y ago
Oh man, I wish I could up vote this comment more than once. I had never heard about this service but it looks perfect for me. I love to cook but hate grocery shopping or planning meals. I'm starting to get into other services like these. For example, I've started to use Trunk Club for clothing with good results.
- harryh 11y ago
  I just sent you a free week to try it out. I've been a customer for close to 3 years and love it.
  - mratzloff 11y ago
    Beautiful. Thanks!
  - onecommentjust 11y ago
    The guy you replied to doesn't have an email address in his profile. How did you "send him a free week to try it out"? Does Hacker News have some sort of user-to-user communication that I'm not aware of?
    - harryh 11y ago
      I googled his username and found his github which has his email.
stouset 11y ago
My bullshit detector is pinging wildly on the linked diet. Gluten-free, measured salt intake, 6 glasses of water per day, and the list goes on. No thanks — I'll take my diet advice from people that follow the science, not pop trends.
- pbreit 11y ago
  Fair enough but it's mostly just whole foods and quite a bit better than a lot of people's diets.

roflchoppa 11y ago

Have you considered meal prepping? It takes me maybe an hour to prep almost a weeks worth of food, which is lunch and dinner. Well ill have to be honest, i just eat the same thing over and over again. Chicken, Quinoa (or rice if you want) Broccoli, potatoes, lentils. My digestive system loves it.

brandonmenc 11y ago

> go out and get ingredients, prep the food, then clean up afterwards Plan food for the whole week. Buy the ingredients in one trip. Clean as you cook. Take one day a week to pre cook and freeze as much as possible. Cook three or four nights a week and eat leftovers for the remainder. Build a repertoire of around ten meals you train yourself to bang out quickly and without thinking. If you're cooking for your kids, make them help with the cooking and the clean up. (This is how I learned to cook.) It's not rocket science.

ebiester 11y ago
This has always been weird for me. After a few days, the vegetables are not as fresh. Why would you buy Friday's vegetables on Sunday? Then again, I'd say 40% of our grocery budget is vegetables, if not more. Perhaps we're not the average case.
- brandonmenc 11y ago
  There's nothing wrong with making a quick stop in the middle of the week to pick up leafy greens and other perishables. But quick is the key. I also really like frozen vegetables - green beans, broccoli and cauliflower florets, etc. I don't understand the stigma against them, particularly if they're organic.
- moron4hire 11y ago
  Vegetables take longer than a week to become inedible. It's the week-and-a-half mark where they start to get limp and questionable. It's the two-week mark where they start to rot completely. If you have a problem with rotting vegetables (bought from the grocery store, fresh out of a garden are much more durable), then you're keeping them longer than you think. Meat goes bad much more quickly. If I'm not eating meat within two--maaaybe three--days of purchasing it, I will freeze it.
  - Symbiote 11y ago
    Just before vegetables are approaching the rotting stage, they're still fine for a hearty soup. Scrub them if they're dirty, chop them into rough 1cm cubes, cook in a litre of stock, and blend (or not) when they're cooked. Since I live alone, I tend to buy vegetables once a week, and meat on my way home if I'm sure I'll use it — I'm prone to wasting it otherwise. I go past at least four small supermarkets on my way home from work (30 minutes by bicycle). I have some frozen fish too, since it's quick to defrost, and bacon, since it keeps for ages. I have no problem making a vegetarian meal (chickpeas, tofu etc -- these keep indefinitely).