I spend far too much time on the Web, watching videos of crocheting, of cats, of dogs, of musical items, of American politics, of ‘amazing things’ … You get the picture: I’m a YouTube addict, basically. I even pay the bastards to keep their ads to themselves !
You’ll note that I didn’t include videos of cooking: this is because I haven’t done any real cooking for absolutely yonks, now. I have their prepared meals delivered from a terrific place up in Queensland – although I had no idea of its location when I first started ordering from it. Because I believed I was safe from cooking I gave away my entire kitchen infrastructure.
Today – which might become a day of infamy (in M-R terms, that is) – I came across this site:
https://www.youtube.com/@BOSHTV/videos
and have only stopped watching some of its contents ten minutes ago – when I got to my feet, went to the frig and, having removed a carton with 7 eggs in it, hard-boiled them and ate one. It was A Kind Of Statement, I think …
Some of the blokes’ multi videos are on topics like tempeh, lentils, beans … I drooled, positively drooled, and had to wipe my front. I LOVED being vegetarian (although these blokes are vegan, I can live with it) and found vegetarian cooking hugely more tasty and certainly more easy than omnivore cooking.
I have written slightly savage comments under one or two videos, as is my wont – the comments, rather than their being slightly savage, that is – in trying to explain to the pair of chefs just how unfair they are in presenting a cooking-infrastructure-less person with dishes such as those they present. They’ve written a cookbook. I see a possible out, albeit an expensive one …
Hang on ! – that’s a different one ! Oh Jesus, they’ve published two … I’m lost.
DOWNUNDER WITH BOODZ 
It’s their job to keep tempting you, to get you to buy their products, try their recipes, support their channels. But damn, seeing all that great food being prepared would make me drool too.
I don’t cook much anymore either. Frozen dinners, quick sheetpan dinners. Rarely more than 20 minutes start to finish. And who can emulate the cooks on tv or video who have all those fancy specialized devices for doing everything. I was given a food processor once. Had no place to store it, so it sat on the counter all the time. And it did what it was supposed to do in a couple of seconds — after which I probably spent 20 minutes taking it apart and cleaning it. Not worth having!
Omnivore. Vegetarian. I thought you went carnivore a while back …
I can appreciate your situation, though. The kids were buying prepared meals a while back and gave me some of them. After a week or two they all started tasting the same. So I went back to my “cooking.” Pop some veggies and a chicken thigh on a cookie sheet and eat 20 minutes later.
Yep, I go all out on “cooking.”
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You’re right, of course, Colorado – I did my best with carnivore too. But as I’m too piss-weak to give up my white coffee (now with SOY MILK – YUMMMM !!), I was never going to achieve success there. 😐 Have never had the strength of character to give up everything I like – even to achieve a medication-less life. Sighh …
I reached the stage you describe when, coupla years back, I was ordering ‘Lite n’ Easy’ – got there quite rapidly, too. Stopped that. But check out what my Service Provider set up for its clients: https://cookaborough.com.au/ And I’ve benefited from Cookaborough’s list (ever-growing !) of small cooking places; especially now, with Perfect Portion Meals – from which I order weekly 21 meals all under 300 cals ! It’s the only way I’m able to stop putting on weight. 😦 (If you saw the spreadsheet I maintain, you wouldn’t bloody well believe how I can put on 300g the morning after consuming a total of 789 calories the day before.)
But here’s the thing: when I had finished with WW, having lost that 30 kilos, I was still vegetarian. And for at least a year I didn’t put on any weight ! But I began to show signs of anaemia and was instructed to go omnivore. Honestly, I can’t win in this unending struggle with my weight. WHIIIIIIIIIINGE !!!!!!! [grin]
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You’re not alone, m’dear. But we are cursed with the need to eat, and Pandora’s Box contains so much good stuff!
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I am so glad you didn’t go full carnivore as you threatened MR. That scared me to death! I do think moderation in all things – generally – is the way to eat.
I’m with pied type. I still cook but I try to keep it simple and I love sheet pan and one pot dinners. I’m also known in my family to be anti-appliance. Who needs a rice cooker when you have a saucepan and hot plate honestly I just can’t bear the space these things take up and then all the cleaning they need. I can make a lot with one hot plate and an oven or microwave but my favourites are the shit pan meals Mr. Gum and I do use pre-prepared meals sometimes but the good ones tend to be more expensive – for a reason – and you don’t end up with leftovers! I love leftovers.
I won’t watch Bosh because I am trying very hard to keep my social media usage down!
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No idea why you want to keep your social media usage down, Sue, unless it’s just that you can’t spare the time – which I’d find entirely credible !
I’m a bit unsure about today’s vocabulary: I have always thought that ‘social media’ means platforms on which people specifically address one another (Facebook, e.g.) rather than those wherein stuff is posted for general consumption … Hang on: that doesn’t make sense … Facebook is often used for alarm messages and so forth.
I give up: forget I even said that. 😦
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I will forget you said the matter, haha. Interesting to think about the definition of the concept though . There are PhDs in that I’m sure.
And yes, I want to keep it down because I have so much else to do, including books to read. I get much pleasure out of social media. However, I struggle to keep up with blogs let alone spend time on other platforms. I don’t do podcasts for this reason, except on road trips. If I’m doing housework I’m more likely to put on music than listen to the radio or a podcast mainly because housework can be noisy – and you miss stuff. If I’m walking, I prefer peace. We need peace for our mental well-being (and for safety, to be aware of what’s around us – by which I mean cars and bikes and scooters more than people threats.)
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We sure do need peace, what with everything that’s going down …
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I love to cook. I love to eat! Meat/fish as an ingredient, not the main. Tonight’s dinner: Lemony Orzo with Asparagus and Garlic Bread Crumbs from the NY Times. We have this on repeat. But tonight I fried a salmon burger, which I shredded and added to the mix. Just enough salmon to make it interesting, without taking over. Yum!
You can still cook…you just need a few pots and pans. Not many! We’ve been using the same ones for 42 years, a wedding present from my parents.
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I’ve read some of your recipes, Michele, small clever person who loves to eat yet doesn’t accrue pounds and pounds. (Sighh …) They are always tempting, so you do know your onions, as it were. [grin]
My major problem in regard to returning to the stove-top – which was my modus operandi – is that I don’t have one. That is, I have one of those ceramic-or-whatever square things, and I hate, fear and loathe it. I haven’t had a pot on it other than to fry bacon; and that resulted in blobs of fat everywhere, in spite of my (unsuccessful) use of a spatter-guard thingy. If I were ever to get out of this place – which looks less and less likely ! – it would have to be to somewhere with either a gas or an old-fashioned electric cook-top. And then we might see …!
[some ancient frustrated sobbing …]
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Oh … I was devastated to find our new (old) apartment had a gas cooktop. We have now replaced it with an induction cooktop and I love it. I am still learning heat management a bit bit I don’t understand why you get more fat splattered with it than with any other form of heat? I haven’t noticed any difference. What I have noticed is that whatever fat there is so easy to clean.
BTW I still don’t understand why you want to leave a place you seemed to love so much when you got it?! But I hope you are able to be happy there.
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Indeed I did love it, Sue. But I was the first tenant in this building (there are five buildings in the complex), and one of the first in the whole place. It was like heaven for about three months: really nice little flat, gardens, peace and quiet and shops and tram not far. https://www.homes.vic.gov.au/news/community-kitchens-and-cat-meet-one-bangs-street-prahrans-first-renters
Then the other residents began to fill up the place. They are mostly Housing Commission tenants.
If I said they’re animals that would be insulting creatures I love, but it might give you the idea. They apparently don’t know how to use garbage chutes. They vomit on the paths. They drop garbage in the gardens. Their children scream all the time and they have ugly little dogs that bark all the time. They push the shopping-trolleys they’ve brought back from Coles onto the plants. They actually leave bags or boxes of garbage in the shopping-trolleys, quite often. They are people I should dearly like to be allowed to take to with a baseball bat.
They are entitled – how/why I have no idea ! – but they moved into these nice flats amid lovely gardens and INSTANTLY began to turn the place into a shit palace as if they had every right to, and regardless of we few who appreciated what we have. I HATE THEM.
Get the picture ?
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Oh I see … I get the picture. Very disappointing. I think we have some social housing coming to the block behind us – but, it’s not our block, and it’s very small. Not sure how many residences there’ll be but it won’t be many … the entrance won’t be our street … so we are hoping all will be well. Many social housing people are quiet and conscientious – we had some in the street where we bought our first home. But I have seen apartment blocks that look terrible too.
Do you have good neighbours near you?
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On my floor there are several who open the chutes, put their garbage on the front ledge and then go away. One can only wonder that it doesn’t occur to them that they never find anyone else’s garbage there when they turn up again. And my floor has been responsible no less than FIVE TIMES so far this year for completely blocking the recycling chute. It’s only ever when I find this and report it to Maintenance that it gets cleared. I do not love them.
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Many of us get hooked on videos and internet folly, M-R. I stop at kitten and puppy videos and my Instagram feed is full of recipes because I look at them when I’m hungry and think “yum!” I will never be vegan or vegetarian, although I rarely eat beef and pork these days. Trying to gear myself toward more fish, seafood and beans, if it meets my standards (nothing farm raised).
I will pass on anything with lentils (it’s the consistency of them, I think, that keeps me away), but I’m open to dishes without meat. When I was a child, there were days when I actually preferred a pile of veggies to the meat and even today, I will put more of them on my plate than fish or chicken.
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I went vego for the sake of the animals, but anæmia turned me into an omnivore first and then even a carnivore. I’m often one of those infuriating people who tend to think “Oh, what difference do just I make ?!” Pathetic. But a pescatarian never: the sight of fish gasping for water is appalling to me, reminding me of my own deep fear of being unable to get air in (coming from a childhood bout of diphtheria).
I believe I must be a vegetarian in my soul: seeing the men of Bosh ! putting together their heavenly meals makes me want to go cooking again. My perfect but impractical day would start with a raw muesli topped with chopped fruit, Greek yoghurt and nuts; be followed at lunch by a salad of vegetables, fruit and nuts; and would end with a tempeh chilli, full of different beans, sweetcorn, crushed tomatoes … I have to stop now.
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I think you gave away your dishes and cookware too soon! I do love salad, fruit, nuts, and yogurt and am trying to put more of those things into my diet. Won’t tell you I’m eating more chicken eggs, though..
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No, would never be vegan, and I consider eggs good food. I believe vegans are not so much against the things themselves, as against the way the industry that produces them is run.
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