Step (8) into health
In my premature retirement, I have all the time that I need to cook. Of course. But, I had time to cook even when I was working full time. Rare was a day when I felt that I didn’t have the time to make myself the ciabatta sandwich lunch that I have been having for years. And home-cooked dinner almost all the time.
I suspect that most people have the time that they need in the kitchen in order to put together a good dinner. There is an argument to be made that perhaps people do not necessarily allocate their time well, and not all their time is healthily spent.
For instance, I notice that over the years, I have become less and less a consumer of entertainment of most types. This behavior change alone has freed up a number of hours.
I am confident that most people will find time to cook by simply re-prioritizing their activities. Is watching a two-hour movie or a three-hour ballgame more important than cooking for an hour? Is spending time scrolling through Facebook or Insta, or whatever else, more important and valuable than cooking ones own meals? Do people ask themselves such questions? If they have not, well, the person has a problem and doesn’t even know that there is a problem. Friends and family, who have free time because they are not doomscrolling, need to do an intervention ;)
There is the immense joy of turning ingredients into tasty foods. There is a great deal of truth in the notion that fun is when you do it, and entertainment is watching somebody else having fun. Actors and ball players have a lot of fun doing what they do, and they get paid for it. We watch them having fun and we pay them to have fun? Dammit, I want to have fun. Healthy fun. Tasty fun.
Home-cooked food is healthier than pre-packaged food or eating outside because you know what you are cooking. You control what you are cooking. You have the power to bring in fresh ingredients, to go lightly on the salt, to exclude ingredients that you don’t like, to make magic in the kitchen.
The reality is also that I find cooking to be enjoyable only because of the quick and easy availability of the semi-processed ingredients that are inexpensive. Something my grandmothers, and even my mother for most of my growing up years, did not have access to.
For my grandmothers, cooking meant always starting from step 1. To make dosai, for example, they had to start with soaking rice and dal for a few hours. And then they sat at the aattukkal for more than an hour, perhaps even two, manually pushing the rice or dal in the huge mortar with one hand while pushing the pestle around with another. And then wait for a few hours for the batter to mildly ferment. Only after all these laborious and time-consuming tasks could they begin to make dosais over wood-fired stoves.
Instead of all that work, I, here in America, on the other side of the planet from the old country, can skip ahead and pick up a tub of dosai batter at the store. Of course they don’t taste anywhere as delicious as grandmas’ dosais were. But, life is full of tradeoffs, right?
In cooking, buying the dosai batter or opening up a can of garbanzo beans or using frozen quinoa-bean-burgers is what I refer to as jumping into Step 8 of a ten-step process. No need to plan ahead and soak the dry beans overnight. We can leap over a lot of steps in between, like how a lot of developing countries leapfrogged into cellphones without going through the landline hassles.
Living in a different part of the world introduced me to foods and ingredients that I hadn’t even heard about when I was young. Edamame? Tamari? Yakisoba? In my younger years, I might have even guessed that these were some curse words. But, now I know better, and even know how to incorporate them into what has become one of our favorites. And, yes, without the Step 8 ingredients, without which I would never ever make them at home:
Yakisoba noodles from the grocery store.
Pre-cooked and salted edamame from Trader Joe’s.
Other ingredients: Onion, garlic, cilantro, ginger, carrots, green beans, salted peanuts. (Broccoli and bell pepper will be great too, which we have included in other variations)
Slice into long thin strips the following: Onion, ginger, and whatever vegetables you bring in. Chop garlic into thin, long slices. Finely chop the cilantro stems.
Heat oil in a pan (I suspect that a wok will work way better) and add all the veggie ingredients and the peanuts. Cover with a lid and bring the heat down to medium high.
Thaw the edamame in the microwave. Separate the noodles that come packed tightly.
Make sure not to cook the veggies to death ;) When they are cooked enough, sprinkle tamari and stir. After a minute, add the noodles, edamame, and chopped up cilantro leaves. Toss them well. Replace the lid and let them hang out together over low heat for five minutes. Turn the stove off, and enjoy.
The entire operation will take just about an hour, including the time to clean up. All thanks to the modern economy that makes Step 8 possible.
