
The Efficiency Is Everything Cookbook [pdf] - robertAngst
https://efficiencyiseverything.com/The-Cookbook-v-1.4.pdf
======
robertAngst
Some notes- At base, the recipes eat for ~21$/week/person. After I lost my
job, I definitely got below 20$/week, less protein, more rice.

I have seen HN dispute 19k/yr living, so I also wanted to share with HN, the 3
things that allowed 2 people to live on $19,000/year. We lived like this for 3
years as my wife got her Doctorate.

>Health Insurance- Don't pick the wrong one. Too often I hear people choosing
'a good plan', but the reality is, the Payments(preimums) + Max Out Of Pocket
exceed the cost of a Bronze plan.

>Used cars are better than new. Nothing quite like not caring if your car gets
a ding. Nothing quite like not having a car payment.

>Stop eating out, the 6$ meal is 6x the cost of the meals in the cookbook.
Doing a Calorie Per Dollar comparison is a wakeup call for value.

Thought this is useful for everyone. I'm planning to study another round of
Calorie, Protein, and Nutrient Per Dollar data. Any requests?

~~~
auber
The whole used car thing is just flat out wrong. If you are a mechanic and you
know how to asses the health of a car perfectly and you are able to actually
find a car that she not unreliable then maybe buying a used car would make
sense. But even then you are giving up backup cameras, good mileage/hybrid
tech and most importantly you are giving up the HUGE amount of progress that
has been made in safety that is designed into the structure of the car. And on
top of that you have to drive around an old beater that you aren’t proud to be
seen in. Just buy a new Toyota Corolla. It’s guarnteed to be as reliable as
possible, has a backup camera and modern safety features. And it looks good.
But if you pay in cash it’s only 17k so you won’t be worried about dings
anyway. In my opinion thats worth ~8k.

But for the average person buying a used car will result in huge reliability
problems, being stranded on the side of the road multiple times and you’ll end
up paying thousands for repairs anyway. Yes, we all know that one guy who
bought a used Toyota and never had problems. There’s a reason why it’s an
anecdote about “that one guy I know.”

~~~
meuk
In Europe, the situation is different (cars and gasoline is a lot more
expensive here, and salary in tech is a lot lower), and your argument doesn't
make much sense. A new Toyota Corolla is 25k euro, which is more than 28k
dollar. That is more than my gross year income and about 8 years of rent (and
I work as an IT consultant, which is not a particularly bad job), and I still
completely neglected recurring costs (taxes, gasoline).

If you buy a new car, you're paying for the fact that it is new, even if you
can't see it. I did a quick search, and found a gorgeous Audi A8 that looks
like it's new for 6k. You can buy a crappy old car for about 1k. So anything
in between should get you something modest. Most people I know buy used cars,
and I rarely have heard anyone having troubles with them (IDK, are American
cars less reliable?). If you buy a relatively new used car, you get all of the
advantages you list, and none of the disadvantages.

~~~
Nashooo
Where are you working that your gross yearly income as an IT Consultant is
below 25.000 euro? Did you mean net income?

~~~
meuk
Netherlands. I am a starter and work part-time (4 days). I'll make more than
25k next year, don't worry ;)

------
meuk
A couple of thoughts: The recipes are nice, but contain a lot of meat. This is
very expensive. Where I live (the Netherlands), it would be closer to $10 per
day (only counting dinners). Just the meat will be something like $4 for a
single portion. Besides, I would first save money on bigger things like modest
housing and not having a car before trying to save on food.

I usually make combinations with: 1\. Vegetables (for vitamins): beans,
broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, tomatoes, bell peppers 2\. Meat-like (for
proteins): Ground beef, chicken, meat replacements 2\. Filler (for carbs):
Potatoes, pasta, rice 3\. Optional extra's: Sauce, cream, cheese (cheese is
expensive though!)

This allows me to cook fairly quick and cheap.

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sanxchit
Skimming through the recipes, it seems to be mostly meat-based dishes. I would
like to see a similar cookbook with plant based alternatives.

~~~
i_am_nomad
Open a bag of Fritos. Dump in a cup of melted Velveeta, some pickled
jalapeños, half a can of black beans. Mix it up and eat it out of the bag.
Then, loathe yourself and wonder how it came to this.

~~~
wwweston
Most of the loathing probably comes from the month's RDA of sodium described
in your proposal.

Substitute some sort of more traditional cheese and some roasted unsalted
peanuts in the above recipe and you'll probably enjoy it about as much and
feel better afterwards.

~~~
RandomInteger4
Substitute Fritos for not Fritos to make the dish even better.

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chii
I find the highest cost item required for living is real-estate (both rent or
mortgage).

Cutting food costs barely matters when 40% of your weekly cost is actually
paying for a roof over your head. But living in a nice place, in a good
neighbourhood, etc, can't really be substituted.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Estate agents in the UK will tell you the best value is to buy a cheap house
in the best neighborhood. That may make financial sense in that you can gain
some economic benefit by bringing the standard of your house up. The downside
is every day you will feel like the poorest person in the area. Doing the
opposite might give you a better sense of well-being.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _The downside is every day you will feel like the poorest person in the
> area._

You can offset some of that though by being able to brag about in which
neighborhood you live.

This line of thinking reminds me of a tip on gift giving: if you have fixed
amount of money to spend, go for the category of items in which you can afford
the best item (vs. spending the exact same amount on a cheap item from a more
expensive category). E.g. an expensive scarf instead of cheap coffee machine.
The reasoning is that the recipient will look at your gift relative to the
category it belongs to, and not evaluate what else could be bought with the
same amount of money.

------
ZeroFries
Some dishes I regularly make:

Hamburger mush - 1 lb ground beef, beef bouillon (enough to make ~2 cups of
broth), 2 tbsp flour, water

Cook and drain ground beef, add bouillon + flour + enough water to be liquidy,
let it cook on low until paste like consistency. Serve over rice with
vegetables (mushrooms, broccoli, cabbage, zucchini, bokchoy in any combination
are good)

\-----------------------------------------------------

Chocolate quinoa - 1 cup quinoa, 1/4 cup cocoa powder, 1/4 cup chocolate
protein powder, honey

Cook quinoa. Mix cocoa powder and chocolate protein powder with some hot
water, enough to make a sauce. Add honey to taste, mix with cooked quinoa

\-----------------------------------------------------

Greek yogurt alfredo - 2 tsp butter, 1 tsp garlic powder, 3/4 cup greek
yogurt, 1/2 cup grated parm

Melt butter in small pot or pan, add garlic powder, mix in yogurt. Set heat to
low and stir in parm until it's melted. Serve over pasta and vegetables

~~~
inciampati
> Greek yogurt alfredo

I hate to come off as a snarky purist, but there isn't need to go to weird
italofusion combinations if you want variable, vegetable heavy diet based
around rice, pasta, or legumes. In South Italy we cook vegetable and olive oil
based sauces in the time it takes to boil water and cook the pasta. Then you
mix these together while finishing the cooking of the drained pasta. Every
single vegetable is fair game. You just need a good source of fat, which is
served by olive oil. The pasta or lentil base gives you protein enough that
you only seek meat or heavier protein sources every fourth meal or so.

~~~
ZeroFries
Those sauces sound good. The alfredo sauce is actually really delicious
though, it's become one of my favourite meals.

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rodolphoarruda
It would be nice to see a version of this using the metric system, otherwise
international users will have to keep converting ingredients servings between
systems all the time. That's boring and time consuming.

~~~
robertAngst
Thank you, will do.

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Scoundreller
No mention of chickpeas/garbanzo for protein? Ahhhh.

------
nutjob2
I like to optimise for 3 things: speed, cost, and health. In this case I have
found recipe books to be generally pointless since they're not able to meet
those specific requirements.

Speed: If I have to spend more than about 15-30 seconds in preparation, then
it's out. Somewhat longer cooking time is ok if it's mostly unattended. I buy
ingredients pre-cut/tinned and this tends to be location dependent.

Cost: This is entirely location dependent. I start meal design with what is
cheap/good/suitable at my local supermarket. It has to be a regular item
because I'm not going to waste time looking for deals each week. My average
meal cost is less than 2 euros and that's with ingredients that are not the
cheapest.

Health: This is dependent on what you want to believe, but I've gotten
exceptional results from merely avoiding sugar and processed carbs of any
sort. It's not extreme in any way but it ends up limiting your choices broadly
because vendors sneak sugar and processed carbs into everything.

~~~
ahnick
What are your go to foods Health wise?

~~~
cageface
Lentils pack a huge nutritional bang for the buck and are very easy to cook.
One of my favorite one pot meals is to toss some lentils and brown rice in a
pot and simmer for 40 minutes. Just add your own choice of seasonings and some
leafy greens on the side and a handful of nuts and you have a very cheap and
healthy meal.

~~~
firethief
If you're in the US and the rice is from a former cotton state (not
California), you could be getting a high dose of arsenic by using brown rice
as a staple. A sane government would set limits on arsenic at least on par
with China's, but that would be costly to American agriculture, and it's easy
to ignore chronic arsenic poisoning because it causes cancer or heart disease,
not an identifiable syndrome that would generate bad publicity for
politicians. My favorite alternatives are millet (cheap, has flavor if you
toast it) and quinoa (price on par with rice if you can find it not packaged
for yuppies).

~~~
Mikeb85
Maybe it's because I'm Slavic, but buckwheat is where it's at. Cheap, packed
with protein, has a pleasant nutty flavour.

------
tmaly
I did a quick glance at the recipes and the majority I would not consider to
be very healthy. If you don’t have a choice, you can survive on these but it
would not be my first choice.

~~~
robertAngst
I'm curious what you consider a healthy meal.

Do you have any recipes or expectations?

~~~
tmaly
In recent history, I am seeing more and more research pointing to excessive
carbohydrates and not fat as being a problem in the diet.

I would consider something along the lines of a Paleo or Mediterranean diet to
be a healthy choice.

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notsgnik
After reading couples of recepies, I rather use this book who is more
"factory"/"cheap"/"delicious" in other word, "more efficient" to me. "Five
Ingredients, Ten Minutes" by Jules Clancy.

[https://www.amazon.com/Five-Ingredients-Minutes-Jules-
Clancy...](https://www.amazon.com/Five-Ingredients-Minutes-Jules-
Clancy/dp/0718158741)

------
thisismyswamp
Not a bad document, but not very researched either. I skimmed and noticed that
for example, it is quick to assert that olive oil will smoke, even though it's
hard to reach a temperature where even extra virgin olive oil will start
smoking.

 _Edit_ : Wait no actually it's even worse, it implies extra virgin olive oil
will not smoke?

> Vegetable oil – as mentioned, can be replaced with other high heat oils like
> peanut oil. Butter will burn, olive oil will smoke. Extra virgin olive oil
> costs pennies more, I always get it over olive oil.

------
analog31
A lot of these recipes make sense to me, even if I wouldn't necessarily add
them to my own tool belt. When my mom taught me and my brothers to cook, she
wrote down her recipes for us, and I still have them. Most of them are of this
nature, refined over years of feeding three hungry boys on a middle class
wage. Also, she's a scientist by training.

There were quite a few recipes that started with browning hamburger and
onions.

And I suspect that during my generation, families that still cooked had a lot
of these kinds of meals, usually prepared from memory.

So the cookbook is hardly a shock to my sensibilities.

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m0zg
My wife and I spent a year not working and we got our grocery budget to about
30 dollars per day for a family of 3 without sacrificing anything. In fact
that's not quite the right characterization, we actually _improved our diet_
compared to what it was before. More veggies, more meat, less sugar, less
processed. And it doesn't even take that much time. About an hour a day is
more than enough. Before this exercise we'd easily spend $2k+ per month for
the same family.

~~~
nzjrs
$USD30? My goodness that is a lot!

~~~
m0zg
Which is why it's hard for me to believe that someone could be spending less
than one third that per day and eating well.

------
wyclif
I notice that sometimes non-tech people think that cooking eqipment is
relatively unimportant, but having the right equipment on hand makes cooking
so much easier and more enjoyable. It's also an investment that dramatically
improves the quality of your life if you cook every day.

~~~
nutjob2
I'd say that is a matter of choice and preference though. I'm totally
minimalist because I hate washing things up and that is a big quality of life
factor. I'm close to zero wash-up because I use a single wok so often it's not
required.

~~~
ahnick
Care to share your favorite wok recipes?

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Waterluvian
A few winters ago I played so much of _The Long Dark_ that I began cozying up
with chicken and beef broth prepared and consumed like it was tea.

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PorterDuff
I got as far as this:

"1 (10½oz) can of cream of chicken soup"

and quit.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Any special reason? Do you not like the taste/texture, or do you have
lifestyle/ethical/financial/efficiency/health objections?

~~~
PorterDuff
I think mostly flavor. Canned soup is some nasty stuff.

Here's my entry into the efficiency menu:

Take a crockpot/slow cooker, throw in stew meat, frozen peas/corn/green beans,
a lemon, an onion, garlic, sriracha, cut up a few potatoes and carrots, a can
of chopped organic tomatoes. Cook for hours. Done. Probably 5 minutes of prep.

You could probably live exclusively on that. Low salt.

