

Hacking your food supply - iamelgringo
http://iamelgringo.blogspot.com/2008/12/hacking-your-food-supply-perennial.html

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tptacek
Neat post. Erin and I have the same problem. Question: you're chopping and
freezing garlic, onions, fresh green veg --- I get that the protein freezes
just fine, but doesn't the rest of the dish suffer?

The major timer saver we have is a slow cooker; throw a frozen package of
chicken thighs in before we leave for the office, and when we come home we
have a better protein than we would if we started from fresh thighs in the
evening and an hour to cook them. Thighs, brisket, ribs, chuck, potatoes, all
work well.

You're a foodie; have you looked into sous vide? You can vacuum-bag a protein
and some accompanyments and leave them cooking to a precise temperature for 4,
8, or 30 hours, and you're going to end up with a perfectly cooked protein. No
thaw at 5:30PM, just a quick sear and you're off.

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mattmaroon
I stumbled on that too, but I don't think he meant he froze them individually.

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tptacek
I didn't think he was freezing packages of minced shallot --- although it
would rule if you could do that --- but regardless of how you package it,
doesn't it kill the veg to freeze and thaw like that? Freezing creates ice
crystals that tear cell walls.

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mattmaroon
I freeze some stuff in my vacuum saver bags and don't get that sort of thing
at all. Plus I buy frozen veggies and they're fine.

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tptacek
Frozen veg: (1) are flash-frozen instead of slowly frozen in your freezer, (2)
are only available for some vegetables (garlic? leeks? green onions?), (3)
taste significantly worse than fresh (except for peas).

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mattmaroon
I see what you mean.

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tptacek
Sorry, the topic interests me; not trying to be a contrarian message board
nerd.

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mattmaroon
No, makes sense. I hadn't really thought of it that way. I assume those things
must freeze well or he wouldn't do it, but I am curious why.

I guess perhaps the reason you can't find frozen garlic is that refrigerated
garlic lasts forever. Other stuff I'm not sure about though. There are
definitely some vegetables that perish quickly yet I've never seen frozen, and
some not even in a can.

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iamelgringo
A lot of our recipes tend to involve making marinades for meat, and then the
meat in the marinade. Some marinades work better than others; it seems that
acidic marinades that have lemon or vinegar in them tend to cook the meat
while they're frozen, however.

Other times, we package the sauce, meat and vegetables separately. For
instance, one of my wife's recipes is for a stir fry. For that one, we freeze
the sauce, meat and frozen vegetables separately. We also buy flash frozen
vegetables for that one. We combine them while cooking, and they hold up
better.

There's a whole art and science to freezing and preserving food which my wife,
my mother and mother-in-law are much better at than I am. There is a orchard
in Morgan Hill that has the most amazing heirloom peaches. So, we’ll buy a
couple of flats when they are at peak and freeze them. We also do the same for
strawberries, blueberries, cherries and raspberries. Peaches need a
preservative; strawberries don't do great unless they're sugared. Raspberries,
blueberries and cherries do well when frozen whole on a cookie sheet and then
vacuum packed after they’re frozen. It’s a couple hours of work a piece, but
eating frozen heirloom peaches on Dutch oven pancakes at Christmastime makes
it worthwhile.

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truebosko
I can't do the whole month thing because I actually enjoy cooking as a side
hobby, but I do make one big dish that lasts us (girlfriend/I) for at least 2
days (dinner / lunches for work)

It's easy to get a list of recipes you'll enjoy throughout the various
seasons. For example, right now it's a mix of Beef Stew, Spaghetti, and
Risotto dishes throughout the winter and in-between I cook whatever I bought
from the market that weekend

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mattmaroon
Yeah, me too. I'm sure I'd be surprised at how many dishes hold up well in the
freezer, but I still couldn't limit myself to that few. I love a good home
made Jambalaya every now and then.

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bdotdub
i feel like use of the word 'hack' has become a little bit too liberal

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iamelgringo
This was the spirit in which I used the word:

 _Hacking might be characterized as ‘an appropriate application of ingenuity’.
Whether the result is a quick- and-dirty patchwork job or a carefully crafted
work of art, you have to admire the cleverness that went into it._ From:
<http://catb.org/jargon/html/meaning-of-hack.html>

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bdotdub
I mean, I agree this idea is great and very helpful. its definitely practical
and useful but personally I just don't think its a 'hack'.

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tptacek
The problem isn't the word "hack", it's the word "food"; he's not "food
hacking", he's "meal hacking". In a book of "meal hacks", this would be a
keystone chapter.

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rcoder
This strikes me as sort of being the opposite of "hacking" your food: instead
of finding a creative, new way to prepare your meals, you build a repertoire
of a handful of reproducible dishes, and make them over and over again.

I understand that this may be a gain in efficiency, but I can't see how anyone
who calls themselves a foodie could enjoy eating the same eight dishes on a
slightly-randomized schedule for months at a time.

"What's for dinner, hon?"

"Oh, we're having #7 tonight."

"Hooray! #7 is my _favorite_."

etc.

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tptacek
For a lot of people --- maybe _most_ people in America, and almost certainly
most hackers, the alternative to a strategy like this is simply eating out
every night. There are certainly a lot of ways to engineer variability into
planned, pre-prepped meals, but be that as it may, the "hack" here is to allow
yourself to cook at all when you have a lifestyle that almost demands nightly
Thai takeout.

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comatose_kid
Somewhat related: the best place to buy cheap fruits and veggies is at a
Chinese or Indian market. Typically half the cost for most items.

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sidsavara
Really interesting. I don't like cooking either, and this seems like a good
middle ground. The lost freezer space is probably not as big a deal also,
since I'm guessing you don't ever need to put frozen chicken etc in there
unless it's already prepackaged in a meal.

I recently discovered the same thing: that food preparation is a pain and
takes too long. My solution (which people also enjoyed on HN) was to avoid
cooking altogether and hire someone off craig's list for $60 a week to do it:

[http://sidsavara.com/personal-productivity/the-price-of-
my-d...](http://sidsavara.com/personal-productivity/the-price-of-my-
dreams-60-a-week)

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iamelgringo
I really liked your article, actually. We're getting to the point where we'd
like to do all the planning and buying, and then hire someone off of
Craigslist to help prep the food. We're not quite at that point yet, but
hopefully in a couple of months we'll be able to.

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KevBurnsJr
I do this on a less formal scale by always cooking 6-8 servings on each
Saturday and Sunday nights, tupperwaring the leftovers.

Disposable Tupperware is god's gift to hackers.

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streety
I'm a little unclear on what you do. My understanding with OAMC was that you
cooked the meals (once a month, obviously) and then just reheated them on the
day. Reading your post it sounds more like you just prep the ingredients once
a month and then cook them on the day you eat them. Have I read this wrong?

I'm certainly not doing OAMC but I'm moving in this direction. Mainly with
ingredients though rather than complete meals. My main limitation is freezer
space.

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iamelgringo
We actually just do the food prep and then we cook the meal the day we're
going to eat it. Meat tends to dry out if they're frozen after they're cooked.

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streety
In that case it sounds a lot like what I'm doing but on a bigger scale.

I would definitely be interested in seeing your recipes.

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iamelgringo
Thanks, I'll work on posting them after we're done cooking this weekend.

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ph0rque
Neat... the recipe database sounds like grounds for a quick recipe app.

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atarashi
Couple thousand creative-commons licensed recipes with a social networking
twist: <http://www.opensourcefood.com/>

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shaunxcode
dude that site is sweet - I just wish the recipe ingredients were normalized!

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peregrine
Seconded!!! Then you could make a nice recipe api....and the world is open.

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llimllib
My fiancee and I are in a similar situation.

We've taken a less radical approach, we simply cook twice a week and make
enough to cover the rest of the week with some to spare, which we freeze. It
doesn't usually take much extra time to double or triple one recipe at a time.

Then, when a week is too busy to get in 2 cooking nights, we just start
pulling from the freezer.

Meals that work especially well with this approach are soups, chilis, and fish
dishes. Frozen salmon + herbs and lemon sauce, wrapped in parchment and frozen
by the dozen, is our fast food. Just throw it in the oven for a few minutes
and you've got a healthy, decent meal with no cleanup.

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tfinniga
By far the easiest way to get started is something like Dream Dinners or
Dinner A'fare, as mentioned. The price and convenience are both somewhere in
between cooking yourself and eating out.

They've got a bunch of recipes you can choose from, and they do the shopping
for the ingredients, so it saves a lot of time.

The one downside - if the one near where you live is like the one near where I
live, it might be a bit awkward being the only guy there.

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ssharp
I've done this on a smaller scale and with fully cooked food. I work full-time
and have class 2 or 3 days a week at night. I try my best to avoid fast food,
so if often involves cooking double portions for the days that I'm away all
day. My wife is starting law school next fall and when that happens, we'll
probably switch to a system like this.

Fresh ingredients are great but the time saved is generally worth the loss.

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jonknee
Curious, I thought that people who did this cooked the meals prior to
freezing. Cooking is usually what takes a while, prep can be done really
quickly (especially if you do it often). I guess it all depends on the
recipes, but it doesn't seem like a real time saver to me.

Either way it's not for me, cooking is my release. I gladly get off the
computer and onto the cutting board.

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kaens
I lived in a communal house with about 15 other people for about a year, and
this is more or less exactly what we did.

The process works _very_ well for keeping multiple people with possibly
different eating schedules fed, and minimizes the amount of crap that people
shove down their throats - which in the above situation can lead to not having
any food :(.

