Eating without cooking
Two months into living in a construction site and what are we eating?
Dear family, friends, and maybe some random strangers,
Food has become the bane of my existence. What used to be a humdrum weekly dilemma that I would ponder on Sunday afternoons (‘What are we going to eat this week?’) has become more angst-filled and guilt-ridden (‘What are we going to eat this week?!’). Before we started the renovations, my husband had warned me that it would be hard. I knew this. I was under no illusion that living without a proper kitchen for the better part of a year, while feeding a family of four including two small children, was going to be easy. What I had not anticipated (and neither had he) was what, exactly, was going to be hard about it.
We thought that the additional kitchen labour would be hard. The lack of kitchen sink, and having to do all the washing up in the bathroom. The lack of counter space and areas for food prep (and disrupted kitchen workflows). The lack of an oven and stove. And sure, all of those things do make cooking and eating more difficult. Simple meal prep and cleaning takes about double the time it used to (I timed it). There are a lot of meals that I just can’t make now, because they require an oven. But the hardest part, for me, was something unexpected: a detrimental mental aspect to eating out all the time.
I didn’t realise, before we actually did it, that eating out all the time and eating pre-prepared meals from Trader Joe’s and Costco would have any kind of mental or emotional impact. Financial, sure. Physical, probably. But that my mood would change because I wasn’t able to cook? That was unexpected. I didn’t even think I liked cooking that much. I cooked all the time because we had to eat, but I never thought of cooking as a hobby or pictured myself as a potential Masterchef contestant. When it was taken away from me, though… Damn I missed chopping and browning and simmering and roasting. Cooking.
A week or two ago, there was a period of about four or five days in a row where every lunch and dinner we had was eaten out somewhere, or it was a pre-prepared meal from Trader Joe’s. One of them was a trip to a local farmer’s market where lunch was a series of small things from a few different stalls; the kids’ main lunch that day was hot chips (‘French Fries’ in American*). I think dinner that night was a salad kit from Trader Joe’s, a pre-prepared Cajun chicken fettuccine thing, and leftover curry from a local Indian place. After dinner that evening, when I was thinking about why I felt down, was when I had a revelation — I hadn’t eaten what I considered a ‘proper meal’ in what felt like ages.
There is, certainly, no objective and definitive arbiter on what constitutes a proper meal. There are entire cuisines built around small plates and eating little bits of lots of different things (hello, tapas and yum cha/dim sum). A lot of people happily graze and snack all day and don’t eat three full meals. Others eat just one meal a day. All of those are fine and legitimate ways of eating, and I cast no judgement at all on those eating styles. But they are personally not for me. I’m what some probably consider a volume eater: I like my plates and bowls to be big and full. I like every lunch and dinner to include ample vegetables and a decent amount of protein, and all the better if there’s a lovely starchy carb tossed in the mix too. Cobbling together different bits of pre-prepared foods that don’t form one cohesive meal was fine every now and then, but when that happened for too many meals in a row, it felt wrong. I got cranky. So I changed our no-kitchen strategy — I tried to cook more.
The pre-prepared meals we’ve tried in the past month
Yakisoba noodle stirfry kit from the deli section at Costco. It was $20, and it was a decent amount of food. I liked the texture of the noodles, there was a good amount of chicken included, and there was some good veg. My problem with it was by the end, it tasted way too salty (the first few bites were fine). And the other problem was that the kids didn’t like it, which means if we were to buy this again, I would probably need an alternative backup dinner. Which defeats the whole purpose of a pre-prepared meal being ‘easy’.
Trader Joe’s roasted vegetable tamale pie. It was fine? Better than I expected, but it was not filling. I split it with my husband and the kids had yoghurt and fruit for dinner that night (it was one of those kinds of days). I was hungry soon after and it didn’t feel like a full, satiating meal. I’m not sure if it’s intended to be a meal on its own or if you’re meant to add sides. Kids refused to try it.
Trader Joe’s tamales (all three flavours: pulled pork in red sauce, cheese and chile, chicken and chile). These were okay. The fillings were a bit too salty (the pork one was the worst offender for this), but generally they were fine. We ate them with a salad kit. Kids didn’t like them.
Trader Joe’s ancient grains and lentil soup and Trader Joe’s minestrone soup. These were pretty good. Again, I thought the minestrone was too salty, but I liked the lentil one. Kids tried it and kind of liked it but only ate a bit.
Trader Joe’s cajun style blackened chicken breast fettucine alfredo. I didn’t actually get to taste this because Charlie ate most of it. My husband shared it with Charlie and said it was good. This is the only pre-prepared hot meal that I’ve bought again so I’ll see if Charlie lets me eat any of this the second time.
Trader Joe’s Just Chicken. Plain cooked chicken breast, seasoned with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Pretty good. Tilly ate some. Good addition to their salad kits.
Trader Joe’s pre-cooked balsamic chicken. I liked this even more than the ‘just chicken’.
So many salad kits. So many. I think we’ve tried every salad kit Trader Joe’s sells at this point. I love them.
The ‘proper’ meals I’ve cooked
Slow cooker chilli. We browned the meat and onion in the only skillet we have left, using the induction cooker. Then chucked that plus the beans, diced tomatoes, tomato paste, and spices into the slow cooker. Tasted like food from the ‘before times’. Kids approved.
Lentil minestrone. I used to make this in a dutch oven on the stove, and I’ve switched to using the slow cooker. It tastes the same (well, same enough), and it includes all the components of a proper meal. Kids love it.
Baked tofu (in the toaster oven) and rice (microwaved brown rice from Trader Joe’s freezer section). Kids didn’t like this one (this was a dish they liked in the ‘before times’, so I don’t know if they’ve forever gone off tofu and rice or if this was a one-off. I liked it.
Beans and rice. I cooked the dried beans in the slow cooker (a very different process to what I used to do; maybe the next newsletter will be all about beans), and served it with the microwaved rice. I like to think of this as my Survivor meal (even though these days the contestants don’t even get beans and rice).
March food expenditure
Well, food groceries cracked four digits, and our March food grocery spend was $1,003.97. Which was actually about $200 less than last year and only $30 more than March 2021. I have no idea why but for every year of tracking, March has been significantly higher than February. I know it’s a longer month but only by three days! The past three Marches have had about double February’s spend! Why?!
Our eating out expenditure in March was $838.87, which is a lot higher than the usual March spend (in the previous two years, March eating out was less than $300). I think this is a pattern that will probably continue, both because we are eating out more but also because eating out has become significantly more expensive. Perhaps a future newsletter will include a more thorough analysis of the eating out costs for a family of four and how inflation in the past couple of years has affected that. I have such plans for this newsletter! Until next time, keep cooking and eating, fellow food and data nerds.
*Why is every kind of rectangular shaped deep fried potato called a French Fry here? In Australia, French fries are the long and skinny ones that you usually only get from Macca’s (McDonald’s). Macca’s chips are the quintessential fries. Hot chips are thicker than that, like the size you get at KFC and at the local chip shop. Good with chicken salt or hot gravy. And wedges are even thicker, wedge-shaped, usually seasoned on the outside and served with sour cream and sweet chilli sauce. I’ve been served all three forms of fried potato here and they were all called French fries on the menu with no indication of what it actually will be. Also why do you order a ‘fry’ and not ‘fries’? I was so confused when I first heard someone say ‘one large fry’. I was imagining a giant potato.