After reading the Food NO WAYS thread, I figured this needed it’s own thread.
Are there any rules or short hand methodologies towards food and food preparations in your house?
My Dad had a “Mush on Mush” rule when it came to sandwiches. IIRC, it boiled down to the filling of the sandwich dictates if the sandwich bread should be toasted first or not.
Tuna salad dictates toast. Non-mush fillings would dictate bread.
As I write up the intro here, it dawns on me that a sister thread for Pizza would probably be worthwhile. Post to that thread if your Food Rule is a Pizza Rule.
I only cook once a day, unless it’s some sort of special occasion. So if you want bacon and eggs for breakfast, either you cook them yourself (and cook me some, too), or I’ll cook them, and I won’t cook lunch or dinner. We have leftovers, we have a microwave, and you’re an adult. We also have a McDonald’s within 1/12 of a mile, and Denny’s is one house away, and the Sonic is across the street. Granted, it’s a major artery, but it’s there.
I only serve one starch per meal, unless (again) it’s a special occasion. So, if I DO cook breakfast, it will have toast OR biscuits OR pancakes OR hash browns. You don’t get toast AND hash browns. Unless you go to Denny’s. Similarly, I’ll make beans OR rice OR potatoes for lunch or dinner. We don’t need to ingest those carbs.
Also, no two items in a meal should be the same color, unless that color is green. It’s OK to have peas and a green salad, but it would be more interesting to have peas and something that’s not green.
If the oven is turned on, I’m likely to cook more than one item. If I make meatloaf, I’ll probably bake potatoes to go with it. Why waste the electricity for just one dish, when I can cook two or more?
Every meal must contain some kind vegetable, ideally more than one, and anything potato-based doesn’t count (my husband keeps trying to persuade me chips count towards his five-a-day).
If I cook something new, you have to at least try it before deciding you don’t like it.
It must always be butter. Margarine will not ever be given house room.
It’s a seasonal thing, but from gooseberries and rhubarb in the spring through blackberries and black raspberries in early summer to peaches in midsummer and apples and pears in late summer… we harvest so much free fruit, and have so little freezer space, that there is a fruit-based dessert in the house at least once a week. We don’t have much opportunity to justify other desserts until the fruit supplies wane at the end of winter.
There are no cooked sweet peppers unless they’re so thoroughly buried in the dish that you can’t tell they’re there (see: ratatouille). My husband can’t stand them cooked.
I just figured out that I am never going to use a torch to brulee sugar again (not that I had for, oh, four five years prior to figuring it out). It is WAY easier to caramelize sugar in a small saucepan and pour it over whatever, and gives the same result with a more consistent finish.
All leftovers are stored in old sandwich meat containers… you know, the Gladware reusable/disposable ones. I brought some nice Tupperware into the relationship, but it stays hidden away.
That should read “some kind OF vegetable” in my post, btw. I’m not sure what counts as a kind vegetable. Is brocolli more benign than peas? Is corn especially amiable?
And I totally agree with Sattua on the use of tupperware. All leftovers (and there are a lot, as in spite of the fact that there’s only me and my husband, I am genetically programmed to cook for a troop of hungry miners) are stored in the plastic tubs which our Sunday night takeaway comes in. They must therefore always be washed and kept, even when we have so many that you can’t open a cupboard without them falling on your head. The rule when that happens is that you swear violently, then pick them up and cram them back in there.
I can choke down mac & cheese without peas, though I prefer it with.
My kid, on the other hand, has an allergy to green peas AND does not like mac & cheese. Guess what I fix the evening after I put him on the plane to go visit his dad?
I’m really ok with either, but I would need to try cottage cheese and meatloaf now… I get a feeling that just might work for me, and I don’t think I care that much for cottage cheese.
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Dare I ask if you guys [both] allow ketchup on meatloaf?** This would be the closest thing I can think of, to a deal breaker for me, as far as meatloaf is concerned.
There is some statistic, that Potatoes are like 47% or so most consumed vegetable. French Fries being a disproportionate number of that percentage.
I’m not sure I understand your argument. Granted, the convenience of fries and chips must theoretically remove from the nutrients in potatoes, but I read your statement as something closer to “Potatoes aren’t vegetables”.
My Homeroom teacher in 9th grade told us about a student who went off to college. Being a college student, he had a very limited budget. He saved money by eating fast food. Dollar menu burger and drink. He developed scurvy, and his doctors were surprised to see it. The conclusion was, if he had eaten potatoes with his meals, he would have prevented it. [Then again, that would have been a 50% increase in budget. I think, if I were him, I would have gone Meat and Potatoes, and Water.]
For my own sandwiches, the rule is ‘two meats per cheese’. It may just be ham, or it may be ham, turkey and salami, or any combination of luncheon meats, but the meat/cheese ratio (in slices) is always 2:1.
Lunch and dinner must have a protein. The college days of considering a big plate of spaghetti dinner are long over. If it’s spaghetti, there must be meatballs or sausage or both, for instance.
OP: if the rule is “mush on mush”, then wouldn’t the tuna salad go on bread rather than toast?
I think the deciding factor would be nutritional benefits. I would think potatoes are closer to vegetable than not. Then again, some restaurants down here in the south call Mac and cheese a ‘vegetable’. :dubious: I won’t be arguing that one.
We could hijack into if Potatoes, Tomatoes, and even Corn are vegetables or not.
Potatoes are interesting nutritionally. While technically a starch, they can stand alone as a meal, having a huge variety of vitamins. One could live on them if one had no other options. But they’re also bad in that they cause rapid insulin spikes. If you’re trying to lose weight, they’re the first thing you should cut out of your diet.
I can’t think of any house rules I have except no eating near my computer, and baking sheets get a layer of foil.