I used to hate asparagus, but turns out it's because my mom and grandma would always boil it.
Pro-tip: don't do that, it's awful.
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I used to hate asparagus, but turns out it's because my mom and grandma would always boil it.
Pro-tip: don't do that, it's awful.
Yup, properly cooked veggies are awesome.
But, children's taste buds are different from adults. Iirc they taste things more strongly, so the bitter notes are more pronounced.
Also, they've been breeding stuff like brussel sprouts to be less bitter for a while now, so veggies might actually taste better than when we were kids.
Blanche and shock are the only way I actually like asparagus.
I can tolerate a baked or sauteed spear, but the margin for error is too damned small, and either side of it makes it unpalatable.
The real reason is that unhealthy food contains ingredients that were rarer for our ancestors to obtain. Dense caloric food meant surviving a winter, but our winter never comes.
My mom after feeding me canned green beans for years watching me wolf down green beans at my house
"You hated veggies when you were a kid."
...sure, mom
I looked my mother in the eyes after a long day once and responded to a similar statement with "No, I hated your chilli when I was a kid."
She really does make the absolute worst chilli I've ever tasted. It's so bland. There is almost no chilli powder in it, just some salt and a little bit of pre-ground pepper from a packaged salt/pepper shaker. The recipe amounts to "throw some hamburger and tomato sauce with canned beans in a pot and cook it for an hour and then add random amounts of all THREE seasonings"
It's a wonder I survived to be able to cook on my own.
My kids are the opposite. We can sauté up some fresh green beans and make them so good, but the kids only want to eat the canned ones.
No! Salt kills you, cooking kills vitamins and when you think you do everything right, then your vegetables don't have good enough quality and don't have enough nutritients. Eating healthy means to suffer, deal with it!!! /s
Or just dont overcook/boil your veggies. Everything in moderation.
Some of us grew up with terrible cooks. Properly cooked broccoli was a religious experience for me.
White people conquered the whole world looking for spices and then decided they didn't want to use any of them
Im of Scottish, Irish, and South German descent my ancestors didnt conquer shit beyond the whole bursting into flames under direct sunlight problem.
Because you are designed to seek out salt and sugar as a survival trait; then decided to mass produce it and put it into everything. Now your tastebuds have been ruined, even the standard apple/banana has been genetically modified to have more sugar
Genetically modified? That's a stretch.
Like many other cultures, bananas and apples were selectively reproduced to obtain fruits with more to eat. Corn, carrots, every single kale and cabbage, potatoes, oranges and even strawberries can go into this basket.
The wild banana has almost nothing to eat, being filled with large seeds and we can still find wild apples, by nature very tart but still edible. Every single cereal we plant and harvest today was originally nothing more than a wild grass.
But to call the work of millenia and who knows how many generations of farmers genetic modifications is a bit over the top.
GMOs are very recent introductions and normally for obtaining pest, drought or disease (more) resistant plants.
We absolutely genetically modified pretty much all of our food. We just did it by selective breeding.
The only difference with modern GMO is we've learned to do it directly much faster. We don't need a random mutation to add a trait anymore.
Never forget, wars were fought for spice. people died to not have to consume bland food.
and yet you pass the spice aisle every grocery visit, shame.
;)
The spice must flow
I'm lazy so here's lazy delicious veggie tip:
Get a rice cooker. Get rice and FROZEN pre-processed (chopped) veggies. These are still very inexpensive, require no preparation, last forever in the freezer, and are actually FRESHER than "fresh" veggies, since they are picked when ripe and then flash frozen rather than picked prematurely and sprayed with a ripening agent. Your rice cooker should come with a veggie tray so you can cook the rice and veggies simultaneously. Drop them in there and fire it up. Get yourself some "simmering sauce" and heat it up in a pan for ~15 minutes and baby you got a stew goin'.
So the question is...
Who was he referring to when he said "oh my god"?
I would have written that as "oh my me"
I still don't understand why the cooking skill of my parents sucked this bad. I started cooking on my own when I moved out and even after just a bit of practise and good recipes you can cook tasty meals. How do you go on 50 years failing this, I don't understand. If I see another bowl of dry rice, canned peas and ready marinated chicken from some discounter I'm going to throw up.
Boomers came up as fast food franchises and convenience foods began to dominate. The equal rights movement meant more women in the workplace and less in the kitchen and instead of spreading the burden, capitalism filled in the gaps.
Another explanation is that American cuisine got wrecked by the Great Depression. Everything that had flavor was expensive. People's inability to purchase and make certain foods stopped generational transfer of knowledge on how to make certain things. Thankfully, after several generations it's finally recovering.
"Ethnic" food (non European) wasn't as affected as much.
I heard an interview about a book on it a few years ago but now I can't find it.
I just spent Thanksgiving with my family, and was reminded how much my parents love boiling things. Fucking disgusting, no spices either? Fuck bland potatoes. It takes almost no effort to just toss a bunch of fucking spices on them and then put them in the oven.
My dad does this, just boils vegetables and potatoes so long that they're reduced to their component quarks and then serves them in a bowl with nothing on them. For bonus points, he makes sure they've cooled off to room temperature before we eat. I want to blame the Great Depression for this style of "cuisine", but he was born after that shit.
For lazy people like me: air fryer works great for asparagus and broccoli, taste good even with only salt.
As a lazy person who grew up with a parent who's method of cooking vegetables was just "boil it till its grey!", if a vegetable can be eaten raw, I will be eating it raw.
Raw broccoli dipped in garlic greek yoghurt is delicious, nutritious and fast/lazy to prepare.
I'm on the hunt for a vegan alternative that is decent, but until then, crunchy carrots and sugar snap peas are my go-to lazy veggies.
Also don't boil your vegetables. I was raised in boiled broccoli and sprouts, and steaming baskets changed my life!
Sauté it in what, God?
...
Sauté it in what?
In the pan, duh.
Steam broccoli and cauliflower together in a microwave or steamer of your choice with butter and whatever seasonings you like. Toss in a wok with ripping hot olive oil until golden brown on the edges. Make sure to be rough with the broccoli and cauliflower, you want it to be crushed a bit. Shit slaps and it so easy. Idk if it's healthy anymore after all the butter and oil but whatever. you can adjust the butter levels as needed but make sure there's enough oil in the wok
Seriously though I’m amazed at how many people don’t understand basic cooking and how easy and necessary it is to take interest in self health and basic nourishment. But then get shocked when their organs start to shut down before 50. Like “omg they are trying to kill us all with salt and sugar in fast food” shouldn’t be a shock anymore. It’s capitalism. That’s how it works. They don’t care about your body.
Image Transcription:
A four-panel Mr. Lovenstein comic titled "THIS COMIC MADE POSSIBLE THANKS TO EELS OF WOOD"
The first panel shows an angry pink humanoid standing on a green circle, holding a bunch of asparagus spears and speaking to a yellow-skinned, bearded humanoid barely in the panel. The pink humanoid is saying "HEY GOD, WHY DID YOU MAKE HEALTHY FOOD TASTE BAD?"
The second panel shows the yellow-skinned, bearded humanoid in more detail. It has a halo and is wearing a white robe. It's rolling its eyes angrily as it responds "OH MY GOD! DO I HAVE TO SHOW YOU EVERYTHING?"
The third panel shows the still-angry yellow-skinned humanoid cooking the asparagus spears in a frying pan over the open flame of a gas stove as the pink humanoid watches on amazed. The yellow humanoid is saying "SAUTÉ 'EM AND DON'T FORGET THE SEASONING! STIR AND TASTE AS YOU COOK!"
The final panel shows a close-up of the pink humanoid holding a half-eaten asparagus spear with its mouth full and eyes wide in awe as it says "IT'S... DELICIOUS!" A response from off-screen replies "OF COURSE IT IS!"
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Why not link the actual artist's website so they can get some revenue? Plus, there's usually a hidden panel for his comics.
Correction: Why is tasty unhealthy food so much easier than tasty healthy food?
From what I understand, it's that foods containing lots of fats, sugars, salt etc aren't normally unhealthy, out in the wild. When you're worried about not starving, foods with energy storage substances like sugar are a good thing, and the amount you'll get in some wild fruit or something isn't bad. Salt is an essential thing to get enough of, and overabundance of it in food isn't common. So, rather than evolve some ability to know exactly what substances we need and only want to eat food with those exact things, we have the evolutionary shortcut of "sweet things are good, fatty things are good, salty things are usually good, etc". Our biology hasn't really evolved to for the possibility of us farming stuff that contains sugar on an industrial scale, extracting and concentrating that sugar, and then putting unnaturally large concentrations of it in everything.