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Comment by pavel_lishin | Hacker News Reader

You would cringe if you saw what I just ate.

Made some spaghetti last night, with sauteed onions and mushrooms, with olive oil as sauce. Heated it up today in the microwave, but not long enough, so I just ate it cold, shoveling it into my mouth while reading.

Sometimes I like taking the time to make good food. But most of the time, food is just calories and nutrients.

(I've also had friends tell me that I should become more of a connoisseur of food, or coffee, or wine - but then, I'd never be able to enjoy the food/coffee/wine that I do now because it would taste like crap by comparison.)

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Nicer food doesn't need to be a lot of work. For example: cook spaghetti, remove water, add in crushed garlic (raw!), some olive oil, pepper & salt and eat with cheese. Of course this isn't a great dish, but tastes much better than what you made for less work. If you have two minutes more time we can extend this recipe: put all the ingredients plus grilled pine nuts and a whole bunch of basil leaves into a blender (except the spaghetti and the cheese of course), and you have a very nice pesto.

Normal things usually don't take more than 20 minutes of attention. Stews are excellent: you just throw everything in and let the stove do the work and you have food for multiple days. Going further you have foods that you probably wouldn't cook for yourself but you can cook when you have people over for dinner. Stuff like tiramisu or chocolate mousse don't take more than 20 minutes to prepare. Making your own mayonnaise takes 2 minutes, and you can make it a bit different for example by replacing the vinegar with lime juice (excellent with fish). Then there are things that do take a bit more time (sushi, ravioli and pizza for example), but even this doesn't take more than 30-40 minutes (of course there exists things that take a long time to cook, but that's not necessary for serving a tasty meal).

Then you get into classical French cooking... :)

> add in crushed garlic (raw!)

Assuming you have access to this, which foodies implicitly assume you do.

Can't you buy this for 2 cents per clove of garlic at the supermarket?

> Can't you buy this for 2 cents per clove of garlic at the supermarket?

Look up 'food deserts' sometime:

http://www.cdc.gov/features/fooddeserts/

http://www.fooddesert.net/

This is really epsilon from trolling. You could just as effectively have pointed out that there are people in Sub-Saharan Africa that don't have access to food at all.

If you don't have access to garlic, you don't have access to food. You are no longer debating the merits of different techniques. Garlic is universal; it's an integral part of peasant food in Mexico, South America, Africa, and of course all of Asia. Garlic is not a luxury item.

You're not reading my cites. I'm talking about food deserts in the US, places where the only place to buy food is a convenience store with either no fresh foods or massively overpriced fresh foods.

I'm well aware of what a "food desert" is. I live in Chicago. What I don't understand is what that has to do with garlic, or how you managed to somehow pivot from garlic to an addled, irrelevant argument about privilege.

I wouldn't care so much except you used the one food item gourmet cooking shares with all cooking around the world across every economic class everywhere to do it with, and I just couldn't handle it.

> to an addled, irrelevant argument about privilege.

No, I did not. You're the one who brought up privilege.

> all cooking around the world across every economic class everywhere

Traditional cooking, maybe, but that is less and less relevant to what the underclasses actually eat in the First World these days, and food deserts explain why.

I fixed your garlic problem in your food desert: http://www.amazon.com/Casa-Fruta-Fresh-Garlic-3lb/dp/B000Z8T...

The guy has access to onions and (gasp!) mushrooms, so he certainly has access to garlic. If you live in a place where you don't even have access to garlic that's very sad.

OP used mushrooms. If you can get mushrooms, you can get garlic.

I had leftover Easy Mac that was made with Eggnog instead of milk because I had ran out.

It was sinfully delicious. Probably took a year off my life though.

> Probably took a year off my life though.

According to XKCD, all you have to do is pick up 2,629,742 pennies (individually) and you'll have your year back!

http://what-if.xkcd.com/22/ Science!

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