Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
This week, in food news, when did following recipes become a personal failure? By culinary historian Laura Shaprio?
In this week’s What’s for Dinner? segment, we’ve got Rancho Gordo’s lentil and carrot salad.
In How’d You Make That? it’s Marisa’s simple peanut noodles (4 oz noodles, 1 tbsp. peanut butter, 1 tbsp. soy sauce, 1 tbsp. brown sugar, and 1 clove garlic.)
We’ve got a free ranging discussion of grocery lists this week.
And in What We’re Loving? It’s basic broccoli.
If you like what you hear, make sure to subscribe! Bonus points if you rate us or leave a review. Want to help us keep the lights on? Become a member via our Patreon page. Follow us on Instagram and twitter @localmouthful and help us spread the word about the show.
For grocery list tips — I HAVE to use paper and pen, crossing off the item as I pick it up when shopping. I keep a narrow tablet with magnetic back on the side of the fridge ( and a pen right there too!) and add items to it throughout the week as I plan my upcoming menu’s. If the store doesn’t have an item available (while shopping), I circle it so I remember to add it to the next week’s list. Hope that’s helpful for Joy! Love listening to your episodes!
Thanks, Leslie. Something like that might work better for me.
Random question for joy – were you able to find vegan bread crumbs at sprouts?
1 vote here for broccoli – actually charring some today to make dashii!
I was!
Broccoli is my favorite vegetable and I always have it in stock! I have never heard of the author of that cookbook and NY Times newsletter, but your description of his cookbook is very fascinating. From a historical perspective, early recipes and cookbooks (approx. Pre-1900) were mostly written in this more narrative form with no quantities. But just as discussed, this was not meant for a novice. These cookbooks were marketed towards either housewives or full time cooks who spent the majority of their time cooking and would have been so familiar with food that they did not need quantities. It’s fascinating to think there is someone returning to that style of conveying recipes. I personally don’t think that is useful for your average person looking to follow a recipe these days, especially as less and less people in society need to devote their whole days to cooking.
I organize my list, on paper, not according to store but according to the section of the store/ pantry. I use small groupings on the page rather than a long list. Visually the list mirrors how a typical grocery store is organized. For instance, veg (hard and soft), dry stores – like flour, sugar, rice – cold goods, meat, detergents, condiments. Then as I am walking through the store I can check to see if I have missed picking up anything I would find in that section.
You can use the same list at several stores, if you have that luxury, since they are usually laid out in the same manner. Anything unfound is carried over to a new list next shop. Like Marisa’s mom I keep 1/4 sheets of recycled paper handy to jot things down as I use them up in the galley then make the shopping list as above when I am preparing for the outting. Now, remembering to take the list with me when I go provisioning is another story…
Heather
Joy, I made a large chart on google sheets for my mom of all our grocery shopping/household needs, and how often we purchase them (organized by category). For each week she can copy the master to a new sheet, and then adjust with that we need to purchase that week.
I’m only shopping for me, so I use the Notes app as Marisa does.
But growing up, we had a smallish notepad with perforated pages on a small clipboard hung up on a nail in the kitchen with a pen attached. If we needed something, it went on the notepad and then whoever was grocery shopping copied those items to a new paper list. My Mom liked to create a list by aisle in the grocery store. (This was before phones that weren’t attached by a cord to the wall.)
If you are a paper person, embrace the paper!
Love your show. You guys always make me smile. Yes, I do a list – one list with different stores on it. I have a specialty store, Costco (which I insta cart) and Grocery (either Whole Foods (sorry Joy) or Trader Joes). Then I add (hand write) onto my printed list. I also have at the top of the list a Sat – Friday menu so that helps keep me in the right frame of mind for shopping. It’s complicated! 🙂 Also, Love broccoli and Sam Sifton is, indeed, smug. 🙂
https://www.ranchogordo.com/blogs/recipes/tagged/salads
Thank you, June!
Check out AnyList, Joy. I use it for all my lists and love it!
We have several Amazon Alexa devices in our house – like at least two per floor. On the Alexa app (which my husband and I both have access to on our respective phones), you can create lists. Mine are “Shopping” (this is akin to Marisa’s “other”), Costco, Penzeys, and several others – any time we need something, I can say, “Alexa – add cayenne pepper to the Penzeys list” or “Alexa – add boneless rotisserie package to Costco list” … I have access to all of the lists when I go out, and generic “can get it anywhere” stuff goes on the “Shopping” list. When I’m at Costco (or more accurately right now, when I’m adding Costco items to Instacart), I still check the Costco list AND the Shopping list. The only thing I need to get better at is checking the stuff off when it arrives … that’s a discipline thing that I’m getting better at, but I’m not always there 🙂
Dan would never be willing to live with Alexa. Her already feels like we live in a surveillance state!
Love the commentary on Sam Sifton in the podcast from this week! I completely agree; his tone in the newsletters always bugs me (and since he started sending them, I now rarely even look at it), and the ‘no recipe recipe’ concept is very annoying. Chris Kimball/Milk Street has recently started doing this too, with their “cook-ish” posts. I’m all for food and cooking inspiration, but if I’m looking for a recipe, please give me a recipe and not in a condescending fashion. Now I wish I’d listened to this before last weekend so we could have ranted (I mean, discussed…) about it in the Patreon chat like you suggested 😉
I plan my meals and put it in my notes app on my phone and then build my grocery list from there. I essentially pick 7 dinners and put them on specific days but I almost never stick exactly to the schedule, but then I know I have all the items for those recipes and can decide what I’m making each night based on what sounds good. I put my grocery list in the “reminders” app on the iPhone because it’s essentially just a checklist (you can edit an item to reminder you at a certain day/time and/or place if you like but I don’t use that feature for my grocery list). But if you wanted you could set a reminder for Liquid Aminos and have it remind you when you get to Fresh Thyme. I just keep everything on one list (don’t separate by store), but I do the majority of my shopping at Aldi and know what I can’t get there so I just sift through my list as I go. Then I delete the items as I shop. There’s a local organization that I get a bag of food from every week and I’m never sure what I’m going to get, so I make sure to do my meal planning and grocery shopping after I get that bag so I can plan using the items I get. That what works for me-hope you find your groove Joy! Marisa, I’ve never been a huge fan of peanut sauce but you’ve inspired me to try again with your simple recipe! Thanks ladies!