I think there is a start up cost to cooking that he missed. Oatmeal is quick once you have oatmeal and flavoring ingredients on hand and know how to make it taste good. I think part of the problem with cooking at home is that there is heavy upfront costs in building a supply of ingredients and learning techniques, etc. When foodie evangelists discount or forget this, they come off sounding like condescending douches.

I found, through trial and error, that as long as I keep my kitchen stocked, it’s just a lot less time to cook than to eat out, even at fast food restaurants.

That was a big surprise to me - I started cooking my own food for health reasons and have been amazed at how much cheaper and faster it is.

Alysia @1 - I half agree; there is some trouble with learning to cook, but it’s not too horrible. I’m doing it, and I’m not very good in the kitchen at all, having never really done my own cooking with anything other than a microwave.

In the oatmeal case, the upfront costs for the oatmeal enhancing ingredients are not too awful, and the trip to the grocery store not a whole lot worse than going to a restaurant. The cooking technique is very simple. I agree foodie evangelists often come off sounding like condescending douches, but theirs isn’t the only way to cook your own food.

A lot of staples are cheap.  Spices can be expensive and probably ought to be bought on an as-needed basis so you don’t end up with bottles of crap you don’t use.  But flour, sugar, beans, rice, baking powder, dry pasta, oatmeal, cornmeal—that stuff is not terribly expensive and can be accumulated a little as a time, an item or two per trip to the store.  That way you’re not laying out a lot of money at once for food you’re not able to eat all at once.  And if you don’t know what to put in your oatmeal, look at the “flavors” on the boxes of instant, then buy those things.  Raisins and spice?  Check.  Brown sugar?  Check.  Apple and cinnamon?  Check.  If you have oatmeal, cinnamon, and sugar in the house, a box of raisins costs $3 and will last you a month of breakfasts.

I didn’t so much mean the monetary cost for ingredients (although for some people that can be a big burden) but more the planning and time it takes to remember to buy cream and to build a good collection of spices. And I don’t think it is prohibitory for *most* Americans, I just think it something that needs to be acknowledged when righting such an article rather than the sort of “OH MY FUCKING GOD YOUR ARE SO DUMB YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW HOT TO LIVE YOUR OWN LIFE BECAUSE THIS IS EASIER THAN WHAT YOUR ARE DOING NOW YOU DUMBASS” sort of tone of the article. I just started reading the times because it is one of a few websites I can read at work. I had never read anything by this guy before this article and I thought he made a lot of good points but it just dripped with such condescension.

My guess is that this oatmeal like product isn’t so much for McDonald’s costumers so much as to McD’s critics so that they have something to point to when critics say they don’t try to make healthy food. My guess is that this product will be yanked when it doesn’t sell and then McD’s will say that the people DONT WANT healthy food. I also think demonstrations of how good homemade food can be made quickly could really help some people, but how one eats is such a basic part of a person’s lifestyle and culture that condescension is the absolute worse think one can do to advance “the cause”.

Then again, his article was probably aimed at foodies, so he could have just been stoking his base and not looking to expand his audience.

Alysia @ 4- aha, I see what you mean. And yes, condescenscion is a crap way to persuade.

My guess is that this product will be yanked when it doesn’t sell and then McD’s will say that the people DONT WANT healthy food.

Now that you mention it, I wouldn’t be surprised.

I could tell he was kind of a prat about it from Amanda’s excerpt because he doesn’t mentioned microwaving. It takes maybe two minutes on high for a hot breakfast (instant oatmeal is an absolute scam) and then you throw whatever you have on it. It’s just a basic starch, ad anything you would add to bread, rice, potatoes, pasta, or couscous. I prefer jam but that hasn’t stopped me from adding left over beef stew, tuna, vegetable stir-fry, peas, fruit (fresh, canned, and dried) honey, chutney, and on one occasion of great poverty, ketchup.

What would it take to get people to move towards realizing that having a well-stocked kitchen is cheaper and more convenient than eating out?

More expensive gas and parking.

“OH MY FUCKING GOD YOUR ARE SO DUMB YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW HOT TO LIVE YOUR OWN LIFE BECAUSE THIS IS EASIER THAN WHAT YOUR ARE DOING NOW YOU DUMBASS” sort of tone of the article.

Yes, this.

Also, I just can’t get exercised over the “OH MY FUCKING GOD IT IS SO HORRIBLE IT HAS FAT AND CALORIES (CALORIES!!) AND IS SWEETENED AND HAS SEVEN INGREDIENTS GROSS GROSS GROSS” issue.

I mean really? Feeling that without sweeteners and cream*, oatmeal tastes like gluey particleboard paste makes me an uncultured idiot who just needs to suck it up and learn that gluey particleboard paste is mmm mmm tasty? No. And if the argument is that all of us childish uncultured idiots should learn to LIKE OUR HEALTHY FOOD UNSWEETENED DAMMIT, well, all I can say is a) that’s a super good way to scare people off from eating more nutritious food and b) my, but the emperor’s new clothes are delicious!

*okay it’s fake cream, I’ll give you that, and fake cream is not nearly as delicious as real cream. But fake or real, cream does not actually erase the nutrients in oatmeal. I promise. If the question is oatmeal with cream or no oatmeal at all, pour the damn cream.

Pee Ess: Not that I would buy oatmeal at McDonald’s (I don’t care to pay premium prices for fake cream) but there *is* the issue that if I buy oatmeal at McDonald’s there is exactly zero chance that I will burn it to the pot when I look away for a second too long, boil it over ditto, or have to wash a pot, spoon and bowl, all of which are things that happen frequently if not every time I cook hot cereal at home.

Enh.  We eat in most of the time; when we eat out, it’s mostly at locally run places that serve food we either don’t know how to make or can’t be fussed with making for ourselves because it’s fiddly.  (Chinese and Thai are two of our favorite eat-out genres.) 

I imagine “don’t know how to cook it,” “haven’t got the stuff on hand today” or “just plain don’t feel like cooking” are some of the big contributors toward people eating out instead of eating in.  And there is the time factor of “It’ll take me 30 minutes each way to get home in this traffic, plus whatever time I spend cooking and eating, or I can have fast food in my hand in 15 minutes and eat in in the car on my way from point A to point B”. 

That having been said, McDonalds oatmeal WTF?  If you’re going to McD’s for breakfast, you probably weren’t thinking of oatmeal; you were thinking of one of those egg sandwich things or possibly overly sweetened pancakes with fake maple syrup.  Either one of which you could have just as fast at home, yes, but only if you have the ingredients on hand and are willing to leave the dirty cookware on the stove until you get back.

Or maybe you have a toddler (or two)  or a mouthy preschooler or a babe in arms or a half-trained, large puppy or a confused elder you’re caring for or any one of like a bizillion things that actually does make cooking oatmeal at home (while you get ready for work) more trouble than waiting till you leave home and have any kids strapped in the car, then ordering breakfast at McD’s and letting them do the dishes.

It’s kind of funny to me that Amanda can be so on point about valuing the labor women are expected to do, and then turn around and forget entirely about how that extra labor might make the work of getting breakfast into everyone a bit harder. Maybe because she doesn’t have the additional labor of caring for kids. That REALLY makes a difference in how easy it is to get meals on the table from scratch.

Maybe because I am familar with Bittman, I don’t feel like he was talking down to me.  I read it while laughing at myself.  But you know, you learn.  I never ate oatmeal in my whole life.  A few months ago, I was waiting at the drive thru for my morning coffee (I know, I know) and I saw the sign and I impulse ordered it.  Listen, without the added brown sugar, which is how I ordered it, it’s 260 calories.  That’s not a lot of calories for a filling breakfast.  And it is filling. 

It got me started on oatmeal.  Now I eat the Quaker Oats instant low sugar maple oatmeal almost every morning, and I slice up organic strawberries on top of it.  It’s great!  And it only has four grams of sugar , the McDonalds one has 18 grams of sugar, and a whopping 32 if you get it with the added brown sugar.  So that is bad.

Now, after reading Bittman’s piece, and thinking about the probability that the Quaker instant is so processed that it loses the health benefits of a whole grain, I am going to try my hand at making my own from rolled oats.  The problem with that is I am not a fan of honey, and I don’t want to add sugar.  But I’m going to start playing around with it this weekend, maybe a little honey won’t bother me. 

The point is, it all started with McDonalds, crazy huh?  And I don’t eat anything else there, I’m a vegetarian.  They just happen to be the place i pass every morning that has decent coffee.  And the other point is, even if you find Bittman to be a bit of a snob or whatever, I have learned a lot from that guy.  Amanda is the one who turned me on to him with her food blogging, which I am glad she is doing again btw.

Eh. It sounded good to me in theory, even if I don’t personally eat oatmeal. Just one thing, it takes me two minutes to queue up for and receive a cup of decent filter coffee, and it costs 95p ($1.50?). As someone who likes to sleep in it’s a dealbreeaker at present, though I see what you’re saying.

As for everyone else, it’s the same shit once again. Shock horror, eating healthily requires the same kind of triangle as everything else in life: Health/positivity vs Time vs Cost. You always have to choose two, realistically. Amanda is identifying a way to make something relatively healthy, cheap and convenient. If you don’t want to take the advice on board that’s fine but don’t try to make it some kind of moral issue or anything.

Well, Amanda works from home and probably? so does Bittman.  The thing about the quaker instant that I like is that once i get into my office I can put a little water in my coffee mug and nuke it, and then that’s that.  I like to get into the office early while it’s quiet to get stuff done, and I don’t want to rush my breakfast at home.  I like to eat it at my desk, before the crazy starts, while reading the NY Times online.  It’s my half an hour every morning that I need.  The last thing I want is to shove some food down my throat while running around the house.  Sorry, but that is just unpleasurable.  That’s the other thing I have to see if I can make work with making my own.

Throw kids into that equation and forget about it.  (those I don’t have).

But, you take what you can use and you leave the rest.  It’s not personal.  I’ve learned a lot from both Amanda and Bitman about food.  Of course some of what either says is not going to be something that works for me.

I will, thanks!

I like eating out- edible every time. I wouldn’t eat oatmeal from mcdonalds, because there are convenience items for that. If I go to McDonalds, I’m usually on some trip where I have to drive some place at 5 am in the morning(and don’t go with the eat a fricking granola bar at home. for fuck’s sake, by the time lunch rolled around, I’d rip your arm off.) *ahem* I tend to load up on the calories when I note that it may be rude to eat daintly little healthy snacks through a 4 hour meeting.

Feeling that without sweeteners and cream*, oatmeal tastes like gluey particleboard paste makes me an uncultured idiot who just needs to suck it up and learn that gluey particleboard paste is mmm mmm tasty?

Uh… dunno what you’re talking about. Because except for smelly hippies, nobody eats plain oatmeal.

I don’t think it’s fair to factor in travel time from home, because a lot of busy people buy food from the restaurants that are around them, or from places they pass on the way home, rather than making a special trip to a distant restaurant.

As for coffee:  I take the El train in Chicago for work, and there is a Dunkin Donuts at the station.  They are extremely fast.  I can get coffee in one minute with no preparation, waiting, or cleanup.  If there is a line, it might take a few minutes.

People aren’t bad judges of what is convenient.  They might overestimate how long it takes to cook, but they know that driving through McDonalds on the way home is going to take significantly less time and less work.

Not to mention that it’s ALWAYS faster to microwave frozen, processed food than it is to cook or get takeout.  Cooking isn’t just competing with takeout.  It’s competing with the frozen pizzas and frozen burritos in most Americans’ freezers.

Cooking might be more efficient than some people think, but unless you’re starting at home and driving or walking somewhere 15+ minutes away, it’s not faster than fast food.

I don’t think nobody eats plain oatmeal. I’m sure some people eat it, even if they are ‘smelly hippies’, which is a useless descriptor that tells us nothing. To some, I’m a smelly hippie what with my body hair,feminism, and the fact that I once glanced at a drum circle and was not stricken with horror, but others would consider me a neoliberal enemy of all that is right and good as I buy packaged food all the time. andtake out.

I’m kind of inbetween on this.  I don’t find cooking particularly easy, but I do agree that there are some dishes in particular—breakfast foods, coffee, rice & beans—where it is very easy to stay stocked and where prep times are tiny.

I think what people don’t realize is that you can edge your way in.  That was the big revelation for me, that you can just have a half-dozen or so dishes that you cook regularly and spice slightly differently, and it’s perfectly pleasant until you want to expand.

Combine 1/2 cup old fashioned oats and 1 cup water, and microwave on 50% power for 5 minutes. This is what I eat every morning. No chance of forgetting and burning it. Add sweetener, fruit, milk to taste.

OTOH, while cooking takes no more time than eating out or ordering delivery, it often takes significantly more mental energy and sustained attention. Those quantities are often at a premium. You have to plan at least somewhat in advance, and you have to coordinate a multistep process that requires precise timing of multiple overlapping tasks, and if you’re exhausted from work, you sometimes just can’t face doing all that when you’re already starving. You can wait to eat, as long as you don’t have to do anything harder than watching TV, but you can’t face any recipe with more than one step. And in this paragraph, by you I mean me.

And you still have the problem of cleaning. And if you put that off till the next day, then you go to cook and discover all the pans and utensils you need are dirty, and suddenly the amount of work just doubled, and you say fuck it and order pizza so you can spend time cleaning the kitchen. I’ve totally never done this in any way. Nope.

I actually enjoy cooking. So I’m always torn between evangelizing cooking, and saying truthfully that it isn’t as intimidating as people think it is—and admitting that in real life, I sometimes just don’t have the energy. You know?

Well, it’s hard because the ‘type’, I guess, of energy that is dear for people is unique to the person, so we end up talking past each other. “Oh, cooking is so easy!You can do it without thinking! In the time you spent composing an answer to this blog post, you could have cooked a four course meal”

“What are you talking about?All that prep, the mess, and I’m exhausted anyway. It takes me 2 seconds to write a blog reply! A meal takes me an hour!”

I am not sure the ‘sides’(there are many others) can ever understand each other.

I started eating Quaker oats when I was first living on my own the summer after my freshman year in college and realized how expensive box cereal was. Boiled in water and topped with brown sugar, oatmeal is pretty good and can be made quickly. Plenty of places, like chain cafes, sell oatmeal. There’s no reason to dress it up.

I’m a big champion of cooking, but I think oatmeal is a hard sell, especially when he rules out instant oatmeal packets. Real oatmeal takes more time to cook in the morning than frying up eggs: you have to boil water, mix in the oats, and cook for about 15 minutes while watching it to make sure it isn’t burning. Then you mix in the various spices and dried fruits and sit down to eat what is invariably waaaaayyyyy too much oatmeal. It would probably take less time to fry up eggs and make toast and have a real decadent breakfast.

I think the objections to instant oatmeal are more based on the fake dried fruit and sweeteners than te actual oats, so removing that from the equation might solve the problem.  So Instant oatmeal plus milk plus brown sugar is both very quick, contains minimal additives, and tastes good.

What? Um no, MP. Irish oats, old-fashioned, Scottish, Steel-cut, it all goes in the microwave at 1/2 cup of oats to 1 cup liquid (of you’re choice) for 3-5 minutes. Want dried fruit? Toss ‘em in with oatmeal. Fresh? Slice it up during cooking time. Sweeten as you please & there you go. I have 3 kids & a mom with Huntington’s, whom I have to hand-feed, and a husbeast who works nights & therefore is useless in the morning. Ordering in is a GODDAMN pain with kids, even moreso dining out, besides being fucking ridiculously expensive. And I’ll cop to being an evil, pissy bear in the morning. For me, though, being cheap wins out. And not having to deal with people anymore than I have to!

Okay, so this is somewhat off-topic as it doesn’t relate to oatmeal, but I thought I’d delurk to share a great resource I’ve found for easy recipes:
http://thestonesoup.com/blog/

These are all 5 ingredients or less and most can be made in 10 minutes or less. Most of them are also fairly healthy. 

Back to my cave…

Cooking oatmeal in the microwave was invariably a lot more trouble than on the stovetop. Microwave ovens vary, as packages are constantly reminding us, and I never did find the sweet spot in mine that would a) cook the damn oatmeal and b) not boil it over in a huge gummy mess. I can step away for longer from a simmering pan of hot cereal than I can from a bowl of it in the microwave.

Er, that first sentence in #31 should end with FOR ME. Obvs not for everybody. Which is kind of the point.

Disclaimer that is apparently relevant for this thread: I am a single 25-year-old female living alone. As a graduate student I have the option of working from home when I don’t have meetings or classes.

That being said, from start to finish, I can make hot, delicious oatmeal in 5 minutes, which involves about 2 minutes worth of participation from me. I do not wash the bowl afterward, and instead use it for oatmeal the next morning. Here is my recipe:

2/3 c water (estimated; I know where it comes on the bowl I use)
1/3 c old fashioned oats (I get these in 10lb bags from Costco)
~1T flax meal (estimated again)

Nuke for 1:30. Stir. Nuke for 1:00.

Add 4 spoonfuls frozen blueberries and a splash of soymilk. Stir. Add most of a scoop of vanilla protein powder. Stir. Nom.

While my oatmeal is in the microwave, I get dressed and get my crap together for the day. This seriously takes about the same amount of time that it takes to make toast. I call it the Breakfast of Awesome.

@kristin - The trick is to use a bowl that’s way too big. I have something like this from World Market, and I’m making 1/3 cup oatmeal at a time. I’ve only had one boil-over incident, and that was when I was making a half-cup serving and I didn’t use enough water and it asploded.

I think there is a start up cost to cooking that he missed. Oatmeal is quick once you have oatmeal and flavoring ingredients on hand and know how to make it taste good. I think part of the problem with cooking at home is that there is heavy upfront costs in building a supply of ingredients and learning techniques, etc. When foodie evangelists discount or forget this, they come off sounding like condescending douches.

Um. Am I being a concern troll if I’m responding to a commenter?

I agree - sometimes food bloggers forget that it *can* take time to learn to cook and make it quick. I think of this as grad student syndrome. A lot of us grad students in math were *hideous* teachers of mathematics. We’d forgotten what it was like to be struggling with pre-calc, much less calc. And food bloggers are the same way. It’s now quick to peel and chop and onion, and you have a plan for what to do with the waste, so, that 5-10 minute chore takes just a couple minutes instead.

But I think “condescending douche” is a bit harsh.

Shit, I have an omelette most mornings.  And that takes me less time than the f’in drive up at McD’s. 
Seriously, turn on flame, (cast iron omelette pan lives on burner) break two eggs in glass pitcher that I used to microwave water for coffee, add two shots water from tap.  Stir with fork.  Spray hot omelette pan with oil. Pour in eggs.  Lift edge, lift edge.  Grab handful of shredded cheese.  Put on eggs.  Fold.  Done.  I think it took longer to type that than cook it.

Equipmnt needed:
omelette pan and spatula.

Ingredietns:
Eggs
oil
cheese    

If you’re a carnivore, you can also do the nuke one pre-cooked sausage (I do a bunch on one day and have 4 the week.) Toss on bun, ketchup or maple syrup we keep in squeeze bottle like ketchup. 

Super hurry morning.  Nuke 2 c water in micro 4 - 4 minutes. Lay bacon on bacon pan, cover with paper towel.  Grind and put coffee in french press.  Pour water into french press, bacon in micro for 3 minutes.  Shit, shower, shave.  Put bacon on bun - shot of ketchup. Pour coffee in t’go cup.  Toss bacon pan in dishwasher. Bacon in one hand, coffee in other.Get ass out the door.  20 minutes from pillow to door.

I don’t think nobody eats plain oatmeal.

I eat it with 2% milk and jam of my choice, I wouldn’t recommend using sour orange marmalade for that purpose.

kristen, could we have at least one comment where you can tell us of a cooking experience that is isn’t stressful for you?

Anyway, the recipe for chinese sok, which is very easy to make, is a kind of porridge, like breakfast oatmeal:

6 pints water

2 pints chicken, beef or other broth.

ginger root without the skin, fresh is the best

chicken, beef, pork, shrimp at least one lb of one of these meats, cut up except for the shrimp.

1 cup long-grain rice.

1/2 tbs Chinese 5 spice powder.

Combine the above, bring to a boil, then simmer for 2 hours.

It’s good for disposing of a chicken carcass or other leftover you may have from a meat course.

Any questions?

Well Kristin, there is also the issue, that if I make the oatmeal or the coffee at home, there is absolutely zero chance that I will leave a corner of the cup lid slightly loose, plus make the coffee so fucking hot, even when I order/make it with light ice (just like requested on the fucking receipt) , that I will then unwittingly spill it and scald myself, ruining a sweater and a giant scald burn, slightly blistered. There is also zero chance that I will then have my lawyer send me a letter refusing to pay the $20 for the new sweater.

@ kristin #31: BIGGER bowl. Seriously - I have these great, cheap, @ 2 cup ceramic bowls with handles for soup, cereal, etc.

Shit, I have an omelette most mornings.  And that takes me less time than the f’in drive up at McD’s. 

I think the dynamic of getting breakfast from McDonald’s is similar to people who go to Dunkin’ Donuts in the morning: you stop in on your way to work and pick something up. Maybe it’s a muffin, maybe it’s a donut, and maybe it’s oatmeal.

Dark Avenger, I love cooking and in the general food threads I talk a lot about things I like to cook. Threads about how easy it is to cook at home that anyone who eats out is a simp, though, are good places to point out that cooking is not always easy. Even for those of us who love doing it.

Phylosopher, that’s definitely a point, but it sounds to me more like a point against eating on the go (which I get, I don’t like eating on the go either for exactly those reasons).

Nice bowls, Hobbes - sorry, that almost sounds lascivious - not meant to. .  They don’t get too hot?

Heh, it was actually the gall of restaurants/cafeterias taking up a precious 10 minutes (if not more!) of my lunch hours (when I could be reading!) that contributed to me bringing leftovers for lunch. Generally, I cook at home. Frequently I cook two dinners with enough portions for several meals, so that I’ll have some on hand for work lunches. Plus bread via the breadmaker. I still like to eat out as it doesn’t involve any additional time on my feet, although as a vegetarian (cutting out many fastfood joints) and someone moderately good at cooking, frequently it is only worth the effort if the restaurant is either very good (usually translating to expensive) or something more elaborate than the home effort warrants (tandoori comes to mind).

Also, my personal vote for oatmeal at home is doing steel cut/Irish oats once a week (takes about an hour) and microwaving portions for breakfast. Actually eventually got sick of oatmeal due to this, but was still much tastier than any instant varieties.

You’re probably right on that Tyro.  It’s the ability to eat it in the car while driving to work (multitasking) that attracts most people to a McD’s breakfast.  But that would be for something like an Egg McMuffin that you can eat with one hand - oatmeal doesn’t work that way, unless these are something drinkable?

That’s why I posted the bacon sandwich thing.

Ah. I don’t have room in my kitchen for special big bowls for microwaved oatmeal, and I realize I could use a casserole or mixing bowl or something but at that point I’ve got a dirty cooking vessel to wash just like if I cooked the damn stuff on the stove (because I am not going to make my kids eat their oatmeal out of a casserole). So I solved my problem by just using the stovetop. It’s not really an issue for me anymore.

My point isn’t so much that omg cooking oatmeal is terribly fraught and difficult, because I agree that it’s not, but more that there are a jillion little potential irritants about the process that might spur someone to not bother and just pick it up somewhere. That being stupid and/or lazy aren’t the only reasons real people would elect to make a habit of grabbing oatmeal at McD’s.

snowmentality @ 24 : I’m in much the same situation—I like cooking, and it’s pretty easy for me, but there are still days when I get home and just think, no.  Not tonight.  I’m hungry, I’m tired, my feet hurt, and I desperately want to play with the cat because work was stressful.  At that stage I can microwave something out of my freezer, which might even have been homemade, because I’m lucky enough that half the things I like making best make huge amounts with freezeable leftovers.  Or maybe it’s going to be something storebought, or soup from a can, or whatever.  Or, delivery or takeout.

It’s not that I don’t know that cooking at home is usually cheaper, just as quick, and sometimes thoughtless (pasta with jarred sauce approaches mindless for me, due to having made it about a gazillion times the first few years I lived on my own).  But sometimes, it’s not what I want.  So fast food becomes a sometimes food, and I can live with that.

Plus, I’d rather have toast than oatmeal.  Oatmeal tends to explode if I make it (we all have individual things we struggle with, this is one of mine, yes I’m aware it’s simple, it’s still one of mine).  Toast, at worst, just needs the charred edges scraped off.  If I have time for something more complicated in the morning, I’ve got recipes galore; if I’m in a rush, it’s toast, cereal, fruit, or some combination thereof, whatever feels the least labour-intensive that day.

Tenya, we did that for awhile with the old JOhn Robbins 3 grain recipe, let’s see
1/2 c steel cut oats
1/2 c cracked wheat (bulghar will do)
1/2 c dates (pre-cut and rolled in oat flour from health food store saved cutting) 
1/3 cup corn meal (stoneground preferably according to the recipe)
1/4 tsp salt or to taste

Bring 5 c water to boil.  Add above ingredients.  Turn down to simmer and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Cover. Turn off heat. Let sit for 5 minutes. 
Cinnamon, milk and maple syrup as desired.

I used to mix up huge batches of this, and put pre-measured batches in mason jars.  Made double and triple batches , then nuked as needed.

BTW, for those who find oatmeal not sweet enough, or any sweet food really, you can often cut the sugar by adding some vanilla start with 1/4 tsp or even just a drop or two to try it. 

Thanks for reminding me.

The only thing I have to add is that “Time Fascist” sounds like a movie that Troy and Abed would be really into on Community.

kristin, that’s a strawman. If you read it, he suggests that you could have a tastier bowl of oatmeal without mystery ingredients for less money and time.  This is the truth.

To suggest he’s bullying you into eating cardboard is simply incorrect.  No reason to play Rush Limbaugh acting like Michelle Obama is out to get him. He’s right.  What you could make at home in five minutes would taste better than McDonalds.  Deal with the argument as it is. 

But your reaction does create another question: why have Americans been led to believe what comes from the stove and/or is healthy must taste bad?  Marketing is good to get us there, because it’s objectively untrue.

This post doesn’t conflict with my belief that cooking in hard.  It is.  It’s hard to learn a new skill.  People who cook tend to be people who enjoy learning new things for fun.  But once you learn it, it’s easy.

My point was to agree with Bittman (sorry, McDonald’s isn’t more convenient or relaxing that getting home and being able to spend that extra 15 minutes in your life instead of in your car), but to say people don’t see what’s obvious to him (he doesn’t work at home, but in the offices of the Times, and by the way people who work at home work—-my housework piles the fuck up, I promise that) don’t because billions of dollars have been spent convincing us that cooking is too hard to learn and too time-consuming.  And the perception that it’s hard is what makes it hard.  And learning something new is hard.  But oatmeal is easy; a great place for an intimidated person to realize they won’t burn the house down.

Now there’s a thesis that needs a look—why are we trained that healthy food tastes bad?

It’s not just marketing; most folks here know that the health food movement began as an ascetic movement (heck, even corn flakes were supposed to keep the passions down), and only recently has the connection between good food and food which is good for you been rediscovered.

I haven’t had time to read all the responses (ha!) but for me the thing that deters me from cooking is if I haven’t planned what I’m cooking beforehand. I find that if I’ve anticipated and mentally planned (even by as little as an hour beforehand) I’m happy to simply pull stuff out, chop, cook, etc. But if I come home from work, I’m tired and hungry and I haven’t worked out what to cook, that’s when I reach for the car keys, or the phone or even walk to the local Vietnamese place down the road.

I cut down hugely on the amount of take-away food I eat simply by doing a weekly menu plan. It’s not planned down to the nth degree. I’ll program salad but I’m loose about what goes into the salad. I’ll also leave a day or so free to cover for last minute invites from friends to go out or other social stuff that comes up. I tend to start work late and leave late (my workplace is relatively flexible) and so I also tend to do some prep in the morning so when i get back from work half of the meal is done. This also means I’m much less likely to reach for the car keys.

So TL;DR the secret to getting me to cook is a little bit of planning.

I don’t disagree that cooking takes up mental energy, and planning ahead is the most of it.  I order takeout when I didn’t plan ahead.  But weirdly, my unwillingness to leave my house and go places just to get food to eat (as opposed to actually eating at a restaurant as an outing) is why I also bake my own bread and cook my own food mostly.  I hate the effort of going to the store for a loaf of bread.  Easier to make my own, since I don’t have to get dressed.  Which is why the kids thing puzzles me.  Dressing children to take them anywhere always seems like such an effort.

What you could make at home in five minutes would taste better than McDonalds.

Maybe to you and me. There are people who don’t like homemade oatmeal. If they eat oatmeal at McDonald’s because they like that, they are eating oatmeal they wouldn’t otherwise eat, and having fat and sugar in it doesn’t change it from oatmeal into poison. This is a classic case of making the perfect the enemy of the good.

why have Americans been led to believe what comes from the stove and/or is healthy must taste bad?

Well it just couldn’t have anything to do with people like Bittman insisting that oatmeal with skim milk and a tiny bit of honey tastes better than oatmeal with cream and lots of sugar, and if we don’t agree it’s because we’re babies addicted to sweet food who don’t know what tastes good.

I love homemade food and prefer it 999 times out of 1000 to restaurant food, but that’s largely because I learned to plug my ears to the idea that homemade food with fat and sugar is the devil, and that nutritious eating doesn’t have to be ascetic. Most people are *not* ascetics, and emphasizing asceticism is only going to run them off.

I think I would have been totally behind Bittman if he’d been like “what are these jackasses doing serving you fake cream and charging you more than real cream would cost? Here, try this oatmeal recipe, top it with some real cream and as much brown sugar as you like, and see if that’s not better. Amirite? I knew it. I’m right.” But he’s not. Instead he’s like “You should be cooking it yourself because wharrrgarbleFATISTHEDEVILOMGCALORIES!!!!”

That being stupid and/or lazy aren’t the only reasons real people would elect to make a habit of grabbing oatmeal at McD’s.

Well, here’s the thing—even if one accepts that it’s a viable alternative to buy oatmeal from McDonald’s (who am I to judge? I indulge in buying the occasional muffin in the morning), why does McDonald’s have to sell a sugary artificially-flavored-laden confection which a huge number of calories? It’s oatmeal, one of the simplest foods in existence.

Planning is definitely it.  The hardest thing in learning to cook for me was stocking up on stuff so that if I didn’t plan, throwing shit together is an option.  Now that it is an option, I definitely eat out less, because fuck it.  Too much work to figure where to order from, what to get, how to pay blah.

kristin, I agree some people prefer junk.  It’s definitely a taste acquired in childhood, and it does take work to relearn to eat real food.  But once you do, it is definitely better.  I don’t actually have a lot of patience for adults who are picky like children, though.

I don’t know if it is JUST marketing. It may start as marketing and then people develop tastes for crap, but I think most people genuinely enjoy eating crap: at least in the short term. McDs food isn’t just marketed well, it is also designed to be really instantly satisfying. Assuming that Americans have all been duped is a really terrible way to start a PR movement.

there were like 4 comments posted while i was writing 58, sorry for the redundancy

Cooking is not faster if you don’t know what you’re doing. My mom and I cooked a few meals this past summer from actual recipes and it took us 3 to 4 times as long as the estimated time, probably because we’re novices to this fancy cookin’ thing. But now I’m back at the dorm and eating food other people made.

It’s not just marketing; most folks here know that the health food movement began as an ascetic movement (heck, even corn flakes were supposed to keep the passions down), and only recently has the connection between good food and food which is good for you been rediscovered.

YES THIS.

I’m not eating plain cornflakes to prevent me from masturbating, k? I’m trying to eat good quality food because it contains good nutrients and tastes good. When my exposure to healthy, local eating was “Mmm-mmm! plain steamed chard! SO DELICIOUS once you get used to it” I could not stay far enough away from that shit. But when I started realizing “Holy crap, baby chard salad with fresh pea tendrils, finely grated Parmesan, bacon crumbles and a fantastic dressing” I was all over it.

But if someone had scolded me about the salt in the Parmesan, tsk tsk, omg the fat in that bacon, and why do you need to drench that salad with calorie-laden dressing, why can’t you just APPRECIATE the FLAVOR of the GREENS, I would never have touched it.

When people focus on how fat and sugar are so bad they even taint the wholesomeness of oatmeal, it makes it very hard for me to believe the “nutrition” they’re worried about isn’t actually adherence to a sort of culinary Puritanism.

The last paragraph in comment 54 sums up my feelings pretty perfectly.

But I will point out that you actually agree with Bittman: people eat junk because they like the way it tastes, and like the sugar overload and the grease.  You notion that healthier food is punishment or “ascetic” is one I just reject, though.  I’m a person who adores her sensual pleasures, generally too much, and god, I love me some whole grains and veggies.  The notion that Bittman is shoving tasteless crap at you is false; he’s a food critic.  The man loves to eat.  He’s written cookbooks that foodies take as the Bible.  In fact, the thing that you latched onto first to lash out at him was that he’s a snob who doesn’t like the flavorless, nasty preservatives in junk food. 

But your point does zero in on exactly what was setting Bittman off, and it’s probably the biggest problem that objectors to the food-industrial complex have.  The food industry has trained Americans to prefer stuff that doesn’t have interesting flavors, but is heavy on sugars and fat.  And it is socialization, in my view, though it often plays on stuff that kids like and tries to keep your childish habits strong in adulthood.  The reason is that a lot of people don’t like that stuff.  People exist that genuinely would prefer a nicely roasted vegetable to a pile of grease from McDonald’s.  So it’s not impossible. 

You can address the time complaints, and the cost complaints.  You can fix food deserts and teach people to cook.  But how much will all this matter if people have a taste for fast food?

and it does take work to relearn to eat real food.  But once you do, it is definitely better.  I don’t actually have a lot of patience for adults who are picky like children, though.

This is exactly the kind of condescending attitude that turns me off “healthy eating”  as evangelized by Bittman and others, and I know I cannot possibly be the only one. People have taste preferences, and their taste preferences simply do not make them less developed/intelligent/mature than you.

Can you honestly not see how being told “You are like a child because you don’t prefer the same kind of food I do, and in order to eat Real Food you must remap all your taste preferences” makes the idea of changing eating habits a lot more intimidating and a lot less welcoming?

Assuming that Americans have all been duped is a really terrible way to start a PR movement.

It’s a sticking point that Americans—-I don’t know about elsewhere, but definitely here—-hear “socialized” and think “duped”.  Part of the problem is we think there is a natural way to be, and spend all our time trying to find it. 

I disagree.  I think that people could be socialized to like junk or healthy food.  Neither is “authentic”, which means neither is a dupe.

We’re socialized to like junk because it’s more profitable.

Yea…I mean…people like what they like. My ability to eat brussels sprouts (if roasted by someone else, with the outer leaves removed) does not make me better than someone who fricking hates bitter things and is perhaps a super taster. I notice also that people want different intensities of things- I like sweet things, but can be satisfied with fruit. Others crave a donut. They aren’t bad people or childish….they just like donuts.I think they are too sweet in the morning.

And Amanda, you keep repeating that I think all healthy food is ascetic, as if that makes it true. It’s not true at all. I’m going to go start pre-doughs for homebaked wholegrain bread in a couple minutes here. I love me some roasted veggies. In the summer my daily breakfast is smoothies made with local fruit. Observe the drooling over the imaginary salad in my previous post. I love fresh, varied food exactly because it’s delicious.

I am, in short, all about the healthy freakin’ food, and my point is that healthy food and asceticism don’t have to be married but that many “healthy food” devotees are so used to their asceticism that they fail to notice that what seems to define their “healthy food” is what it has less of, and that non-ascetics don’t think of food that way and will resist being urged to think of food in that way. They will flock to “Try this, it’s delicious” and not to “Eat this, because it has less sin in it”.

I will point out for people who are offended at my point about socialization this:  To say that preferring junk is just people’s natural state is to say that I’m a dupe because I don’t.  It’s to insinuate that I’m only kidding myself when I lick my lips at veggies. 

I disagree.  No one is a dupe.  Tastes are socialized.  People really do, once they get into the habit of eating healthy, produce a heartfelt turn-your-nose-up reaction to deep fried stuff.  I lost my taste for it.  I’m not a dupe.

And yet, kristin, you bashed people who promote healthy food by using that exact word.  Sorry if I mistook the use of “ascetic” to mean “ascetic”. 

I really think the most important step is to stop talking about eating better like it’s a punishment.  It’s a delight, if done properly.  You admit this, so really it’s important to keep at it.

They will flock to “Try this, it’s delicious” and not to “Eat this, because it has less sin in it”.

... and they will strongly resist someone who says “try this it’s great” if that person has spent the past few weeks calling their food “junk” and “crap”. I know you, Amanda, personally, would never dream of saying that to someone in real life, but metaphorically it’s pretty much what a lot of the food evangelism movement does. “OMG you people eat GARBAGE! Here, taste this.”

Anyway, my question is, “What would it take to overcome marketing that has falsely convinced us that dressing ourselves, our children, getting in the car, and going to a restaurant is more convenient than staying in your slippers and avoiding traffic while stirring is?”  As a lazy person, it was a revelation how much easier cooking is.  My personal experience is that I resisted learning this, and I feel like I’m not especially stupid, so my own error is probably pretty widespread.  That’s the question, and I don’t think the answer is just to shift around, making different arguments about something a bit irrelevant. 

I think interesting points made were about planning, mental space, and learning curve.  I think all these are things that our system prevents us from addressing properly.  Unfortunately, acclimation to junk is a real problem, and I think the most sticking, since most people who start cooking stick to it, once they get the hang of it.

But Amanda, you can’t “keep at” talking about the gustatory pleasures of eating better when “eating better” means “cutting things out because they’re sinful”.

The gustatory pleasures of eating better happen when we eat food that tastes better to us because it’s fresher, higher quality and more flavorful. That does not necessarily have an overlap with “lower fat, less sugar, fewer calories”. Emphasizing “lower fat, less sugar, fewer calories” IS going to evoke images of deprivation because nobody likes to be told they can’t have things.

, “What would it take to overcome marketing that has falsely convinced us that dressing ourselves, our children, getting in the car, and going to a restaurant is more convenient than staying in your slippers and avoiding traffic while stirring is?”

But going out to brunch is totally awesome. Heading down the street to the local cafe and having my breakfast be a coffee and a muffin while reading the newspaper is more enjoyable than standing around in my empty apartment making an omelet.

There are a lot of great reasons to cook at home—it’s healthier, it feels therapeutic for me, and I’m quite thrifty and don’t like to spend more money on anything than I have to. But going out to a restaurant is great.

I don’t actually have to call food “junk” or “crap”, because most people call it that anyway, honestly.  That’s just what it’s called.  I don’t actually spend most of my personal life evangelizing for anything.  That’s what blogging’s for.

I don’t recall using the words “sinful” or “ascetic”, except in reference to your comments, kristin.  I’m not religious by nature, and so that kind of thinking doesn’t have much of a grip on my mind, for better or for worse.

Amanda—the point I was trying to make was not that what food a person likes is natural and unchangeable. I was addressing the “what would it take to overcome the marketing…” question, and it seems that in this particular peice by Bittman his tone is very condescending. It is addressed to a “you” which seems to be all the stupid people that eat at McDonalds. I think that being condescending is the absolute worse pr move for the foodie movement because food is such an intimate part of culture and life that people are bound to get offended when you suggest they are doing it wrong even when they are doing it “wrong.”

Tyro, I do agree that going out to eat at a nice, relaxing pace is a great pleasure, one I indulge in frequently.  If that was most eating out done in this country, our health would be way better. 

The issue at hand isn’t, “Why do people eat out for fun?”  The issue is, “Why do people eat out for that hurried, day-to-day eating when doing so saves neither time nor effort nor money?”  Indeed, I would say from a sheer pleasure viewpoint—-and I do love me some pleasure—-eating at home for that hurried eating gives more pleasure.  My saddest meals in life are when I’m on the road and forced to stare down the menu at Subway.

Yeah, alysia, that’s why I noted it differed from his usual conciliatory tone. He’s angry, but I think more at McDonalds and their apologists than people who buy into the marketing.

I think a big point too is non-perfection is not the end of the world - you don’t have to never ever eat out again, much like with the part-time vegetarians and whatnot, not eating out every day 1+ times a day is really very good. And sometimes it is easy to get caught up in too many qualifiers - is it locally made? is it organic? does the company treat its workers well? is it vegan? what is the saturated fat/refined carb content? - something I think Bittman is good about communicating to people, no, don’t just get overwhelmed with these and give up and say that eating healthy is too much. Start basic, start with just eating more vegetables and whole grains, at home. Then once that is familiar, looking at seasonal vegetables/local/organic/etc. comes together.

I mentioned before that I just started reading the times, so I was not familiar with his work, but as soon as i read it, it really hit me as being from the “christ, what an ass hole” wing of the foodie movement. unfortunately, these are the types of peices that usually get the most play and are most likley to reach a broader audience, unfortunately.

On an unrelated note, his argument really makes me think of how important it is to divorce living and eating well from losing weight. I guess I am not sure the difference in health outcomes, but if a person that was teh level of overweight as teh typical “headless fatty” from the nightly news were to swap out mcd’s oatmeal for homemade oatmeal with real cream and honey or brown suguar are whatever, I doubt there would be much, if any calorie deficit.

Threads about how easy it is to cook at home that anyone who eats out is a simp, though, are good places to point out that cooking is not always easy. Even for those of us who love doing it.

We’re talking about cooking oatmeal, not making a rib roast or a stew from scratch.

I don’t believe Amanda was saying that everyone who eats out is a simp, I occasionally eat out having burger and fries because my noble spouse isn’t into burgers, so it’s less trouble for me rather than cooking a burger for one person.

You don’t use the words “sinful” or “ascetic” but there is a strong theme that eating better is about NOT eating certain things.

People will resist being told to “eat better” by avoiding foods they like.

They will be open to “eating better” if it primarily means adding new and tasty foods to their repertoire.

Condescending about how they are childish, picky, or other unflattering things will never, ever change this, and it’s actually kind of mindboggling how you go “People act like picky children who don’t want to change their eating habits by giving up the fat and sugar they’re used to” and then spin right around and go “Why are people unreceptive to the idea of eating healthier food?”

We’re talking about cooking oatmeal, not making a rib roast or a stew from scratch.

Yes, and even cooking oatmeal can have its little issues that make “What the hell, I’ll just stop at McD’s on the way and grab some there” seem viable. The question was “why do people think eating out for even simple foods is more convenient” and that is one answer.

Back to the breakfast thing - you can make up a batch of muffins on Sunday night, toss them in the fridge and then eat them one at a time in the mornings. There are a plethora of ‘morning glory’ muffin recipes out on the Internet, and you can alter them or flavor them to your own liking. Muffins are really forgiving, and I’ve seen recipes involving honey, molasses, dried fruit, fresh fruit, shredded carrots, shredded coconut and orange zest. And once you have your favorite recipe memorized, you can probably make the batch in less than an hour, not including baking time.

I think one of the issues with eating out vs. staying home is that spending money on eating out is a status symbol, the power of which I never underestimate as a major factor in many Americans’ actions and beliefs.  (I’m always amazed at my middle class co-workers’ obsessions with expensive cars, for example.)  I don’t think it is a coincidence that they are offering oatmeal, which has a vaguely healthy/foodie cachet that, say, bagels or muffins don’t posses. 

I know, McD’s isn’t in the same universe as most other status symbols, but Starbucks also has oatmeal (for like $3 or something for a tiny paper cup!), and I can see this appealing to many Americans as a “luxury” they “can afford” and are happy to pay for, even though paying that kind of markup for oatmeal is truly a scandal, if one thinks hard enough about it.   

Time-poor, wage-poor Americans just love to spoil themselves by having the “service economy” serve them in $4 increments.  McD’s is just offering the low-rent version of this.

Kristin’s been spot on in this thread:  220 calories just isn’t a lot for breakfast, and that number on it’s own tells you next to nothing about the healthiness of the meal.  Equating it with a McDonald’s hamburger because of the equivalence in calories reminds me of the people who tried to gloat about how calorie-rich a Chipotle burrito is compared to a Big Mac, suggesting that a meal that’s primarily beans and rice is nutritionally equivalent to a meal that’s primarily burger and bread.

Sweeteners or no, it still has a lot of whole grain, correct?  Our experience was a lot like Daisy’s:  Order it without the brown sugar.  It was quite filling for us, too.

I figure the oatmeal at McDonald’s is for those who are there with someone else.

But there have been many times - like when I was pulling nightshift in the mailroom, or road trips - when McD’s having oatmeal would’ve been a godsend.  There’s something about hot food when you are neither hot nor at home nor have food.

I came here after reading TNC’s take on this.

Shorter version of my comment, if you want to skip it, is that I pretty much agree with him.

People don’t make all of their consumption decisions based on a strict cost/time/value analysis.

There’s two things going on here. One, just to address the convenience factor, is that something that seems easy to one person might seem like too much bother to someone else. The payoff isn’t the same for everybody. And that’s okay. The second thing is pleasure.

You’ve written a lot about the value of pleasure, and I think a lot of people eat at McDonald’s because it gives them pleasure. But our culture doesn’t really allow for people to say they eat at McDonald’s because it gives them pleasure. (Especially if, god forbid, the people in question are fat.)

Pleasure isn’t just that it tastes good to them. It’s the treat of buying something for yourself. For a lot of people, it might be the one thing they do for themselves all day. Is it really the end of the world if that treat is a serving of oatmeal with more sugar than is absolutely necessary?

I say all this as someone who knows how to cook, enjoys cooking, cooks oatmeal at home on a regular basis, would never order oatmeal in a restaurant - be it McDonald’s or a fancy brunch place, is disciplined about bringing my food to work so I don’t have to eat out, and who can’t even remember the last time I ate at McDonald’s.

Just because getting breakfast from McDonald’s doesn’t do much for me (though if I were to go that route, I’m totally getting egg and cheese biscuit with a hashbrown) doesn’t mean I don’t have my own guilty pleasures that don’t maximize my use of my time or money and that may even be kind of bad for me. If what helps someone get through the day is treating themselves to breakfast and that breakfast is oatmeal with too much sugar, who fucking cares?

PS, Oatmeal was the first food I mastered cooking.  No, it wasn’t toast - I blew up the toaster as a toddler.  No, it was oatmeal.  Then eggs in the microwave, then pancakes…

@84 Ismene:  That’s true, but you have to have the shredded carrots, nuts, and etc in your kitchen.  As a poor temp-worker, that never gelled for me.  I wouldn’t have any of those.  No fridge space aside from milk and fruit; and getting dried ingredients at a reasonable price was darn near impossible.

I’d cook banana bread and other pound cakes, but decent muffins were too tough.  I’d get them as day-olds in batches if I could, though, and do the in-fridge-or-garage until I ate them.

I realized today that our mail carrier was really large.  And we live in the mountains, it’s all up and down stairs for her, all day.  Yet another example of no matter the amount of exercise, some people’s body’s find a stable weight in the ‘obese’ range without being lazy!

Lastly, when I moved in with my spouse, she was appalled that I would mix oatmeal and water into a sandwich bag and then eat it later, in the car or on the bus.  Paste from a tube was not her style.

Chingona, here’s TNC’s post:  http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2011/02/awesome-oatmeal/71678/

Your link was…interesting.

Ach, I’ve bought pre-made porridge at a shop plenty of times (not MacDonald’s though - at Pret a Manger- do you have that in the US? - just oats and milk), because in the morning everyone’s rushing in and out of the bathroom, getting dressed, getting the toddler dressed, rushing for the train, trying to get the first cup of tea down their necks - and in those circumstances, paying any kind of attention to a saucepan, let alone taking to time to sit down and eat porridge, is just not an option.  I quite like the few minutes quiet queuing and sitting at my desk reading the first emails of the day and eating my breakfast.

Which is not to say that I can’t/won’t make my own porridge - I frequently do at weekends.  It doesn’t have to be one or the other.

Like someone said above - if Bittman had been commenting/criticising the use of fake cream and over-sweetening of the MacDonald’s oatmeal then I’d have been with him totally but going on about how stupid people are for not preferring his kind of convenience to their own kind of convenience is patronising and annoying.

Katherine I agree with you about those early morning quiet office moments.  I won’t give that up either.

Amanda, I know people who work from home work, I used to do it myself, for a long time, but it’s still different when it comes to what you can cook and how you can eat.  It just is. 

But, there are ways to make it work, and claiming that they’re aren’t is an excuse.

As for Bittman being condescending, or his equating sugar with evil - Americans are addicted to sugar, and it’s killing us.  The thing is, I’m really smart, and I know it.  So are the other people on this thread.  No one is calling you an idiot.  It’s really hard to keep track of just how much added sugar you are getting every day.  It’s in everything.  IN massive amounts.

And it’s killing you.  Krisin, it is poisoning you.  If Bitman is “acting like that” it’s because he knows it.

So that’s why I read AManda’s food blogging and Bittman’s work (his new column is amazing!).  I don’t think they think I’m a dummy, but I wouldn’t care if they did.  I’m not invested in what someone who doesn’t know me thinks about me.  I am invested in eating healthier and breaking the sugar addiction, that believe it or not, we all basiclaly have because we were raised in America.

If you grew up in America and you claim you don’t have too much expousure to sugar, it’s like claiming you grew up in white America and have zero racial problems.  You have em.  You better figure that out or you’ll never get rid of them.  And reading is a great solution to both of those byproducts of being American.

I read the Bittman piece as a rant against McD’s for selling the stuff and marketing it as “healthy” when it doesn’t begin to meet the criteria for that, rather than as a rant against Stoopid People Who Eat At McD’s Because They’re Lazy. And Stoopid. Obviously mileage varies on that interpretation.

The only fast-food-takeout-type thing I do is coffee, mostly because I don’t drink much of it and by the time I finished a given amount, it’d be stale. I don’t have fancy coffee makers, either (no espresso maker), so I can’t get the same intensity of flavor (yes, I know I could invest in a machine for that). Otherwise, though, I find fast food to be tasteless and textureless; just this bland, sweet/salty mush. If it works for you? Have at it.

I don’t even know that it’s so much an issue of time as where that time is spent.  It may take less time in an absolute sense to cook oatmeal at home than to grabbing it from McDonalds (leaving aside the issue of cleanup), but McDonalds oatmeal can be picked up in a drive through and eaten at a desk.  Getting the McDonalds oatmeal may allow one to get a few more minutes of sleep, deal with the inevitable “Mom/Dad, where’s my ________?” issues that kids always manage to raise five minutes before they have to leave, and maybe hit that narrow window of time when the expressway traffic is somewhat less heinous.  If you’re urban poor, the time it takes to make oatmeal at home may be the difference between making the bus/train connections that get you to work on time and losing your job because of tardiness.  Many people leave the house in the morning without having had any breakfast at all because between the needs of sleep, commuting, and nutrition, something has to give.  One block of five minutes is not necessarily interchangeable with another, particularly in the morning during the working week.

This isn’t to say that Bittman is wrong about the content of McDonalds’ oatmeal, but rather that the problem is way deeper than food industry brainwashing.  It has to do with the whole way we’ve constructed our living and working spaces, the way we finance schools, the two-income trap, and a whole host of other issues.  Until people start saying things like “hey, I want to live in a place where I can walk or bike to do my basic shopping,” or “I want to start taking a train to work instead of spending time on the expressway” or “why can’t the schools 1 mile from downtown be just as good as the schools 30 miles from downtown,” we’re going to make limited headway.

If you grew up in America and you claim you don’t have too much expousure to sugar, it’s like claiming you grew up in white America and have zero racial problems.

Um, wow….That’s an…interesting frame to use.

But yes, belittling, scolding and insulting the people you’re trying to convince is sure to be an effective tactic here, even though it isn’t with anything else, because it’s OMG SO IMPORTANT.  Plus it feels tingly.

Yes, and even cooking oatmeal can have its little issues that make “What the hell, I’ll just stop at McD’s on the way and grab some there” seem viable.

kristin, I’m sure that you’d say the same thing about making soft/hard boiled eggs or making green tea with a tea bag and boiling water.

But what would it take to get people to move towards realizing that having a well-stocked kitchen is cheaper and more convenient than eating out?

Having it actually be more convenient.

It isn’t the convenience of extra time that eating out provides or of money or of anything mentioned before. It’s the convenience of attention. I don’t have to pay attention to the details of how something is prepared when I’m eating out. That - and fewer dishes to clean - is what I’m paying for when I eat out.

I have a job where I have to keep a huge amount of context in my head pretty much all day. While with practice any particular cooking skill wouldn’t require much mental effort to maintain, learning and failing (because that’s the expected result of first attempts) is hard and takes effort. It requires close attention, and that’s what I’ve been doing all day. I might feel different if I had a job where I could zone out and let my mind wander, but for most professional jobs (or non-professional office work) that isn’t the case.

This is similar to why most people don’t use Linux on their main home machine - sure, it may be way cheaper than legal proprietary software and it’s almost to the point where TCO even for the home user is down to where windows was a decade ago, but most people just don’t feel like learning why their computer’s audio doesn’t work anymore (again) and how to fix it. Or how to reconnect to wifi now that their hardware is using a different set of drivers.  Sure, maybe it isn’t at all difficult to figure out in absolute terms. But it’s demanding attention.

Even though I think I was learning more when I was in school than I am now, and I was certainly learning more intellectually challenging things then, I feel like I was spending less time then with my attention turned on. Maybe if I had learned to cook back in grad. school it’d be different.

kristin, I’m sure that you’d say the same thing about making soft/hard boiled eggs or making green tea with a tea bag and boiling water.

And it’s true: despite the fact that making tea is pretty easy, nevertheless, lots of places sell tea in a to-go cup. Now, if the only form of “tea” you could get at McDonald’s or Starbucks was some kind of syrup-and-milk-infused confection that had 200 calories, I’d take issue with that, as well.

I’m not belittling or scolding anybody!  The terrible reactions by posters here is why I hardly ever post here anymore (I used to post daily) and moved someplace else.  But I still read what Amanda posts everyday! 

Anyway, I’m sorry if that’s how that came across, though in my experience there is something about a lot of commenters at this particular blog that makes them WANT to take things personally or read something into it that wasn’t there. 

Americans are addicted to sugar, most through no fault of their own!  That’s a truth.  And it’s also a truth that we need to get health care costs under control so that everybody may have health care as they do in all decent societies.  (i know there’s a lot more to it than that, but we do need to get costs under control).  One of the things we can do is break our addiction to sugar.

I’m sorry if it’s offensive to state that because you have added sugar and loads of it in everything you buy in this country (and that’s all political too as most here will know) your tastes HAVE been shaped and manipulated.  Amanda is right about that.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say.  Have a great day!  (for real! I swear) 

I just want to address the calorie thing - sorry!  LOL

Okay, 200 or even 300 calories is not a lot for breakfast!  I think Bitman meant empty calories, I hope he did.  I am someone who has battled anorexia and bulimia my whole life, and would measure out precisely 100 calories worth of special K (complete with extra high fructose corn syrup please!) because I have at points in my life, lived on 300-400 calories a day.

300 healthy calories for breaksfast is fine.  That’s why I started reading Amanda’s food blogging and took her advice and bought Bitman’s book - I know how to eat very little!  I wanted to learn how to eat healthy.

So IMO Kristin’s objections to portraying calories as evil are correct.  BUT I don’t believe that’s what either Bittman or Amanda are doing.  You can’t expect people to write to your particular issue (in my case, life long eating disorders).  You have to get it’s not personal, they are not smearing you.  You take what you can use, and you leave the rest.

Sorry if that sounds “scolding” but it’s something that has been highly useful for me.  If it’s not useful for you, leave it! 

Heh, it’s kinda weird all these people saying plain porridge is basically gross… I like plain porridge, or porridge with a pinch of salt; putting sugar on it is GROSS GROSS GROSS.

Of course your preferences may vary.

I don’t think it’s zero effort at home, especially you have to consider the time cost of washing up at least a bowl and spoon (possibly also a pan and wooden spoon; possibly also the cooker top after you spill porridge all over it, um, not that I ever do that… or the microwave when you heat the porridge too long and it explodes) covered in sticky porridge which is, er, not the easiest washing up to do (especially if you leave it all day to set).  And no, not everyone has a dishwasher to do that for them.

If McD’s (or wherever) is en-route to your work (or wherever else you might be going to) then I can see that it might be less effort to stop in there than to deal with making food (and cleaning up after) at home.  The coffee place at the train station here does porridge, which I imagine would be great if I were commuting by train - I could then eat my hot breakfast *on the train* which is ever so much less time consuming than eating it at home first; but if people are eating fast food whilst driving I am very very worried.

redwards—how much of a food snob did I just reveal myself to be to admit that I hadn’t even considered the microwave version of oatmeal?

For me, it’s the planning ahead aspect that gets me.  We usually at least keep some frozen meat here, which is fairly easy to cook (I freaked my husband out by not even timing it), but it’s fairly often that supper time comes and I realize I’ve forgotten to thaw anything.  Non-frozen ingredients are a hit-or-miss thing, as since it’s not habitual for us to use them, often they don’t get used as, well, I forget we have them.  We also eat out fairly often just because, so even if I’ve planned something in advance, it might wind up getting pushed off another day.  It’s hard for me to justify from-scratch cooking when most ingredients can’t be bought in single-serving sizes, and won’t get used even if I try to find things to do with them.  I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been trying to come up with a meal, and found that while we had a fair amount of stuff in the apartment, none of it went together to form a coherent meal.

Plus, I really hate washing dishes.  If it can’t be thrown in the dishwasher—which eliminates pretty much anything being cooked on the stove—I’m not going to want to use it.

scrumby - instant oatmeal is a staple for people who have a hotpot but not a microwave.  This is fairly common for westerners in parts of Asia and for some work places.  If you want oatmeal as a middle of the day snack, plain instant with a single packet of sugar or honey (so its single serving and packaged for the office) is extremely handy and not really a scam.  The plain versions of store brands are usually almost entirely just oatmeal, so that extra you pay for is mostly to not more packaging.

Bittman’s tone is among those that gives foodies a bad name by being douche-y, adding ammo to the charge so many have that in general they (or their public face) are arrogant prigs.  He has some good stuff (ideas, recipes, technique tips) for people who like to cook though.

And I really agree with jeevmon’s 1st paragraph @97.

Daisy, try Aguava necter for the sweetener.

We have chickens.  Most days, I eat eggs. 
I put the pan on the burner as I walk in the kitchen. Start the coffee (if I prepped the night before=push button, usually it means fill the well, grind the beans, rinse the caraffe, push the button).  Toss some frozen potato bits or left over rice in the now heated pan (usually with a very small splash of olive oil). Crack two eggs over the potatoes/rice, add a splat of salsa and maybe milk, stir.  Unload or load dishwasher (depending on night before).  Pour coffee, slide eggs onto plate, eat.

I notice that your post doesn’t discuss issues of clean up or food preparation containers/utensils.  I’ve never ended up with a sink full of dishes to do after getting take out!  I’ve also never had Starbucks say “sorry, we have no clean cups right now to make your coffee in—you’ll have to dig one with hot chocolate stained into the sides out of the sink and clean it before we can make your coffee.”

I have no doubt that it is usually cheaper to cook than to eat out/get take out.  And I don’t doubt that in certain cases it is more convenient to cook, though I do disagree that it is usually more convenient to cook/make your food at home for the reasons I just gave above.  Sometimes for breakfast I eat a bagel and cream cheese or dry cereal—things that I do make myself at home and bring to work.  But what about when I want an egg sandwich for breakfast?  Then I need to find a clean pan, I need to actually have eggs in the house, I need to get the butter out, put butter in the pan, crack the eggs, wash the egg off my hands, find a clean spatula, have bread in the house, find that bread, toast it, butter it, find cheese, put cheese on the eggs.  I’d like vegetables on my egg sandwich, but I never have usable vegetables in the house for this purpose.  I can’t really do too much else while the eggs are cooking lest I burn them.  (I don’t get the suggestion to eat oatmeal while doing other things.  Am I the only klutz who needs to actually work at not dropping food on my clothes or getting my work clothes splattered with butter?  That’s right—if I am cooking in the morning, I do it in my bra so I don’t get food on my clothes.)  Then I have to get out the aluminum foil.  Put the sandwich in it, close it up, put it in my bag.  Then I have to put the pan and utensils I’ve dirtied in the sink (which is probably already overflowing) and put the eggs, butter, bread, and cheese back in the fridge. 

Now it’s time for coffee/tea.  I have chai.  My wife has a red eye with half and half.  Uh oh, we don’t have chai or half and half in the house.  Let’s just say we did have it.  I want my milk steamed.  I have one of those little steamer things from IKEA, so I can heat my milk and my chai separately (in two mugs which I’ll be adding to the pile of dishes) and then steam the milk.  Of course first I have to clean that steamer thing which is in the pile of dishes.  My wife has more trouble.  We’ve got a coffee pot so she can make the coffee quickly and easily, but what about the shot of espresso?  We don’t have an espresso machine?  We each also need a travel mug to put our drinks in.  I usually get the venti size at Starbucks, so I need an extra large mug (I need caffeine, but I can’t drink coffee so I drink a ton of tea) which we don’t have.  Even if we did have it, now everyday we are adding two travel mugs to the pile of dishes when we get home from work.  Of course, we only do dishes every two-three days, so the next day our travel mugs will still be dirty and will need cleaning before we can make our drinks.

Or, instead of all of this, we can go through the Starbucks drive through (which we pass on our way to work everyday anyway) where they will make me an egg sandwich which has less fat/calories than my egg sandwich and actual vegetables along with a chai and a red eye.  Typically there are about 1-3 cars in front of us.  This adds something like 7 minutes tops to our morning commute, but involves no cooking, no cleaning dishes from the sink, no making more dishes, no finding that we don’t have half the ingredients we need to make these things.  What do we do during these 4-7 minutes?  My wife and I sit in the car and talk about what we read in the NYTimes this morning.

Do we waste a ton of money getting food/drinks from Starbucks?  Absolutely.  But would it be more convenient in terms of time/stress to make those very same things at home?  Maybe we are just not as talented as some, but no I don’t believe we could clean every utensil/pan/cup we need, make all of those things, and clean it all up (dishes in sink, coffee grounds in garbage, food back in fridge) in 4-7 minutes while having a leisurely discussion about the NYTimes.

<quote>Even in New York, where everything is delivered, I’m often too impatient to wait for deliveries.  I find myself waiting and thinking, “I could have cooked it by now,” and yet I often still end up phoning in deliveries when cooking would have been faster. </quote>

There’s some serious privilege underlying that statement that you may not have recognized. This is the same sentiment that leads folks to say “poor people are poor because they waste all their money on fast food or take out, rather than just cooking on their own.”
Sure, it’s cheaper to buy a bunch of ingredients and cook for yourself.  Sure, it frequently takes less time to put together a healthy, delicious meal than it does to wait 45 minutes to an hour for delivery.  But here’s the thing - for those 45 minutes to an hour, you can be working and earning money.  I’m sure when you order delivery, you’re not sitting around twiddling your thumbs from the time you put down the phone until it arrives.
Now, there’s some calculus involved there - are you earning as much money during that hour as you could save by making your own meal? Possibly… But will you lose your eight hour shift if you can’t show up for the first hour, and thus lose money overall? Yes, probably.
So, it’s a bit naive, as well as insulting, to just say, “gosh, why doesn’t everyone just cook their own meals?”

I think maybe I need to drop my disabled toddler off at Bittman’s house, and hopefully his next book can be about how to cook easy flavorful meals while simultaneously monitoring a frustrated disabled person with no sense of danger, and no ability to do any task independently.

hopefully his next book can be about how to cook easy flavorful meals while simultaneously monitoring a frustrated disabled person with no sense of danger, and no ability to do any task independently.

I just gave you a recipe above that takes 10 minutes prep, and 2 hours of letting it simmer on the stove so you can watch said frustrated disabled person as well instead of what you’re cooking.

Cause it’s all about you, isn’t it, Eileen? 

A further point about condescension - when bloggers and professional writers express disdain at the choices people make with respect to food in the name of convenience, it is inevitably going to sound condescending.  Take Bittman.  He’s an established food writer with one of the most successful cookbook franchises in the country.  He has the luxury of more-or-less being able to set his own hours and not being required to show up in an office from 8 AM to 6 PM.  Now, those books didn’t write themselves, and I don’t doubt that he works hard, but when he starts talking about the time it takes to do X, he nonetheless betrays his own privileges.  Most notably, he reveals his own lack of understanding of how people actually get through the day.  Most people are not lucky enough to have jobs where their commute is from the bedroom to a home office, or where no one cares that they’re not at their desk or at their station by 8 AM. 

It’s possible to make too much of this, and Bittman is certainly better on these kinds of issues than Pollan (who too often seems to lapse into wistful nostalgia for the days when Mom stayed home and cooked) or Alice Waters, who has basically said that those of us who aren’t lucky enough to live in a place with year-round farmers’ markets should eat root vegetables and that if poor people would just stop renting movies, they’d be able to eat the “right way.”  The overall point of Bittman’s post is, actually, spot on about the nutritional content of McDonalds’ oatmeal.  The bit about time is one that maybe he should rethink, but it’s not the central point of the piece.

Wow, Dark Avenger, that was extremely nasty. 

It’s not all about me, and it’s not all about him either.  I appreciate when people talk about what they do for themselves and, I think understandably, object when that is presented as appropriate for all possible lifestyles.

Spend some time with helpless people and grow a soul, you worthless tool.

For people with limited time and resources, I heartily recommend Quick From Scratch One-Dish Meals. It’s not a vegetarian cookbook, but it has a ton of really excellent recipes that are ready in less than half an hour. And because it’s a food and wine book, it comes with a wine recommendation!

I am such a fan of this book for beginning cooks that I literally bought like 10 of them on sale and gave them out to friends.

Holy shit DA that was nasty. I realize I’m hypersensitive having a disabled child of my own, but seriously…

Since our dear Mr Bittman suggested that his convenient solutions are The Way, without apparently any understanding of people with different lives from his own, then yes, DA, it is all about all of us.

So why don’t you take your two hour recipe and stick it up your unpleasant arse.

The issue at hand isn’t, “Why do people eat out for fun?” The issue is, “Why do people eat out for that hurried, day-to-day eating when doing so saves neither time nor effort nor money?”

At least one reason - because having someone else do it for you relieves you of having to worry about it at all.  If you’re already juggling a dozen things in your schedule, getting rid of planning a meal and cooking it frees up your brain to worry about the other 11 things you need to get done.

As for the McDonald’s breakfast thing - most McD’s breakfasts on weekdays are bought in the midwest by people going through the drive-thru on the way to work or after they get to work at a McD’s on the corner before they sit down to work.  Getting on the road and getting to work so you won’t be late is much more important (given stupid lack of public transport) than getting a breakfast into you.  If you’re late you can always skip breakfast or raid your granola bar stash to last until lunch and if you aren’t late you can snag something when you get there.  It removes a worry from the morning, that is already stuffed with worries about the stupid morning commute.

This actually is a lot of the reason why people eat out over cook - at least in the midwest.  You have a 1/2 hour to hour commute to your workplace in the morning, you work 8+ hours, then you have a 1/2 hour to hour commute home.  You get home and, if you’re the kind of person who plans, you have a meal planned out that you can quickly cook.  If you’re not you either have to have enough brain energy left from the day to come up with something, or you say “fuck it - let’s go out”.  Or you open up a jar of spaghetti sauce, a can of mushrooms, and boil some pasta (or whatever your go-to “I don’t have a fucking clue what to make” backup meal happens to be).

And hey - McD’s offers oatmeal as an option.  That in itself is kind of amazing to me.  If you don’t eat at McD’s (which I tend not to) then you don’t have to worry about it.  If McD’s is the closest choice in the morning and you don’t like greasy sausage sandwiches, well, now you have a new option.  If I end up going out to breakfast with a friend who wants to get an Egg McMuffin, well, I can get oatmeal if I want.  Yay?

I realize I’m hypersensitive having a disabled child of my own, but seriously…

If Mr. Bittman had written about problems people have when they are the caretakers of others, and blew off those who chose Micky D’s over those making oatmeal at home as not having the best interests of their charges at heart, Eileen would have a point.

So why don’t you take your two hour recipe and stick it up your unpleasant arse.

Thanks for your carefully phrased and considerate feedback.

Spend some time with helpless people and grow a soul, you worthless tool.

I have been a caretaker, along with Mother Avenger, for my dying brother and sick-as-hell COPD Grandfather Avenger, so spare your energy where it’s important in your life, not being a jackass on the Internets might be a good place to start.

For people who really don’t have the time to cook oatmeal in the morning or eat it at their house before going to work (and I appreciate this, as a chronic oversleeper):

Put your dry oats, some milk/vegan milk/water/whatever combo you like, and the sweetener/seasonings/dried fruits of your choice in a tupperware container. Let sit in the fridge overnight. In the morning, you can either eat it straight out of the fridge, or bring it with you to eat on the train/at your desk/whenever.

Amanda @ 49 because what they sell at fast food places is hyper-tasty due to addictive and usually unhealthy ingredients.  MSG,  high salt, HFCS, and don’t forget color additives.  I was looking at sushi yesterday - yeah, one of my eat outs that does take less time than at home because I’m a sushi novice, and it does take some skill and practice.  I was really attracted to the unnaturally bright green and orange (dyed roe) as opposed to the slightly brown avocado dragon roll.  Fortunately, my Michael Pollan reading kid was with me and pointed it out.  SHit, I KNOW better, but it still almost worked.

Once your tongue and brain get used to the hyper visual and the hyper tasty, regular does seem less so.  It’s like people who seem to think that they can’t enjoy anything unless they take a picture or video of it - like it didn’t happen. 

BTW, this idea of the hyper-real isn’t original to me, it comesform a Texas prof named Rick Rodderick.

I love cooking and haven’t eaten at McDonald’s ever. But my chap and I still do the “Fuck it, let’s go out*” thing at least once a week despite restaurant prices in the UK being far higher than in the US.

I blame lack of time for shopping and organisation, and an unpredictable long-hours lifestyle. Fresh food, of the kind that is fun and quick to cook with (and healthiest), goes off. If it turns out we’re both working late four days in a row, the salad rots in the fridge and you can forget about fish. I also blame the architect who made my kitchen so small that we can’t cook as a sociable activity. I get maybe two hours contact with my partner per week when we are both awake and I don’t want to spend even twenty minutes of that chopping things when we could be chatting and waiting for our starters at a cafe.

Yes, like a lot of easy options, convenience food isn’t actually a lot harder than the alternative. But as the thread above demonstrates, convenience means different things to different people. It’s not just about the time on a stopwatch.

*NonyNony, would you mind if I abbreviate it to FILGO? It has a nice ring to it.

I don’t understand what “instant oatmeal” is, I don’t think we have it here. Could someone please explain? I have a hard time thinking of something more instant than regular oatmeal (if you have a microwave oven). Put oats in bowl, pour water, nuke for two or three minutes. I find that if I open the microwave after about a minute and stir the bowl, it never explodes. I eat it with milk and raisins, sometimes with some cinnamon on top.

The convenience or inconvenience of cooking at home depends not only on your mental/physical energy and time, but also on your kitchen. Mine is absolutely cramped. I have no counterspace, one small cupboard that barely has room for a bunch of cans and some bags of flour and oatmeal, a tiny tiny fridge and a freezer that is way smaller than a microwave. My stove is slow with only two burners, and my oven is small, awkwardly placed and can’t keep the heat (thus taking way too long time to cook anything).

I love good vegetarian food with lots of different vegetables, but I just can’t keep them on hand, there’s no space. If I want to make a vegetable stew, I have to use up all the veggies at the same time and then eat the entire batch over the next one or two days - I can’t freeze it, because my freezer will be completely full with one bag of spinach and one bag of broccoli. This means that I lose the two main conveniences of home cooking - I do have to leave the house and go shopping, and I can’t make enough to feed me for a week. If I had counterspace, a dishwasher, a good normal-sized stove & oven and more cupboards, cooking would be easy and convenient. As it is, it’s a hassle.

Gotta love food threads, they turn everybody into snotty, angry bastards. On all sides.

To answer the Q raised in the post, what would convince me to cook for myself at home is ever being home. My life isn’t near as crazy as lots of people, but even I’m really only awake and at my house for like 3.5 hours a day. Tops. Weekends I’m home, and weekends I cook. (Sometimes.)

Americans work a fuckload of hours, which doesn’t just mean oh they’re tired, and oh they’re broke. It means they’re at work where it is very hard to find a stove and 15 minutes for simmering steel-cut oats. Unless you work for Hank Scorpio.

I should add, before someone says 3.5 hours is enough to make roasted local duck with butternut squash risotto (i know damn well that theoretically it is)—

It’s not like those 3.5 hours are all mine, to do with as I please. They are when I need to handle all the personal and household business, take care of the pet, and manage to squeeze in a modicum of exercise. And, you know, hopefully breathe for a minute and talk to my partner.

Instant oatmeal comes in premeasured pouches with the flavoring already in it. It also had convenient instructions and a variety of flavors. Instant grits are the same way, but feature a regional corn dish . mm…

In a pinch, you can even pour the hot water into the pouch directly and eat from it, though I don’t recommend it for anyone not extra-ordinarily graceful (meaning NOT for me).  I like the plain instant grits so I can control for salt as the flavored ones tend to be much too salty for me.

I have to preface this by saying that I do all the grocery shopping, cooking & most all of the cleaning in my home.  I actually like to spend the day in my kitchen cooking and I don’t mind the clean up.  But home-made meals do require cleanup. Perhaps, as some in my home believe, there really are fairies who make the beds, do the dishes and laundry, but they have not visited me.  Probably cuz I was such a bad girl whilst growing up! Going out for a cup of coffee means not only do I not have to prepare it, I don’t have to clean any of it up afterward!  Not the pot, not the filter, not the spilled grounds, not the cup and not the inevitable brown dribble from pot to cup.  And that’s just coffee!  Sometimes it’s nice to let someone else deal with all the prep & cleanup.

kristin, follow up from the last thread - savory couscous can be fab with either sour orange (or other citrus-I’m thinking about trying tamarind) or cranberries added.  Both go well with a light sauteed green or green mix and fish.

My work day starts at 2 AM. At 1:30 in the morning, I am capable of putting fruit in a bag, tossing in some previously made food (apple oatmeal muffins, bacon cheddar muffins, sausage balls) and picking up a thermos full of tea made the night before.
I do not have the agility to even pour cold cereal and milk into a bowl without landing half of it on myself. I learned this through trial and error. Many many errors.

By the time the family wants dinner, I have been up somewhere between 15 and 17 hours. Add in three kids, none of whom likes the same thing.

Cooking is fun on the weekends. I make muffins. I make pancakes. I cook dinner cheerfully, with kiddo help. During the summer, the kids each cook one meal a week. But during the week, when the 13 has shirked the dishes, the 11 is shrieking at the 13, the 15 has fallen asleep and will not wake for anything, including the judgment trump, but especially not for pasta, and the husband is furiously typing tests because he has a PFLAG meeting?
Blergh. It’s easier to call out for freshly-killed pizza.

Blergh. It’s easier to call out for freshly-killed pizza.

People calling you lazy and/or ignorant in 3..2..1..

Keeping the pizzalope population at a stable level helps prevent them from overrunning housing developments and ending up as roadkill.

(Also, when it comes to pizza, Papa John is a better chef than I am)

The food industry has trained Americans to prefer stuff that doesn’t have interesting flavors, but is heavy on sugars and fat.

I don’t think this is entirely true.

I grew up in a white upper-middle-class family with two working parents.  My parents worked very long hours.  They often didn’t have the energy to cook a family meal after they got home; eating McDonalds or Pizza was a 2-3 times a week affair.  On top of that, there was no one home afterschool to tell me “no honey, eat some apples and peanut butter instead of half a box of cocoa puffs” pretty much the entire time I was growing up.  Why should I have?  The cocoa puffs were more satisfying on an “Og Like Food” level, and easily accessable even if we didn’t have any in the house.  (Okay, that last part we can blame on marketing.)

My parents also never encouraged me to help them cook, when they did actually get around to it, or taught me even by demonstration how to plan meals. My dad’s exact words on one occasion were: “I don’t know.  I just take something out of the freezer.”

That perpetuated into my adult life, especially when I found out how much food I tend to waste because I am forced to buy way more than a single person needs, and then up wasting what I do use because the dish I attempted turned out inedible.  Time’s a factor too, since learning requires a bigger time investment, and I never had much of it even in college, and even less with a full-time job.  Your average search engine is also surpringly unhelpful when trying to learn cooking techniques.  No offense, but when you or anyone else posts on cooking and talk about throwing some of X or X in for X, my head spins.  Over so many discouraging results and what feels like a goddamn language barrier, I’ve developed a bit of a ignorance/failure/time/energy/waambulance complex.

It’s not that I don’t LOVE complicated foods (because I absolutely do), it’s that they’re often equally as difficult to figure out if you never learned how to cook.  In summary: Cheetos easy, curry hard.

Back to the orginal question AManda asked, why are AMericans so quick to buy this carp - both literally and figuratively, see the bowl in that photo? read kristin’s post about not being able to find room in her kitchen for the type of bowls that would allow microwaving oatmeal?

That bowl, and many others like it, are the bowls that mostly come with the “sets” of dishes.  About the only thing that bowl is good for is a salad or cold cereal.  Most anything else, is hard to eat from them.  THey’re also designed for eating “at the table.”

So get rid of them and buy some cheap but more multi-useful/serviceable bowls. 

But they maaaaatch!

Yeah, manufacturers got us long ago with anything “en suite.”  And because most people are basically lazy (a human trait, not a condemnation of anyone in particular)  and unsure in some area about their own taste and naturally conforming, “en suite” takes care of a lot of that anxiety. 

I spent much of my childhood maneuvering in my own and relatives overcrowded homes because they had either downsized, but just moved the en suite furniture, or bought new stuff en suite, usually living and bedrooms sets that were too large and had far too many pieces for the size of the room.  They would complain, complain, complain about how uncomfortable a chair was or a loveseat was a bad angle for the TV, Or how you couldn’t reach one side of the closet because the dresser or nightstand was in the way.  When someone said “Well, why don’t you get a more comfortable chair (and they COULD afford it)  the answer would be something like “well there’s no room” (there wasn’t), but they couldn’t imagine getting rid of the useless piece, because it was part of “the set.”

#82 Kristin:::You don’t use the words “sinful” or “ascetic” but there is a strong theme that eating better is about NOT eating certain things.:::

The thing is - eating better IS about NOT eating certain things - or at least not eating too much of them.

The problem with the McDonald’s oatmeal is that it is designed to appeal to people who want to eat better. And because it actually has oatmeal in it there is some redeeming quality there. But it’s the other crap and excess of sugar that negates that quality and that’s where the rubber hits the road.

As others have made abundantly clear - if it’s convenience you’re after you can do a lot better both on the time front and the nutritional front. I use the instant oatmeal myself at work - the stuff with no additives - and I add my own milk and sweetener whether it be maple syrup, applesauce and/or dried fruit. Waaay cheaper than MickeyD’s - and a mere minute and a half in the microwave at work in the morning.

I’ve got a container of steel cut oats in my pantry and I’m going to give that a whirl - making it in a big batch and portioning it out for reheating.

TYro, you’re moving the goalposts/changing the subject in #73.  If we’re talking about “going out to breakfast at a nice little neighborhood cafe, or reading the paper with a cup of fresh coffee while people/street watching, that’s one thing.  This was about thinking that fast on the way to somewhere (as in McD’s) was somehow FASTER than home.  And for oatmeal, that’s demonstrably false.

ISmene # 84 - yes, I have done that.  But one other thing we’re forgetting in this is that Bittman and AManda are discussing McD’s. My local “from scratch” bakery makes those morning glory muffins. They are made exactly the way I make mine at home (the owner and I have compared notes).  If I have time (because that bakery owner is a hoot and likes to talk) I don’t see ANY problem, sin, or dietary reason not to go there for that muffin. That would be a silly argument. 

But this is about McD’s and the ostensible reason for getting fast food oatmeal at McD’s is time savings, and that is demonstrably false.

In a pinch, you can even pour the hot water into the pouch directly and eat from it, though I don’t recommend it for anyone not extra-ordinarily graceful (meaning NOT for me).

Psh, in a real pinch you gnaw off a corner of the packet and pour it directly into your mouth (saliva is all you need) or do like my friend and spoon some jam on top of it and then pour it into your mouth (she’s a classier bitch than I am, clearly!)

As for all the people writing out, in exquisite detail, the graceful ballet that is breakfast prep at your house, may I point out that I’ve played The Sims for plenty of hours too; I’m not incapable of divvying up my time into carefully calculated chunks. And you should see the weekend plans I make for myself—military precision, y’all. But then I don’t do it, for a variety of reasons, because I am often even less rational than a sim (albeit with less flailing at fires until I get killed…)

There is often a disconnect between planning and execution, and I don’t think it’s valuable to assume that when people say “I don’t have time” they always literally mean they think they have no time at all. It could also mean “the 1 hour trip to the grocery store has been an insurmountable barrier to buying food for the last 2 weeks and I haven’t gotten enough sleep a single day this month and I want sugar to substitute for REM” or “I am clinging to my sanity by my oatmeal-packet-tearing fingernails and if I have to sit at home alone boiling water in silence for one goddamn minute I will jump in front of the stupid bus I have to catch to work” Which is to say, I think we should not underestimate the role that isolation and exhaustion and misery play in why people don’t behave like perfectly rational consumers/cooks. :p

jeevmon it also has a whole bunch to do with our unbelievable hypocrisy between what we say we want and what we do.

I just picked up, rather cheaply, a plastic covered handles ceramic soup bowl sized mug.  The oatmeal box has the recipe for microwave oatmeal.  Seriously, water, salt, oats. IN bowl, two buttons to press.  Put on cover.  Walk out of house. Eat. it. Bring bowl home from work or car - put in dishwasher.  Later Rinse Repeat tomorrow.

Besides less cost and better nutrition, no paper napkin, receipt, disposable bowl in the landfill.

Honestly, philfemgal, yeah, I’ll say it. It sounds like you are one of those picky people sittin in the dark becuase turning on the light - let alone a candle is too damn much work for you.  It also sounds like you see everything very short term. If you did the frickin dishes at night and skipped the Starbucks in the a.m. - perhaps you could afford a dishwasher or an apartment that has one. Yeah, I HATE doing dishes too.

Come off it Eileen - why wouldn’t it be just as difficult to get said frustrated disabled toddler into a car seat, then into a McD’s restaurant , wait in line to get food etc?  Unless you’re talking about just getting you fed - then how do you feed said toddler? in the car?

@ Well what?  Crockpot.

jeevmon @97:  Maybe I’m weird, but when I was seven I wanted to live and work somewhere I could ride my bicycle to work.  That was thirty years ago.  Of course, when I was seven, we lived several miles out of town because it was the place my mom was able to afford that had garden space.  So I couldn’t ride my bicycle to any place at all.

Now of course, I’ve had that option, and I liked it.  And once again, we’ve chosen a house ten miles outside of town, just like the house I lived in when I was seven.  But this time, there’s a grocery and a park and a hardware store within a mile, and two pharmacies and two more groceries within three miles.  And there’s a bus that can hop me from either of those places to town.  And I rode five miles to highschool (and then five back) so ten isn’t outside of my range.  And there is someone on our street who commutes via bicycle, even though we have a 1:3 slope for our neighborhood.

So it is possible.  And it’s not crazy.

Personally, when I did the 9-5 office thing, I brought my breakfast with me so I could eat it during that quiet ‘review what messages arrived and orders for the day’ segment of the day.  If I bought anything, it’d be a bagel, because there’s no way I could make them as good as one of the shops downtown.  Add that to my bowl of cereal (usually oatmeal in fact, either steeped in a lunchbag or instant from the coffee machine at work) and I’d be fine.

Ok, last post.  Has anyone else found the Target Archer Farms organic oatmeal?  Actually tastes good, also contains flax seed in one variety.  I keep a box in my desk along with my emergency soup bowl so I’m not tempted to stop at McD’s on the way in on THOSE mornings.  Next to the box of Archer Farms granola bars- for THOSE even worse holy shit I’m late mornings.

I was rather grateful for the Bittman post, in that I had forgotten how good muesli (the raw oatmeal soaked in milk - I add raisins, other dried fruit if available, fresh fruit) is. Satisfying to me in a way oatmeal isn’t, for some reason.
For what it’s worth, steel-cut oats - which have a less gluey texture when cooked - can be prepared in a full-sized thermos; you put the oats in and add an appropriate amount of boiling water, cap, let sit overnight, which cuts down on the oatmeal-cooking time in the morning. I do not know if this would work in smaller quantities, and it does require pouring into a bowl to eat, and the thermos should be soaked or rinsed upon emptying. That is, I think it requires pouring into a bowl to eat. I have never tried it straight from the thermos.
It is aggravating that most instant oatmeal has so much sugar added - I believe there’s a Trader Joe’s unflavored type that has less.
The other good shortcut I have learned for breakfast is making scones or biscuits and freezing them, unbaked, in a large ziplock bag. They’re actually lighter than they would be if baked immediately after making - the fat doesn’t liquefy as soon. If you have a toaster oven you can bake just a few at a time, which is nice for those with smaller households.
It did sound to me as if Bittman’s main complaint was that McD’s is making such crappy oatmeal. Bittman doesn’t strike me as exactly a food snob. There’s a recipe of his that we’re very fond of - chicken with ketchup sauce. Basically, crispy chicken with a sauce made of garlic, ketchup and cayenne powder.

Re: Comment #100, Daniel Martin:  Most people don’t know that they spend ten times as much time dealing with operating system issues (or should, hence computers failing because of background overload) than they should.  It’s not that they’re stupid, it’s that they’re taught this is how it is, and they live with it - never knowing that it could be another way.

Oatmeal is no different.  Most people never know that you can steep oatmeal (or noodles) slowly, with little heat, just more time and less attention, than the recipe says.  Because the recipe doesn’t say what other options you have!  Most people don’t know that most dried flavoring ingredients last not just weeks, but months or years in a decent container.  Or that in the modern world, a decent container is what everyone already has, or can get, if they buy pickles.

How many people know that you don’t have to buy batteries at $10 a pack when the same number of batteries are in the flashlight on another row for $1.50?  The capitalistic world we’re in limits their options to know this:  No company makes money off of telling people that they don’t need their service.

But yeah, a packet of instant is going to be faster than McD’s, and while it may take planning to have it on you, above we’ve had several suggestions:  Microwaveable bowl with lid (Corning sells these as separates); bowl with lid in fridge overnight; sandwich baggy with oatmeal and hot (but not hot enough to melt the baggy); crock pot; or the five-minute attention-version of classic oatmeal.

All are faster than standing in a queue and then waiting for them to make their instant oatmeal.  And don’t kid yourself:  of course theirs is instant.  So unless your path to work or home includes walking home and waiting around near a McD’s (which admittedly, I’ve had, but don’t now; why don’t suburban bus depots get made over by the road where the fast-food is?) or homeless (kitchenless)... You’re better off doing it yourself.  Cheaper, too.

phylosopher:  Jesus Christ, get off this.  Fact:  You do not know what is easier for everyone in every situation.  Personal disclosure:  I buy coffee at McDonald’s approximately two or three times per year, total.  I also often find that I am so busy in the house that I leave it without having eaten anything at all, which most often results in my not having any breakfast, or yogurt that I buy at work. 

My only point:  Talk about your own solutions.  Share recipes.  All good.  Pretend that those solutions are universal… bad.  This is surprising?  Guess what all you people without disabled children are doing when you think your life solutions should naturally approximate mine?  You are reveling in your fucking privileges.  There is no faster way to make me absolutely enraged than to try to tell me that you know what I can do to make my life easier.  You.  Don’t.  Know.

And honestly, spending this much time attacking McDonald’s for diversifying it’s crappy menu will only result in McDonald’s ceasing to even try to provide alternatives to those that want them.  If I found myself with a group in a McDonald’s on a morning that I hadn’t eaten, which is not an impossible scenario, I would certainly appreciate the oatmeal option, rather than trying to magically create a non-meat option in a restaurant that puts beef fat in almost everything.

Eileen, I’m sick and tired of these really good threads getting derailed by people in outlier situations like you who dream up some fake situation - and yes, trying to inject yourself and your toddler into an out or home for breakfast situation is fake.  Fine, if you have some special situation, deal with it.  We’re not talking about you, but about the majority of people who would have the McD’s faster, healthier, better mindset.

Look, if we’re talking about it being faster/cheaper/better in some way to drive yourself somewhere instead of taking a cab, we’re obviously not talking about someone who is legally blind doing so, and I don’t think it’s incumbent on any poster to list all the outlier exceptions. 

I hate mcD’s.  Yet, I went there, for an egg mcmuffin. I know better in all the health/time/money ways.  I couldn’t wait for the weekend to make myself an Egg mC at home.  Yes that was very much an instant gratification thing - stupid and self centered and lesson learned.  Burned by their coffee.  Lesson really learned.  Wish my kid had been there to give me that reminder of those other options and shot of some willpower.  I think that’s what threads like this do. 

Speaking of the kid - he wants to learn to make sushi.  Thin I’ll get of the Internets and go work on it with him. Chow, and ciao.

Shit, just clicked back to Amanda’s original article - that was the question Eileen, what makes people buy oatmeal at MCD’s.  Rather hard to answer without speculating about other folk’s motivations - you know?

Rather hard to answer without speculating about other folk’s motivations - you know?

Actually answer the question? Aw, but I wanted more of your prove-phylosopher-is-the-moral-ist-dude-evah comment spamming… (And if Guardian Avenger could weigh in once more on the just-how-lazy-and-dumb-is-that-disabled-kid’s-stupid-mom-anyways? debate that would make my life complete.)

Outliers are the reason why it’s important to keep in mind that your solutions are particular to you.  If an entire article is about speculating why people do X, imagines a reason why (they think it’s easier!)and then concludes that this must be proof that they are stupid, without taking into account the fact that Many People have life circumstances vastly different than those of the writer, then the entire article is fundamentally flawed.

For reference:  Jamie Oliver is great on his own.  Jamie Oliver is crap when he tries to change other people.  The reason?  Jamie Oliver has no idea what other people’s lives are like, even when he invites himself into them.

And again…  if you find yourself in McDonald’s with a group…  out-voted, as it were…  don’t you prefer being able to eat something socially to nursing a drink and being left out?  Diversity in a menu is a good thing, even when the menu is crap.

phylosopher: I’m puzzled.  The original post claimed that it was more convenient to make food and one’s morning coffee/tea at home than it is to buy it.  I offered evidence that that claim is false.  You just called me picky (based on what, I have no idea), but didn’t offer any reason to think what I said wasn’t true.  (I don’t know if you are really a philosopher, but if you are I’m sure you realize that you’ve just made the ad hominem fallacy instead of actually responding to my claim about how long it actually takes to make those particular items.)

It does indeed take more time energy to make an egg sandwich, a red eye, a chai, and do the dishes related to making them than to get that food at the Starbucks drive through on my way to work at around 8:50-9am in the morning. I can’t for the life of me see how your suggestion of doing dishes at night could show this to be untrue.  Does it not take time to do the dishes if you do them after dark in your world?  That is still time that isn’t involved in getting take-out breakfast.

I’m not sure why you think I am picky or that I wouldn’t light a candle????  Of course I would light a candle if I wanted some light.  Note the *if I wanted light*.  If I wanted to save money, then I wouldn’t buy so much take-out breakfast/coffee.  If I wanted to drink something other than my normal morning drink then I would.  When I want something other than an egg sandwich for breakfast (which is the vast majority of the time) then I have something different, most of which I make at home. 

If I wanted to spend more time/energy doing dishes, then I would do dishes every night.  But I don’t want to.  You can call me lazy or dirty or addicted to chai or .  (I call myself horribly anemic, tired all the time, and not seeing the point of wasting water running the dishwasher without a full load.)  But that’s all irrelevant to what the original post is about.

...I feel that it’s sort of rude to act like people with disabled toddlers somehow don’t count. Maybe we don’t all have disabled toddlers, but the problems of disabled people and those who care for them are relevant to conversations about why people want to buy oatmeal from Mcdonalds.

I mean, the situations of work at home people who know what steel cut oats are(what’s with the obsession with steel cut oats lately? I’m not sure we even have those at Krogers) are not exactly the most common situations, but there’s nothing wrong with those people chiming in about their opinions on oatmeal.

Shorter phylosopher:  “I get annoyed when people’s actual lives get in the way of my abstract arguments.”

Just want to put this convenience issue in perspective. It doesn’t get much more convenient than pouring yourself a bowl of cereal, but a large percentage of adults still leave the house each morning without having eaten any breakfast. Just saying.

Eileen, your family situation really doesn’t negate the fact that most people that buy oatmeal at McDonalds are doing it because they think it’s a “healthier” option. You have an anecdote, not data. It being easier for you to do that doesn’t change the fact that oatmeal from McDonalds is worse for you in almost every way.

If the excuses of people who don’t have time to make breakfast seem like not very good excuses, consider that they are being forced to defend themselves from the accusation that they are bad people because they don’t find time in their schedule to make oatmeal from scratch.

And then we have phylosopher referring to himself as “stupid and self-centered” for eating an egg and cheese sandwich. Really? The one time a year that hit the McD’s drive-thru for an egg ‘n’ cheese biscuit and hash brown, I enjoy every greasy, fatty bite and then I don’t go back for another year.

I thought we were supposed to be all about taking the guilt and shame out of eating. And then you get these ridiculous threads.

Eileen, your family situation really doesn’t negate the fact that most people that buy oatmeal at McDonalds are doing it because they think it’s a “healthier” option.

I think we’d also do well to remember that very few people who are otherwise eating breakfast at home are going to be lured into the drive-thru because of the oatmeal. People who otherwise hit the drive-thru several times a week have another option. That option is oatmeal. It has more sugar than some other options, but also more fiber. It has less than 300 calories. Like everything on the menu at McD’s, it’s not as healthy as the same food would be if you prepared it at home. But ... should they not have put oatmeal on the menu? Given that most of the people buying the oatmeal would be buying something from McD’s, I’m having a really hard time finding the harm.

So here is your happy ending. While mostly i am a very healthy eater, Ihad for a variety of reasons gotten in to the habit of stopping into McD’s for a fatty fried breakfast. Each morning i would eat my fried potatos and meaty cheesy egg thing, and feel quite guilty. Guilty for both giving McD money and eating that horribly tasty but horribly unhealthy meal. So I saw oatmeal and thought a little less guilt was available and ordered it. Oh it was sooooo sweet and yuck. BUT…I realized I liked it much more than the fried food and that I could make oatmeal at work faster, cheaper and tastier than paying for it on my way to work. So no more guilt at all. Now I enjoy healthy fruit and oatmeal, made by myself in about 2 minutes at work. Yum and Yay!

I’m so freaking glad Bittman got sort-of angry about this. I don’t read it as him being particularly angry at people who eat at McD’s rather than at the establishment itself, but even it he was? About time, I say. Most Americans don’t live in a food desert or have home situations that are so extreme as to prevent them from sparing 5 minutes to pour oats and water in a bowl in the morning. But gotta love the immediate cries of “condescending,” “foodie,” “privileged douche” “I have no time for this!” “I have no bowls!” etc.

Yeah, imagine that, a food writer and a cookbook author whose whole mission is to get people to cook healthy food at home, telling people that cooking their own food is tastier, healthier, and better all-around than patronizing fast food establishments! Wow, shocking! He really should put twenty disclaimers at the end of the essay to make sure that all those with extremely unusual dietary needs, work hours, kitchen sizes, home situations, what have you, don’t get offended at the suggestion that maybe, just maybe, it’s better to spend ten minutes on cooking own porridge than on driving to McDs to spend more money on an inferior, potentially very unhealthy, product.

Let’s face it, it’s not about anything else other than perceived convenience and what we’ve been socialized to see as “easy” and “difficult.” There’s a lot of effort involved in socializing people to think that getting in the car, going to the drive-through, waiting in line, and eating sugared-up oatmeal is easy. Which, by the way is possible only because we have the cheap labor and the massive subsidies for big agra. There are people all over the world who live without McD’s, but with those same tiny kitchens, food insecurity, disabilities, long work hours that we have here, and somehow manage to feed themselves and their families. I know, I grew up like that. So for everyone who screams “privilege” the second someone mentions a home cooked meal, yeah, you’re right, but so is the option to go out and and have someone else do the cooking and the horrible icky clean-up for you.

I get that people are busy and have weird complicated lives, I do. But, really, Bittman is right. And I’m glad he’s not tiptoeing around the issue. Incidentally, io9 had a fascinating article yesterday about large-scale agricultural production methods that are expected to fail within a few decades. And if you think about it, all of those methods exist to make it possible for the likes of McD’s to have that sugared-up oatmeal and dirt-cheap meat. So it might be convenient, but it sure as hell not healthy and, on top of that, not sustainable.

See, philfemgal, it’s that mindset thing again.  You talked about a sink full of dirty dishes, and offered as the only alternative THAT, or running a half full dishwasher - ever heard of the rinse cycle - it takes much less water than rinsing by hand, and in a pinch, you can reuse a coffee cup from it? Ever heard of a sink brush - it takes al lof about three seconds to swish and rinse and stick on the drainboard.

And you offered your own explanation for the picky.  Gotta have exactly what you want - NOW, and each of you wanting something different! That’s picky.  It’s the reason that a lot of people don’t want to cook at home - because there’s a perception that if it isn’t what each of us individually wants, then that is a major deprivation/lack of freedom that just WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.  The same for those who won’t eat leftovers.  A home kitchen is not a fast food restaurant.  Whoever is cooking is not a short order cook.  Children are conditioned today to think so - single serving packets are the way that works.  It is not sane to think that all the cuisines of the world should live in your refrigerator and a revolving gastronomique tour of those cuisines take place - cooked fresh every night. 

I’ll disagree with you about the ad hominem - and perhaps you didn’t realize the word picture you had going there - complaints about dishes in the sink and then your comments about how much you spent at Starbucks sounded as if you yourself were lamenting some lack.  Sorry, but people I know who have dishwashers generally don’t have stacks of dishes in the sink to the point where they are scrounging for coffee cups on a daily basis. 

So if you know ad hominem, you should also know “ought implies can.”  And individuals who don’t recognize that are what derail good threads.

Shannon, no one is saying that the disabled or their caregivers don’t count - that’s a strawman.  Of those that have responded, at least two of us have been caregivers at some point or have had kids. 

This thread was about a mindset, for those who physically can and intellectually do know otherwise, why would they buy into the McD’s hype that their oatmeal is faster and the same as homecooked healthy. Right there is an acknowledgment that for some small subset of people it might really be a solution to some problem.

Right Chingona - because I don’t enjoy it in the way I would, say, the indulgence of a cream horn that that local bakery makes to perfection.  Or their turtle cookies.  Butter, sugar, carmel, chocolate, supporting the local economy (yeah the baker uses as much local as possible.) I enjoy every single crumb when I get those and do not feel guilty or stupid - it was worth it.  SO beleive me this isn’t about self- denial as “always good” and self- indulgence = “always bad.”

I know I can make a much better egg mc muffin at home - and that yes, does take a little time and thought - to do with having the muffin on hand and the Canadian bacon defrosted.  I could have waited until the weekend.    I had that instant oatmeal at work.  But I gave in to a craving brought on by seeing the picture of egg mcmuffins when I went to through the drive through for the free coffee (broke a brand new french press carafe the night before!)  - and the more I’ve been eating real food, the more I can taste the chemicals in McD’s - and I did.  In addition to the lid not being on, the coffee too hot to drink with the egg McMuffin - it was cold, the cheese not even melted.  That’s why it was stupid - and it wasn’t worth it- so I felt ripped off. And yeah, money’ stight and that $3 could have gone for something else - like turtle cookies!.

YEs, elena, yes.  And, it’s also our car-centric suburb design.  What are we doing, we AGW/climate change non-deniers,  thinking it’s OK to leave our gas cars idling because we don’t want to get out and actually go into McD’s?  WHen you think about it, it’s so silly (barring parents with young kids and those with disabilities) I mean people will wait sometimes an extra ten or so minutes when there is no line in the store itself, but they won’t get out of their cars, even if they can see how backed up the drive though is.  ANd we wonder why there is an obesity problem - hello? (and yep I was one of those people in that line - that’s why I’ve quit McD’s.

Shannon, no one is saying that the disabled or their caregivers don’t count - that’s a strawman.

Previously:
Eileen, I’m sick and tired of these really good threads getting derailed by people in outlier situations like you who dream up some fake situation - and yes, trying to inject yourself and your toddler into an out or home for breakfast situation is fake.

See, it’s not that they don’t count, nobody’s saying that.  They would count if they were real, but as we have established, they are fake.  Fake as McDonald’s oatmeal.  That derailing toddler is probably chock full of artificial preservatives and empty calories.

Phylosopher seems like the right wing caricature of an elitist liberal. Really just a general douche every thread he is in. And I say this as a person who is having trouble understanding how oatmeal is ever difficult. It is water + oats +heat. If it overflows in the microwave it is still edible. Still, phylosopher needs to suck it.

Apply a little logic Sopho,
Situation as described: I eat/would eat at McD’s because I have a disabled, frustrated toddler who is so labor intensive that I can’t even cook a microwave bowl of oatmeal in the a.m.

Uhm, how would getting said toddler into car and into McD’s restaurant to eat be easier?  In car? in out of car twice?  Sorry, but either that really isn’t easier, in which case, parent of said toddler is fully included with the why do people think this is easier, because it isn’t.
And, which Eileen admitted it was a fake situation <italic>Personal disclosure:  I buy coffee at McDonald’s approximately two or three times per year, total. </italic> Can’t remember if that was before or after she accused others of using abstract theories in the face of her reality -which wasn’t real. 

Or, this person has such really, really unusual special circumstances, that for them what we are discussing in this one little tiny thread on a single blog in the whole fucking universe of blogs regarding the general population doesn’t apply to them. It certainly doesn’t mean “doesn’t count” in any larger sense than that.

Soph, you said what I was trying to mean much better than I. He acted like Eileen made up her toddler just to muddy the waters of the thread, when I think she was just trying to point out that there are many very good reasons that people’s situations may differ and they might eat some sugary oatmeal from McDs. She may know how to make oatmeal, and may be physically able to do so, but maybe after working hard taking care of her child, who has special needs, maybe she’d like to have someone do the taking care, the work, instead?

It seems that our days and weekends are filling up with extra obligations- cook some oatmeal, make dinner for the week, buy different bowls than the bowls we have, spend more time washing dishes, and we’re already overloaded with obligation.

And if Guardian Avenger could weigh in once more on the just-how-lazy-and-dumb-is-that-disabled-kid’s-stupid-mom-anyways?

And where can you draw that conclusion from what I’ve written on this thread?

Again, this is advice for the typical Jane and Joe Blow, Eileen or any else who has a special situation of caretaking, long commutes, work shifts, etc., is/are obviously not in that category and therefore shouldn’t take the article personally.

Uh…the situations of caregiving, long commutes, and strict workshifts are the *norm*, not the exception. although I’m in America. Other countries may be different.

Posts about food that even hint at the fact that junk food isn’t good for you always seem to end up with massive comment threads with people claiming someone’s being classist or elitist.  In many cases, the criticisms are valid and some privilege-checking is certainly in order, but in Bittman’s article and Amanda’s response, I think those claims are knee-jerk and reactionary.  Bittman’s more than proven his understanding and compassion for people who are underprivileged and marginalized, and his article was clearly a rant at the byproducts of the consumer-based food system we have in American culture.  And some of the things Amanda’s been criticized for saying in this thread, while maybe said in a less-sensitive way, are completely true.  Americans are generally addicted to excessive amounts of sugar and fat, and it’s not just that “some people just like that kind of food”; no, really, people are addicted to it because they’ve grown up on it, rather than actual food.  And that shouldn’t be offensive to anyone, because it’s true of the vast majority of Americans.  Being offended because someone had the nerve to state such a fact is like a smoker being offended that doctors keep telling them it will negatively impact their health.  It’s not like if we didn’t have readily-available supersweet snacks at our disposal, people would never be satisfied with the sweetness of an apple or orange.  This is acquired, unhealthy, and unnecessary, and the system has set it up so that it’s the cheapest and easiest way to consume food.  Neither Bittman nor Amanda shamed any victims of this system. 

I <a href=“http://ethecofem.blogspot.com/2011/02/sensitivities-in-discussing-food-ethics.html”>wrote a post about this</i> yesterday.  I think it’s important that we continue to remember the difference between an actual instance of unenlightened food snobbery from privileged turds, and laments about the negative consequences of our current system.

This is the link I apparently thought was italic rather than a link in my last botched comment.

the situations of caregiving

You noticed the word special, or do you think a caregiver of a 12 year old child would have the problems Eileen talked about when making oatmeal for said 12 year old?

The problem with the McDonald’s oatmeal is that it is designed to appeal to people who want to eat better. And because it actually has oatmeal in it there is some redeeming quality there. But it’s the other crap and excess of sugar that negates that quality and that’s where the rubber hits the road.

Can someone who agrees with the above please explain to me how the sugar negates the whole grain?  Does the sugar cause the whole grain to disappear, or render it inert?

Yes, I realize that the commenter probably didn’t mean it in that way, but I think it speaks directly to what some of us are saying:  It’s an improvement, even if it’s not as ideal as homemade.  Most of the comments aren’t addressing Amanda’s question because we don’t agree with the premise.  Also, Bittman refuses to believe that someone would go to McDonalds just for oatmeal—that it’s meant as some sort of lure to get people to buy their less nutritious food.  I’d like to think, at a minimum, that the discussion here has revealed the ridiculousness of that position.

(Incidentally, you can get rid of almost all of the rest of the extra sugar by skipping the cranberries.  Too bad Bittman decided not to link to the nutritional information so that all of his readers could see that for themselves.)

Somewhat relatedly, why the hate towards getting coffee on the way to work?  If you don’t put sugar in it, it’s just a time-honored caffiene delivery system.  Is it the price?  That’s Suze Orman asceticism taken to a depressing level:  250 work days a year, let’s say $4 a pop (and that’s on the high side, even at Starbucks); you would have to deny yourself every day of the year to save $1,000.  I understand that that amount of money may be meaningful enough to actually forgo Starbucks, but the comments were directed at the very idea of getting coffee to go, regardless of the ability to pay.

Eat while you’re walking around getting dressed. And then talk to me about convenience.

Hmm, I think we’re all missing the most important point—this dude is able to dress himself hands-free! Please teach me how to simultaneously walk, eat oatmeal, and button my pants with my prehensile toes, breakfast guru!

@Crissa - I’m not denying that it’s possible.  There are these places called “cities,” for example.  But for a substantial portion of the population (maybe even a majority), it’s not how they live because one consideration trumps all - schools.  The way we finance schools encourages suburban sprawl because lower-density housing is generally considered more desirable, and therefore more valuable, than higher density housing.  By making schools in areas with such housing the better-funded ones, we encourage people to buy bigger houses in areas that require driving.  We make having both parents work outside the home a requirement, not a choice.  We create the commuting situation that shrinks the time available for things like cooking and exercise. 

Then we add to that the urban poor.  The people who live in high-density environments, but ones which are isolated from the transit system and lacking in amenities.  The food deserts, for example.  People living here often have to work multiple jobs just to keep their heads above water, and face long commutes because of poor mass transit infrastructure. 

Convenience foods like McDonalds oatmeal serve the needs created by these situations.  It didn’t create them.  And changing it is going to be difficult.  The ‘burbanites view schools much like they view health care - something they’ve earned.  Any attempt to change the basis of school funding is too easy to characterize as taking money from the Hard Working Deserving People and giving it to the Undeserving Lazy People.  And no one wants to pay to ameliorate the plight of the urban poor. 

Food writers come in for a lot of criticism on class issues because they focus just on the food.  When Bittman says something about how it’s only ten minutes or whatever, he reveals his own privilege.  Making oatmeal from 6:50 - 7:00 AM is not the same as waiting in the line at McDonalds from 7:50- 8:00 AM.

OK, NY Expat, here are some real concerns for coffee to go - at least for those in the ‘burbs. And yes, it does depend on where you get it.  And if you don’t think that the oatmeal is meant as a lure, you’ve failed marketing 101.  All those photos of the perfect sandwiches at the ordering station -  yes, we humans are generally creatures of weak will.  “Man, I’m going to have a long day, I DESERVE what I REALLY want, eh, I’ll work out more later.” I pulled into McD’s for their (free Mondays) coffee and found myself many times with that egg Mc.  Call me particularly weak willed, but the average American waistline AND health problems and expressed desire to change those confirms that my lack of will is just not that much of an anomaly.

Driving to the Starbucks can be a bit out of way - extra gas/time
Getting it at a drive through - idling pollution
Disposable crap - cup, receipt, napkin
Destruction of the local entrepreneurial economy - Starbucks - the Walmart of coffeeshops moves in, local goes bye, bye. It is destructive of a sense of place - anonymous.

Obviously, much of this can be negated if you are say, getting it at the train station. Or walking to your neighborhood shop where you are allowed to hang your personal mug on the hook and reuse. 

As for the sugars, it’s that it is there in addition to the barley malt and on the cranberries and naturally in the apples.  Why not just allow customers that wanted it to ask for a packet? I would also have a problem with the"undefined cream - WTF?  and caramel color -source?  in that McD’s oatmeal

Oh c’mon Bagelsan - one eating it at home isn’t a necessary part of many have pointed out - but even if it is getting dressed is a euphemism for morning routine particular to each person - waiting for curling/straightening iron to warm up, water to boil for coffee, supervision of cat feeding, doggie/pooing in yard, lunch bagging whatever, computer booting all those littl e30 second intervals where slurping a spoon of oatmeal can be fit in.

“That doesn’t make our choices invalid.” 

I’m not sure what you mean by an invalid choice, purpleshoes. 

I’ll offer my interpretation on the “choice” to eat fast food for those who make a habit of it - they are not choices in the sense of fully informed conscious choices.  They are default options.  Not fully informed, because most people DON’t read labels.  Most people DON’T consider other options, mainly because our culture has a homecooking=harder and more time consuming than fast food, as a foregone conclusion - and so we never stop to unpackage and examine that assumption like Bittman did and like AManda asked us to do.

We do that a LOT.  It is institutionalized thinking in my lexicon.  Institutionalization takes other option off the table as “live” choices - either by perception or eventually, actuality of their impossibility.  E.g drive in a car enough and eventually, the leg muscles will so atrophy that a walk around the block becomes impossible) .  Where we birth, how/where we educate our kids, how we get places, marriage as the end point of committed relationships, outside of the home as the place to die (changing),  and funeral homes/embalming internment as the ONLY way to dispose or bodies (also changing in past few decades)  are all examples of institutionalization of formerly private family and homebased activities.  Fast food is the institutionalization of feeding oneself and ones family quickly and efficiently.  Amanda and Bittman are just trying to keep those other options “live” and in front of us as live options, IMO.  Sometimes that has to be done forcefully in order not to be dismissed.

(By the way, sugar is not poisonous, please. Sugars are a basic component of many foods, including sugarcane juice, and are an example of the kind of carbohydrate humans need to live. If you eat an unvaried diet with one kind of food predominating, you can hurt yourself on anything. I gave myself health problems as a middle schooler because I ate very little besides oranges, which did a number on my stomach because they’re so acidic. If you eat nothing but corn mush that hasn’t been nixtamalized, you can get pellagra easily. If you eat nothing but boar kidneys, you are on a fast track to gout. These have been problems for various cultures and in various places; the fact that our problem does seem to be an inability to stop making everything really really sweet doesn’t make sugarcane sugar any more poisonous than polenta is.)
Comment #178: purpleshoes on 02/26 at 09:44 AM

While sugar certainly isn’t a poison, and it is necessary or naturally occurring in many foods - bread and fruit, cane sugar and now hfcs has unnecessarily been added to so many foods as a marketing tool (we naturally like it, but we don’t have a natural ‘enough” mechanism) that while it is not a poison - not sure where you got that, seems a strawman but it is a contributing factor to T2 diabetes - which is caused primarily childhood and adult obesity which is a combination of too many calories, too little exercise.  Added sugars make it easy to get too many calories.

The problem is not that “sugar is a poison”, but simply that the amounts of sugar and fat that you already get in McDonald’s food are already extremely unhealthy, and that adding sugary/fatty oatmeal to the mix won’t help this.

Most of the article wasn’t addressed to McDs though. It was addressed to “you” where “you” is a dumbass who is too stupid to even realize the wonder of oatmeal at home. It was possibly an opportunity to show that McDs food and simple food to cook from home have some common ground, but the article scolds McDs oatmeal eaters like they are stupid children. Regardless of whether are not you think McDs eaters are in fact stupid children who need to be scolded, if anyone who is sort of on the fence read this article (and it may be doubtful that that sort of person reads foodie articles in the NYTs anyway), they would end up being pushed towards team Limbaugh. If this is a dietary battle for the average American of team foodie vs team Limbaugh, Limbaugh won the point.

Also oatmeal with cream and honey is sugary and fatty too, just arguably a better quality of sugar and fat.

NY expat, I don’t think the issue is that sugar/fat cancel out the whole grain, but that instant oatmeal is so processed that it’s not really a whole grain anymore. That’s why Bittman always suggests using steel cut or rolled oats. So what McDs is pulling here is nothing but a marketing gimmick. There’s no benefit of the grain and on top of that you’re getting more of the McD’s staple of fat/sugar. So they are further socializing consumers to like and expect those flavors in food.

I’m not a big defender of starbucks, but they will happily put the drink in your travel mug for you. But still, support local. At the very least you won’t be getting cheap, super-acidic, over-roasted beans.

“maybe, just maybe, it’s better to spend ten minutes on cooking own porridge than on driving to McDs to spend more money on an inferior, potentially very unhealthy, product.”

Except most of the people who are going through the drive-through aren’t already at home thinking “what do I eat now?  what should I do before the next home-based task?”

They are home but heading to work, at work heading home, at work heading out to coach the game, are at home but rushing off to pick up the kids from ballet, in line at the church parking lot heading to the game.  They are already on the road.  There is no extra effort involved, no going out of the way.  Most people in this society drive somewhere at least a few days a week and drive right by some kind of fast food place.  Ten minutes gets the food job done.

While waiting in the drive-thru line or in the line at the counter they can have a conversation with other people in the car or over the phone, check mail on the ubiquitous Blackberry, listen to something on the radio, think about a problem at work or home, think about something on a blog or website you want to respond to, or just veg out.

Why are vehicles today so big, have so many cup holders and look like little living rooms?  Because so much living takes place in them.

Also, ten minutes of preparation while your disabled distractible toddler is off doing whatever distracts her/him doesn’t sound very relaxing or even easy.  Nor does spending the next two hours keeping said toddler from “exploring” the burner or oven.

alysia - almost certainly excepting the readers of pandagon food blogging, but most Americans are dumbasses when it comes to food - using your words, not mine or Bittman’s.  I would say we’ve been conditioned to/been prevented from being educated and knowledgeable about our food network.  And cooking.  I’ve had people swear up and down that mayo or ketchup CAN’t be made at home - that pre-made and just reheated is safer than cooked from scratch- e coli, you know - that from a school lunch room professional (and then she read the Beef Products, Inc. article.)  Until people like Bittman and his precursors, Robbins, Lappe, PETA types, etc.  started getting front page coverage on the horrors of factory farming, most people did not have a clear picture of the food supply network.  Most still don’t. 

I enjoy random encounters in the grocery store and elsewhere my Ag interests take me.  Some samples:
I don’t EVER cook anything with a bone in it - followed by a shudder.

I always buy foods labeled “natural” they’re so much healthier.

Certified Angus Beef is so much better - there’s just something about those purebred Angus cattle.

Ribs? Oh, you have to have a grill/smoker to cook those.

I would NEVER, NEVER, NEVER eat veal.  Slaughtering a baby animal is just so cruel - as they reach for the pork or lamb chops.

Pork?  Pork has worms.
Pork is dry.
Pork has to be cooked to 165F to be safe to eat. 

Imported fruit is the same as American grown - after all the FDA inspects it all.

Organic milk and cage free eggs are better - those cows and chickens are all small family farmed/ raised outside.

Wash the lettuce - the farm rinses it - why should I redo that?

Any kind of food is healthy for you/OK to eat as long as it is organic.

Well what else is there to eat from a cow? It’s either ground or steak, right?

Gyros - you can’t make that at home.

There’s no difference between organic and regular wine.   

I don’t taste any difference between out of season strawberries and in season ones.  That’s a myth! (Underlying assumption here that the local grocery store gets local strawberries when in season - not the case.) 

ANd then there’s the checkout line:  This has been happening less frequently in the past 5 years or so, but I still get:

What’s that?? That being: chard, squash, fennel, rutabaga, turnips, parsnips, jicama, kiwi, gingerroot, rhubarb, fresh dill, etc. 

What do you do with it?  About anything from the above list. 

More than 5 years ago, even the veg department people would look at you like you had 3 heads asking for some of the above. 

It was yeoman’s work to get to the point where tofu/a variety of lettuces/ veg/fruit is now a staple in most chain grocers.  Forgive the yeoman for saying the rest of the populace needs to at the least exhibit a bit of responsibility in recognizing what it is they are putting in their mouths.

It’s not a one time thing oldfeminist.  It’s meant to help with lifestyle changes. One reads it and is forced to examine their held beliefs.  About healthy food, about food expense.  Then one may remember that next time at the grocery store - oh yeah, if I pickup the oatmeal, or if I pick up the granola bars, I’ll have an alternative with me/when I get to work.

I never said people weren’t dumbasses. But did you ever change anyones mind calling them a dumbass or treating them as such? If your goal is just the joy of gloating over stupid non-cookers, or getting foodies all riled up, then condescension is a fine method. But if you actually want to change people’s minds and actions you have to respect them, treat them as adults, and make them feel empowered to make their own choices: even if they are totally in the wrong. I mean just look at this thread. These are probably people who agree like 90% when it comes to issues of food, yet I have never seen an example in the comment thread where person A explains why they go through the drive through, person B condescends that he/she already TOLD person A the recipe for soup, and then person A is like “oh wow, your are totally right!!!” That just isn’t the way people work.

There may be some advantage in riling up your base to getting a wider variety of produce in stores and things like that, but if the goal is to make individual changes that are initially difficult (and changing the way you live, your habits, your pallet IS initially difficult), then being condescending is the absolute worst thing you can do.

Also, making your own catsup may not be the best place to start to get a person cooking at home.

Like if someon read and article and it said “Here is this thing McDonald’s makes and you can make a just as tasty version that is cheaper and easier at home!” Instead of “YOU are eating at McDonalds because YOU have been brainwashed to like sugar and are too ignorant to know that YOU can make oatmeal at home!” the first one will make people think, the second one will make them feel like they have been accused of something and double down on their actions and stick to their guns. Thats why commercials are usually up beat and cheery and make you feel empowered (even if the message is totally orwellian bull shit) rather than scolding and condescending. To the extent the commercials do shame (the chick-food BK commercials come to mind), it is always shamed directed at an out group to shore up the market that is already their rather than reach out to others.

Alysia, that is becuase on this thread, we aren’t standing face to face having that conversation.  These are two separate issues.  Some of us probably didn’t know that McD’s was selling oatmeal (I didn’t).  ANd in some cases that means they didn’t know their spouse/child/parent was eating unhealthy overpriced oatmeal from McD’s.  So yeah articles like this can enlighten “dumbasses” on both sides.

But I disagree when you claim the attitude of the article is “you dumbasses.”  I think people with knowledge who succumb to the socializing, marketing, allure of a McDonald’s breakfast already are conflicted about doing so, consciously or not. This just brings that internal conflict to the surface.

IN #190 alysia, you are advocating using the same brainwashing tactics McDonalds does.  And McDonalds sees people as consumers only - to be manipulated.  Sorry, I, and evidently Bittman and Marcotte respect fellow human beings a bit more than McD’s does.  If our side uses McD’s tactics, we are doomed to lose.  To start, they have a shitload more advertising dollars.  Sorry, phylosopher’s market share can’t compare. 

You are also seeing this from an educated, “I know that but I have a good exceptional reason to do it anyway” - personal perspective.  There are individuals who do NOT know this stuff, and who are grateful that someone pointed it out and made a good argument so they can arm themselves against the individuals in their lives who are NOT ready to make the effort/change, unless that arguemtn is presented (spouse/kids/parents.)

ON the ketchup - Yes, sometimes I’m disgustingly honest in relating things exactly as they happen in my personal life.  The ketchup and the mayo thing really did happen.  The mayo one was a lot cooler, because they got to see the what 5 minute process happen right in front of their eyes.  Even my kids were amazed, because we had been a loyal Hellmans or nothing family for years.  When it tased even better, they started being convinced.

I mean seriously - there are people who think the preservatives and “weird” chemical additives are necessary to the end product.

Another quote “what is and where can I get BHT?” I need it for a recipe.

I think generally Amanda does a good job of showing an alternate way of eating without coming off as mean-spirited. This Bittman peice absolutely does not, but I am willing to believe that his other pieces may be better.

Also, communicating your message in a way that people can accept is just a vital part of putting out a message. You can word the exact same message to either turn people off or make them consider your position by how you frame it and how you make them feel: its just a fact of life. You can’t say that people are eating poorly because fastfood campaigns are so effective and then claim that a little bit of condescending dickery is all you need to change people’s minds.

But so help me god, that is not an appropriate level of fear to have about any common food product that won’t actually cause life-threatening anaphylaxis.

It would be better to encourage people to pay attention to what they eat, so that they can teach themselves to detect how much sugar they are eating, which would encourage a healthier attitude toward it than “OMG! CARBS GONNA KILL US ALL”.

Professor Avenger has a lack of a sweet tooth compared to most folks, but he had to change his diet because his idea of a dessert is an order of ravioli at the end of the meal, and he was told by his doctor when he was in his early ‘40s that he was prediabetic if he kept eating and not exercising as well.

So, it’s not sugar per se, the question should be, “How much sugar do you really like in your diet?”

alysia, you are still missing my point.  It is that when someone is educated they may read the Bittmanarticle /Marcotte take on Bittman as condescending.  Someone who doesn’t know this might read it with a “hey thanks, I hadn’t known/thought of that and see it as encouragement and a peptalk. 

IME, that’s how I read Amanda’s veggie broth thing - and I don’t think I even paid attention until about her third or fourth mention when people started arguing about whether it was easy/doable or not.

purpleshoes, I’ll say it again, neither Bittman or Marcotte is making the claim of sugar is poisoning us.  People in that link you posted from earlier on this thread were using hyperbole to criticize Bittman.  A reasonable argument can be made that excess sugar IS one of the top two or three contributing factors to TII diabetes, even if it is part of a varied diet. 

What was being said seriously by Bittman and others is that refined sugar in addition to naturally occurring sugars, particularly in foods where it’s hidden because they aren’t prepared in view, and we don’t have a “what is natural” taste level of comparison if we were raised on the over sweetened stuff. Every breakfast cereal tastes “not sweet enough” if you were raised on frootloops and sugar pops .
And in stuff like McD’s oatmeal, we really don’t have control or knowledge of the extra sugar in it. (Yeah, yeah, the claim is have it your way - but like I related - I asked for ice to make coffee drinkable immediately.  It burned me when the cup spilled - even though the receipt said lite ice.)

....Maybe we don’t *want* to make lifestyle changes. Maybe we feel overloaded with effort already. Maybe we just want a food substance in our mouths.

I’m at the checkstand at Sunflower Market. Not only did the clerk, and the bagger, and the next clerk over not know what the kohlrabi was, they couldn’t even find a code for it once I told them its name. That was entertaining.

I scanned through a few comments and the TNC link that was posted and what that tells me that it’s not enough to show readers here how to cook, how to plan meals, how to shop for groceries ... a few tips are also needed on how to do dishes.

I am rather amazed that people think its a chore to clean a bowl after cooking oatmeal.

Finish eating.
Fill the dish with water.
Soak (an hour or till the next meal prep)
Rinse.

It was yeoman’s work to get to the point where tofu/a variety of lettuces/ veg/fruit is now a staple in most chain grocers.  Forgive the yeoman for saying the rest of the populace needs to at the least exhibit a bit of responsibility in recognizing what it is they are putting in their mouths.
Comment #187: phylosopher on 02/26 at 07:13 PM

but

IN #190 alysia, you are advocating using the same brainwashing tactics McDonalds does.  And McDonalds sees people as consumers only - to be manipulated.  Sorry, I, and evidently Bittman and Marcotte respect fellow human beings a bit more than McD’s does.  If our side uses McD’s tactics, we are doomed to lose.  To start, they have a shitload more advertising dollars.  Sorry, phylosopher’s market share can’t compare.
Comment #192: phylosopher on 02/26 at 08:27 PM

You are so powerful that you can’t do anything….?

I am rather amazed that people think its a chore to clean a bowl after cooking oatmeal.

Finish eating.
Fill the dish with water.
Soak (an hour or till the next meal prep)
Rinse.
Comment #202: ittef on 02/27 at 12:54 AM

Oh gosh, yet another topic on which people can tell other people “your lazy and/or doin it rong.” 

You don’t think that having to wash the dishes before cooking again is sometimes daunting (as was mentioned above by someone already)?  Maybe you just don’t work as much or are in better health (as in, younger, not dealing with a chronic condition) or don’t work two jobs and then second/third shift at home.  Maybe it’s not a giant chore putting the bowl away and getting it out again—maybe you’re six feet tall and can reach all the shelves some tall person put in your kitchen.

How many of the people who think it’s a lot easier to just cook something at home have children or other beings dependent on them day in, day out, right now?  I don’t mean having helped someone else take care of an older relative some time in the past.  Who today is on the side of “it’s easy to cook at home every day and there’s no reason to give in to the fast food demon” and is the primary support for children or a dependent adult all the time?

Selfishly, I suppose, one of the reasons I hate doing dishes is that I have to take off my rings and bracelets and watch and at the end of it my hands are now dried out and could use some lotion, but the lotion doesn’t seem to help my skin from chapping and peeling.  I guess I could wear gloves which make my hands smell weird and rubbery, but then they sweat or something inside and wrinkly and then the skin peeling again. 

Not that this means I eat fast food all the time.  I rarely do.  Luckily I have only one other person in the household and he is not dependent on me for food and supervision.  He shares cooking (in that “look what I did” mode still, but he’s progressing). 

I suck it up and deal with the dishes and the mess and procuring food at the grocery once or twice a week and storing it and monitoring it and planning etcetera.  But I learned to cook from my mother so it’s not really a big challenge.  Plus I’m pescetarian, so the fast food options available to me are not that great. 

But.  If I had any more responsibility around the house, I might choke down Mickey D’s Filet O’Fish or not-so-great oatmeal more often.

Anyway, I do still do dishes after cooking food at home.  I just don’t always like it.  I am in fact one of those people who doesn’t always clean as you go, just so I can do a couple of meals’ worth of dishes at one time and limit the peeling skin deal, but that puts me in the trick bag of not wanting to cook because there’s dishes to do before I start.  After a 12-hour day of wrangling with annoying people (I am a stone introvert), sometimes I just don’t want to do it.  Then a pizza delivered by one of the local places (luckily there are three good ones within four blocks) may be in my dinner plans.

@#203
You don’t think that having to wash the dishes before cooking again is sometimes daunting (as was mentioned above by someone already)?
No I don’t.

Maybe you just don’t work as much or are in better health (as in, younger, not dealing with a chronic condition) or don’t work two jobs and then second/third shift at home.

I frequently work long hours, yes I am in great health and no I still don’t buy this excuse that having to work multiple shift hours makes it impossible for you to rinse a bowl.

Maybe it’s not a giant chore putting the bowl away and getting it out again—maybe you’re six feet tall and can reach all the shelves some tall person put in your kitchen.

Yes it’s not a giant chore.

I have a privileged life now. But I grew up in a third world country where a good part of my childhood was spent in a one room flat with a tin roof and a divider to separate the living area from the kitchen. We cooked on a kerosene stove and didn’t have these fancy cupboards that you think are such a problem. I learned to cook simple things by the time I was 8. I have lived and worked with people who barely had any kitchen utensils and these amazing gadgets like electric stove tops, running water from faucets and dishwashers, that you take for granted, were unheard of.

Look we can play this who’s more miserable game all day. But it’s rather galling to have this much luxury and yet complain that doing something as simple as rinsing a bowl is so hard. That anyone pointing out how simple it can be is an entitled ableist.

How do you think the rest of the world, where cheap fastfood chains aren’t the norm, lives?

If you want to eat junk food because you don’t want to have to do dishes and have your hands go dry, that’s your choice. No one is talking about taking that away from you. But recognize that for what it is. Pointing out that there are other simple options does not make one entitled, but complaining about that information being made available is just you whining and setting up strawman arguments.

oldfeminist @203: Amanda’s never bothered much to hide her contempt for women who are dumbfuck enough to breed, so I’m guessing the answer is “you should have stayed a single young boho and you’ve have all the time in the world to make oatmeal”.

It reminds me of an interview with Mollie Katzen about some of the criticisms of the Moosewood Cookbook: at the time she wrote it, she was a single graduate student, so she just assumed everybody spent all day puttering around working on their PhDs, so they had plenty of time to stop whenever and go knead the bread or give the bean stew a stir.

Really, if you were going to write a post of the condescending clueless latte-sipping foodie, you couldn’t do better than Amanda’s post. It’s like the Slow Food version of libertarians whining about how they don’t understand why more women and blacks don’t see the value of thinking their way.

You know, that was a little unfair, I should have said “breed on purpose”.

I think in the end the answer to Amanda’s question might be moot, and Shannon’s post at 200 is why. I’d love to be the kind of person who cares passionately about what she eats, but I’m not. I just don’t give a flying fuck, in the end. And I’m not likely to, any time in the near future. My life is largely comprised of joyless drudgery, and I find cooking (and ESPECIALLY cleaning up after) to be mostly joyless and rather drudgy as well. I do the bare minimum required to keep soul and body attached, and to keep my finances stable.

I don’t imagine that I’m alone in this way of thinking. But I am alone in my community of progressives and foodies, who literally have NO IDEA how I even exist. It’s unthinkable to them that someone just doesn’t fucking care about food. And then they wonder, why don’t people cook steel cut oats with organic farm fresh cream….it’s not that it takes too much effort, or time, or whatever. It takes CARING, and most people don’t.

Gotta make em care first, guys, or you just end up arguing over whether to call them poor souls or dumbfucks.

How do you think the rest of the world, where cheap fastfood chains aren’t the norm, lives?

They don’t eat much, and when they do, it’s usually the females of the family who have to gather, cook, serve, and clean up afterward, in addition to everything else they have to do that makes their lives extremely difficult and shorter than they should be.

So is your argument really that the mother who grabs a McDonald’s oatmeal to eat in her car needs to STFU and get out that saucepan, because there are women cooking mealie over a dung fire in East Kenya?

/me snorts…

This is one reason why I don’t have a blog.  Amanda is clearly more patient than a saint.

yanno why?

IT.IS.OATMEAL.

THERE.IS.NO.GODSFORSAKEN.REASON.TO.BUY.CRAPPY.OATMEAL

It’s a crime against the laws of nature and cooking.

Let me ask you again,

yanno why?

Oatmeal is about 20 cents a serving.  Add water and cheap sweeteners/spices, and it’s 50 cents.  It takes no time to make, if you’re not interested in making it well (but it will still be edible).  Cleanup is absurdly easy if you’re not using a pot.  And if you hate dishes so damned much, buy styrofoam cups.

Seriously, there is a reason Bittman is ranting…

This is the proverbial:  “Using my own bathroom is soooo inconvenient!  I’d rather use McDonald’s bathroom—it’s clean, and I don’t have to clean up after myself.”  Let’s say Mickey D charges for the restrooms, would that previous line of thought make any sense at all?

/me shakes head…

One can make the “my life is soooo complicated whine” all they want, but yanno, other people have *real* problems.  No one has sympathy for you if you can’t be bothered to learn how to use the washing machine.  No one has sympathy for you if you can’t read simple sentences or make change.  That’s because of social expectations.  There should be social expectations that you can fix yourself the minimum of toast or oatmeal with a minimum of attention.  I have been hellishly busy, and I’ve never had to go without oatmeal for lack of time—and in virtually no possible universe would it actually be easier to *get* oatmeal from McDonald’s.

Gooooooooodddddddaaaaaamnnnn but people damned well need to learn how to cook!  If only so that braindead easy stuff isn’t a trial!  Not being able to make yourself oatmeal is like not being able to read a fucking stop sign.  Literally.  There are circumstances, but those people who legitly have problems, have real problems.

Random comment on the question of sugar - what I personally find irritating about the excessive sweetness of so many prepared foods is that my metabolism’s slowed down considerably in the past few years, and I don’t have much appetite for anything that tastes sweet anymore. It usually doesn’t appeal, and if I do eat it I fill up too quickly. I wish the makers of breakfast cereal would realize that it’s possible for those who want more sweetness to add more sugar to the bowl.
For us, ordering in or hitting the drive-through is really about not doing the mental effort of making food, not so much the physical effort, not so much saving time. It’s also about eating something without having had to smell it cooking first. And, yeah, McDonald’s already gives you those little packets of ketchup and so forth with fries; why can’t they do the oatmeal add-ons in packets too, and let you add your own? It’s not that I expect McDonald’s to give me the healthiest version possible of anything, but it would be nice if they didn’t go out of their way to make it the unhealthiest version.

shah8 @209: Yes, there is a reason Bittman is ranting. Probably the same reason you’re ranting, which is that you’re so absorbed in your own preferences (“But….WHY doesn’t anyone else care about the differences between organic steel-cut oats and instant?”) that you haven’t bothered to listen to many people explain, exactly, what the godforsaken reasons to buy crappy oatmeal ARE.

You don’t get it because you don’t want to. Getting it might involve learning that, gosh, there are people who don’t care about the wonders of food as much as I do! There are people who don’t choose food entirely on what it tastes like and how organic-fairtrade-locavor it is! There are people who eat crappy oatmeal because it’s cheap and you can grab it on your way to work and it fills the stomach, and that’s a bigger priority than “Yes, but is it sustainably farmed oatmeal?”

I’m not a snob, mythago.  One look at my living quarters will prove that.

It’s just that, on the topic of oatmeal (which dissenters always elide to the topic of overall cooking), this is obscene, alright?  It’s not really about respect for personal choices, alright?  Because it’s fundamentally based on super-cheap labor and capital.  Nobody with an equivalent worth in time is going to cook oatmeal for you.  It’s a fucking insult at the very core.  If McDonald’s and its ilk couldn’t get a huge number of people to work for shit wages, you’ll be told to cook your own damned oatmeal.  Thus, making a class argument about how Bittman, Amanda, and their like are so snooty, is fucking hypocritical.  Do you think cabmen are cheap?  How about nurses?  No?  Is driving yourself to work less mentally taxing than fixing a bowl of oatmeal?  No?  Howabout simply wiping your own ass after emptying your trusty bowels, good enough so that you don’t stain your undies, is *that* particularly free of intellectual stress—and oh! the cleanup costs of washing your hands afterwards!  That surely is assented to without qualm, even though it takes a minute or two.  Do you see what I’m driving at?  It’s called being a grown-up who’s actually able to take care of herself.

And stop talking about cooking in general.  We’re talking OATMEAL.

OH I didn’t realize we were only literally talking about oatmeal. This might be because Amanda ends her post with:

But what would it take to get people to move towards realizing that having a well-stocked kitchen is cheaper and more convenient than eating out?

Which is general and NOT ABOUT FUCKING OATMEAL.

But if it’s all about oatmeal then I’ll shut up, because I don’t especially like oatmeal and have probably eaten in three times in my life, and would certainly never purchase it when an egg mcmuffin was available at the same location.

I’ve been a director at a major food corporation.  I currently do consulting for some of the major food corporations.  My specialty is consumer segmentation.  And guess what?  What you foodies don’t seem to understand is that the great divide is whether people like to cook or not.  It’s as simple as that.  And trying to say that people “should” like to cook, or “should”  want to cook, or “should” want to have a well-stocked kitchen, or “should” want to invest in upgrading their skills, is one of the stupidest things, whatsoever.  Some people like it - like Amanda and Bittman and a few others on this thread.  Bully for them.  Other people find it tiresome and drudgy as articulated upthread.  And yanno?  They have every right to find it tiresome and drudgy, and to try to find workarounds that work for them, whether it’s convenience food or stopping at McDonald’s or Starbucks or the pizza place. 

And puh-lease, Amanda.  Do you like sewing your own clothing from scratch?  How come?  Maybe I should tell you you “should” like it, and it’s so easy to do, and once you get started you’ll realize the Error of Your Clothing-Buying Ways and how much superior your homemade clothing is.  Are you motivated yet to learn how to sew?  My guess is that you’re no more motivated than at the beginning of this sentence.

It doesn’t matter that objectively, making a bowl of oatmeal is an easy thing (for someone who is able-bodied) and cleaning up / washing said bowl is an easy thing.  I don’t want to do it.  And I’m not sure why I should have to, really, any more than Amanda should have to take up sewing.

And I challenge Amanda on her little “it’s only 10 minutes!” - she’s never had infant twins underfoot, as I have.  Sure, 10 minutes is only 10 minutes—but 10 minutes doing something I don’t want to do might as well be an eternity.

Oatmeal is the point because it’s the extreme outlier.  We probably should stock and cook, to the best of our abilities.  Everyone understands that not everyone can, or have the time to, cook.  That’s understood, but what is frankly disturbing was all the people who thought oatmeal was impossible to do in a busy morning.  There is no way that can be true, and this gives off the sense of entitlement as all those stories about wealthy people from Patosi or Tehran sending laundry to Paris, if not quite so bad.  If McDonald’s offering oatmeal, *bad* oatmeal, worst than what was in my college cafeteria, then that is seriously indicating pathology.

shah8 @212: you need to talk out of one side of your face at a time. Oatmeal is supercheap and superfast, right? Then they don’t HAVE to pay shit wages because (like coffee) the cost to make it is enormously lower than the cost you pay. Of course, we could also consider how much money the people buying McDonald’s oatmeal probably make. I’m guessing more of them fall into the “shit wages” category and fewer into the “Oh, I just didn’t have the energy to heat up organic steel-cut oats with agave nectar and goatmilk in my exhibition kitchen this morning” category. If you’re concerned about the fast-food-eating underclass, saying they’re lazy non-self-ass-wipers for actually (god have mercy on us) buying oatmeal is a bizarre way to show it.

And I don’t even know where you’re getting this grown-up nonsense from. Are you morally opposed to restaurants, or what? How DARE anybody pay somebody to do anything they might, conceivably, be able to do themselves, really?

Susanne @214: You should want to because Amanda wants to. Really, that’s about it. If there’s anything that makes me keyboardface it’s the constant theme here of “But I like this and it’s easy, so the only reason you don’t is that you’re unenlightened and/or stubborn.”

but what is frankly disturbing was all the people who thought oatmeal was impossible to do in a busy morning

It’s not impossible to do eggs Benedict on a busy morning, either. Or cinnamon buns from scratch. I’ve done it. Does that mean anyone who says “fuck it, I’m grabbing something takeout” is a lazy, entitled ass who needs get back in the kitchen like a grown-up?

Susanne, it’s because people are fucking illiterate wrt cooking.  It’s not 10 to make oatmeal.  It’s basically 3 unattended fucking minutes, plus one to add condiments to taste.  Cleanup is another couple of minutes.  I don’t care what you’re doing, there is no justifiable reason not to slow down the eensiest bit to eat something hot.  If you didn’t have the time/intellectual energy to make oatmeal, then you certainly didn’t have time to fetch it from McDonalds unless it’s right where you need to be and the place is empty.  Grab a granola bar and a yogurt cup instead.  It’s one thing to understand that pancakes might be a great deal of trouble and go to McDonalds for those (tho’ I think they are horrifically expensive).  It’s another when it comes to OATMEAL.

It’s not about the food.  ‘bout the preening instead.  I’d rather pay for a manicure.  Better social opportunities.

Again, mythago, count.  Sure, there will always be times when you forget to eat, or you’ve burnt your toast, or you have stomach issues and need something bland.  Of course, oatmeal could come in handy.  However…that’s not the sort of market McDonald’s is trying to serve.

I don’t care what you’re doing, there is no justifiable reason not to slow down the eensiest bit to eat something hot.

Oh so now the yogurt, fruit, and cold cereal-eaters are lazy food-illiterate children too. It must be hot! Or you are the shit on the bottom of my shoe!

I really just wanna see how crazy this thread can get after a few more hours.

If you didn’t have the time/intellectual energy to make oatmeal, then you certainly didn’t have time to fetch it from McDonalds unless it’s right where you need to be and the place is empty.

This is gonna blow your mind, but there is a McD’s in between the front door of my office building and the elevator I take to my office. And it’s always empty in the mornings (because everyone goes to the next-door S’bucks in the morning, apparently).

Well, it’s not about you, then…
.
.
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What?

Why is it so much worse to be fucking illiterate wrt cooking, than it is being fucking illiterate wrt sewing your own clothing from scratch?  Or for that matter, why can’t you paint your own damn nails instead of paying someone to do it?  What’s the difference?  I mean, it’s not THAT hard to paint your nails, absent a physical limitation such as arthritis - you open the bottle, you paint it on, you wave your hands around.  It’s only 10 minutes.  What are you, lazy or something?

(BTW, I don’t care if you go get a manicure - have fun.  I’m just commenting that it’s no inherently worse to pay someone else to give you oatmeal-on-the-go, or coffee-on-the-go, than it is to pay someone else to paint your nails.  Both are physical tasks that most able bodied people are able to do.)

And, as someone who personally does not like to cook or prepare food, I most certainly have the physical and mental energy to place an order and pay for it when I don’t have that same energy to actually prepare the food.  See, when I’m placing an order, I only need to deal with the spoken moment of “I’d like a ...” and the physical payment in dollars.  The rest of the time, I can be dealing with my own thoughts.  I can’t do that when I’m cooking, since it requires my attention and causes clean-up that I just don’t particularly want to deal with.  You know, just like you don’t always want to deal with painting your own nails.

Shah8, why the diatribe on oatmeal being something people could easily make at home?  Haven’t you ever seen, well, the explosion of coffee shops?  People can make coffee at home, too.  But you know something?  Many of them don’t want to.  One of my clients right now is a coffee chain (not Starbucks, but similar).  Some of their patrons are true coffee connoisseurs who have all the fancy schmancy equipment at home.  Others don’t know how to make anything at home other than instant coffee.  So what?  Why should the latter “have” to make coffee at home if they’re happy buying coffee at a coffee shop?  For the life of me, I don’t see why oatmeal has stirred (ha ha!) your outrage when coffee shops have existed for a while.

Then again, coffee shops have Williamsburg hipster credentials and Mickey D’s doesn’t ...

That’s pretty bad game for the faux populist angle…

lemme ask you just one thing.  Is cooking the *only* daily activity you don’t like to do?

I prefer the lifestyle of too expensive to have servants, but cars are cheap, than the other way around…

Okay, I think I *finally* get shah8’s point: if you don’t bother to do things that shah8 does, or don’t care about preparing your food the way shah8 does, then you’re too lazy to wipe your own ass and you should get back in there and make a goddamn hot meal. If you don’t want to do things that shah8 also wants to do (make pancakes, do your own nails) even if it would be trivial, quick or both, then that’s perfectly okay.

Which is why, Susanne, you are on the money about the coffee shops. This isn’t oatmeal being sold at Starbucks, it’s at (shudder) MCDONALD’S. How plebian.

I like the folks who can express my point that some people don’t care about food as much as others. I’m actually someone who cares about food more than most, but a lot of times I barely have the energy and drive to ‘make’ myself some cereal.

Maybe we ‘should’ add extra drudgery and suckery to life, but as the person who is expected to take that burden on(I’m a woman), I can see why others might resist it. I can say “It’s so easy and quick to grow basil. You shouldn’t go to the store and buy basil when a few hours a week can give you basil all summer! You can dry this basil, blah blah blah” but I can’t really get too mad if instead of digging around in the dirt, people decide to buy a convenient package of basil since they’re already in the store anyway.

Dammit Shah, I know it’s not about me, that’s the fucking point. The other fucking point is that I’m not some unique outlier snowflake. I am pretty goddamn average. There are lots of people who don’t care about food, who have truly convenient fast-food options, and thus who do not make their own oatmeal. And nothing you or Amanda can say about the Joys Of Homemade Oatmeal will change those facts, because the Joys of Homemade Oatmeal are irrelevant.

It’s not about the food.  ‘bout the preening instead.  I’d rather pay for a manicure.  Better social opportunities.

A matter of sheer opinion; can it really be so astonishing to you that other people have a different opinion? I just got invited to my barista’s wedding…clearly the social opportunities of buying coffee have potential.

Also, a McD’s oatmeal costs ~$3…where are you getting a three-dollar manicure pray tell? Cheapest one I’ve seen around is about $20, for which I can buy two weeks of my daily coffee at the train station. So to me you look like the lazy sucker. I bet you can’t even wipe your own ass.

I’m finding this interesting, actually…

There seems to be this perception that this is about foodies and hobbyists looking down on people.  That I, and Amanda, and all the other people on a side “likes to cook”.

I think mythago, shannon, and Well, What?, should unpack our dear love for cooking, hmmm?  We just love labor, right?  T’was nuttin’ to whip up TDay on the tick’s notice.  We despise people who can’t make a baklava, fresh with the most delightful rose water!

....

Nah…

Everyone on this side of the fence thinks this is about home-ec illiteracy, and think there are real consequences for home-ec illiteracy.  We think this should be remedied, and no, the secure knowledge that you can just pay someone is not a substitute because it’s not just about whether or not you have food.  In any event, the attitude is extremely obnoxious in the classist sense.

Well, then, I think you must be sewing-illiterate, and there are real consequences for sewing-illiteracy, and I think this must be remedied, because it’s extremely obnoxious in the classist sense that you are paying people to sew clothing, towels and linens you could sew yourself.  If you only knew how fun it could be, I’m suuuuuure you’d love it.

BTW, what consequences are there for home-ec illiteracy?  If it’s about health—people can choose healthful convenience options or non-healthful convenience options—just like home cooks can choose healthful or non-healthful cooking options.  I don’t have any more negative consequences from not being a particularly skilled cook than I do for not being a particularly skilled home seamstress.  Yes, I might spend more on food away-from-home—but if I find the tradeoff worth it, what’s the problem here?

Everyone on this side of the fence thinks this is about home-ec illiteracy

In other words, that anyone who doesn’t enjoy and perform cooking just the way *you* do is a fucking ignoramus. Kindly explain how that’s not looking down on people?

I’m sorry to disappoint your excitement about picking “sides”, but I’m actually a foodie. I like to cook. I’m one of those annoying people who demurs to raves about my homemade cheesecake with “thanks, but really it’s pretty easy to make.”

The difference between you and me is that I don’t have a burning need for everyone else to like a) cooking and b) food just as much as I do.

Well, no, it’s just that you miss the point, and I think deliberately so, in the classic libertarian sense.

Nobody has problems with service labor, and nobody’s asking that everyone does everything for him or herself.  I can actually use a sewing machine, with some reminders.  However, I can’t do alterations as well as someone who does that sort of thing for a living.  Even so, knowing the very rudiments helps me appreciate the job the tailor does and judge whether I should go back to her the next time I need the ass let out of a pair of pants.  It’s the same way with food, and many other things.  There is, right now, in this country, a severe crisis in people being able to care for themselves, in terms of food, exercise, education, all manner of things.  A key roadblock is that people manage to burn water, run in a fashion that tears knee ligaments, have absolutely no clue what critical thinking is, and most of this is because people simply don’t get practice.  They don’t manage to talk to one another.  It’s hard to help them, or prove anything, or do much at all because they simply don’t have the “vocabulary”.  If people struggle everytime they actually do try to read, do math, or cook, they tend to be slow, full of thought, and laborious.  They do things the hard way, completely unnecessarily, and it’s very nasty to represent that as a “choice”.  Yes, people will always be firm about their personal “choices”, but that is about pride and insecurity.  Such a person, to which a kitchen is some foreign appliance, do manage to mess up oatmeal.  Do you know what?  The only way NOT to mess up oatmeal, and better foods, is to practice those skills.  Along the way, you figure out how you respond to food, what foods you actually like, what things really cost, and how much time a meal truly takes.  These are good things.  Learning this kind of stuff increase health and sanity.  That’s why people get hot up in the collar about it.

The way *I* do?  What do my methods have to do with anything?  I prefer to cook oatmeal on the stovetop, long form, so it’s nice and plump and juicy with partially rehydrated raisins.  I don’t have to cook it that way, and I don’t judge anyone for cooking it a different way, should they want oatmeal.

I’m just one of those hardasses that think the minimal cooking proficiency involved in making oatmeal is very low and that people should learn how to make it themselves, for many reasons.  I don’t care how they do it, especially because I suspect they can make it better than MD’s according to their own taste.

Food is essential to liberation.

I’m just one of those hardasses that think the minimal cooking proficiency involved in making oatmeal is very low and that people should learn how to make it themselves, for many reasons. 
Comment #232: shah8 on 02/27 at 10:51 PM

Once they do know how, is it wrong if they then choose to spend their time and energy on something else?

Perhaps they’re busy making clothing, or tiling the bathroom, or caning a chair, or changing the oil, or making jewelry, or any of a hundred other things that people do that they might legitimately hire someone else to do, even if the person they hire doesn’t have a really high degree of expertise.

I’m still waiting for someone who is the primary caretaker of a child or dependent adult to step forward and say that fast food doesn’t sometimes save time or energy.

Look, for me, personally, I get a little annoyed when I buy restaurant or fast food when I think about how I could make it myself and it would cost way less.  I am paying for the convenience of not cooking, not cleaning up, not having to have bought the ingredients and stored them and dealt with the leftover cooked stuff and/or ingredients.  If I’m eating alone, I often just punt and have a piece of cheese and some pickles, or dig into the cereal box, or a can of beans, or some chips with salsa.  If you have others you normally prepare food for, it’s not as easy to convince them that they’re fine with one of those options.

One scenario that fast food plays in a lot is when adult 1 calls from work to ask how is adult 2 doing with dependents 3 4 and 5.  Adult 2 says, it has been a crazy mofo of a day.  Adult 1 says, how about I stop by fastfoodplace and pick up tastyfavorite?  Adult 2 suddenly has an hour of hir time back if the answer is “yes.”

That adult 1 is very often a husband and adult 2 is very often a wife isn’t coincidental.  Men more often “do” their household duties by paying someone else; women feel, or are made to feel, that they should do it personally or there’s no love put into it. 

I don’t believe Amanda is complicit in this arrangement at all.  What I do think is that Amanda isn’t sufficiently aware of how it plays out in a lot of people’s lives, and how “you should stay home and cook” sounds to women who are already guilted into doing every kind of housework for free with a smile because that is their measure as a wife and mother and all-around caretaker.  Cooking isn’t a new and fun adventure, it’s fucking work, and they’d like to have a choice not to be the cook for a change.

Shah8, of all the chores that there are, why is cooking so elevated as to be the one that people “should” know how to do at a high level, and “should” invest the time in, even if they don’t like it?  Why cooking, but not sewing, or electrical work, or growing one’s own food?

I use instant oatmeal.  I like the taste. I’ve had steel cut oatmeal on occasion and it’s just not so much appreciably better to me to be worth the effort.  Not everything I eat has to be the Utmost in Tastiness, and I find that tiring.  Good enough is just fine.  It’s food, not the Second Coming.  I wouldn’t know what to do with a rutabaga or kohlrabi.  Oh well. 

Oh - and I’m at a healthful weight for my height and build, just in case you were going to do the “you must be fatty mcfatson” gig.

McDonald’s marketing team has been playing pickup behind Starbucks for quite some time. Why? Starbucks has a growing adult market for food (especially breakfast food) while MickeyD’s has lost market share for adults (people are looking for healthier alternatives to fried burgers and french fries, even if they’re not really “health food”—-think: the rise of Subway, etc.). Starbucks customers are buying oatmeal in contrast to the other offerings there—-“those fattening scones, ginormous muffins, or…..the oatmeal?” The oatmeal is the lowest calorie offering. It also (not coincidentally) has the highest profit margin for preparation (on the calorie side, they could have reduced the size of the scones for the same effect, but the profit margin isn’t as high).

So, to state the obvious: Starbucks is profiting off of (mostly women’s) calorie-consciousness and fear of fat. They’re also marketing oatmeal as a somewhat elite, somewhat exotic breakfast food—-which works because most USians didn’t grow up eating oatmeal for breakfast. McD’s is positioning themselves as just like Starbucks, but cheaper (just like they did with the coffee).

Fact is, if you’re from the US, and you’re in your own kitchen and inclined to prepare something in the morning, you’re probably going to cook anything except oatmeal. But standing in front of that Starbucks counter, staring at all the high-fat, tasty treats…..seeing that “healthy” (prior to streusel topping) oatmeal might change your mind. MickeyD’s is just going that one step further and saying, “buy ours! we’re cheaper!”

There are any number of answers to Amanda’s parting question; it’s a damn shame that the folks trying to talk about why people don’t aren’t being considered. Shit, I love to cook and am good at it. Ever since I took a second job and my mom went from living with cancer to (currently) dying from it, I’m not in the kitchen very often either. I can afford to get mom-and-pop carryout instead of fast-food, but that isn’t true for everyone (also, my city has a metric fuckton of mom-and-pops). I’ve had people suggest that hey, maybe if I just planned ahead, I could spend one day a week basically making my own homecooked TV dinners. After all, it’s just an hour-and-a-half at the store (no grocery stores in inner city neighborhoods! gotta drive across town out to the interstate) and a couple more short hours in the kitchen! Yeah…no. I’m making a command decision when I get carryout—-my time is valuable, too. I know it doesn’t take very much time to chop veggies for some home-cooked stir fry or something else delicious—-but it still does take time. Forty minutes prep-and-cook and another twenty cleaning up is still one hour. And an hour at 8:00PM after I’ve already been up at 5:00AM feels a whole helluva lot different, physically, than that same hour does a little after 4:30PM on that rare night I have nothing to do and nowhere to go.

I’m able bodied. I’m not poor. I know how to cook, have all the proper utensils (no really, it’s a LOT easier to cook with pots and pans that aren’t paper-thin, and easier to cut with knives that will hold an edge). I love cooking. What would it take for me to do so more often?

Fewer working hours, which means less time on the road. Living closer to the evening destinations I have (second job, union hall, places to work out, kids activities). Living closer to where the grocery stores are. Produce that lasts at least a week in the fridge—-a privilege I only have during the five months we have a farmer’s market (grocery store produce is not good around here—-even at the stores in the “good” areas). A god-damn dishwasher. Actual counter space so I can prep while my daughter does homework (right now, we’re sharing the kitchen table for that—-sometimes it’s a real hassle). And seriously? I’m a single parent—-I have no partner to fall back on (as in oldfeminist’s example). I imagine that would make a difference; couples I know tell me it does.

What will not help me: suggestions on changing my cooking methods or switching favorite cuisines. I like what I like. Suggestions that work on paper (“cut your veggies ahead of time for stir-fry and salads after shopping!” but not in reality (the cut-up stuff has “turned” by Wednesday night—-it already sat in the grocery store a lot longer than it should have). Suggestions to move to a more convenient location (I live where I can afford to, and in mid-size cities in the midwest, there is no “convenient location”—-everything is spread out because it’s accommodating not just people in the city, but the tens of thousands of folks in the surrounding rural communities that no longer have an economy of their own).

The variable I have the most control over (after considering my options) is: cook or takeout? Why is it any surprise that I (and millions of other in similar situations) use the takeout option?

In my experience, homemade mayo and mustard are easy and fabulous and homemade katchup sucks (unless you have a lot of practice, and sometimes even then).  Salsa, on the other hand, is really easy, provided, again, you have the tools, space and ten free minutes to make it.

La Lubu, you’re really good at explaining things.

shah, personally, I am able to cook simple things(OK, I can’t cook meat), and am able to make oatmeal. However, other people not making oatmeal is no injury to me.

Ever since I took a second job and my mom went from living with cancer to (currently) dying from it, I’m not in the kitchen very often either.
Comment #238: La Lubu on 02/28 at 09:50 AM

Sorry about your mom.

Apparently, homemade guacmole is delicious, but I’m not going to judge anyone for not making it.

You know, this post asked a question. It asked WHY people perceive takeout as easier than cooking. At least 50 different answers have been given in this thread. Like La Lubu (ps, so sorry to hear about your mom), I’m kind of rankled that nobody seems to want to hear any of those answers; they just want to hear “I’m lazy and brainwashed.”

And like a typical human, the more my reasoning and reality are dismissed, the more I just want to tell the dismissers to fuck themselves. People are proud, stubborn, and contrary. If you really want to reform the way things go, you have meet them where they’re at. When you ask a question, you had goddamn well better listen to the answers.

Come on. We all knew, long before this thread, that long hours and multiple jobs and substandard grocery options were serious obstacles to the, shall we say, “daily cook.” We all knew that women still bear an unfairly large brunt of household duties. Is it so fucking hard to say, “gosh. I bet McD’s oatmeal sounds pretty good to some overworked, underpaid bastard”? Why is it his fault for being broke and tired and overwhelmed, and not McD’s fault for being fucking disgusting?

When did we stop looking at the shovelers of shit, and start blaming those who have shit shoveled onto their heads every day? When did we become so fucking Republican?

When you ask a question, you had goddamn well better listen to the answers.
Comment #243: Well, what?  on 02/28 at 12:10 PM

Reminds me of this.

And it also reminds me that one of the things they train people who help other people to do is listen. 

If you come at a person who states a problem with your standard list of things to do, and that person has reasonable intelligence and access to information, it might turn out that each one is a suggestion that’s already been made a hundred times and isn’t going to work for that person for some reason. 

It is much more pleasant for all concerned to ask, “what have you tried so far.”  And then actually listen when they explain what they tried and why it didn’t work.  That way you’re not getting more and more frustrated when your wonderful lovely suggestions get shot down, one by one.

In other words, if someone’s not doing something that even dumb people might think to do, imagine that there may be a reason for this other than being even dumber than dirt.

Yeah, well what.  With you @243 100%.  I’ve always tried to make time to cook, if at all possible, because I was taught how and used to be majorly broke all the time.  It doesn’t mean I’m better than anyone else; cooking your own food, especially when you’ve been given the skills from a young age doesn’t do that.  It meant I didn’t value my own time as much as I should have.  I’ve gotten better at that.

La Lubu, sorry to hear about your mom.

I don’t think anyone’s mentioned travel as a reason someone would buy McDonald’s oatmeal. I travel a lot - road trips and by plane. If it’s a long road trip, I’ll usually pack a cooler with sandwiches and whatnot, but those only last so long and I’ll end up stopping at a fast food place to get something to eat. McDonald’s is cheap and, hey, their oatmeal has fruit so that’s something warm, palatable, and healthyish for road food. It could be an option for holiday travelers, truckers, people moving to a new city, etc.

And if I’m taking a plane trip and I’m stuck in an airport for a few hours, I’ll need to eat. The decent restaurants are all overpriced, so fast food or bags of snack mix from a bookstore are about the only cheap options. Again, if I’m traveling, I’m expecting to be away from home and eating out a lot until I get back. A break from burgers, tacos, and bad iceberg lettuce salads (or good but expensive restaurants) is a good thing and McDonald’s oatmeal can fill that niche.

Plus, McDonald’s just sent me two coupons for free oatmeal. I’m lower-middle class and I’m planning on taking them up on the offer because McDonald’s is on my way to work and it’s free food. If I had even less money than I do now, I’d have already used the coupons.

Well What, I am entirely 100% with you on the “yknow, some people just don’t like food” angle.

I do want to cut my food costs, as most of the costs are getting takeout or going out to a bar or whatever, but I am already annoyed that I have to eat; having to cook just feels like adding insult to injury.  “Do this thing that interrupts what you want to do, so that you can do yet more of what you don’t want to do!  Pay no attention to the gender-specific baggage behind the apron.”

(Doesn’t help that I don’t remember to bring my dishes home from work.  *wry*)

Is it so fucking hard to say, “gosh. I bet McD’s oatmeal sounds pretty good to some overworked, underpaid bastard”? Why is it his fault for being broke and tired and overwhelmed, and not McD’s fault for being fucking disgusting?

That’s precisely what Bittman said in his article.

Thanks much to all the folks offering condolences. It really does mean a lot. I wanted to type a response earlier, but I was using my phone and realized I didn’t log in after I typed it (shit), so I lost the comment.

To further answer Amanda’s parting question, I made a list of all various things that people I know are juggling. Younger people and those without children aren’t juggling as many. People between the ages of 40-50 are juggling at least ten of these items:
<ul>
<li>second job or side hustle</li>
<li>night classes (for current job or to change jobs)</li>
<li>caretaking of child(ren)</li>
<li>transportation of child(ren)</li>
<li>caretaking for elderly/ill/disabled parents</li>
<li>caretaking for ill, disabled or injured partner</li>
<li>activist/political work (labor, anti-racist/POC movement, LGBT, environment, etc.</li>
<li>cultural or artistic pursuits</li>
<li>exercise</li>
<li>volunteering for child(ren)‘s activities</li>
<li>volunteering in community (homeless shelter, rape crisis center, etc.)</li>
<li>12-step programs or other mental health therapy</li>
<li>religious practice or other “centering” practice—-something to regroup, reconnect with the flow of life. I really hesitate to say “spiritual” because that’s alienating to atheists, but I hesitate to say “emotional work” because that carries the connotation of being solely inner-directed rather than both inner- and outer-directed. I’m thinking things like meditation or walking in silence in nature, or a nice long jog—-something that seems to take the “I” out of the equation and make it more a “we,” y’know? If you don’t, that’s cool too.</li>
<li>home or personal errands (grocery, post office, pharmacy, etc.)</li>
<li>home maintenance/projects (cleaning, cutting grass, gardening, painting, fixing things, etc.)</li>
<li>managing one’s own chronic condition or pain (most often work-related; sometimes genetic)</li>
<li>and somehow, someway trying to find time to socialize with friends/family, or enjoy some downtime entertainment</li>
</ul>

That’s what people are juggling. I’m juggling 14 of those items each week. That, and the transportation time it takes to do so. Most people my age are struggling with a dozen of ‘em (that “sandwich generation” thing). Yeah, I could give up some things in order to find more time to cook….but not really. I need everything I’m doing, or I wouldn’t be doing it. What isn’t rewarding: having lots of drive time. I wish my geographic circle was smaller. But….I need the activities themselves for physical and mental self care. It matters. And if in order to accommodate what I deem the essentials to my schedule I use takeout or frozen ravioli or something…..I’m making the command decision that right now, I value that meeting, or that class, or that social activity (either mine, my daughter’s or both) more than I value home cooking. And I value home cooking a lot.

I thought about snarkily commenting: “what would it take to get more USians to eat home cooking? Get them all a wife.” You know? Because really—-if I could cut a couple things out of my schedule it would be the schlepping my daughter around to places, the errand-running, and home maintenance (I’d also ditch the thyroid problems if I could). Then I would have no scutwork, just the meaningful stuff.

But that’s the problem. The whole “why aren’t you cooking” question is framed as an individual problem, when the causes are systemic and affect everyone. The real solutions aren’t in some intricate dance of advance planning and time management in the kitchen. The real solutions are collective, not individual.

Nice post, La Lubu.

But frankly you could give me all day long with nothing to do and I’d still rather go out to eat, or buy something prepackaged, or go to Starbucks and get a latte instead of make my own coffee.  Why is it not acceptable to simply not like cooking?

Why is it not acceptable to simply not like cooking?

It is, if you’re a man. And I’m not trying to say “men don’t cook”—where I’m from, they sure the hell do (and always have, long before there was ever a Food Network). Just saying—-men don’t get the social approbation for choosing not to, for having other go-to options (whether going out to eat, takeout, frozen or pre-prepared food from the store, eating at his parent’s house, having a partner cook for him, etc.).

More USians were eating home cooking ‘back in the day’, but it was often because someone else was cooking it for them. Not because everyone was cooking for him or herself.

Anyway, I made the list I did because three of those items are specifically child-related (arguably, so is “second job”); three more correspond with getting older (and arguably, two more: “night classes” and “12-step or other therapy”). Young, healthy, childfree people don’t often have a good grasp on exactly how much time is already pre-spoken for in the average older person’s life. Shit, Martha Stewart would have a hard time managing my schedule (if she didn’t have staff to do it for her). And she grew up working class, and so probably does have some kind of clue on the contingencies. But….I’m no organization maven. I have ADD. If I don’t write shit down, I will forget it.

I dunno. This post really bothered me, even though I think it was a honest question at the end. Hand cramps have occurred all over the feminist blogosphere from all the furious typing on various posts over women having to do the emotional work in relationships, all that invisible labor that takes up so much mental space and provides added stress to the women carrying the burden—-I just thought it was painfully obvious that women are also expected to be Organization Central for all the mental and physical work that goes into the rest of life, too. I think it’s damn well obvious why people aren’t doing more home cooking.