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Showing posts from May, 2013

How to eat when you have to : The taste of Gurnisht

What do you know about real Jewish cooking? You know Kugel? You know Chulent? You know Kishka? You know Gurnisht! Actually, you do know Gurnisht, because Gurnisht is "Nothing" in Yiddish. "Nada" in Spanish. When I was a kid, and I refused to eat what grandparents offered, they used to say "Well, you can always eat Gurnisht". This post is an intermission between a long introduction into how to eat when you have to and a more practical and applicable how-to guide. The real thing is coming right away. But before that I want to reiterate, what will be our approach to cooking and how will it be different from the usual cookbook , cooking show, cooking blog cookie-cutter approach. As we showed in the previous post, EVERYTHING is a problem. You can't buy EVERYTHING. You can't cook EVERYTHING, you can't make EVERYONE happy, you can't follow EVERY dietary guideline and you can't make EVERY meal exotic, memorable or even blog-worthy. You can&

How to eat when you have to: food shopping

Today we are going to talk about grocery shopping, and the best way to start it is with the condom commercial from the 90-s: The boy wants the sweets, the father wants to check items off his shopping list and get out of the supermarket, the son throws a tantrum, the father regrets not using a condom 7 years ago. Why do I bring this up? Because I hate food shopping. Every time I enter the supermarket I feel like the combination of the son and the father. The son wants to buy EVERYTHING, and the father wants to save money. The son wants sweets, and the father wants nutrition. The son is tempted by new products and exciting flavors, and the father realizes that whatever you buy you would have store, cook, eat, digest and pay for it again in the gym.  We will try to analyze what kinds of problems are faced with in the supermarket and will learn how to deal with some of them. The first and evident problem is the problem of EVERYTHING. I am surprised that Mark Bittman did not write a