advice

Cooking: Containers Are For Eating

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OK, I know the image of eating a reheated meal out of a container is not exactly dignified. It conjures up imagines of someone who can’t cook, is too rushed, or just has no dignity.

I beg to differ.

See, I cook and freeze a lot of food. I live alone, I like to experiment with cooking, and I like to pace out what I eat so it’s not the same thing four days in a row. Needless to say a lot of what I eat spends its time in a glass container in the freezer.

In turn, that container may not be reheated at home. A lot of food I make is reheated at work, even though we have a great cafeteria (I’m a cheapskate also).

In all these cases, if I reheat food, unless I really need to (like, say, pouring out curry sauce) do I really want to reheat something then dump it into another dish or bowl? Hell, I just eat it out of what I reheated it in.

Why?

  • First, it’s faster. I don’t have to go around getting something else to eat out of.
  • Secondly, it dirties up less dishes. Like I really need to mess up the food container and another dish (or a paper one and waste it).
  • Third, I don’t have to pack or find other dining ware. I just use what I have.
  • Fourth, a good container is multi-use.  It’s not just for freezing – I use mine to store vegetables, side dishes, etc.  Saves me a plastic bag being thrown away.

Do I do this at home? Absolutely. I don’t need to make more of a mess. So yes, in stereotypical bachelor fashion, I eat out of the reheating container.

But as far as I’m concerned? It’s worth it. It’s simpler, faster, and neater. It’s not undignified – it’s precise.

(Besides, I think most of my food is pretty damn classy, thank you!)

If you shop around you can also find some great storage containers that make excellent dining ware. I myself favor the Ziplock glass containers, which come in multiple sizes, have nice-fitting lids, and are pretty sturdy. Also being glass they look a bit more dignified to eat out of.

So go on. Eat out of the container!

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Cooking With Steve: Sauces

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Sauces are awesome.

Admittedly no one’s going to argue on that directly. We’ve all had great sauces, from powerful barbecue to mild bechamel. But I not only like a good sauce, I think they’re a key to healthy cooking.

Now we don’t often think of sauces and healthy. Usually we think of sauces as fatty or rich or spicy, and always excessive. Some store bought sauces may freak you out if you read the label. But actually there’s three ways sauces can be healthy – or at least cook healthy.

One, you can tweak a sauce to be at least neutral. Substituting ingredients (vegetable spread over butter), finding ones that compensate for removing others (in some black pepper makes up for removing salt), trying different forms (crushed tomatoes over sauce) can work wonders. Once you’ve made a sauce to be at least not UNHEALTHY you can enjoy it more.

Two, you can actually find sauces or make them healthy or to have some nutritional benefit. I’ve found some home made tomato sauces or those using crushed tomatoes are, despite all the past jokes about School lunches, basically a vegetable. A little work and luck and you can make a sauce that actually ads to the meal and is still healthy.

Third, and finally – sauces let you eat a wider variety of food. Even if the sauce is the worst part of the meal, if you don’t overdo it, it can work magic.

This is where sauces are awesome and why even a “neutral” sauce has benefits.

You can take a giant pile of food, dump the right sauce on it, and you have a delectable healthy meal. Even food you’re normally not fond of can suddenly become delectable with the right sauce, and an uninteresting food can be suddenly interesting. If you can manage to do that with an actual healthy sauce, then more’s the win.

That’s one of the reasons I quest to develop my own lower sodium, lower fat Japanese Curry. If I can get it just right then I’ll have a decent sauce that is neutral to mildly good for you that I can put on ANYTHING and have an instant, delicious meal.

It’s one of the reasons cooks amateur and professional try to get the perfect pasta sauces – a neutral-tasting plate of pasta becomes a wonder with the right sauce.

So when you’re learning to cook, work on your sauces. Make them delicious, make them healthy, or at least make them so you don’t need too much of them. It’s a key to turning food that’s good for you into a delicious meal.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.