"But I can't afford healthy food."

[cindybubbles]

My mom told me not to buy McDoubles anymore, even though they cost $1.59 and salads from Subway cost $6.22. She wants me to be healthy, after all.

Also, every time I order or mention McDoubles, she thinks that I mean Double Quarter Pounders!

[HYHYBT]

dishwasher is in the laundry downstairs and the kitchens upstairs

There has to be a story there somewhere. Do you happen to know it?

[AccountingDrone]

There has to be a story there somewhere. Do you happen to know it?

Probably where the plumbing able to handle fast reasonably large volumes of water without overflowing was thanks to the laundry already being there.

See, some older houses have inadequate outgoing plumbing or even incoming plumbing to service a dishwasher, so you put it where you don't have to add any extra pipe runs.

We have a second laundry out in the barn, only place we could put in a full sized washer - the in house water supply and outflow will only manage the small apartment sized washers, thanks to the cheap assed son of a jackal who remodeled the house before we bought it. It was designed to be a cute little weekend place for a young couple that didn't really cook and had a 2 year old kid ... hence the microscopic kitchen that one person fits in with no counter space, and a totally inadequate water and septic system.

[sophie]

There has to be a story there somewhere. Do you happen to know it?

Accounting drones right, it's a water thing. Downstairs is a garage and the house is on top of it. They built it so that the pipes run through the unheated garage into the house, that works out so well it winter . The whole house is old, the insulation is from the the sixties and there's no central heat or a/c but the rents dirt cheap, we know the landlords(my in laws) and it's private and quiet. We would being paying 6 to 10 times what we do now if when rented from someone else or from a company.

[AccountingDrone]

Accounting drones right, it's a water thing. Downstairs is a garage and the house is on top of it. They built it so that the pipes run through the unheated garage into the house, that works out so well it winter . The whole house is old, the insulation is from the the sixties and there's no central heat or a/c but the rents dirt cheap, we know the landlords(my in laws) and it's private and quiet. We would being paying 6 to 10 times what we do now if when rented from someone else or from a company.

I am just used to old buildngs and the jury-rigging used historically to plumb and heat and frequently wire them. The house we had in Portsmouth VA had been built in WW1 as Navy housing [Craddock, VA - first planned community in the US, and very up to date and modern for the time] and it still have visible though disconnected knob wiring with a single bryant knife switch as the cutoff for the incoming electrical supply for the entire house.
and when working on the kitchen, had the original linseed oil linoleum in 3 layers from successive renovations, then it had a layer of tile plastic linoleum from about 1960, then single sheet plastic flooring from about 1975, and around 30 layers of paint in quite an assortment of colors on the walls and cabinets.

But then again, the house my parents owned originally had been built by my great grandfather in 1890 and had originally had the ultra luxurious lambs wool insulation. Yup, the walls were filled with wool for insulation! In the 1950s my dad paid for a construction company to carefully remove the original clapboarding sheathing the house, remove the wool, update the wiring and plumbing, add fibreglass insulation and put the cladding back up. He also changed the coal furnace to oil and closed up the coal chute and added a 1 000 gallon oil tank.

[sophie]

We're lucky enough to have brand new wiring in this place but the "insulation" is old newspapers stuffed in the walls.
When we moved in the whole bathroom was avocado green, I mean everything tub,toilet,walls,roof and floor. And too top it off a green bath mat was GLUED to the green linoleum floor. The walls were dark green plastic "wood paneling". I've painted the walls,we're going to put down a new floor before winter and a new toilet when he gets a bonus at work.

[Seshat]

To be fair, most recipes are packed full of jargon. There need to be learn-to-cook books which actually explain cooking in detail: exactly what boiling, searing, roasting, etc is. Which tools you will need to cook a recipe, and how to substitute for the tools you don't have.

A typical recipe doesn't bother explaining that you want a spatula, a mixing bowl, measuring cups ... and exactly how much IS 'a pinch of salt'. What does 'salt and pepper to taste' mean?

[Jetfire]

True. A good part of learning to cook is to build up the confidence to just try it in the end. Cooking can be very forgiving (especially compared to baking), and the simple stuff is where you pick up the jargon. But it can be tough to pierce the phrasing when you are just starting; especially if you get into the mindset that recipes have to be followed exactly. (which most don't).

For me, I know I should eat out less and cook more for myself; but it's a bed I make myself. Often times I'll buy premade lunch apps from the store, as often as I'll have homemade sandwiches or pastas I reheat. But I do know how to cook (for the most part), and I even have a garden on my back deck for peppers, tomatoes (and hopefully cukes) and herbs.

[sophie]

I guess it might be a bit cultural too. Where I was born and my family is from girls learn to cook, you have to or people might "talk" about you(when men cook there its considered a hobby). I knew how to boil potatoes by age 7 and I was baking bread by 12 or 13. And when you get married or move out you are given a cookbook that tells you how to make almost everything, how to boil water and so on. It even has an English translation but the word order isn't right and sometime only half the recipe is in English.

[s_stabeler]

A typical recipe doesn't bother explaining that you want a spatula, a mixing bowl, measuring cups ... and exactly how much IS 'a pinch of salt'. What does 'salt and pepper to taste' mean?

salt and pepper to taste means that the ampunt of salt and pepper you add depends on who is eating it. It's the same as with tea- you add milk and sugar to change the taste.

[NecCat]

If someone wants to learn to cook there are so many ways to learn. There are many cookbooks with definitions in the back (boil, broil, bake etc), possible substitutions, imperial/metric tables, what the tools are called and look like and anything else the novice cook would need to be able to follow the recipes. There is also youtube quick clinics for everything from frying an egg on up, with the watcher seeing the spatula, measure cup, whisk or whatever being used, where someone could learn how to make most things.

My son is 6 and he's a little short so I don't let him use the stove, but he can make simple things in the oven (baked omelettes, roast beef, baked fish, bread, pizza). If a 6 year old can handle it, I would think most adults could - if they wanted to.

[wolfie]

had the original linseed oil linoleum in 3 layers from successive renovations, then it had a layer of tile plastic linoleum from about 1960, then single sheet plastic flooring from about 1975

Minor nit-pick, but there's no such thing as plastic linoleum. There's plastic sheet flooring that's used in the same manner as linoleum, but it ain't linoleum. The name "linoleum" is derived from linseed oil.

[AccountingDrone]

Minor nit-pick, but there's no such thing as plastic linoleum. There's plastic sheet flooring that's used in the same manner as linoleum, but it ain't linoleum. The name "linoleum" is derived from linseed oil.

I know that, but in many instances back in the 50s and 60s when they first started making petroleum based 'linoleum' process flooring, it was still called linoleum because that happens to have been the actual brand name for a line of flooring.
[and linseed oil 'plasticizes' when chemically and thermally modified into flooring with powdered cork or sawdust. So effectively it is still plastic flooring. Another funky fact is that Leonardo experimented with plasticization as an art technique - based on linseed oil as a matter of interest. He made the thin layers of plastic into a head of cabbage. ]

[Dreamstalker]

So in effect that was the first use of 3D printing?

[Sleepwalker]

Meh, my mom wouldn't allow us near her when she was cooking or sewing, and now she wonders why none of us cook or so. Not blaming her, it was her only alone time when we lot were growing up, but it's a little annoying now.

/afraid of the stove