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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28315 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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Oof. Good on you for following your ethics, but that is harder. I can only speak for my own situation, I hope it helps as a sketch:

I'm designing food supplies for 3 days, which lines up neatly with integer bulk quantities of food I can buy. I'm targeting 1800-2000 calories a day, 150-200 grams protein, about 300 grams carbs, the balance is fats. My level of talent and energy to invest is minimal. My 3-day buy is:

  • 5 pounds of boneless skinless chicken breast, usually packaged as 6 breasts. This can flex between 4.5 and 6 pounds, which lets me easily buy from what's in the cooler.
  • 5-pound bag of russet potatoes.
  • 2-pound (? Maybe just 1) bag of rainbow carrots.
  • Enough broccoli heads to end up with about 1.5lb of florets. Allegedly you can coin the stems, I've not tried it.
  • 1 or 2 heads of cauliflower.

This assumes stocks of olive oil or EVOO and spice blend on hand. I use 2 large baking pans, because I don't have a lot of counter space.

Batch 1 is chicken:

  • Preheat the oven to 425. While that's running, prep the batch:
  • Pat the breasts dry of juice, array them on the pan
  • Lightly coat with OO, you want a thinnish layer, say just short of dripping off, but enough to adhere the spice blend and help cook
    • I have a mister that should help with this, but instead wants to squirt a stream of oil all over, not fog it. I don't have a solution for this beyond keep the stream moving and vary spacing until the result looks right.
  • Dust with spice blend
  • Set timer for 25-35 minutes, depending on weight and preference. 165F in the center is what USDA will tell you to achieve; I think this is high because that's what's needed for instant sterilization, not an accumulation of sterilization over longer times at lower temps.
  • After starting batch 1, immediately prep pan 2:

Batch 2 is broccoli and cauliflower:

  • Use a paring knife to prep the veg as you like. For me this is just cutting florets of both up, medium size.
  • In a second pan, arrange artfully. Some piling is acceptable; if you need this, oil the veg that would get covered up.
  • Apply OO, fairly heavily. I'm not going to say soak, but you want enough for all exposed veg to be wet.
  • Apply spice dust

Wait out the rest of pan 1's cooking time with a beer and entertainment. When your timer dings, cycle pan 2 in immediately, turn the heat to 450 and let it climb, set timer for 25 minutes, and give pan 1 the rest of your beer to cool. Move the chicken out into a storage platter, move the platter to the fridge to start chilling, and pour out chicken juices wherever you find acceptable, perhaps a beer can or the trash. Roughly swab out pan 1 and prep batch 3 in it:

  • Sink wash potatoes, sink wash carrots. Remove blemishes, top and trim.
  • Coarse-chop the carrots to ~1.5" long. Or maybe don't even bother if they'll fit your tupperware and you're feral enough, it doesn't seem to change much.
  • Arrange on pan 1 as you go.
  • Apply OO, you can be pretty light here if you want.
  • Apply spice dust

Wait out batch 2, cycle in batch 3, bake for 40 minutes. While it's cooking, pull the chicken out and start portioning out. For these portions, one day is enough volume to fill one 8-cup Rubbermaid container and one 4-cup Rubbermaid container, as here.

This is, you'll gather, not haut cuisine, and that's somewhat intentional, in order to encourage the food-as-fuel mindset.

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