Welcome back to the Across The Peak Podcast, the show Where Rich and Justin discuss preparedness, the birds and the bees, guns, history, tattoos, and… well, basically all the stuff your old man shoulda taught you! After a four-year silence we are re-releasing the ATP archive. Here it is, folks, Across The Peak Episode 009: How to Cook a Tasty Meal! This show was originally released on 08/28/2018.
How to Cook a Tasty Meal
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What Are You Drinking?
Rich’s Drink: Old Fashioned cocktail
Justin’s Drink: I don’t think we ever got to it…
Do you cook?
If you eat, so you should probably be able to feed yourself.
Advantages of Cooking
1. Expense. Eating out, even fast food, is expensive.
– McDonald’s 3x per day, $6 per meal: $18/day x 5 days: $90
– Temptation to overspend on dessert, that extra glass of wine, etc.
2. Health.
– Ingredients. A MAJOR percentage of restaurant food is pre-packaged, reheated junk that is loaded with preservatives.
– Salt. Most of what we experience as flavor or taste is salt, so restaurant food is notoriously salty. Same with packaged foods
– Lack of biodiveristy. Most of the fast food you eat is mostly industrial corn and soy
– Most fast food is loaded with unsavory shit like…shit
– Ability plan ahead, cook for longer-term
Book Rec: Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle
When you cook you have the ability to control what goes into your body.
3. Intangible Benefits
– Ladies (and gents) love it – it’s attractive
– You actually have a connection with your food; it is not longer just fuel
– The experience of sharing a prepared meal with friends/family
Demystifying Cooking
1. Simple and Fresh ingredients
– Most people think fancy meals require complicated processes and ingredients. Most don’t, just simple and fresh ingredients and solid technique
Movie Rec: Julie and Julia
2. Read the whole recipe first
3. Don’t be afraid to “fail”
– “I either win or I learn.”
4. Practice, practice, practice
How to Learn to Cook
1. Make a note of meals you like in restaurants and attempt to master them
2. Buy a cookbook that has things you like in it and start cooking them
3. Plan ahead
– It is easy to cave and order delivery when it’s late and you don’t have stuff at home
– read the whole recipe first
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Book of the Week
The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Eating Local by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon
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Hindsight/Behind the Scenes
This was a great episode. Like, really great. I feel like the show was beginning to hit its stride at this point. If you only listen to one, this wouldn’t be a bad one. This is one of the episodes that Rich and I recorded twice.
The first time was at Rich’s house when Ky, the dogs, and I traveled down to Crossville for the 4th of July, 2018. The photo above shows the dogs in the car on that trip, suffering tight quarters! That episode didn’t turn out too good, so we did a second take and I’m glad we did.
