I made the best Pad Thai I have ever made tonight!
Granted, it was the first time I have ever made it, so the bar was low. However, since it is one of our staple dishes when we get Thai food, it was actually comparable to what we buy, but didn't quite have the same depth of flavor in the sauce. All in all though, it was bloody good. I know this because my wife didn't complain about it, and if she isn't complaining, it must have been alright.
Thankfully, she is illiterate.
It did remind me however that I should spend more time in the kitchen than I do and cook dinner a bit more often. I am sure that my wife would like that also, as we tend to be one of those "make what's easy" families, and end up not making anything too complex. A salad with some meat, or some potatoes and fish. It is good food, but relatively plain, and I grew up in a family that ate quite spicy.
I was reading an article the other day from Australia, where one of the major supermarket chains was selling some kind of trolley divider that split into several compartments, based on what kinds of food were being bought. The idea is that it will influence people to buy more good food than bad. After this, I was thinking why I don't have a tool in my banking which breaks down my buying attached to my own shopping, since we predominantly shop through the one chain using a loyalty card. Just about everything should be there.
I mentioned this to some colleagues and found out -
It is there!
The app is only in Finnish and Swedish, and I didn't read it so closely. while I don't like being tracked, this particular supermarket is a cooperative, so the users are generally also shareholders, even though most don't own much, like me. However, the prices are comparable to the other chain (it is almost a duopoly in Finland) and we get bonuses from other areas too, like on our insurance payments. The bonuses come in the form of in-store discounts, but more importantly, cash back that collects into the account and can be used the same as any debit account. And it doesn't have to be at the same chain.
However, I was interested in looking into our buying behavior and it lets me dive in over the last year and see it split into all the various categories. What I was surprised to discover was that 20% of the total cost was on fuel. We don't drive as much as we used to, so I was expecting it to be lower, but over the last year, it has been normally over €2 a liter and up to about €2.40, which means between about about $8 and $10 per gallon. I was looking at the cost in the US at the moment and it is averaging under $4 per gallon.
I can dive into each one, and it will give me a breakdown on the categories in those categories, and then I can keep drilling down.
So for example, you can see that the "ready food" is quite high on the list, but drilling down it is possible to see why, as there is a 12-month graph available and through those months, we didn't have a kitchen and only a microwave available - so we were eating more pre-made food, like salmon and mashed potato, or frozen meals. We were also cooking at my wife's parents' place and freezing it to reheat later.
I missed fresh food.
Now that I have found this section in the app, I am going to spend time getting to know what I am buying and where I have some opportunities. Grocery shopping becomes habitual and it is common to buy the same things over and over, and get stuck in a rut. And of course, there are the expenses.
For me though, I think the larger opportunity isn't in saving money or in getting more creative in the kitchen. Rather, it will be that diving through will help me build a map of my diet and hopefully help me make better decisions. My diet isn't that bad, but at the same time, I am likely blind to a lot of the extras I eat, so getting that picture will likely prove valuable in supporting my newfound practice of heading to the gym.
As I have mentioned before, I see exercise as a keystone habit, for once in the groove and starting to get some results, it spreads into other areas of life. Diet might come first, then it could be neatening up the house, the personal appearance, then the workspaces and the career. It affects everyone a bit differently, but the trend line is toward improvement in multiple areas.
Is anyone else using these kinds of apps?
And, when it comes to the money side of things, I was mentioning how much impact a few extra dollars on a mortgage can make on the length of the loan, so any savings here could be diverted straight into the mortgage each month.
Eat a little healthier, save a little money. Shorten the loan.
Winning.
Whilst this is god information to have, unless I am using it to improve life, it is useless. When I was talking with me colleagues about it at lunch the other day, they haven't been using it much at all. It is one of those "forgotten" tools in their app range and it is probably sitting next to the icon of their poison of choice social media. It is a funny thing how much time we spend entertaining ourselves and filling our heads with information that doesn't improve our lives, and how little time we spend consuming what could, if we applied it.
I am trying to get back into the groove of improvement again, because even though I have very low motivation to do so, I still have to go through the motions of making life as good as it can be for me, and those I care about at least. We have a lot of tools at our disposal, but they are all useless if we aren't using them well.
Economics starts at home.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Posted Using LeoFinance Alpha
Posted Using LeoFinance Alpha
I love pad thai, but have never tried to make it. I've been on a search for the perfect pad thai for forty years now. There was that one, back in Boston up by MIT, that looms large in my memory, I can taste it even, but NO ONE ELSE HAS COME CLOSE to how good that one was. I try that dish in every thai restaurant I enter. Good for you making it yourself. Yum. You may have inspired me to try it too. Some shrimp, some peanuts, cilantro (is that in pad thai? should be if not), a bit of something fishy, a tad of something acid... oh my I really want some now!!
20% in fuel costs?! Holy cow. That's a lot!
Cooking your own saves a lot of money, and the food is much better for you, so there will be lower health "care" costs too. I's tell you to grow your own too, but that is no way to save money, at least not the way I do it! Crimey I paid over $200 this year just for dirt. I spend a lot on equipment and supplies. I hope eventually I will have everything I need so the costs go way down. But going out to the garden to grab dinner is very rewarding, like taking the very best care of myself.
Seems to me, from your writings, that you are constantly trying to improve your life.
Amazingly easy! Not sure if "perfect" but good enough for me :)
It is funny how this happens and once it is stuck in the head as the "best", others don't have a chance.
Yes it is - as a garnish at least. It is called coriander in the rest of the world I think :)
Yeah it is. Looked again and it 25!
Setup and maintenance costs are high, but the feeling of harvest is worth it :)
Yes. But it goes through stages of activity too, where sometimes I am doing a little bit of work, sometimes a lot of work. I feel I should be in a "lot of work" mode now.
Is that a banking tool or is it from your loyalty card?
Cos I know the bank that I am using helps me to break down my credit card spent by certain categories. I don't believe my Flybuys (Loyalty card) has that split at like the grocery level.
Both. It is a bank that owns the chain, or the chain that owns the bank. one of those. It is a decent set up here really in terms of this company, as it is a cooperative and it does make sense to use it.
I am glad that I have the split available now. I will go through it with my wife and see where she can spend less. ;)
"Where we can spend less" would make the conversation go better....hahaha
I always worry about when banks own stuff other then banks. It sometimes gets too massive and a failure in one part of the business will spread to the others and pretty soon, the whole thing is on fire.
Then, besides being a writer ,you are a cook also! 😳 It is really surprising. I would like to taste the dish you made. Send some of it in reply if you can.😂
Definitely not a cook - but everyone needs to eat :)
Wouldn't that be awesome? Like Star Trek Transporter for blogs
Yeah, It needs Tony sterk !!
Bye the way India's robot has landed on South pole of moon today... It can also carry..😁😁
It would be good to read your kitchen experience posts as well :) I have long been thinking to share some recipe posts, but couldn't realize yet.
Recipe posts can be fun - with the right attitude. They need some personality! :)
We used to have a decent Thai place around here but it closed after covid. I don't even know where to get good Pad Thai anymore. If they wanted people to buy healthier food, they should make fresh fruit and vegetables less expensive and all the processed stuff more expensive. Not the opposite like it is now. I used to keep spreadsheets where I would break down our spending on eating out, gas, other expenses, and online purchases. I also used to track our grocery bill divided by fruits and veggies, dairy, dry stuff, non edibles, etc. Like 75% of a weekly $100 bill was fruits and veggies.
They don't actually want people to be healthy. However, they are covering their bases by saying that we are trying, but it is up to you to use - knowing we won't likely use.
I wish all the banks should also offer this and then they could all be aggregated into a single app.
Yeah, that would be pretty cool. Like some kind of database so you could easily search. I don't mind playing with spreadsheets, but having it all pre loaded for you would be cool.
We’ve certainly been eating out more often than we did in the past and it’s noticeable on the wallet as well as on our overall health. We aren’t in bad health or shape but we’ve got an extra 10 pounds we didn’t have before and we know that we need to ditch that.
Cooking at home is absolutely a great start to that process! The cleanup is tough but it teaches good lessons to small steps that it’s important to do what we can in the house so that we can be sustaining when we need to be and cut some things out if the need arises. Getting into cooking various things to freeze is great. One of the best tools we got for home cooking is a pressure cooker. Some people scoff at it, saying it’s lazy and some other shit. You know what? It’s fucking efficient lol. Put a few ingredients in there, put it on high pressure or slow cooker and walk away, come back and it’s done. The other great thing? Perfect fucking rice every time if you do 1:1 ratio of water to rice. That was huge for me! Lol. I swear I don’t have stock in pressure cooker companies :D they are an awesome tool though! Completely worth the cost! We actually bought an extra bowl so that we can wash one and have one available if we need to make another meal.
I have never used a pressure cooker, but now I know that you will get a cut from every purchase, I will look into them! ;D
We do have a rice cooker though, which we got from a Filipino friend, because when he found out we didn't have one, he thought us crazy. Every Asian apparently has a rice cooker.
Do you think writing and discussing these things helps you evaluate what you are doing in your daily lives too? It helps me to talk and get views from you guys on it :)
Yeah I never used one before 2 years ago and now outside the summer, we use one 5 or 6 days a week. You can’t beat the efficiency of it. It will make a soup in 30 minutes, with meat 40 and the meat is tender enough to fall off the bone or just fall apart.
For sure it’s good to see what other people are doing and get ideas about what we can do different! I know I’ve changed a few things based on what others have said in comments and it’s cool!
Under Armor makes a great app to track meals and count calories / macros that I really like called MyFitnessPal. It's not so much tied to groceries, but it helps me plan out my meal prep for the week. I've been using ChatGPT to help me come up with menus and meal plans to keep me on track. It has been one of my favorite uses of AI so far.
I have heard there is one that will plan a meal based on what you have in the cupboard - come across it?
I think you can just do that with ChatGPT and maybe the new AI you're talking about was built on top of its pre-built GPT.
I say if there is data fed to you in the form of information and you can gain insight from it in a constructive manner, that’s good enough for me to pay some attention to.
I love how you led from a successful pad Thai right through improvement tactics to a vision for health and good life!
Too much information is absorbed without chewing, or using the energy it provides. No matter how useful it could be, unused it is useless.
Finnish is an interesting language. After I looked up the etymology of 'food' - late old english foda, originally germanic, I can see how the replacement of consonants (very common in indo-european language evolution), could arrive at ruoka, and kuuk and kosmetiikka and hygienia provide some clues, but the rest is, well, Finnish :D.
Finnish is an interesting language as it is "new" in the sense that the first written form of it was compiled about 200 years ago by one person. This became the "book language" that is taught in schools and it is rule based with very few exceptions. It is like math. Now though, there are also "loan words" that come into it, as you noticed above with kosmetikka and hygenia. There are also mani other ones like bussi and taksi. It also loans words from Swedish and Russian.
I am not using those apps as me and Mary always tend to make easy and vegetable things. We try to eat seasonal vegetables and fruit without asking for strawberries in winter (for example).
We add eggs and legumes on a daily base to make sure that we eat an adequate amount of proteins.
We very rarely buy ready foods but just sometimes we have pizza and I eat something in the "Too Good To Go" app, which is an amazing tool to help stores saving food from being wasted. It come from NL so I guess you have that in Funland too
Seasonal is best! Though we freeze fresh raspberries and strawberries for the winter :)
I am not sure if Funland has that app, but some old friends of mine had a startup doing something similar about a decade ago.
I also love simple food. Yesterday we boiled 1 kg of turkey necks ($1). Plus free vegetables from our garden - tomatoes, garlic, onions, lettuce.
Turkey necks? Is that good?
This is delicious meat. There are 20 grams of protein and 6 grams of fat per 100 grams. Very useful composition, a group of vitamins B1-B12. Try it and don't be shy about the looks from the side :)
I am not really using any application like that and I tend to just go with whatever. I haven't really been caring too much about my diet as much and I tend to prefer things that save me time.
Do you feel it affects you?
I feel that it does not affect me as much but I am not that old yet. Maybe when things catch up to me.
This post hits home because I was thinking about the topic of groceries the other day when I went to the store with the wife. This is not something I typically do, but wanted to get out of the house for a while. When we were walking through the store the price on everything just floored me. I really need to sit down with the wife and have a conversation about better meal planning and buying habits surrounding the plan.
It is really, really easy to get in the groove of buying what we know and is comfortable, even if it is no longer the best choice. When I first came to Finland, there was very little "ethnic" food options either in restaurants or shops, because there was no demand. Now though, people are better travelled and are demanding a wider range. The tastes are changing. Old people though, still buy what they have always bought.
One problem we are running into is that we are finding that fresh food is becoming more expensive to buy than shit food. Fresh food is also not staying so fresh, even from the store. I don't know if it is because of the heat or what, but it gets bad quickly, sometimes in the store.
For your wife not to complain about the meal,. You did a very good job.
In my country with the recent hike and removal of fuel subsidy, it seems that 45% of income goes to fuel, because we don't just use it for driving only, we also use it as a lightening system, when there is a power outage....
feeding is worse, ever since the hike of goods, the price of food items has tripled his price ,and no one is saying anything about it .
It is a scam. If I had to put the energy costs for electricity into this too, it would be another 20% on top.
I miss a good home cooked meal that is what I miss! Something with fresh peas and a nice potato and a piece of freshly grilled meat... Never mind the diet... Although I think age definitely plays a role in all of this right 😂😂
Gotta learn to cook!
At least to grill. :P
I didn't even think you were handy in the kitchen so that's a pleasant surprise. Plus the fact that you seem to have done quite a nice job with it.
I do love spicy food. And simple food too. How does that work?
I think everyone should be able to cook something decent to survive :)
Un post increíble, gracias por compartir
Women actually love men who can cook well. I used to date a man who makes the meal almost all the time. Also, he was very cool with making the dish but I help him at times. He cooks the food since he is a better cook.
Your wife is surely going to appreciate you if you cook for her. She would love it!
We should all have some basic cooking knowledge which we can improve on. I tend to cook at least 3 times per week now and they complain I use peas too often. Fascinating when you start to break down the shopping into sections highlighting where we could change things up slightly. We buy meat from the butcher in bulk and saves us around 25% in the long run.
Starting a one-week experiment. My wife and daughter started on a trip and I gave them 66.6% of the money that's dedicated to buying food and other daily consumables. Despite the fact that I weigh about 60 % of the total biomass in the family. I'll see if I can feed that mass with 33.3 % of the money.
Without...
...and other cheats.