I consider myself to be a lover of good food. At the same time, I’ve now been living in my own apartment for some 18 months, at the time this article was originally published. As such, there’s a lot of considerations I’ve had to take when it comes to buying, consuming, and preserving food and drinks.
In this guide, I’ll share most of them with you.
Last updated: 19th of March 2019
• Situation: Do you like to make pasta or boil-in-bag rice for 1-2 persons, but you’re tired of how the boiling water can take ~10 minutes before it begins to boil? My answer: Boil the pasta in the microwave. It’ll begin to boil inside of a minute, and you’ll heavily reduce the electricity consumption as well.
Notes:
- A basic microwave-suitable box that can hold ≥1.2L, e.g. an IKEA 365+ box, should be sufficient for this. For boil-in-bag rice, the box should also be ≥8cm tall.
- As the pasta is to be added to the water before putting it in the microwave, you may want to add 2-3min extra to the boiling time, compared to when boiling it on a plate.
- When boiling spaghetti, you may want to snap the spaghetti sticks in two, so that they can fit inside the box and its boiling water.
- For some reason, I’ve found that microwaves have problems with boiling more than 250g of pasta at a time, leaving them far more stiff after boiling than they really should be.
• S: Do you need to have cartons of milk and fluid cream in your everyday life, but find that they turn sour after a week or so, so that you have to pour them out? A: Buy lactose-reduced milk and cream instead, as they can in many cases last up to two months before they begin to turn sour.
Notes:
- In the European Union, it’s prohibited to actually say in marketing that lactose-reduced milk is milk. This is nothing to worry about, as the EU can be a bit overzealous with their brand protection laws. Lactose-reduced dairy products tastes virtually identical to normal products, except for being marginally sweeter.
- Lactose-free products can in some cases cost a pretty penny, while in other cases they are almost as cheap as normal dairy products. If you’re price-conscious, you can look for lactose-reduced products.
- Contrary to what one would think, lactose-free butter and crème fraîche do not seem to have longer expiration dates than their normal versions.
• S: Do you like some tasty jam on your breadslices and cereals, but are concerned on dietary grounds about how they usually have 30-65% sugar? A: If you are able to afford it, buy jam varieties that are labelled as e.g. “80% Berries” or something like that.
Notes:
- It’s not enough to merely go for “light jam”, as even they still average 25-35% sugar. The varieties that I’m thinking of, are those that rely heavily on sweeteners and/or stevia. If the jam’s nutrition labels says that it has 6-10% sugar, that’s a very good sign, as it means that they’ve added virtually no sugar apart from those that were already in the berries.
- Contrary to what one would think, ecological jam brands ≠ less sugar than normal jam brands.
• S: Do your vegetables often turn soft or moldy before you’ve had time to use them? A: As soon as you’ve bought them, slice them up and freeze them in bags.
Notes:
- Presuming that you intend to use them in stews and other warm meals, it’s extremely easy to freeze paprika, onion, leek, broccoli, apple, fennel, and whole cherry tomatoes in this way. Lettuce and regular tomatoes can not be freezed in this way. Carrots should boil for 2min-ish and cooled down in water before being frozen. Bananas should be frozen whole or in halves, and not sliced, as the slices would be too hard to break apart when frozen.
- You can also do this with taco sauce, sliced bread, and cheese that has been grated into relatively thick strips.
- Cherry tomatoes and grated cheese that is frozen, can not normally be used for cold or lukewarm meals, only in warm meals.
• S: Is there usually a lot of yellow or brown dust at the bottom of your cereal boxes, müsli bags, tortillachips bags, and/or crispbread boxes? A: Sift them through an iron sift with small holes, into a box or meal-bowl, and make a yummy oatmeal-like meal out of it.
Notes:
- You’ll want to use a sift with small holes, e.g. one that is designed for flour. It also needs to be pretty large and wide.
• S: Do you often have half- or quarter-full jars of salad cheese (a.k.a. Danish feta cheese) that you no longer want to use? A: Sift out the oil/brine, add the feta cheese to a box of flavoured cream cheese, and use a fork to mash and mix the feta cheese with the cream cheese. Then, proceed to use this mixture in the same way as you would use normal flavoured cream cheese.
Notes:
- In this case, the term feta cheese refers to a very mild cheese made from cow milk, that was made popular by the Danish dairy company Arla around the turn of the millenium, and which intentionally looks very similar to the far more strongly tasting Greek feta cheese.
• S: Do you tend to eat at restaurants every now and then, but can’t always eat it up properly? A: Bring a plastic bag or box with you to the restaurant, so that you can stuff it with leftovers that you can bring back home and eat later that night.
Notes:
- Apparently, the practice of putting leftovers in plastic bags is common in the United States, whereas it’s virtually unheard of in Europe, because no one have really thought of such a thing there. So if you live in Europe, you’ll have to bring such bags or boxes with you on your own accord when you go to a restaurant.
• S: Do you want your sauce or stew to be a lot thicker, but you either don’t have or don’t want to use fluid cream? A: A little bit of corn starch should help on the matter.
Notes:
- If you add too much corn starch, the stew will take on a brown colour, and may become so thick that it becomes difficult to stir. You therefore don’t usually want to use more than 1 tablespoon of corn starch for a regular household meal.
- Corn starch becomes thicker the more it is boiled. Therefore, the longer the sauce or stew is boiled, the less starch you’ll need to add to it.
• S: Do you often fry chicken fillets or frozen meals in frying pans, but don’t want to use so much butter or oil to fry it with? A: Use warm water instead. Start with 2 regular tablespoons (ca. 20ml) of water, and then add 1 more each time the previous dosage has been absorbed.
Notes:
- Doing this, makes the meal a lot less fatty and juicy than it was intended to be. Those who crave juicy fat, as a majority of humans do, should beware of possible sudden desires to try to eat it with spoonfuls of margarine or butter.
• S: Do your eyes tend to hurt and fell tears when you’re slicing up onions and leeks? A: Use slalom skiing goggles to cover your eyes near-completely from the eye-irritating pungencies that rise up from sliced onions.
Notes:
- If you don’t already have suitable slalom goggles for this, they can usually be bought from €20 and up, depending in part on where you live, and whether you have time to wait on postal package deliveries or not.
- I can personally also recommend slalom goggles when going for walks in snowy and windy weather, or during very heavy rainfalls. And even more so when going on bicycle or kickscooter trips.
• S: Do you sometimes buy goat milk for use in gravy, but you never manage to use the entire carton of it before it turns sour? A: If it’s still fresh, pour as much of it as you can into an ice cube tray and freeze them. That way you can put cubes of goat milk into your gravy whenever you want to.
Notes:
- There are of course considerable differences between different trays. For instance, the 16-slot, flower-shaped version of IKEA’s PLASTIS can hold roughly 175ml.
You can expect more advices to be added to this article over time, when I’ve either come across them or have figured out how to formulate ones that I already know about.
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