Does anyone feel these things suck? Not in a good way. I’ve had a hoover since i moved out after college 15 years ago. Dudes a beast. My wife wanted a robot we got maybe a year ago and it barely does it job at best. Constantly replacing parts, frequent disruptions, and got like 600 sq ft on our main floor to clean. Way too much work and when it does work it may get the top layer of dirt but it doesn’t feel clean. I can spend 20 min vacuuming the whole house with my regular vacuum and it feels and smells clean for several days. I hope these robots get better but I’m not a fan right now.
Do you have a lot of carpet? Tbh they seem to work best if you have non carpeted floors. Also, there are a zillion robot vacuums out there and the lowest pricing tier sucks major ass unfortunately. If you’re not looking to spend at least $250, anything below that isntrash and absolutely not worth owning at all.
Main floor is about 600 sq ft. I’d say 40% is carpeted. It’s a pretty normal carpet, not shag but not that super short stuff.
We actually went with a nicer one because we had just adopted a puppy and wanted one that wouldn’t smear shit all over the house in case the dog went inside. It was an irobot brand, it was about $500.
Dang, that sucks :(. I convinced my mom to get one and, although it’s far from perfect, after some startup period where it didn’t know the good routes through the home it’s working consistently great (iRobot J7+ i think). it now saves her and her cleaning help a ton of time
I only vacuum/sweep when the drifts of dust and hair become tripping hazards. A $300ish iRobot does a crappy job, but it runs regularly. I just need to empty the bin once every few days.
Same, mines like a $40 one from a few years back on black friday. Does it do a great job? No, each individual run is objectively not good and it misses some stuff, but over the course of a week it averages out to pretty freaking great and all I've gotta do is empty its bin when I get home from work at least once or twice. 10/10, would recommend and seeing the amount of cat hair its picked up is pretty disgusting.
Can’t say much about liberalism or capitalism, but classic Conservatism’s emphasis on environmental conservation has always been something I appreciate. It goes to show how far the quote-unquote "G"OP has strayed from its party’s original beliefs.
I think some of y’all are really overestimating how much politicians cost. I don’t have a photogenic memory but I remember a few years ago on an article like this politicians were being paid like $70k.
My first move is to think about safety and longevity. I'm going to need a private island as a base of operations. Caution also dictates having a few backup homes, so my enemies never really know where I am. Beyond that, I need to spread my message, so I'm going to need a private plane. Something modest and a few years old is fine. This is a charitable effort. It isn't about me. And in the name of charity and effectiveness, let's go ahead and add a boat on there, too. Now, to really clear our heads before we get going and make sure we're enacting the right policies, we're going to want to bring in some girls...
Yeah the biggest annoyance is the tapioca. It’s hard to get just right (chewy but not too soft), you cant really make large batches and save it for later and it takes a long time just to make a single serving for one drink.
That being said, spaghetti sauce. Yeah, home made is better, but “doctoring” a jarred sauce gets 95% as good without hours of work. You can’t fix the canned shit, but I’ve not found a jarred sauce that I can’t tweak with fresh herbs and some quickly sweated aromatics and end up with something that people love. It also satisfies my picky ass. Now, I will say that fucking ragu is pretty shit overall, and doctoring it only goes so far. But it is still good enough that making sauce from scratch ain’t happening.
Edit:
There seems to be a lot of range in spaghetti sauce recipes. It’s also important to note that I’m not talking about marinara.
So, the real time involved is split between prep and simmering.
Here’s how we do it. Remember this is an american talking here, so don’t redirect expect something traditionally Italian. And I’m a southerner that’s mostly german and Scots-Irish, so don’t expect any new York style stuff lol.
You take your tomatoes, skin them however you prefer. I use a quick dip in boiling water, aka blanching.
You give those peeled tomatoes a rough chop into nice size chunks. Now, the kind of tomato matters for that because something like a roma e isn’t gong to need as many chops as a beefsteak. You’d usually be using something like a roma anyway, but if your neighbor drops off a giant bucket of tomatoes, you can only use what you got, you know?
You chop up an onion, maybe two. You mince some garlic, maybe half a bulb if you really like garlic. I love garlic, so I go heavy.
Now, that’s your usual start. Most people in my family don’t add anything else in the way of veggies. Me? I like to char a couple of red or yellow bell peppers, skin them, and get them in there too. If I’m feeling frisky, I might have zucchini, eggplant, or whatever else cut up and ready to add at the appropriate time too, but that’s optional.
You get the onions sweating. While they’re starting, you feet your herbs together. Idgaf about fresh vs dried, each has benefits for flavor, you do what you prefer. I do oregano, basil, marjoram, a little thyme, and that’s it. I’m simple.
A little black pepper, a little salt (you really don’t need much, maybe a teaspoon for a big batch; salt your damn pasta water instead) to taste.
Once the onions are almost ready, I add the peppers since the quick char and steam to peel them tends to get them halfway cooked anyway.
This is around a half hour of work for most people. For me, it’s closer to an hour. Yay disability!
Then you add your tomatoes, herbs, and any optional veggies. Bring to boil, reduce to simmer.
After that, it’s patience. You’re making sure any veggies added are tender, and after that it’s cooking things down and letting the flavors develop. And, I promise you, anything under a half hour of simmering isn’t going to taste right, and will be super runny. You’ll usually have what amounts to chunky tomato water until close to the hour mark. For a big pot (my biggest is 6 quarts, and it starts damn near full when I do it) an hour and a half is bare minimum for the right thickness.
Now, if you’re going to jar that up, you’re done except for that part, which isn’t involved in what I originally said.
If you’re going to add meat, you’ll want to start browning it off about a half hour ahead of when the thickness will be right. You add the cooked meat in and let it simmer for 15 minutes at minimum. Do yourself a favor and deglaze the pan used with a nice, semisweet red wine, add that to the pot and go at least a half hour after adding it.
Now, exactly how long it needs to simmer is variable because you’re dealing with tomatoes, and the water content varies between varieties, time of year, weather conditions, etc. But I’ve never had a full sized batch take less than an hour and a half counting from the initial bring-to-boil stage.
I dunno, maybe there’s time savers I’ve never thought of. Maybe the folks saying it’s a half hour are doing a different version of “from scratch”, or whatever. But that’s how we do it, and it’s pretty much what the typical recipes I’ve seen online do (I went and checked because I wondered if I was crazy lol), plus or minus some details that don’t really change simmer time.
I’ve had some batches need a full two hours of simmering. And, yeah, you don’t have to stand over the pot the whole time, but chances are you’ll still be in the kitchen cleaning, keeping an eye on things stirring occasionally, adding any herbs or spices to adjust taste as it goes, etc. So it isn’t like you can just pop down to the local pub (or equivalent in your location) and go by time alone. You’ll still be in the general vicinity, with the added heat and humidity from cooking.
But that’s why I rarely go from scratch. I can pick up a jar of whatever, add some herbs, extra garlic and/or onions, brown any meat and then the deglaze and be done in under an hour from start to finish, including prep. The taste isn’t the same, nor is the texture, but it’s still yummy.
I came here to hard disagree, especially with the crepes example, but egg on my face and apologies all around: I am with you regarding spaghetti sauce.
I just don't consider any of that an answer to the question. For the most part, nobody is expecting every individual ingredient of a meal to be made from the raw ingredients (I don't actually think sauce is a lot of hands on work, but I don't usually bother to make it either). While I have a pasta maker and love fresh homemade pasta, if I make a lasagna from store bought noodles, jarred sauce, and store bought ricotta, nobody is going to yell at me for calling it homemade. The version with fresh pasta, homemade sauce, and homemade ricotta is going to be better (OK, I haven't done ricotta so I might make it gross), but the first one still counts.
I’m the exact opposite on spaghetti sauce. I find an incredible sauce is very easy to make heaps of with San Marzano tomatoes and tastes almost zero effort, just lots of time. But then I have like ten spaghettis’ worth and it’s wrecks shop on any jar sauce!
Italian scratching his head here. I can think of only one particular type of ragu that takes a few hours to make properly and is obviously not what’s being discussed here due to jars, doctoring sweating and general confusion.
Mate putting together a tomato sauce from scratch for some spaghetti shouldn’t take longer than the time it takes to the water to boil plus the 9 or so minutes that it takes to cook the pasta you are overthinking it
I’m American, and do use jarred sauce if I have it, but more often what I have is tomato paste, a half bottle of wine hanging out in the refrigerator and some garlic or olive oil and butter. Anchovies. Usually have canned peeled tomatoes too, but those do have to cook awhile to taste good.
I guess I don’t set out to replicate jarred sauce, generally speaking, but can quickly dress pasta for supper with something good.
I learned from America’s Test Kitchen to look at the ingredients. If the first ingredient is tomato paste or tomato concentrate, pass. If it is tomatoes, it will probably be fine. Although usually this means a more expensive jar, there are plenty of expensive/fancy looking jars that don’t pass this test.
That said, Del Grosso’s has a premium line with “Aunt Mary Anne’s Marinara”. It is our go-to and far and away the best I’ve tried.
I’m a huge fan of Rao’s sauce, but the price jumped from about $4 a jar to $10 last year and I just can’t justify that. I sometimes find it on sale for under $5 and def grab it, but it’s rare these days.
I used to doctor storebought sauces too. Recently though, I’ve just been buying those cans of cento crushed tomatoes. They’re a blank slate, and probably better quality tomatoes too.
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