Tofu is like a third of the sirloin stake? Did not expect that “eating less plastics” would be among the benefits of me not eating meat. Strange times.
What would I even be writing about without publicly exposing my personal life intimate details (don’t want to) or that hasn’t been said ad nauseam by better and more known writers at this point? What’s a sensible sex and dating column that doesn’t simply reduce into the usual “be empathetic, respect other’s space and boundaries, open dialog, know yourself, seek therapy, etc”?
It has been great! First holiday season away from my family as a newly minted expat, but I’m lucky to have four/five other couples from my home country going through pretty much the same thing, so we’ve been each others support . Me and my partner are positively surprised at how well things have been working (mostly)!
Pakora are fried veggies, samosa is pastry, paneer is cheese, naan is bread. You can eat any of those with rice and sauce, but you can also have them without. Indian food has a lot of variation on flavours, texture, visuals, as expected from any cuisine with such a rich history.
Can you recommend something from Indian culture that isn’t what I have described above?
No because “overkill on spices, sauce and rice” is subjective. If “it’s always the same flavor” then either 1) you’re keep ordering the same stuff 2) the restaurants you’ve been to do lowest cost easy menus 3) it’s not the same flavor but it looks like so to you because you’re not used to it.
Next time ask the server for “solid food, no liquids” instead.
I just toss my enameled cast iron in my dishwasher every day, and deal with it being poorly seasoned by seasoning on the fly every time I cook on it. Scrubbing by hand isn’t that much work, but it’s still more than ten times the effort of just throwing it in the machine…
You did say earlier that you cook once a day, meal for two. When I do that, all dishes for the day take a third of the maximum load on my machine, so I could wash once every three days, therefore averaging like 3 L per day tops? You handwashing every day are spending 6-8L daily which is more than double.
If it is true that you can spend <8L for an arbitrarily large amount of dishes, though, then I guess there must be an amount of dishes that you will outperform a dishwasher. They cannot handle an infinite amount of dirt, unfortunately. If you hand wash every 7 days you will be averaging less than 1L a day which really does sound unbeatable.
And some things I just toss in there anyway. My Wusthof knifes for instance are not carbons steel and don’t have wooden handles, and my machine has a neat spot that secures it perfectly upright so the edge isn’t touching anything. I have been doing this for years and observed no noticeable downside.
It’s plausible that handwashing uses less electricity, specially if you let the machine heat-dry the dishes. But water? If you do the comparison against a fully-loaded machine, no way. Modern machines use half the water from machines of 15 years ago, and those were already competitive against handwashing. Best case scenario for handwashing (single water bath) still uses about twice as much water. Dishwasher detergent is stronger and the machine takes longer so it has more contact time, the chemistry heavily favours using less water for the same amount of gunk to dissolve.
In your case, as you already mentioned you only cook once a day and you don’t want to degrade your high end stuff in the machine, it’s reasonable that you won’t generate dishes enough to fill the machine. If you would be using a half-loaded dishwasher then it is plausible that you would use less water handwashing, but it’s still a close call - which is why I sometimes use the machine filled 1/3 without worry.
I’m definitely not on the oily broth soup camp, but I guess that’s because I barely make broth-based soup. I do love ramen with sesame oil, though!
I prefer creamy soups for winter, whatever the base: lentils, kabocha, black/brown beans, onions, hearts of palm. Super easy to make, if you have a handy blender to make quick work of it. That or oats & milk porridge for breakfast, I’m set for a chilly day.
If it’s worth to purchase a dishwasher… it varies a lot given each ones own priorities and situation.
If saving X minutes a day is a big thing or a small thing… it also varies a lot given how you value your time and how much you enjoy dishwashing by hand. I know a few people who love to do it; no need to take away that joy for the sake of efficiency.
But for the vast majority, if you have a dishwasher idle, those are some minutes you get back practically* for free.
I also cook only for two, but I do it three times a day, and I have a lot to do so I value each minute saved in chores immensely. My dishwasher has been a blessing, without it I would be eating out or ordering delivery MUCH more frequently.