HN Books @HNBooksMonth

Tangential rant:

The publishing industry pushes more and more cookbooks every year, and between traditional cookbooks and more recent YouTube channels, most recipes are much more fantasy entertainment than serious attempts at trying to get people to take more control over how their food is made.

The problem is that cookbook recipes distort the flow of food preparation:

Find an appealing recipe -> look up the necessary ingredients -> buy the ingredients -> take the ingredients home and make the recipe

This motivates people to purchase ingredients which are not in season, i.e. purchasing tomatoes to make tomato salad when tomatoes are not in season. This generates demand for produce which is lacking in flavor and nutrition, with an outsize environmental impact due to being shipped thousands of miles[1].

The proper flow is to go to a local farmer's market -> buy what is local and in-season (with a side benefit that it will be cheap, since the farmer has little control over the date of harvest and everything has to be sold before it rots) and in great quantities -> figure out how to make it once you get home, taking advantage of other produce which is in season, fresh ingredients which are available all year round (i.e. meat, dairy, eggs), and shelf-stable pantry staples.

This flow yields food which is simultaneously tastier and more affordable - but you have to learn how to cook as an independent life skill, and not constantly rely upon recipes.

[1] See e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Tomatoland-Industrial-Agriculture-Des...

⬐ apacheCamel

What kind of solutions do you think are possible for this issue? I can totally see your point, but I am unsure how to fix it for a person who really isn't interested in learning tons of recipes for each season.

I think the first flow is still fine, but maybe should just include going local and buying in-season items.

Knowing what you eat is important but I can understand why people are drawn to the easiness of a cookbook filled with recipes from any season.

⬐ kls

A reverse cookbook app, I have these ingredients, what can I make?

⬐ SAI_Peregrinus

IMO a better choice would be a cookbook app where you input a rough location & it takes that and the date to determine what's in season, then lists recipes using the probably-available ingredients. The "normal" flow (figure out what you're making, get the parts, make the thing) is preserved, you just do it with in-season ingredients.

⬐ 52-6F-62

Dieticians of Canada released a website and mobile app that does this. I use it from time-to-time: https://www.cookspiration.com/

Edit: the site seems to work differently than the app. You can search by ingredient in the app.

⬐ solatic

It's not about learning recipes, it's about learning cooking as a matter of technique - everything from knife skills to the correct temperature for burners (high for boiling water, medium for bringing oil up to temperature, low for simmering sauces) to how to salt and season food for taste. These are simple skills which are generally not covered in recipes (due to their generic applicability) and, honestly, should be taught in high school as part of a home economics course.

⬐ dooglius

> but you have to learn how to cook as an independent life skill, and not constantly rely upon recipes

But don't you have to start by looking at recipes before you have fully acquired this skill? It's not like anyone is born with the ability to know what temperature to cook things at.

⬐ Mikhail_Edoshin

Recipes alone are not good for that, you need a systematic course. That, and the fact that most recipe sources try to be interesting, not just "basic pancakes".

⬐ swsieber

Nah, you could totally rely upon recipes and shop only for in season stuff. It'd be trivially easy to if somebody made a seasonally organized cookbook. Getting local only is a little harder, but still not terrible, especially in the digital age.

⬐ jaco8

Depends where you live , there is no local farmer's market here, if we drive there the affordable part of the equation disappears. Some local grown things are available , like mushrooms and they seem to be in season all year. The best and freshest tomatoes have flown a minimum of 10 hours from where they happen to be in season. So , while I agree with your proper flow , the reality is you eat whatever is available near you nevermind where it comes from.

>The Luddites’ fable of disaster, of a fall from grace, smacks more of wishful thinking than of digging through archives. It gains credence not from scholarship but from evocative dichotomies: fresh and natural versus processed and preserved; local versus global; slow versus fast: artisanal and traditional versus urban and industrial; healthful versus contaminated and fatty. History shows, I believe, that the Luddites have things back to front.

No, they don't. And his work is less historical than ideological.

We have lots of historically verified facts to know that modern processed foods are unhealthy and created to maximize profit. From corn syrup everywhere, to things like this:

E.g. http://www.amazon.com/Tomatoland-Industrial-Agriculture-Dest...

Barry Eastbrook has a book "Tomatoland" [1], about the taste of tomatoes in America, which is based on his earlier article [2]. Also there was a good interview with him on NPR [3]. Tomatoes are grown for easy transportation, and appearance, not for taste. They're harvested while still green, and then treated with ethylene gas, which "colors" them in an attractive color, but doesn't add any taste.

1. http://www.amazon.com/Tomatoland-Industrial-Agriculture-Dest...

2. http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2009/03/politics-of-th...

3. http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?story...