The best time to do something is not always when we want the outcome. It is when the conditions make the work possible. A realization we discovered but did not really understand that at first. This post elaborates on our previous post here.

We were thinking about summer and what we wanted. Plans included a garden that would be producing vegetables. The smoker would be running. We would have fish and meat preserved for later in the year to cut down on cooking. It was an appealing picture: spending the warmer months enjoying the things we had grown, caught, and prepared ourselves.

Then we started thinking through what that actually required. That was when we realized something obvious that we had somehow missed.Some of the things we wanted most in summer needed to happen long before summer arrived.

We Realized We Needed To Work Backwards

Smoking meat in the middle of summer sounded great until we remembered that a smoker creates heat. Standing outside next to a smoker on a hot summer day, adding more heat to the house and the surrounding area, was not exactly the experience we were imagining.

The result belonged in summer but the work did not.

The same thing happened with the garden. If we wanted fresh vegetables in the summer, summer was not when the garden started. The planning happened during the colder months. Seeds needed to be selected. Beds needed to be prepared. Structures needed to be repaired. Decisions needed to be made before the first warm days arrived.

The summer garden was the visible result of work that happened when the conditions were better suited for preparation.That was the moment we started seeing a pattern.

Maybe we had been looking at activities backward? The the question was not simply, “What do we want to do?” Maybe the better question was, “What conditions need to exist for this thing to happen well?”

We Started Paying Attention

The more we paid attention, the more we saw this idea everywhere. The world around us is constantly changing.

• Weather changes.
• The amount of daylight changes.
• Temperature changes.

We also realized during the year that

• Our energy levels changes.
• Daily responsibilities change.
• Short and long term goals change.

Those changes are not necessarily problems to solve. They are information.

For a long time, we treated conditions as something to work around. If we wanted something badly enough, we assumed we should be able to make it happen regardless of what was going on around us. Sometimes that is true. There are certainly times when persistence matters. But there are also times when we make things unnecessarily difficult because we are ignoring the conditions that surround us.

The Work May Not Be Wrong, The Timing May Be.

We already understand this in many areas of life. Farmers do not plant because they are impatient to see the harvest. They plant when the conditions give the plants the best chance to grow. Athletes do not train the same way every day of the year. Their goals require different phases of preparation.

Consider an Olympic skier does not approach July the same way they approach competition season. The goal remains the same, but the work changes. There is a time for building strength, a time for refining technique, a time for competition, and a time for recovery.

Their short term goals change over the year due to seasonal changes. They are paying attention to them and being optimized for their fall and winter peak. They understand that progress depends not only on effort, but on applying the effort at the right time.

Fish Have Seasons Too…

Fishing was another place where this idea became clear. Technically, yes, we can fish all year. But not every fishing trip serves the same purpose.

A cold spring Chinook trip can produce an incredible fish for meals. There is nothing wrong with that. But it may not be the trip we are most excited about. It can be one of the worst trips weather wise which is completely ruins the joy of fishing for fishing’s sake. There are times when the weather is right, the days are longer, and being on the water simply feels like where we want to be.

There are also trips with a different purpose.

If we want smoked trout in the freezer during the winter months, that requires planning. It means recognizing when those opportunities are available and making the effort when the conditions support it. The goal is not just catching a fish that day. The goal is creating something we will appreciate later.

Once again, the outcome and the work do not always happen in the same season.

The same lesson existed in the garden.

It is easy to think of gardening as a summer activity because summer is when we see the results. The vegetables are growing, ripening, and producing. You dream of fresh tastes of beans and tomatoes, maybe some carrots. Bees and flowers make the garden feel alive.

But the garden really begins much earlier.

It begins when we are sitting inside during the colder months deciding what to plant. It begins when we are preparing structures, organizing materials, and thinking through what the next growing season requires. By the time summer arrives, much of the important work has already happened.

The garden is not created in the moment we enjoy it. It is created through respecting the conditions that make each stage possible.

We found the same pattern with creative projects.

One of the things we enjoy is collecting stones and turning them into jewelry. At first, it seems like one activity. But it is really a series of activities that each fit different conditions. Finding interesting stones is best done when being outside is enjoyable. Warmer weather makes it easier to explore, collect materials, and rinse rocks outside.

Then the conditions change in a similar pattern.

• Days become shorter.
• Evenings become longer.
• Outdoor adventures slow down.

That creates the perfect environment for sitting at the workbench, cutting stones, assembling pieces, and finishing projects. The creative process did not stop. It changed forms. The conditions changed, so the work changed with them.

The more examples we found, the more we realized this was not really about hobbies. The hobbies were just where we happened to notice it first. Every pursuit has conditions where it thrives.

• A skier has them.
• A gardener has them.
• A builder has them.
• An artist has them.

A parent, a business owner, or someone learning a new skill has them. The conditions are different because the goals are different. The mistake is assuming that every day, every month, and every season should offer the same opportunities.

They do not.

Wrapping Up

We have spent a lot of time believing that progress comes from pushing harder. Sometimes it does. But sometimes progress comes from recognizing when pushing harder is simply creating more resistance.

Working with conditions does not mean choosing the easy path.

• The gardener still prepares.
• The skier still trains.
• The fisherman still gets up early.
• The craftsman still puts in the hours.

The difference is that they are not spending all of their energy fighting what is already there. They understand the environment they are working within and adjust accordingly. Maybe there is something valuable in that.

Our take away was, if we wanted to optimize our outcomes:

• Not to build a life where every season looks the same because they aren’t.
• Don’t force every activity into every part of the year if it doesn’t support it.
• Recognize what each season, each place, and each stage of life makes possible.

The conditions are already there. The question is whether we are paying enough attention to work with them.

The post Planning Early Leads To Better Outcomes first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

For a long time, the explanation felt simple. I told myself there wasn’t enough time. That answer worked, but it didn’t hold up under closer inspection. The time was there. I just wasn’t using it in a way that made sense.

Without realizing it, I assumed my routines should look the same all year. I tried to cook the same way, keep my hobbies moving at a steady pace, and make consistent progress on my goals no matter the season. It sounds reasonable, but it ignores something obvious once you step back.

Conditions change constantly. Daylight shifts by the hour throughout the year. Temperatures swing from one extreme to another. Our minds and bodies respond to those changes, whether we notice them or not. I didn’t enjoy working out extremely hard on a 100-degree day, and I had no motivation to run outside in the rain.

This is where the all-or-nothing pattern shows up. If I couldn’t do something the way I wanted, I put it off. If I couldn’t stay consistent, I dropped it. Projects didn’t just slow down; they stopped.

There had to be another way. It turns out there is. Most animals do this without thinking. They work with the seasons, not against them. I started doing the same. I aligned my work with what the environment supported instead of pushing against it. That shift kept me moving forward year-round and helped me use my time more effectively.

For example, during the holidays, we tend to eat more hearty, calorie-dense food. That is a better time to build strength than to try to lose weight. I also found I could spend more time making jewelry in the winter, but I needed to gather materials in the summer. It seems obvious in hindsight, but I didn’t see it until I started thinking this way.

That shift removes a lot of pressure. Instead of fighting everything at once, you focus your efforts where they actually work. I used to get frustrated when I couldn’t keep everything moving at the same time. That was the wrong approach. Now I focus on when I can make the most progress in specific areas. That keeps my effort aligned with the right conditions.

Wrapping Up

This idea started to show up in more places than I expected, especially in how I manage my time and goals. It changed how I cook, plan, and approach fitness, as well as several other areas. That is when it became practical, not just a way of thinking, and that is what I will get into next.

The post Better Results by Working With the Seasons first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Setting Up our Goals

To begin with, we got honest about our goals, which was an outcome of reviewing our habits. After some conversations and ideating, we made a list of our 3 to 6-month goals with attainable outcomes. Achievable and actionable goals are key to driving real, attainable outcomes. These items went into a spreadsheet. It wasn’t easy because we had to be honest about trade-offs and priorities.

In that process, we found that there are things we think we want to do and things we will do. Many of us have things we say we want but will never achieve because we cannot take action or are unwilling to suffer for them. We may want to be rock stars or master gardeners, which takes time and energy. 

If we pursue those goals, we must trade off other things we want to expend energy on. By focusing on what we wish to in a measurable and actionable way, we make sure we focus our energy on things we won’t simply drop just because something got ‘hard’. Unfortunately, growth isn’t easy, but by focusing on actionable items, you can prove that you are progressing due to your effort.

Buckets of Hours for Balance

We assigned each goal a bucket of hours each week. Those buckets of hours allow us to stay balanced and manage multiple goals simultaneously. We are rarely engaged in one single goal at a time. There will usually be an attempt to attain various goals simultaneously. 

Even if you want to be an Olympic athlete, you will not be training every minute of the day. You will also need to build your brand, do interviews, and find a way to earn income later. The sport may be the primary focus, but it can’t always be the only thing you can focus on. 

Before the week starts, we put what we will work on on the sheet and tie those items to the larger goals. We then estimate each item to make sure it can make it happen. Further, we make sure the goals are attainable that week. We can’t plant a garden if the weather isn’t expected to cooperate. This work creates an actionable weekly plan with no foreseeable blocking dependencies.

Logging our Time

Every day, we ‘bill’ our time against the tasks we have for that week, just like any other project. We log this for every day we work on one of the tasks. To be realistic, we also bill our daily duties, such as making dinner, doing dishes, or even going to the gym. Let’s face it: those things also take time and limit our capacity for the bigger goals.

As the week goes on, we add notes about wins, losses, and learnings as things progress. These become items to review every Friday to gauge how the week went. Our time logging creates a data-based way of determining how things are proceeding. 

 If something happens and we can’t get through an item, we want to ensure it doesn’t keep recurring. If it happens repeatedly, it is feedback that it is not actionable or can’t be done right now due to some dependency.

Celebrate the Wins

We have learned that we must also celebrate our wins if something has gone well. If we have made a huge gain or overcome a hurdle, we want to recognize and reward ourselves; otherwise, working towards long-term goals can feel like an overwhelming slog. If you’re going to become a great baker, you want to make sure you recognize when you have made something great so you know how to repeat it. 

The point here is that we want to remove the stigma of failure. By documenting learnings, we see how we are growing, while celebrating wins, we see our progress. This helps us through positive reinforcement rather than negative reinforcement, which can lead to cognitive biases like Survivor’s Bias that block our growth.

This approach has made us feel more productive and focused. This isn’t a new concept per se. We do Scrum events in software engineering to help teams build their products. Initially, that is where the idea of our personal time card started, but it is not what it has become.

An Actionable Feedback Loop

Our timecard has become a constant feedback loop that helps us address the question, ‘Am I doing everything possible to achieve what I want and what is truly important to me?’ That question can be tricky to answer when we are the judge and jury looking at our performance. It always feels like more must be done, which isn’t always actionable or possible.

A timesheet that tracks progress toward our personal goals gives us a practical gut check and a way to examine our approach to goals and the trade-offs between them. We have real numbers to look at when we ask ourselves if I am doing enough about <x> or should focus more on <y> this week. It then becomes much more about data than about emotional context or mood.

What, No Example?

No, we are not going to give an example. Why? We don’t want to focus on the tools. You can take notes on a whiteboard, a Google calendar, an Excel spreadsheet, or even sticky notes. The point is that the tools don’t matter, but the process does. All you need to do to succeed is:

• Create a set of actionable goals you want to work towards.
• Create a bucket of hours for each.
• Log your time daily.
• Have a win, a learning, or a failure? Take a note!
• Review once a week to celebrate what got done and learn from what went wrong.

Wrapping Up

We know punching a clock can feel tedious. However, we have found this approach a huge help. While your mileage may vary, it has been beneficial for us in balancing our march toward multiple goals. It has helped us realize where we want to be and, more importantly, how to estimate our progress.

The post How To Be Successful Via A Time Card first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

You can easily quantify how much you weigh or how much money you make. Some goals that maximize your potential are not as easy as they seem to quantify. For example, ‘I want to be in good shape’, but putting a pin in for an outcome is hard. Because of those challenges, we decided to take a different approach to how we viewed success, blocks, and missteps via habits.

How This Idea Came About?

It was simple. We were looking for new hobbies during the winter when the weather wasn’t conducive to our regular sports and traveling. Being frugal and conscious of waste, we didn’t want to do things to keep busy. We had a few conversations back and forth about things we wanted to do, but we were worried about cost and space. 

In one of those conversations, we realized we didn’t want another hobby to do another ‘thing. ‘ There had to be more to it than simply entertaining ourselves. Those activities aren’t bad, but we have enough of them. It had to be something that created value in our lives. 

Value Add was Key

The idea of creating value stuck. Value was the key to unlocking a more philosophical approach to all our activities. As we refined this idea, we saw larger implications of that approach. Value was tangible even if it wasn’t easily quantifiable. As with any investment, we wanted to understand how we would be rewarded so we could rank our activities. If you spend time doing something, you want to be rewarded by it in return. The better the return, the larger the reward.

We decided to start ranking our activities by value. Did we get the same value out of watching a movie that we did out of going to the gym? What was the investment for each time? How did the outcomes of doing the activity benefit us? We started to realize that not all activities benefit us. Some activities we found valuable, but they were more maintenance than fun hobbies. 

Out of this, the three habits were born. So what are they?

The Three Habits of Us All

There are three habits all of us have. That is not a judgment because what you value and do is up to you. We only label them to help us define ourselves. The habits are:

• Creation: Habits that create something.
• Stability: Habits that maintain our current state.
• Waste: Habits that have negative sides to them.

Let’s get to defining them.

Habits of Creation

These things we do add value to our lives by creating new things for ourselves. If you garden and grow vegetables to eat, then gardening is a habit of creation for you. You will usually gain something from sitting on the couch and reading a book. That makes reading a habit of creation for you. You practice a creation habit whenever you seek an opportunity to advance a goal. 

Habits of Stability

We must follow these habits, but may not enjoy them or create something new. For example, cleaning the house every week is necessary, but may not add additional value to your life. Another example may be going grocery shopping, which is required to eat. Essentially, any time you perform maintenance or routine tasks necessary to support your life, you practice a habit of stability. 

Habits of Waste

Habits of waste are things we do that create waste. When you go out to eat, only eat half and throw the rest away; you waste food and money. If you have a gym membership, go three times a week, and never push yourself, you get nothing for your time and money. That is what we would call creating waste. Sounds a bit preachy, right?

We’re not Preaching! It is—not—about preaching. It is about honestly identifying areas where we waste our time. Why? Because those areas don’t add value, they still cost us and keep us from doing things we value more. They are, however, sometimes necessary as a tradeoff.

Let’s examine when they are necessary.

You may need to eat out if you are busy working all week, spend your entire Saturday doing yard work, or take the kids to soccer practice. It may be that the only option to eat out is somewhere that serves a larger portion size than you want. Could you have made dinner? Sure! But in this case, you are spending so much of your time with habits of creation that you need to balance them with some waste to stay productive and possibly sane. 

That’s How We Use Them

We use these to review a week or even a year to gauge how things are going. Did we spend more time in habits that created waste, or did we spend more time in habits of creation? Are we balancing the three? When we plan a week and look at the tasks ahead of us, what is the ratio of each outcome of our actions? 

TL;DR: Are we making headway, staying stable, or stuck in a destructive pattern? 

This also applies to longer-term goals. Not all goals are quantifiable or quickly reachable, and life is not linear. Just because we want to do something doesn’t mean something won’t block our path. Things like health, family, and economics are external forces that can hinder our short-term progress. We don’t always control those events but can control how we react. 

The Negative Cycle That These Avoid

The biggest challenge for many of us is recognizing progress. Learning and growing can be frustrating and even painful processes. Many times, to succeed, you must know by failure. When focused on the short term, those failures can lead us to feelings of negativity. We are wired for negativity, and that wiring protects us in the short term. To succeed and grow, we need mechanisms to rewire us to see opportunities. Canonizing these three habits can help us with that rewiring. 

When we try and fail, it is easy for us to assume we learned nothing. Worse yet, there are times in life when we can lose track of our gains due to the duration or challenges of our goals. I will never be an Iron Chef; however, I did learn to cook and do meal planning. It was not a linear progression of learning. There were times I filled the house with acrid smoke, and we ended up going out for fast food.

I was, and always will, be learning. That failure and the lessons learned from it could have been wasteful. In these cases, my ‘Habit of Creation’ is to note what went wrong, why, and how to avoid it the next time. In that act, we take something that was a waste and make it something that creates learning. 

Progress Indicators

Because life and learning aren’t linear, it isn’t always easy to know if we are succeeding in our goals. When we review progress on our goals, we look at what is trending. Seeing more of the week or month with more Creation than Waste indicates that we are progressing, even if we have another year or more to accomplish our goals. This is what some would call ‘working a plan’. 

If life forces a pause due to financial, medical, or other external forces, we may see an uptick in our Stability over Creation. That is still a positive outcome over waste. Sometimes, we might have to wait and see what little we can do alone. For example, economic downturns are not something you, as an individual, can do anything about. What is important is that you can keep a positive mental picture by being able to see what you are doing to stabilize yourself and reduce waste.

Our Check In

We keep a log occasionally, especially when unsure of our progress. Every week, we take 15 minutes to write out 2-3 of each habit we have acted on. For example, we might have done research that turned into a blog post. Out of that research came learning. Maybe we planted a garden but underestimated the time needed to do that activity, so we ate out. Out of that, maybe there was a mix of waste and creation. 

Over time, we want to see a more create-than-waste trend. If we know no stability, we probably let some things go that we shouldn’t. While we don’t love doing maintenance work, sometimes we must stop and change our lawn mower’s oil. Maintenance doesn’t stop there. It may also mean doing a portfolio tune-up to ensure your financial goals are met. Stability comes in many shapes and sizes. 

Wrapping Up

We discussed three types of habits to help guide our definition of progress. By canonizing tasks into Habits of Creation, Stability, and Waste, we can help measure our progress. We can use these as a reality check when we feel we aren’t making progress or learning. It is easy to get discouraged without feedback on successes. These tools can help us define success and overcome that problem to stay focused and positive, or make changes so that we can be.

The post How To Build A Road To Better Habits first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Bread Seems Problematic

Baking bread seems to be a challenging task for many people. There are many variables, such as yeast, moisture levels, gluten creation, and lack of gluten creation, all of which contribute to bread not being simple. If you follow some recipes, you must learn a new language with words like autolyze, punch down, and window pane. Worse, several sites feature extravagantly decorated bread that resembles art more than food.

Well, bully for them! That is not us. We have busy lives, need sandwiches or toast, and want something made by hand. That is where this bread recipe came from. This bread does take time, but much of that time is not active, meaning you can walk away. This is also a ‘no-knead’ bread, meaning it doesn’t require a lot of hand or machine work to knead the dough. 

Source callout. This was someone else’s recipe we modified. We wanted a base bread that had the benefits of both bread flour’s gluten and whole wheat nutrition. Next, we prefered a moister bread than the original recipe so we added butter to the mix. We also like a taller loaf for sandwiches, which requires adjustments to the amount of ingredients, pan size, and cook time. Finally, the original recipe had two problematic flaws that some people struggled with, which we simplified and will address.

Many recipe sites provide pictures and videos of the step-by-step process for making something. We won’t do that. Why? Because we feel it buries the most critical steps in a lot of noise. Breaking with tradition, we will provide you with some pointers on the essential steps and key considerations that will help you break this recipe. Also, if you haven’t read it, here is our guide to fixing bread.

First, we are using a less typical 9 x 5 x 3 pan size. We wanted a bigger loaf for larger slices. One of the primary keys to making bread is ensuring the correct pan size. If the pan is too small, the bread will not be supported and will have too much ‘muffin top’. Using a pan that is too large, the bread will not produce the shape we associate with sandwich bread because it cannot rise over the rim.

• Always measure flour by weight or a spoon-and-level method. This is where the issue of having too wet or too dry dough can arise. No matter what you do, every recipe is going to be off based on the unidity of your kitchen. This is why we prefer to show a picture of what a hydrated dough looks like rather than simplify this further.
• Proof your yeast in warm water to ensure it is alive. While some yeast don’t technically need this, it is simple.
• Warm water is defined as 105°F-110°F, which is slightly above body temperature. Yeast dies if the water is too high above that level, and they won’t create lift if it is too low below that level.

Here is what proofing yeast looks like. Good yeast will foam in under a minute when mixed in warm water. 

Water Content

To achieve good bread, you must balance the water content with the structure. This is especially tricky in no-knead breads. Because flours contain moisture, and eyeballing measuring cups full of water is not 100% accurate, you need to tune your dough. If the dough is too sticky, fold in a tablespoon of flour. If the dough is too dry, it won’t rise in the oven, so add a tablespoon of water. You want to see a shaggy dough like this. 

Doubling 

Because yeast bread is made with living organisims, the times in this recipe are approximate. Yeast is unfeeling and cannot be forced to work faster; they do not care about your schedule or timeline. To achieve a good rise in dough, you must allow the yeast to do its work, which takes time. We can encourage them to work faster through warm conditions. For example, we proof the bread in a room at 78°F. If your kitchen is 67°F, it will take more time. If it is 82°F, it will take less time. 

Shaping

 After your bulk or first rise, you shape the dough and place it into a greased and floured pan. You must pull and stretch the dough instead of simply rolling it out like a pie crust. By stretching and folding, the air bubbles are distributed more evenly, resulting in a better rise and a more even crumb. Dusting the dough with flour before the second rise will also help keep the bread from sticking to the tea towel or plastic covering it. 

Now let’s make some bread!

Here is our recipe for a straightforward, simple, yet tasty homemade bread. Remember, being succesful will come down the following points.

• Make sure your yeast is alive.
• Make sure your water is 105-110F
• Adjust the mositure levels based on your kitchen and its humidyt.
• Give the yeast time to do their job.
• Use all the times as guidelines and not hard and fast rules.

Print

Simple ‘No Knead’ Basic Sandwich Loaf

A basic recipe that is easy to follow and fairly foolproof.

Cuisine American

Keyword Bread

Prep Time 30 minutes minutes

Cook Time 25 minutes minutes

Resting Time 5 hours hours

Total Time 5 hours hours 55 minutes minutes

Servings 12 Slices

Author Pete

Equipment

• 1 Bread Pan 9x5x3
• 1 Bowl
• 1 Bowl Scrapper
• 1 Spatula
• 1 Dish Towel, moistened (or greased plastic wrap)
• Measuring Cups and Spoons
• 1 Dusting wand (handy if you bake a lot but not 100% necessary)
• 1 Digital Thermometer with a fine tip (the best way to check for doneness but not 100% necessary).
• 1 Whisk

Ingredients

• 2 cups bread flour Use the 'spoon and level' technique to fill cup.
• 2 cups whole wheat
• 2 1/4 tsp instant yeast or one packet
• 2 tsp fine salt
• 2 ½ tsp sugar
• 2 cups warm water (at 105-110F)
• 2 tbsp melted butter (cooled to room temp)
• Additional AP or bread flour (for adjusting dough and dusting surfaces)
• 1 tsp canola oil to grease pan (or nuetral flavored oil)

Instructions

• Gather the ingredients.
• In a large mixing bowl, combine flour yeast, salt and sugar.
• Use a whisk or spoon to blend well.
• In a small bowl combine water, butter (or oil).
• Slowly add wet ingredients into dry while mixing Use the bowl scraper (or spatuala) to fold dough onto itself until combined.
• Note: Water content of the flour varies. If the dough is too sticky, dust with small amounts of flour until it becomes workable by hand. If it is too dry, add a teaspoon of water. See photo of shaggy dough above as a guide to correct moisture level
• Cover the bowl with moistened dish towel or greased plastic wrap and set it in a draft-free place to rise for 4 hours.
• When dough has doubled in size, grease a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan with oil then dust with flour.
• Scrape the dough out onto a well-floured surface.
• With floured hands, shape the dough into a rough rectangle about 9 inches by 12 inches.
• Note: You may still need to adjust moisture level here. The dough should be workable without sticking to floured hands.
• Note: This bread doesn't need to be ‘punched down’ like others. Minimize the amount of time you work it to retain as much of the air bubbles as possible.
• Make 2 folds. With the short side facing you, fold 1/3 twards the middle. Fold the other third on top of the previous fold. Pinch seams
• Gently roll into round log and press to make it the square shape of the pan.
• Drop it into the prepared pan and gently push down and into corners to make it even.
• Dust top of loaf with flour
• Cover the pan loosely with a moistened dish towel, and set in a draft-free place for 1 hour, or until it is approximately double in size.
• About 45 minutes before the loaf is done rising, heat the oven to 425F.
• Remove the dish towel and dust the risen loaf with a little more flour.
• Place pan in middle rack of oven.
• Bake the loaf for 25 minutes, until it's a deep golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped. You are looking for an internal temp of 200-205F.
• Note: All ovens cook slightly differently. Use 25 minutes as a guide to start checking for being done. You may need 5-10 minutes more cook time.
• Note: These temps and times are at sea level. You may need adjust your cooking times and temps for your area.
• Remove from the oven and rest for 5 minutes
• Use a dish towel to turn out onto a cooling rack.
• Cool completely (2-3 hours) before slicing.

Wrapping up

We hope this bread works out for you as well as it did for us and that it makes bread more approachable. It doesn’t take rocket science to produce a good loaf. Once you have it set up, you can add to and modify it to fit your needs. You could add seeds for an extra crunch or raisins, cinnamon, and extra sugar for a sweeter dessert bread. The idea is to get something to work and then iterate over it to tune it to your needs. 

The post How To Make A Simple Loaf Of Bread first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Spoilers and TL;DR;

This post is longer than we like. Why? Because to understand an economy such as convenience, you have to set some context. If you are looking for the takeaway and how to save on costs, skip down to Our Learnings. If you want to understand how we unpack on this topic, read on. 

Opposing Forces

There’s a saying, “You can have it quick, cheap or done right. Pick any two”. Why do folks say that? Because it is true! Those are three opposing forces all of us consumers face. By consumers I mean any person or thing doing trading goods and services with another person or thing. That is what an economy is; barter of time and materials with another person or business. 

The balance of these three forces is how we determine personal value. If you break your leg, done right and quick, will take precedence over cheap. You will go to the ER, get pain medication, have the leg set correctly, and you are willing to pay a premium for it. Because you are willing to pay almost anything to stop the pain and fix the leg, it is a perfect example of an inelastic demand curve.

In another example, your vehicle may need an oil change. That is not extremely hard to do, but it is time consuming if you include buying parts and getting rid of the waste oil. In this case, it may be cheaper than going to the dealer, and you can do this as well as a technician. Still, there is a tradeoff of your time to do the work. 

Where It Becomes Gray

Let’s face it, sometimes, you just get hungry and want a burger. You absolutely must have one before you become hangry. That makes your overriding priority. Still, you have a choice to make; cheap or right. Ok, that is admittedly, a strange thought. What is ‘right’ when it comes to a burger? Does it need to be wagyu beef on a toasted brioche bun with micro-greens and bacon jam? Or can it be something out of a gas station hot case?

Let’s go back to our oil change example. We can go out, buy factory parts, tools, and spend our time changing our oil. We will need to run the errands of getting those items first, then do the work, then do the clean up. Finally, we take the used oil and hopefully recycle it. That is a lot of trouble, time, and money for one oil change. If we have our vehicle for 5 years, and have only invested in tools once, buy supplies once, in bulk, then it might be more viable. 

Ah, but yes, other places can change the oil in your vehicle as well. They use dealer grade parts and have lower labor rates. But if we chose that option, will it be done right? That depends on how you define being right. Do they save more time? That depends on your schedule and how urgent you need that oil changed. 

The Chains 

First, let’s eliminate the idea of bartering from our conversation. That is a complete economy of its own that needs its post. For our purposes, when we purchase something, we will use money. The work and/or goods we produce determine our income and money. When we pay someone, that is for them, or more importantly, the chain of people and value they add to the thing we are buying. 

Chain of value-adding people is key to the high cost of buying items of convenience. Durable goods such as cars and washing machines are good examples of value adding chains. The goods we buy are sourced from all over the world. At each step, each piece adds cost to the final product. For example, if someone produces the tires for a vehicle, they need to be paid, as do their sources. Every step, every part, has to be made and shipped and assembled. That’s a lot of folks with hands out. 

 Now, let’s pick one that is not so obvious. What about a McDonald’s Big Mac? No, we aren’t picking on them exclusively, but they are so ubiquitous they are relatable for most people. When we buy a Big Mac, we are paying multiple premiums on that food. There is a large chain of people involved in making sure you get your tasty Big Mac promptly. Those toasted sesame seeds on that bun didn’t toast themselves. 

The Obvious

 Every time we make a purchase decision, we are deciding what amount of right and how quickly we are willing to pay for it. We all make those decisions every day. In general, we probably don’t think about them. Many of us don’t think along these lines actively, but we all do process the data we are given as a set of trade-offs. 

When we are in the store, we may choose a high-end brand name product or a less expensive generic. In each case we are actually making a choice of what ‘done right’  is from a product pov. We place a monetary value on that choice.  The monetary decision is based on how much we value something versus how much the rest of society is willing to pay for something. 

Enter Convenience

We are often willing to pay a premium for a quicker reward. The same goes for buying time back. If you are working 45 hours a week, have a couple kids, and hobbies, time is a precious commodity. Time is finite and the demand curve we have for it can be very inelastic. Doing some research yields that an average person splits between 80-90% of their time between work, household work, and human needs, that doesn’t leave a lot of free time.  

A callout on that data. That sample feels skewed but as with all things health related, it is a best guess based on a series of polls. The group sampled was between ages 15 and 64 and may or may not be employed. There is enough common knowledge around sleep, and work life balance, to contradict some of this. That being said, the trade, in many cases, would be an increase in work and commuting at a loss of sleep instead of additional free time, which would lead to the same problem of limited time.

With so little time, many are willing to pay for services that can’t perform or simply don’t have time for. Don’t have time for dinner? Order out! Don’t have time to clean? Hire a cleaning service! Want a date night alone for two? Hire a nanny! But what are the actual trade offs?

Time vs Money Pitfalls 

When we pay money for goods, many times, we are expecting to get time back. That doesn’t always happen. Why? Consider this:

• Our money supply is generated through us spending time earning. 
• Because society considers some skills more valuable than others, we earn different amounts based on our work.
• When we purchase an item, it usually comes with a chain of value adders that drive up its price, making it a premium product relative to what we may be able to do on our own.

Why do these items matter? Because your money is directly tied to your time. That is what money is exchanged for. You have knowledge, goods, or other items you have invested your time in. Sometimes the trade offs work, and sometimes they don’t.

Examples In Numbers

Let’s do some math. Doug makes $40 an hour. Doug has two kids and a domestic partner. We will say if Doug chooses, he can make dinner for 4 in 45 minutes with $15 of ingredients.  The other choice is that Doug picks up food on his way home, which costs him 15 minutes of time and $10 per person plus a $5 tip. 

The cost of each meal is not only in the dollar cost but the time cost. Doug values his time at $40 an hour.  That means if Doug spends 45 minutes making dinner, his time value is equivalent to $30. When you add $15 of ingredients to that cost, you get the meal for 4 being $45 of his time. 

Conversely, if Doug opts to pick up food, it is more expensive. Fifteen minutes is equivalent to $10. That means the meal cost him $55 of his time.  In this case, what looks like a time buy back costs someone more than they value their time at.

Now we look at Ann. Ann has a similar domestic arrangement. She makes $80, which is double the value of time when compared to Doug. That makes the meal made at home worth $75 worth of her time. The meal out would equate to $65 worth of her time. In Ann’s case, she is buying back her time, but really, only $10 worth. If she were to make enough for leftovers, it might still be worth her time to make the meal at home.  

Our Learnings

As we started to re-evaluate many things in our life, we built out a calorie budget. The first outcome from that was we had to stop eating out. We had used restaurants for convenience, thinking they were saving time.  At our cabin, we had to start cooking more as well. We decided to use some discount grocers as they were a one-stop shop in those less urban areas. At the same time, we were tracking our budget looking for what we need for retirement. A funny serendipitous thing happened.

Both the amount we were spending on going out and our groceries went down significantly. By being calorie conscious, we cut our eating out, which led to eating in. Looking at future retirement needs made us look at being more price conscious. This led to a further reduction in cost. Interestingly enough, we didn’t lose time waiting in lines or for someone to prepare a meal for us. Finally, it made us look at other areas where we were paying for convenience. 

Tips And Traps

Finally, we come to some tips and traps from our learnings. Hopefully they will be food for thought for others.

Tips:

• In terms of ‘Done Right’, premium products may not be worth it. Most products have generic or house brands that are just as good or close enough.
• Before making a purchase choice, think about your time and what it is worth. If something is going to be 8 hours of your time, you are saying it is worth a day working to have it.
• By planning, you can cut down the need for urgency, which usually comes with a trade-off of a higher price.
• Look around your home and ask yourself if every product is needed. Many home products are easy to make with items we have on hand, are just as effective as store-bought.
• Block out time to make a menu or craft items on your calendar so you can stay ahead of needs
• Be intentional in how you spend money, meaning know what your time is truly worth. 

Traps:

• What we perceive as time saving may not be when weighed against other trade-offs once we think about the total cost of that item.. 
• Commit to doing things more than once if they require an investment in tools and supplies.  If you don’t, those tools and supplies will make the initial time you do something more expensive than it is probably worth. 
• Not defining ‘good enough’ before we start a project or even eating out can lead us to overspending. 
• Prioritizing ‘Cheap’ for items when we should prioritize ‘Done Right’ can cause us to re-spend the same time and money over and over. 

One Last Musing

One outcome for us from our learnings was in how we approached a more intentional form of spending our time and money. We came to look at some items as challenges to be solved through hobbies. For us, we decided to make things like making hot sauce, beer, sausage, and jerky part of our things that were fun to do. When we do this, the time cost is reduced for both the hobby and what it produces. For example, if you fish, and you eat fish, while not a convenient thing to do, you help fund your meals while enriching your life via those hobbies. 

Wrapping Up

If you are still with us, we thank you for your patience. This is not a simple topic. The takeaway is there is a cost for convenience. There are times that cost makes sense and there are times it does not. By learning to value your time, and understand what is ‘good enough’, you can better address your budgeting. Further, if you can use your hobbies as a way to cut down the need for convenience items, you can reduce your overall spend of both time and money.

The post The True Cost Of The Easy Way first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Just Nuke It! 

When at work I have never seen anyone in the company kitchen use anything but 100% power to nuke to oblivion whatever it was they were heating. This was my standard operation of a microwave as well. You select Add a Minute, or whatever time you need, hit go, and wait. After the time elapses, it beeps, and you open the door. If it is hot enough you pull it out and if not you repeat the steps until done. There isn’t a lot of magic there. 

Time and multiple attempts have convinced me that the popcorn setting on microwaves never produces good popcorn. In my opinion, the button needs to be labeled Destroy Popcorn. Let’s face it, you would think there wasn’t that much variation between companies in a standard bag of microwave popcorn but there is. For us using the bag’s advice of listening until popping slows was a far better method than the popcorn button.

Just a quick review of the basics of how a microwave works. If you want to get into the details of how a microwave works you can read about that in depth on other sites. A microwave uses a magnetron to excite water molecules. The more agitated the water gets, the more the heat it produces. The thermal limit of water at sea level is 212℉ before it turns into steam. This upper limit is why microwaves can’t brown food via the Maillard Reaction.   

The key technology used here is the magnetron. The microwave is rated by its power. It is simple enough to understand, that the more power, the faster it can heat food. How fast it heats food has positives and surprisingly some negatives. More power is fine, however, too much power isn’t great at times. It turns out too much power can lead to some overheating with messy results.  

Last, no matter what a manufacturer tells you, a microwave can’t roast or air fry. If the manufacturer states it can do those things, you are buying a hybrid with two separate machines built in. If you do some homework you will see it is simply a traditional oven with a microwave. A magnetron can only excite water not create convection or conduction via the dry heat needed for those cooking types. It is not simply not possible for a magnetron to roast or air fry.

Popcorn, Defrost and Vegetables, Oh My!

If you are like us, then you probably have only played around with all the presets, like popcorn. Let’s face it: We use a microwave to save time. What saves time? Full power!! True as that is, it is generally at the cost of something else. But first, about those preset buttons. 

In an attempt to apply the right power and time to provide the proper heating of your food, manufacturers create those preset buttons. Most microwaves do this through a set of mathematical equations by approximating how much water and mass the food has. With that approximation, the microwave then decides, based on its power output, how much time and power to use. Great because we all know exactly how much our frozen leftover lasagna weighs! No, most of us probably don’t unless we are dialed into how it was made, for what calorie budget, and the portion sizes we cut it into. 

Higher-end microwaves may use humidity, infrared, and sound to monitor cooking.  Oddly enough, popcorn seems to have driven a lot of this innovation.  If you have ever overcooked popcorn in a microwave, you understand why it is so critical not to have that happen. When popcorn is cooked too long in a microwave it will turn to a tar-like material and also produce an acrid smoke and smell. It can be so bad that you may need to replace your microwave. I know this from personal experience.

It’s Not Just About Water, Power, and Time 

All presets and management of cooking in a microwave is still about balancing power and time to increase the temperature of the food through the excitement of water. You will also read that they excite the molecules of fat and sugar. Realize those are mostly composed of water hence why we say water not all three. The last important key is the mass of the food. This is why you will see presets such as defrost by weight or bag size for popcorn. 

In these cases, the microwave adjusts the power and time to make sure it slowly raises the temperature of the food. Why slowly? If you have melted cold butter in a microwave and had it explode you know the reason. The cooking of the food is based on how deep the microwaves penetrate the food, where the water is in the food, and how much water is in the food.

Microwaves actually can only penetrate from one to one and a half inches. That means in small pieces of food they cook from the inside out whereas in large they cook from the outside in. In the case of outside in, the interior is done by conduction from the hot part of the food, not the microwave. This is why it is easy to overcook the outside of food and still have a cold center. 

A Pair of Examples

For example, butter has a lot of water and is small. The microwave cooks the melted butter inside out. As the butter superheats the water flashes to steam at 212F which expands rapidly creating an explosion. If you have made this mistake then you know what it is like to clean butter out of every nook and cranny in your microwave. 

My nemesis, Lasagna, is on the opposite side of the reheating problem. For us, frozen lasagna is a block of high-moisture frozen food usually stored in a plastic container. It is large enough that it cooks from the outside in. In the past, we would nuke this at high power. As a result of that reheating process, the outside bits got hot enough to destroy plastic containers. 

Back to the Presets

We still shy away from presets and here is why. I want to understand how my food is being cooked so I can use that in other places. If you have a microwave at work that is 800 watts it is not going to behave like your home microwave of 1000 watts. Our guesses and experiences were the ones in our work environment that didn’t have all the bells and whistles as well.   

When we started to understand how to use the microwave more effectively, we wanted to be able to use that knowledge and adapt to other microwaves. Since nothing is standardized we can’t hope the two machines are the same including their presets. Overall though, I am pretty sure we can get close to home if we simply use the same power settings and only change the amount of time we cook.

All Things in Moderation

Since moderation of power and time was key we started our experiments. As with the article on reheating, it doesn’t mean there is going to be an easy button or simple answer. After researching a bit we found Whirlpool puts out a pretty good list to explain power levels, foods, and how they go together.

But turning down the power means cooking longer, correct? It can, however, be more of a trade-off. By turning down the power, and increasing time, we get more predictable cooking times. This leads to being able to walk away from the machine rather than babysit it. For example, for our serving size of Lasagna, we can put it on for 10 minutes at 50% power and walk away. In our previous cooking style, we would microwave for a minute, wait 30 seconds, and repeat until cooked through. That left us babysitting our food for 7 or 8 minutes. 

This is not the case in popcorn which I don’t trust. For me, no matter the preset, sensor, or other dark arts, I babysit it. There are some items like this where full power and babysitting are needed. I will wait until I hear that popping slow down before I stop it. 

Wrapping Up 

In this post, we discussed some ways to use a microwave more successfully. By moderating power and temp you can achieve better cooking and reheating of food. By not using presets you also learn how to adapt to other microwaves that you use. These two points make the microwave an even more powerful tool in the kitchen.

The post How To Make Good Use of a Microwave first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

There’s No Accounting for Taste

Before we start, let’s recognize and acknowledge ‘There’s no accounting for taste’. It has been a mission of ours for over a year to understand how to be frugal with food without compromising quality. Taste, and quality, are different for different folks. That being said, we have found what works for us and a level of quality of food that we are comfortable with. To produce it, in general, we don’t rely on premium products with a few exceptions. 

Definitions

We will start by giving some definitions for context. These are our definitions and how we approach the tradeoffs we see between money, time, and waste. Waste is an important concept in economies. We will touch on that after we give some definitions.

• The Economics of Scale are places where you can lower costs by buying more. We often see this in membership warehouse stores such as Costco or large-scale retailers such as Walmart. In their cases the volume of buying power allows them to negotiate lower prices.
• The Economics of Time ( also considered Convenience) is how much time a person invests to use, make, or do something. These are usually things like trade-offs between making food and eating out where we weigh the amount of our time to something against the purchase cost.
• The Economics of Zero Waste (or simply Waste) comes from the idea of zero-waste living. For economies of scale and time to be optimized we want to limit waste. If we don’t limit waste, we are losing money and time for items that add no value which negatively impacts economies of scale and time. 

Do You Care?

Maybe? Maybe Not? We found these three concepts are a guiding rubric for balancing budget and life. They lead to feeling better about how we spend our time and money by providing a logical way to gauge purchases. There are times when we have more money than time and vice versa. Everyone has their value systems, and they change over time as our lives change. 

By being conscious of what is important to you, you can save time, money, and waste so they are good to know. That may sound obvious but know it is easy to lose track of goals and focus when life is busy. We will look next at how these three themes affect our personal home economics. 

The Big Three

Scale 

If you choose to make more food at home, you can leverage the economics of scale to your advantage. Many people may know this coming from large families but in general the more you buy, the cheaper the price. In essence, you are mimicking the same idea of purchasing power as any large retailer would but on a personal level.

We are all used to seeing sales where we get 3 steaks for the price of 2 or buy one get one for a dollar more. That is simply marketing to average out a value that entices us to buy more than we usually would. Due to that, you may choose to cook steaks over pork chops that night. Getting a deal is great but buying cooking staples in bulk usually is not the same concept. You may choose to buy 

You can spend less money by weight for items like oil, flour, spices, etc. as you increase the quantity of your purchase. Those are the economies of scale we are discussing.  As the weight increases from say a quart to a gallon, your price will go down per oz.  In many cases, the prices will go down even more. Spices also follow this model. I have paid the same or more for 1.5 ozs of the same spice in a jar as I have for a 14 oz large plastic restaurant container. 

Time and Convenience 

Time, and its partner, convenience is also a critical cost measurement. As in any economy, we are trading specialization and using money as a common way to value our time. The more money we make, the more time we can free up through purchasing time through convenience. This is exactly what happens when we order food regularly. Sometimes makes perfect sense to order out to save some time or as a treat. Ordering out isn’t the only time and convenience vs money trade-off. 

Some recipes are multi-step, and labor-intensive food to produce like lasagna. It is here that we need to start thinking about our time and the outcome of it on a per portion time cost. We can buy a lasagna we like, that is about 85% as good as homemade, and that saves us 2 hours in a kitchen, for about the same cost as homemade for 10 portions. That is not the same as when we make a soup or bread in which we get better quality for 30-60 minutes of active involvement. 

That being said, we struggle when it comes to going out for a sandwich, hamburger, or tacos. Making them at home gives us the ability to control our portions, use items on hand, and have roughly the same outcome as dining out quality-wise. Further, we can make them cheaper and in roughly the same amount of time, we would take to eat out.

Waste

Waste is where the idea of saving time and money can become casualties. The idea behind economies of zero waste is to reuse, re-purpose, and not throw out anything salvageable. In terms of food, this means when eating out or in. Where this resonates with us is the idea of not wasting just food but time and money. 

When you choose to go out, you are paying a premium in money for your food as it has been created through others’ work. You are usually paying a premium time-wise for those portions. For events, celebrations, etc. that may be the intent. If you then have leftovers and don’t take them home, you are creating additional waste which doubles the effective cost in time and money.

This also occurs in home cooking. If you buy ingredients that are one-off or go bad before you can use them you are creating waste. It means you spent a premium for one meal. Why? If you buy say, fish sauce for $10, use two tablespoons, then let it go bad after a lack of use, you spent $10 on a single part of a single meal. 

Putting It Together 

Let’s try and talk through how this works in practice from what we did. We decided to cook at home more than eat out to control our calorie budget. This initially meant spending more time and was less convenient than eating out. In essence, at first, we lost time however, we immediately saw a decrease in monetary cost and waste. 

We then found portion control to be problematic and stored too much food. This created a different set of wastes for us through freezer burn. The lack of variety also made us stumble and go back to eating out more again which was more wasted time not only in going out but time sunk into making things we didn’t eat. 

Where we landed was understanding, for us, what we did well at home. For example, we will go out for Thai or Chinese as we don’t want to store what are one-off items and ingredients. Further, because we specialize in certain areas, we know what we can buy in bulk.  This has led to optimizing through getting good at a wide variety of things we can produce quickly. It has also kept the cost down as we buy things such as flour, cheese, butter, etc. in quantities that allow us to buy cheaper.

We Aren’t Anti-Local

There is a perception that large retailers such as Walmart, Amazon, etc. destroy local community stores. There are tradeoffs to having them for sure. Our point in this post is not to guide you to them instead of other options. It is the opposite. We use both types of retailers as needed and use them for what they each excel at. 

We see each as a specialist in an area. I see no reason to spend a premium on bulk canola oil at a local grocery store. It’s cooking oil, nothing more and nothing less. Conversely, for example, in our small-town Walmart, there aren’t any specialty meats or local flavors. In those cases, we are always willing to pay the premium to a local business. It’s your conscience and value system so you should do you. That is an economy that deals in personal beliefs we don’t dare touch it.

Wrapping Up

We have discussed several economies and rubrics around their use. By learning what is important for you, you can reduce costs in both time and money while reducing waste. This is only an initial post on this subject. We will tie this into how having chosen to keep items on hand and investing in learning opens more options for cost reductions. 

The post How To Make Your Home Economy Work first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Limiting Scope

This post will kick off a series of other more specific posts. Unfortunately, we feel you could write an article per type of food on how to reheat it. That is problematic time-wise and doesn’t run the steel thread of understanding the processes so others can self-help. It also doesn’t take into account a person’s individual calorie budget and serving sizes. We will get to how those change the art of re-heating. 

The Basics

For brevity let’s limit our discussion to some simple ideas that we can expand on later. We would assert that most of our cooking falls into 2 main ways of transferring heat:

• Convection is the transfer of heat from the air to the food such as happens in an oven.
• Conduction is transferring heat to the food by direct contact between the heat source and the food.

  We would also add there are only two ways of applying heat to cook food.

• Dry methods where the cooking process does not rely on a large amount of liquid to transfer heat. These, in our definition, are methods such as sauteing or roasting.
• Wet methods where the primary transfer is based on liquid such as water or oil. This type of cooking is how boiling, frying, and microwaving work.

Mix and Match

Almost all the food you cook will be a mix of these elements. Most cooking is about water management and reaching a safe temperature for the food. Taking that ride from raw to done imparts flavors and textures that please us such as caramelization via the Maillard Reaction. We may concentrate flavors via reductions of water as well such as in, well, a reduction. This method also applies to items like chicken stock or jams.

Where the confusion arises is that most things we cook are hybrids of the four bullet points above. What we want to do is understand what the outcome from our methods produces to reheat it. Did our cooking create something that needs to be reheated vs a dry method or a wet method? This begs the question do we reheat it through convection or conduction?

Hybrid Examples 

Let’s examine two hybrids, lasagna, and fried fish, to understand what we are discussing in terms of methods vs outcomes. We found it easy to ruin both lasagna and fried fish if reheated incorrectly. When we think of lasagna we see it as a dry convection method. For fried fish, it is usually a wet conduction method. The output is a bit different though.

We would classify lasagna as a wet method like a stew. Why such a weird idea? Lasagna cooks by method provided by its water content even though the heat is powered by dry convection. It is the same process that happens when making a casserole or braising meat. Dry heat in an oven raises the temperature of the fluid in the lasagna to cook it through boiling and/or steaming. A microwave is a wet conduction method as it uses the water in the food to heat it. Practically speaking a microwave steams or boils food from the inside out. That makes lasagna a perfect candidate to reheat in a microwave. 

Have you ever tried to microwave fried fish or fries? They turn out pretty nasty in our opinion but why? They are both technically cooked as wet methods of conducting cooking. The outcome of frying food is to drive most of the moisture out of the exterior of the food and create a crust locking moisture in. If that moisture is then released as steam, you get soggy fries and fish. What does a microwave do, well, it produces steam. That is why those foods need dry convection heat to reheat them

Two Other Variables

There are two other variables in our reheating discussion. They are the concepts of thermal capacity and safety. Most of us want to reheat food to preserve its original quality. In concept our matrix of methods above accounts for most items. Thermal capacity and food safety get in the way of that at times so we will set up how to deal with them here. First, let’s identify them

• The USDA states that all leftovers should be reheated to 165℉ to be considered safe.
• The surface-to-mass ratio of the food dictates how much thermal capacity it has and how long heating it thoroughly will take.

The first thing you will notice is that 165℉ is above what some foods are initially cooked to. Let’s talk about that one a little more in-depth

Is It Done?

The USDA has to deal with a broad population which means groups like the very old very young and everyone in between. That means they must put out safety information that others may not suit all. They also must account for all different parts of the food chain from the field where the cow is raised to re-heating leftover roast. That is a lot of places for bad things to happen and bugs to grow.

To us, if a steak is over 135℉ it is overcooked. That is us, not others. We sometimes go as low as 125F for a roast. That is what you will find many people consider rare and is a common way of cooking it.  Personally, fish over 145℉-150℉, unless deep fried where we don’t notice, is overdone. Won’t reheating leftovers push it past the point we like it? That being our pre-packaged hamburger and chicken is getting pushed to 165℉ because we can’t trust it.

We take a ‘let’s be reasonable’ approach and use the USDA as guidelines. We buy food from known sources. When we prep and cook, we have a clean kitchen that gets cleaned regularly. We store food in the fridge or freezer properly. Nothing gets left in the zone for long unless it is intentional. Simply put, we don’t take a lot of chances so we can cook to whatever temperature we are comfortable with. You need to do you, but when you push the temps up, you aren’t re-heating, you are re-cooking. 

Mass to Surface Area

This is one of the most misunderstood variables and one of the most important in heating. Here are the two axioms to know

• The larger something is, the more time it takes to cook. 
• How fast it absorbs heat is directly related to its surface area where it contacts the heat. 

One caveat to that is the microwave but let’s stick to the general for now. Based on these two axioms, we want to reheat food up to temp as quickly as possible without re-cooking it. What isn’t obvious is that it creates conditions where we want to use the lowest heat possible so we don’t overcook the outer part of the food before the interior reaches temp. 

Important Temps to Know

One last piece of the reheating puzzle is two important temperatures. At sea level water boils and turns to steam at 212℉. The Maillard Reaction, or browning of food begins at anywhere from 280℉ to 330℉. Depending on what sugars are present, caramelization follows the Maillard reaction. Eventually, you end up in the burnt stage of Pyrolysis which, in short form, means burnt. 

Why are these temps important? They are important to know so we get what we want from reheating. Do we care about a crust? Then we don’t want to create steam via a wet method. What if we want to raise the temp of something without further browning? In that case, we want to stay under 280℉ 

Back to the Examples

Our serving size of lasagna has a high mass-to-surface ratio. To cook it without further caramelizing, we need to reheat it at a low temp. Because we don’t want to overcook the outside before the inside is warm, we want to take our time but we also want to eat. That is a perfect case for a slow-wet method of cooking so we boil it correct? No, but close.

A microwave, when used correctly, provides a wet method of cooking that steams the lasagna from the inside out. Oddly enough, as water is removed from tomato sauce it is capable of creating a temperature higher than the boiling point of water. Those temps can cause caramelization and overcooking to occur. Yes, we have burned lasagna and melted plastic in a microwave when not careful. For that reason, we want to slowly heat our food at 212℉. For our portion size of 4-6 oz, that usually means a microwave on half power for 10 minutes in a lightly sealed container to hold in the steam.

Our fish is the exact opposite as they are usually high surface-to-mass pieces. We add it to a preheated toaster oven that is running at 275℉ degrees for approximately 10 minutes. This low dry heat helps preserve the crust without causing more browning. The fish is small enough it heats quickly without being over cooked. 

Wrapping up

In this post, we have discussed some of the basic physics and chemistry involved in cooking. By recognizing how the food was created, and what it has become, you can decide how to reheat it. Truly, no one wants to eat leftovers that don’t feel close to the original food they were. If we can get them close, we can save ourselves time and energy in making one-off meals. We can also control how much we waste when we overcook.

The post How To Better Reheat Leftover food first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Portions Vs Meals

In another post, we discussed the difference between portions and meals. We also discussed what a serving size is and isn’t. Since we know a serving size is something based on what others eat, we want to define a portion as the amount of something you eat based on your calorie budget. For example, you may order a pizza but may only eat two slices of an extra-large pie. Was that a portion or a serving of that pizza?

We are calling that out intentionally as we know there is confusion around the definitions of portions vs servings. This becomes a bit more problematic to talk about in multi-course meals where we have proteins, starches, and usually a vegetable as a main entree plus sides. 

This gets more problematic because when building an a la carte meal, you will need portions that make up all three. When you take home leftovers from a restaurant, you may see all three as one portion of a meal. This portion thing begins to sound a little weird but, no worries, we will clear it up a bit later. 

Portion Planning 

To plan for a month of meals we need to extend the number of items we need to have on hand.  Don’t worry, they don’t necessarily add to our work. Remember we can gain portions from simply cooking a little more or taking home leftovers from a restaurant. Before we get to that, let’s give ourselves a definition and again a little harmless math.

• Number of Diners per Meal (NDpM) which is, you guessed it, the number of people you need to feed.
• A complete Meal we define as a meal that approximates proteins, starches, and vegetables to approximate the USDA MyPlate standard.

Let’s also use the table and definitions we had in the previous post to work through our math.

Running Total of Meals Worksheet

The Math

Let’s assume 4 diners for our NdpM. What we then have for the total number of portions we need to make or have on hand for four weeks is 4 x 84  or 336 individual portions correct? That is not exactly the right number as we had defined a complete meal as containing 3 items. This means our Made To Order, A La Carte, and Snack-style meals all may be constructed of individual items such as a portion of chicken, rice, and say roasted corn. The Made To Order may also be complete as is such as fried rice with pork and vegetables. 

That leaves us with roughly a need for the following minimum and maximum items for a meal. 

Min and Max Items per Meal Worksheet

Putting this all together we would need a minimum and maximum number of meal portions, as shown below.

Combined Totals Worksheet

When we multiply those totals by our NDpM of 4 you will notice that we get absurd numbers of between 352 and 672 portions of food to feed a group of 4 for a month. In our case, we are only two so we get between 176 to 336 portions of food. 

They Are Real Numbers

They are real but not scary. Remember that is how much you need for 4 people for a month. We also need to realize that If you buy a 2lb bag of corn, depending on your and your diner’s calorie budgets, you may get eight 4-ounce portions of vegetables from it. When you cook a 3lb roast, after water loss, you may get ten 4-ounce portions from it. What happens if you throw in some mashed potatoes which are just as easy to create twelve 4-ounce portions?

What happens is that you have just covered a Made To Order meal that covers creating up to two complete meals for four plus extra portions left over to use for another meal. You just knocked out 20 portions in one meal. Wait, it gets better. What about pre-made or takeout? In each of these cases, you may end up with more food than can be eaten in one sitting. Those extra portions can be used to make meals later as well.

Well Duh! 

We spent a lot of time telling you something you already knew….maybe? We all inherently do this type of planning from week to week but maybe not month to month. By being cognizant of how we can plan longer term, and reduce food making to portions we need rather than having not enough or too much. 

As we started to cook at home more, we thought we needed a lot more than we did. We found ourselves cooking and storing too much. We arrived at thinking about portions over serving size or complete meals to help us plan. We also focused on a calorie budget to make sure our meals were appropriately sized. This began to save us time and money over the aggregate. 

This is also a rolling plan meaning after a while, the meals you make help support the extra portions. This happens more naturally as you learn to think about the trade-offs of say doing individual items such as a roast vs a casserole. It also eventually leads to having a larger mix of items you want to eat at home which can reduce dependency on eating out. 

Wrapping Up

In this post, we have discussed the nuances of planning with portions over just meals. At first glance the numbers are scary however they are simply numbers. Once you understand this is a month of food numbers aren’t that absurd.

Further with some lifestyle tweaks, we found we could quickly fill them with very little effort. They do give us an approach to managing our food, shopping, and eating out with a goal of efficiency and reduced waste. Lastly, this approach helps us keep an eye on our calorie budgets whether we want to slim down, maintain, or bulk up. 

The post How To Make Meal Plans With Portions first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.