bearing blog

Melissa commented to me yesterday that it seems we’ve all been cooking a lot more simply lately. 

It surprises me to think of it, but she’s right.  I used to make curries, for example, all the time, mixing the spices myself and serving two or three dishes plus a raita.  I used to do a Szechuan-type stir fry once a week or so, with a lovely homemade sauce.  I used to make complicated French stews.  I used to make tostadas with home-fried tortillas, black beans cooked all day in spicy broth, and an array of freshly sliced vegetables.  I used to make authentic clam chowder and, oh, all kinds of lovely, complicated things.  Every week I would try two or three new recipes, because I liked to have a great deal of variety.

What’s in my kitchen now?  Well, there’s a chicken roasting in the oven, there’s a salad chilling in the fridge, there’s a bag of shelled edamame defrosting on the counter, and there’s some broccoli waiting, unsteamed, in the steamer.  Simple.  (And don’t tell me that the edamame makes it exotic.  The stuff comes frozen, in a bag, on sale at the co-op.  It’s not much different from lima beans.)

Everything’s gotten simpler.   I do still try a new recipe or two most weeks, sometimes even a fairly involved one.  But most of my meals these days are pretty square:  meat, veg 1, veg 2, veg 3.  Or:  soup, salad.  Or:  pasta, veg sauce, veg on the side.  Or:  omelet, salad.  Or:  all-in-one casserole. 

Why is this?  It could just be a new phase of experimentation.  (It is nice to perfect and personalize American classics like meatloaf, or chicken with noodles, or tomato soup, or chili.)  And on my part, I’m sure, it’s because I’ve been eating lower-carb for a couple of years, and the meat-veg-veg-veg format works really well for that.  It might be lack of time, or lack of creativity, or just an inclination these days to concentrate on ingredients and taste each one, clearly and simply.

The Star Tribune has a pretty good article on the disappointment of folks who now have to pay through the nose to heat their gigantic suburban houses:

Eight years ago, Holly and Mark Batton built their 4,600-square-foot house in the rolling countryside of Credit River Township south of the Twin Cities.

They saw their home, with its swimming pool and five bathrooms, as an investment they could enjoy as its value rose in fast-growing Scott County.

The Battons belong to a generation of Americans who are living life larger than ever. Now, with energy prices driving up the cost of everyday life, they are also among a generation that is suddenly wondering if they’ve gone too far in pursuit of the good life…

The Battons’ house, with a tax-assessed value of nearly $600,000, is merely of average size in Scottview Estates.

In the Twin Cities and the surrounding suburbs, the home prices have been rising steeply for a number of years.  This is not just a pathological need to keep up with the Joneses, nor just conspicuous consumption, nor just the American taste for debt and distaste for savings.  Like it or not, there has been a strong economic incentive to build or buy the biggest home you possibly can, because everything is going up, fast.   So it isn’t as simple as "silly you, you bought more house than you need, you wasted your money."  People see these houses as something to invest in, for fast equity-building and profit. 

Let me tell you a story of three  married couples I know.   In 2000 Mrs. A. was in graduate school and Mr. A. had just taken an engineering job.  Mr. and Mrs. O were both in graduate school, eking along on their two stipends.  Mr. T. was a grad student and Mrs. T. a stay-at-home mom, eking along on one (generous as stipends go) stipend. 

The A’s said to each other, "Let’s not buy a house yet.  We haven’t time for the upkeep, we don’t want to have too much space or we’ll start acquiring a bunch of junk, married student housing is subsidized and so it’s a terrific deal, and we can both take the bus every day.  Besides," said Mr. A., "when my parents were first married they had to live in the attic above Grandma and Grandpa’s house.  We should be happy with what we have." 

The O’s decided to buy a cozy little house in "Nordeast" Minneapolis the minute they decided to get married.     The T’s, while they were still living many states away, bought a tiny condominium in St. Paul without having had the chance to really explore their options.  "Too bad for them," thought Mr. and Mrs. A.  "Married student housing is such a great deal."

Several years later, when the A’s finally got around to shopping for a house and were fainting at the prices of semi-run-down inner-city duplexes, the T’s and the O’s sold their respective dwellings at large profit.  In particular, the T’s condominium sold for nearly twice what they had paid for it.

Do Mr. and Mrs. A wish they’d bought more house than they needed?  You bet your sweet bottom we do.  We might have sent a kid to college on the profits!

ANYWAY.  That’s just a bit of local color.  The thing that people forgot is that big houses aren’t just a capital outlay; they have operating cost.   And that scales with energy costs.  And  conspicuous consumption is part of the problem.  But some of this is just because it actually appeared to make economic sense.

Houses are still ridiculously overpriced.  Take a look at what $700,000 to $800,000 buys you in this town.  In particular, look at 2011 Fremont Avenue South.  It’s well-equipped, but… is it that well-equipped?  Do I live in San Francisco or something?

Chris, on a trip to Spain, told us about tocino del cielo.

Is this it?  Money quote:

It’s simple — just 25 egg yolks and a kilo of sugar.

Another recipe, in which the egg yolks are diluted somewhat with egg white (nine yolks to three whites), is here.

I think the English name ("egg flan") is boringly descriptive.

My house — the one that’s to be put up in the side yard — is a little bit unusual.  Outside I can hear the hammers as five men assemble the forms for the basement walls. 

But the house itself is already finished.  The Norse Homes website promises that it enjoys climate-controlled comfort on a factory floor in Ladysmith, Wisconsin, while it awaits its final resting place here in Minneapolis.

Yesterday when the housing inspector pulled up to discuss something or other with the men about to pour the concrete, I popped out to say hello.  Hi.  I’m the homeowner.

The inspector looked from me to the house I’d just come out of to the hole in the ground next door.  Of that one, or that one?

Both.  We split the lot.

He looked down at the plans and muttered, It’s a plop ‘n’ drop.

I knew what he meant.  Everything okay?

That’s just what we call these things, the ones that aren’t stick-built on site.  By carpenters. He looked at me with a tight smile.  I just personally get offended when people take the jobs away from the local carpenters.

I shrugged.  I couldn’t afford it otherwise.  Put a modular home factory in Minneapolis, and I’da hired Minneapolis carpenters.

It’s true.  If it weren’t for the modular housing option, we wouldn’t have built the house, and the five men outside wouldn’t be working on it, and the dozen men who were there yesterday morning wouldn’t have been working on it, and Archie who drove the excavator wouldn’t have dug the hole, and our neighbor Rich wouldn’t have had the chance to bid on our new fence, and whichever local carpenter we hire to build the porch wouldn’t have had that job either.

Anyway, last time I checked, carpenters in Wisconsin needed jobs too.