Pasta with a side of philosophy

As may be evidenced by the previous few posts, I've been thinking a lot about the connection between food and money.

You see, I had this conversation tonight with people who told me they spend about 4000 NIS on food a month, for two people. We got down to the nitty gritty, and discovered that that's probably because they enjoy the finer things in life - fresh salmon, a good steak - and those things don't come cheaply.

I had another conversation a few weeks ago, about that food challenge that all the cool kids are doing these days of living on $150 for food per person for the month. (Ok, it wasn't really a conversation, it was a facebook comment and another comment.) Bottom line is - I said I could do that, easily, and other person said, 'Teach me your ways, Oh Wise One, I spend a gazillion times more than that.' (I may be paraphrasing. A tad.)

Point is, and I may have mentioned this before, I make CRAZY things from scratch. Like, truly crazy. Not just granola and cookies and cakes and bread, but, like, croissants and mayonnaise and yogurt and (most recently) pasta.

So yeah, usually those things save me money by making them from scratch. But the [white privilege] thing that happens here is - I FRICKIN HAVE THE TIME TO DO THIS. I am mostly unemployed. I can afford to spend the time making yogurt. Some people are partially employed or just amazing at managing their time, so they can "only" make bread from scratch. Someone I know, who is even crazier than I and only eats fair trade locally grown cow patties or something, purposely has a flexible hours type job so he can grind his own buckwheat flour and make it into coq-au-vin with home fermented wine, or something like that.

Not everyone can do this.

I am even realistic enough to believe that most of the people reading this blog (anyone out there other than my mom?) may just have day jobs and come home and not want to frickin make bread from scratch.

So what's a blogger to do?

Well, one could subscribe to the whole 'Make Amazing Meals in just 13 minutes a Day!' cookbooks, which frankly I think are full of bullshit.

One could become a stay-at-home-mom/dad/furry green alien, and spend all their time following oh so perfect blogs about how to perfectly make a perfect 10 course meal complete with truffle oil, and then take gorgeous photos and blog it and pinterest it or snapchat or instagram or whatever the kids are doing these days. Anyway that's how the Patriarchy keeps women down and out of the workforce, so I'm not sure I support this method.

One could be absolutely batshit crazy and scavenge for food and make bread out of thistles and leftover cat fur. There are bloggers like that out there. I ain't one of them.

Or....one could just say screw it and spend 4000 nis a month and eat good food.

Middle ground? Yes, I suppose there is. There are, like, freezers and crockpot meals and gazillions of websites promising 10 Amazing Meals that Cook in your Crockpot Overnight. I suppose some people are organized enough to do that.

What about you, readers? What is your middle ground? Can we  all be humble, admit we're not perfect, and maybe spend more than we want? Or buy more instant food than we want? Is that even allowed??

Obligatory Recipe: Pasta with Melty Cheese

Ingredients: 

• pasta
• cheese which you can totally keep in your freezer and it's fine
• salt
• make it fancy - top with green thing

1.  Cook pasta in salted cooking water.  
2. Strain, but keep a tiny bit of the cooking water (super cool Great Depression type cooking trick for making everything better.)
3. Put pasta back in the pot with that cooking water. Grate cheese. Stir. Melt. Add more cheese. 
4. Top with some sort of green thing. I'm thinking basil or parsley or green onion which you can totally grow like a zombie. More on that later. 
5. Serve with a large glass of red wine. 

The fine life - we has it.