It is not a skill issue that cabbage is more than a dollar per pound. Medieval pottage is too expensive now.
Right but what if the cheapest food is idk, something like celery root? I think the idea w/the thesis of the article is that a skilled cook can adapt to whatever ingredients are cheapest at any moment.
I think I’m a decent cook but I also think I need to improve because when I’m in the produce area and have no idea how to use like 15—20% of the options there. E.g. celery root, cactus, and ½ dozen things I don’t even recognize.
Sorry, but my point was even shopping cheapest only is getting too expensive now. Poor people have always been buying cheap produce only. That strategy doesn't help when the floor for prices is rising. So if something as basic as cheap as cabbage—the canonical broke peasant food—is like $1.25/lb where it used to be $0.25/lb, the problem isn't the %15-20 of vegetables you don't know how to cook!
All the cheap cuts of meat that we used to eat when we were growing up e.g. pork belly, lamb belly and beef shin, are now not cheap because the middle classes started eating them thanks to the proliferation of tv cooks.
More like the basket swapping method of calculating consumer price inflation misled already distracted pop economics writers
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Skyrocketing prices have taken a big bite out of what Canadians are able to serve up for dinner but food economists say our ability to cope has been worsened by our collective decline in cooking skills.
"We are less able to cook than we were 30 or 40 years ago, and so it's much more difficult for us to adapt our diet," said Mike von Massow, an associate professor at the University of Guelph's Food, Agricultural & Resource Economics department.
But even for those fortunate enough to still afford their weekly grocery run, a lack of skills to improvise in the kitchen makes it harder to work around higher prices, such as by swapping ingredients for less-expensive alternates.
Both then and during today's food inflation crisis, she said her familiarity with the plant-based dishes of her family's Punjabi roots — many of them featuring inexpensive protein sources like legumes — was an advantage.
Annie Belov, a 21-year-old student studying criminology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, has taught herself a lot about cooking since food prices started shooting up.
It's important to note, however, that cooking skills alone cannot solve the affordability problem, said Elaine Power, a professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen's University.
The original article contains 1,271 words, the summary contains 208 words. Saved 84%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
⚠ Folks-- use
lynxto view that article. It’s fully #enshitified in GUI browsers (autoplay, ½-screen blocking bullshit) but decent in text browsers.