Mostly Dead

I’m discovering just how long food preparation takes when one strives to prepare three healthy meals a day from scratch—which goes a long way toward explaining why I didn’t do much cooking over the last four years, as my work schedule ramped up to full time and beyond.

This morning I made oatmeal for breakfast, following a scaled-back version of the recipe from the Red Lion Inn Cookbook. (That’s the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, Mass., star of legendary Norman Rockwell prints, not the Red Lion Inn hotel chain ubiquitous in the West.) It didn’t take long—maybe 10 minutes—but then there was the cleanup afterwards, as I washed the pan and dishes used. At lunchtime, I realized I had more tofu in the fridge that needed to be used up, so I lightly fried a dozen tofu triangles in peanut oil; when they were nearly done, I heated water and cooked a batch of soba noodles. I made a thrown-together peanut sauce in a soup bowl (peanut butter, hot water, rice vinegar, a minced garlic clove, a frizz of grated ginger and a dash of fish sauce—yes, I really do have all of these ingredients on hand), tossed the cooked noodles into it, and ate it with half of the tofu triangles. It was a filling, satisfying lunch, reasonably healthy, and relatively inexpensive. But preparation and cleanup took at least an hour. (Eating it didn’t take much time at all, especially since I started munching on the tofu as each batch came out of the fry pan.)

Next, I put together a sponge (yeast, milk, flour, water) for a bread recipe I want to try. (A sponge is like a preliminary step in some artisan breads, giving the yeast a head start before mixing the full weight of flour into it; it’s also similar to the creation of sourdough starter, although it generally doesn’t sit long enough to ferment and become sour.) Assembly didn’t take long—if you don’t count the extra time I wasted when I forgot that I left the milk on the stovetop to heat while trying to multi-task. Now the sponge is sitting on the counter for four hours; the rest of the bread assembly and production will come later.

After all that (and knowing I still have bread-making ahead of me), I’m tired of cooking. I was thinking of making a roast chicken for dinner tonight, but at this point I don’t know if I have the get-up-and-go to get up and do it.

Oh, and I also incorporated food shopping into my morning walk—I stopped in at Huckleberry’s to stock up on whole-wheat flour and milk for the bread-making adventure. Add it all up and I’ve probably spent two hours on food prep and acquisition today, and it’s only early afternoon.

No wonder I didn’t cook much while I was employed.

Granted, I now have another meal of fried tofu ready to be reheated, and I’ll have plenty of leftovers from both the chicken and the bread—thus saving time in days to come. But still, that’s a lot of time.

This illustrates one reason why processed foods have become the backbone of the American food business. It’s all because of the Great American Time Crunch. Groups like Take Back Your Time have organized to fight the crunch—and TBYT Day is coming up, by the way, on October 24—but the effort appears to be an uphill battle. More people are working more hours, often for less money and benefits, than ever before.

A recent Northwest Cable News piece reported that Americans get, on average, 13 days of vacation each year, compared with 38 days in France. Other parts of Western Europe come close to the French, meaning that the average European works nine weeks a year less than the average American—which prompted Take Back Your Time Day, marking nine weeks before the end of the year.

Anecdotally, it’s easy to see this time crunch among friends and colleagues. Budget cuts and staff reductions mean that the people who are left have to work longer hours and carry greater responsibilities than before the cuts. People whose jobs have been eliminated often juggle multiple part-time jobs to cobble together enough income to survive; and anyone who’s ever worked part time knows there’s truly no such thing as a “part-time job.”

I’m sure someone somewhere has correlated increased demand for processed food with increased working hours; the closest I could find quickly is a 2008 report on food manufacturing from the U.S. Department of Commerce. The report showed slow but steady growth in domestic demand for processed foods over the last 10 years and predicted that the growth would continue: “There is high demand for convenience food and ready-to-serve products such as snack foods, snack bars, and frozen food that are popular with double-income households and consumers who are generally short on time,” the report states. “The aging U.S. population and rising per capita incomes should cause this trend to continue.”

The report also shows that the largest share of Americans’ home grocery budgets is spent not on meats, produce, cereals or dairy, but on “other”—sugars, sweets, fats, nonalcoholic beverages and prepared foods.

This ’splains a lot, I’m thinkin’.

(The report also notes that 44 percent of household food spending now goes to food consumed “away from home.”)

And now people in the growing economic powerhouses of India and China are following suit: Demand for processed food is rising in both countries. The Commerce Department report notes this as well, concluding, “As developing countries experience income increases, demand for processed food grows, especially for higher valued food products such as meat. In developed countries, increased demand comes for convenience and specialty food products.”

Postscript: I gathered enough oomph to get the chicken in the oven around 5 pm, and now it’s just about done. (And I just added a small squash to roast as well.) But I have a confession to make, along with a mea culpa to the bread-baking gods. My bread-baking efforts today seem to be star-crossed. Or, more truthfully, my good intentions have been undone by my impatience to just get it done despite warning signs.

At the store today, I briefly looked for fresh yeast, as a backup plan to the old jar of yeast that’s been sitting in the back of the fridge for a long time. (A very long time.) I didn’t find it in the first place I looked, and then I promptly forgot about it, because—you guessed it—I didn’t have it written down. After getting back home, I didn’t feel like going out again just to buy yeast that I might not need, so I decided to use the yeast I had.

Now, it’s been several years since the last time I baked bread, and some of the finer points of bread-baking knowledge have floated away on the currents of time. Fine points like how to proof yeast—testing it to make sure it’s really still alive and ready to spring into action. (Not to mention the wisdom of relying on yeast that’s old enough to be in kindergarten.) So, after ruining the first cup of milk that I tried to heat up for the sponge, I just heated another and plowed on ahead with the mixing of the sponge. I was encouraged—duped, perhaps—by the familiar scent of yeast that arose from the sponge mixture as I stirred it. Sadly, that was the only thing to arise in the bowl. A few, tiny, pathetic bubbles appeared on the surface, but now, more than four hours later, my sponge is clearly terminal.

While waiting for the chicken to be done, I searched online (thank God for the Internet) and found a page called Video Bread that’s all about how to proof yeast. (They also offer lots of other helpful tips for newbies and re-newbies.) Although it’s too late to save me from myself, I followed the instructions and proofed the yeast that’s been sitting in the fridge. And it is, to quote Billy Crystal in The Princess Bride, “mostly dead.” Unlike the Dread Pirate Roberts, however, my yeast cannot be resuscitated with a small fireplace bellows. Alas.

I’m now down two cups of milk and two cups of flour (along with some tap water), and I’m no closer to having bread than I was this morning. Deep sigh.

Tomorrow morning, humbled, I shall march myself back to the store and buy fresh yeast. And I will begin again.