Honestly, OP, you have to understand that my words are not just kind words. They are 100%, bona fide truth. You have to work hard at overcoming the conditioning of your own mind and that of our sick, deluded society. You owe this to yourself.

You know deep down that what makes you special has absolutely nothing to do with your size, your skin colour, your hair, your teeth, your ears, your knees or your smell. There is something resolutely good about you (about all of us) that is jut there!

Be honest with yourself: do you only want to find love from somebody who is deluded? Are the most attractive people to you those who are attracted to physical characteristics over everyone else? I almost know that this is not the case.

Friends who tell you you are wonderful, loveable and beautiful are great, but it doesn't help if you think they're just saying this because they love you or because they want to be kind. But it might be that they can see it too! They are telling you the truth. They are not conditioned to stare only at your body and they can see beyond the fat that your mind is obsessed with.

OP, I lost about 70lbs not long ago. And all I saw was the fold of fat on my back, the bulge of fat on the hips, the roundness of the belly. A couple of years later and I have regained that weight. Just the other day, I looked in the photo album and couldn't believe just how thin, strong and great I looked. The mind plays tricks on us. You may well be fat and out-of-shape, but you can still be beautiful, still be loveable, still be wonderful.

This is not some kind of dippy positive-thinking. This is fact. Beauty is not the exclusive preserve of thin people. Beauty, as we are told, is in the eye of the beholder. But while you are utterly terrified that people will only ever see you as some sort of misshapen blob, you are hiding your beauty from them. While you hide the beauty, they will only ever see a misshapen blob.

In my arrogant view, you need to do two major things: the first is to stop looking for somebody to love you right now. Make yesterday your last day of ever having done that. You need to start looking inside you to find love. Without it, OP, nobody is ever going to love you (apart from us and your friends). But romantic love is ded in the water unless you start being in love with you just as you find yourself right now. Like I said earlier, this needs to be your number one priority. Meditation will help; mindfulness based stress reduction will help; understanding the way that your mind works will help (buddhist teachings focus on this). You have to set about this task in the correct way: stop thinking that my words are just nice or that they are positive opinions. Start thinking that my words are just simple truths and go and find the evidence to understand why I am saying these things. I am happy to be here and answer your questions if it would help.

The second thing you need to do is go and read Gary Taubes and then buy his book. In 3-6 months, you are not going to be fat any more. Da-da! Magic! But your problem will still be there unless you find out why you are already beautiful. Someone might end up falling for the new-look you, but it won't last because you will hate yourself secretly and this will lead to trouble, misery, suffering and unhappiness. Gary Taubes will be a great guide to why you are fat and what you can do about it; Dr Atkins was right! You may also find the Diet Doctor helpful and Tommy from Sweden with his blog. Google them and Google LCHF (low-carb, high fat). Being fat will become an option for you, not a life sentence. But thin people are deeply unhappy too; thin people are lonely; thin people can't find people to love them; thin people are in abusive relationships; thin people look to drink, drugs and other such distractions to make their lives bearable. When you step on the scales, you only see the quantity of mass that makes up you; love for yourself doesn't have any effect on the readout.

It matters not a jot if you have known for a while that you don't love yourself. That's the past; it's not real; it's just a memory; this is real; this is an objective experience; this is here and now. Here and now is when you need to start loving yourself.

Wanting what you cannot have is the root of all misery; in buddhist teachings, they call it clinging. Clinging is based on ignorance of things as they really are. Your ignorance teaches you that you are the fat that makes up your body (you're not); it teaches you that love and kindness are always less attractive that buff bodies and pert asses (they're not); it teaches you that if somebody can love you then you might be able to love you (you won't); it teaches you that if somebody loves you right now, they will be deserving of all of your love and you will owe them one (this is wrong). These are all delusions. The delusions lead to you craving the impossible; the impossibility of it all leads to unhappiness; unhappiness leads to loneliness and the circle spins around.

Buddhist teachings, on the other hand, say that you can keep from devaluing yourself. But you are going to have to work at it. Within six months, you are going to be thinner, stronger, healthier, more conventionally attractive. Woo hoo. But you are also going to be mentally stronger; more aware of what really makes you special; more confident; less judgemental; happier; and...you are going to be in a loving relationship with someone!!! That is the guarantee I can offer you if you take the scales off your eyes and look at the truths I have laid out in front of you.

As I said, I'm happy to keep you company on your journey. Start a blog and I'll subscribe; put photos of yourself all over it (remembering that you are already beautiful, wonderful, loveable.

Just think - by October, you are going to be everything that you ever dreamed of. But now, it's time to WAKE UP AND STOP DREAMING!!!

If your gym had that machine where you grab the handles and it tells you a BF% number, I wouldn't put too much trust in that. Honestly 5'11" and 199 doesn't sound like you're in the high risk due to weight category, that being said, if you feel slim but fat, then the gym is a great place to fix that.

Just so you're aware of it /r/fitness is pretty awesome. They will pretty much universally tell you that as a beginner you should start at Starting Strength(SS), or StrongLifts5x5(SL). I will agree with this advice.

You'll get mixed reviews on personal trainers, I did 5 sessions with one a while back, here are some of my thoughts

• Be prepared to do your homework, personal trainers are not nutrition scientists, they are not fitness scientists, they may have a certification that is not terribly difficult to acquire.
  
• Every trainer should talk about diet, it generally plays a lot larger role in achieving (most) goals.
  
• My training sessions left me pretty much immobile for a day - he worked the shit outta me.
  
• Try and focus on learning a good routine and good form, and not just paying them to get through every workout, think "Teach a man to fish...",
  
  *I stopped getting training sessions because no matter how many times I told my trainer that I wanted to focus on compound barbell movements, and instilling good form, I some how ended doing weird, unstructured movements that were supposed to work my 'core'.
  
  On to your questions:
  
  1, Unless you have some fancy reputable trainer, I would not make all your diet decisions on their recommendations. The best thing I did for myself was educate myself to the best of my ability on diet and make eating choices based on that. I can share more but I don't want to get in to the keto vs paleo vs mediterranean vs CountCalLowFatBeMiserable.
  
  2, The programs I mentioned above are highly recommended by reddit's fitness communities, SS is based on a book, SL is based on a website and some shorter PDF style guidelines. I use SL because I like it's program, but SS has notably larger collection of good information on the actual workouts. Don't modify the program, stick to it and learn your forms.
  
  3, If you find the diet the best suits your body, and a fitness plan you enjoy and stick to, and push yourself and actually work at the gym... 9-12 months for 22lbs is probably enough time. Again a lot of it depends on your current health (how fat are you?).
  
  4, Surely he didn't mean 32,000 calories. My advice - don't worry about spacing out your meals or over calculating. As you're starting out, focus on making well informed choices that stick to your plan. You can't just wing it, you should definitely track what you eat, but if you make the right (for your body) changes, you should be able to find a rhythm where you eat when you're hungry, you stop when you're full, and you get healthier.
  
  If you can afford to or have the motivation to, you should get some starting numbers from a visit to the doctor, heart health profile and BF% info can be very useful in deciding what kind of things you should do.
  
  And Finally, I just want to say, educate yourself. I approached getting healthy in a similar way to how you did in your post, and getting 100 different opinions on what to eat what to do was absolutely confusing. When advice I was getting was too confusing, I tried to stick to what doctors recommended, which didn't help either. I read this book, and I'm not going to tell you to base your diet and fitness on this book by any means, but I encourage you to read it only to increase your skepticism of common wisdom.
  
  I'm not an expert, or a doctor, just a dude who learned how my body functions in a healthy way, and made changes to facilitate it, me getting healthy :)
  
  (Edited for formatting)

Hi. I'm Pikul, but this expansion I've been playing Clovenshield because fuck DPS queues. That may change in the near future. (Sorry RoD members who saw the rest of this post in the subreddit).

I run the Raid of Disapproval, coming back after an 8 month hiiatus. We killed Jin'rokh last week, died to Horridon trash, and got trolled by horridon. I'm cautiously optimistic for this week! I'm also a moderator.

This is me and my wife. We have been married for almost 6 years. Although that's not a good picture of me any more since I had LASIK about 2 years ago. This is a better one. I hate most pictures of me since they accentuate both of my chins as seen here

We have a house in Falls Church, VA. If anyone is ever in Washington DC, send me a message and we can grab a beer.

I work here in the Office of Fossil Energy. Not a surprise if you google my name. My office is halfway between the Washington Monument and the Capitol building. I can tell you all about coal plants and EPA Regulations, but don't ask me since I start to ramble on. The only work things worth mentioning are I'm a Six Sigma Black Belt, last year I wrote a paper and presented it at PowerGen International in Cologne Germany, and in 2011, I was on detail over to the Executive Office of the President so I got to say "I work at the White House." Looks good on a resume as well.

My wife works here as a horticulturalist. She maintains the Bishop's garden and it is beautiful.

Graduated from Penn State about 6 years ago as a Mechanical Engineer, and now I'm a grad student at Johns Hopkins , working on a Systems Engineering degree. While at PSU, I went to about 2 football games and have hardly been back since graduating.

Grew up here It's a shitty little town that's claim to fame was the highest grossing wal-mart for 2006. Although, they are on top of a large shale gas formation, which has brought tons of economic development to the area. My wife grew up near there too

These are my pets Tavi the Corgi, Gabriel AKA Pinky the Oriental Short Hair, and Sampson the Bengal). The cats are 11 years old, the puppy is 9 weeks old. He is very demanding and a large part of why I stopped playing for 8 months. Pinky does not like the puppy.

Here I am underwater. The Mrs. and I got our advanced scuba certification last summer - deepest I've been is 100 feet. We are totally spoiled by caribbean diving, which is really warm and crystal clear. The Atlantic is cold and murky. I recommend the ABCs for diving - Antigua, Bonaire, and Cozumel. Cosumel especially - we had a wonderful drift dive and saw a massive Eagle Ray. I want to get better at underwater photography.

I'm an internet ordained minster. I officiated the wedding of two of my best friends. Afterwards, we met up with some other friends and went rafting in Colorado on some Class V rapids. That was fun.

This is some beer that I made. I got really into home brewing over the past year and love to share my craft with other people so I get less fat. I also have a blog but it's not very interesting. Mostly some recipes, one photo journal, and a few sundry items. Most recently, I bought some kegs and got all the gear and shit to put it in my minifridge (or "lagering cabinet). That was fun, but I don't have enough people over to drink it. I have been told on two occasions that "this is the best beer I ever had". I entered a brewing competition last year, and got a 28/50 on my Strawberry Wheat beer. I've gotten better, I might try again later.

I have a guitar that I've been meaning to start playing. I will set a new years resolution for both "play my guitar" and "go to the gym", but I fully intend to break both of those. Homebrewing counteracts any gym activities anyways.

I own a bright green Mazda 2 so I never lose it in a parking lot...unless I park next to an SUV. Then I can't even see it because it is a super tiny car.

In the kitchen, I bake bread from scratch and got pretty good at it (simple techniques make amazing bread), roast my own coffee with a popcorn maker, and really love baking desserts. I'm not too great at decorating or presentation, but boy do I love carbs and sweets.


Faust is a real life friend of mine. If he doesn't post pictures, I can put one of his 6 facebook photos up.

Last, here's a bonus video of when we painted our Horde banner. I thought it was cool since we had to paint it from underneath. It prevents large drips/drops of dye and looked really cool from above.

I think that's about it. If someone knows how I should motivate myself to go to the gym let me know.

Ok your turn.

(And Vote for Pikul)

Good for you for making that connection! It's not an easy thing to accept, but once you do, you're kinda stuck this way.

1. A non-vegan can live happily in a vegan household. My SO is non-vegan but, I do all the cooking for us so we have a vegan kitchen. I would be uncomfortable cooking and paying for animal products at this point and he knows better than to ask that of me. I would bet that you're a fantastic chef and will have no problem keeping your husband full and satisfied.
   
   
2. If you're comfortable using it then do so. But I warn you that it may desensitize you to eating/preparing animal products again or it'll make you feel disgusted. If possible, I would donate it to a local food bank or a friend.
   
   
3. Clearly, you care about your son so I don't think you will harm him. Keep a watchful eye and maybe contact your pediatrician for advice, there are plenty that are veg-friendly. I would also recommend following some vegan parent blogs.
   
   
4. Like all other weightloss or weight maintenance, if you're keeping an eye on your calories then you should be fine. You can easily keep carbs under 50%, but you may find that the volume of food you're consuming will increase quite a bit. Most people lose weight when going vegan so don't be surprised if that happens (just maybe don't add tahini to every meal like I did).
   
   
5. My best friend has IBS and it improved drastically after severely cutting down on her meat intake. I imagine that there will be an adjustment period (I had like 4 BMs a day and was cramping due to bloat for a couple weeks), but cutting out animal products could really help your IBS as well.. Only time will tell.
   
   
6. Yes, you can! I haven't frozen seitan for quite that long but it would be interesting to see how it goes. I imagine it would be fine though. Also this recipe for tofu nuggets looks really, really good. Cultured vegan cheeses will last quite a while and continually age in the fridge, Miyoko Schinner says they typically last about 100 days. But yes, you can freeze them if you don't use it in time.
   
   
7. Yess this is my jam right here. I read cookbooks like people read novels. It sounds like you would enjoy Isa Chandra Moskowitz. I absolutely love her book Isa Does It and I recommend it to everyone. Her other stuff is also wonderful (I'm sure amazon will show you the rest of her books in their recommendations)! Another one that I think you would enjoy is Miyoko Schinner's The Homemade Vegan Pantry and Artisan Vegan Cheese. After hearing her speak at VegFest it sounds like she has similar style: doing a lot of prep work beforehand so that doing the everyday meal making is simple. Lastly, I will recommend Plum Bistro's Plum: Gratifying Vegan Dishes. The restaurant is absolutely fantastic and while I haven't made anything in this book since I got it (because I am a little intimidated tbh), I have no doubt that you could get a lot of use from this with your culinary skills.
   
   I hope this was at least a tiny bit helpful! Good luck! :)

Someone pretty much asked this question last week, though he was asking on behalf of his wife. A lot of people found my answer helpful, so I'll repost it here:

I've been vegan for two years, running for two and a half. Things I love:

Curries. Yellow, red, green, all of them. Very versatile, put whatever veggies float your boat. My favorites are yellow potatoes, carrots, peas, bell peppers, onions. Tofu is a MUST for me in curries. Press the excess liquid out (honestly, if your wife is serious about plant-based eating, an actual tofu press is WAAAAY better than using towels and heavy pans) and cube it up. No need to cook it before you throw it into your curry. Also, sometimes I stir in some chunky peanut butter right before I eat it. Serve with white rice, brown rice, quinoa, whatevs. Or just by itself.

Tofu scrambles. These were absolutely essential for me during marathon training last summer. Very quick, easy as hell to make, versatile, and packed with protein, calcium, and iron. Also, one of the few tofu recipes where you really don't have to press the tofu. Getting the excess liquid out is a good idea, but no need to let it press for more than five minutes while you prep your veggies. A good tofu scramble may take a few tries to get the hang of, so I recommend starting with a recipe (like this, for example) but once you've got the hang of it, mix up your veggies and spices to find your favorite combo. I also highly recommend finding some black salt to give your egg-inspired dishes that sulphur-y flavor. ONLY A LITTLE BIT IS NEEDED TO GET THE FLAVOR. Too much, and you and your wife will have the WORST GAS OF YOUR LIVES.

Speaking of eggy stuff, Chickpea salad sandwiches are BOMB. Depending on what spices you use, you can make this more eggy or more chicken-y, or more tuna-y, depending on your mood. My favorite recipe so far has been Thug Kitchen's smoked almond and chickpea salad sandwiches (here) but you can make it way simpler by not bothering with all the almond stuff and just going super basic. This is a tuna-inspired version I love.

I could really go on and on about vegan food, but perhaps the best way to get you and your wife in the right direction is to recommend a few books for you. I have....god, probably like 20 vegan cook books. My top three favorites are:

America's Test Kitchen: Vegan for Everybody - Great pictures, great recipes, and a lot of information on "why this works/why this doesn't work" in vegan cooking. I have been vegan for two years and just recently got this book and it has taught me a lot that I wish I had known all along.

Thug Kitchen: Eat Like You Give a Fuck - The first vegan cook book I ever got, a gift from my husband about a week after I went vegan, and still to this day one of my very favorites. So much basic info (like wtf is nooch), seriously tasty food, and hilariously written (NSFW language). I can't make up my mind whether I recommend this one or the ATK book more, but I'm leaning towards this one.

Minimalist Baker's Everyday Cooking - someone has already mentioned her blog, which I absolutely recommend as well, but there is SO MUCH on that blog, it can be hard to just find something to make. Dana's cook book takes care of that problem by having 101 of her very best recipes in a really beautiful and well-thought out book. Her recipes are always fun and inspired, and she has some of the tastiest vegan desserts I've ever had the pleasure of making.

Last thought: as far as "vegan recipes for runners" goes, one of the beautiful things about eating a whole foods, plant-based diet is that it's all really good food for runners. As long as you stay mostly away from processed stuff (fake meats made of soy protein isolate, vegan cheeses made of practically nothing but oil), then a vegan diet is going to be beneficial to your wife as a runner. There is a place in your kitchen for some Tofurky deli slices and vegan mayo (my favorite is Hampton Creek's Just Mayo) but keep it mostly whole foods and you really can't go wrong.

I hope this helps.

Hi! I also recently started baking as a new hobby. I’m very much still a novice and still find it quite intimidating, but I’ve found quite a few decent vids and books that have helped me to get started...

Bake with Jack - really excellent channel filled with 4 min videos talking about terminology, equipment and technique:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTVR5DSxWPpAVI8TzaaXRqQ

Richard Bertinet’s Waitrose video. A bit basic but I find Bertinet’s mannerisms inspiring and the instructions are very useful. Different kneading technique too:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTVR5DSxWPpAVI8TzaaXRqQ

BBC Good Food basic bread recipe. There is probably a better basic recipe, such as the King Arthur one, but this is the first one I used. I halved the salt on this and it’s given me really nice bread every time:

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2060/easy-white-bread

Brilliant Bread by James Morton. Only just digging into this book but it really is great. Lots of recipes and kneading advice etc. I’d recommend it to anyone:

https://www.amazon.com/Brilliant-Bread-James-Morton/dp/0091955602

Flour Water Salt Yeast. I’ve not really delved into this much yet as I’m still getting used to the basics, but everyone on here seems to love it and it seems very well written (note:you’ll need a Dutch oven for this):

https://www.amazon.com/Flour-Water-Salt-Yeast-Fundamentals/dp/160774273X

If you’re going no-knead/Dutch oven, I’d say it’s worth giving this a watch too, but I’d check the comments as well as a lot of people seem to be tweaking the recipe. A seemingly infamous video/recipe from NY Times:

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-bread

Dough by Richard Bertinet. Another ace book filled with simple easy to follow recipes. Also comes with a short DVD, although I don’t know what’s on it as I’m yet to watch:

https://www.amazon.com/Dough-Simple-Contemporary-Richard-Bertinet/dp/1909487538

River Cottage basic white bread. Not the best instructions but I still found it a useful watch when very first starting out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTVWuw_SBSo

Not sure if these are 100% the best places to start but they’ve definitely helped me. I tend to google pretty much everything, which will lead you to a lot of useful sites too.

I hope these help, even if only a little. Im sure others will make some good suggestions here.

Happy baking!

Okay, you've caught me; there's beer and wine books, too. Here's what you're looking at:

I run a cocktail bar, and I've been meaning to share my library for some time, but I have a knack for lending my books out to friends and colleagues so I keep waiting for it to be complete. Then I realized my collection keeps growing and will never be complete, so I may as well just share a snapshot of it.

Top row:

Sippin' Safari: In Search of the Great "Lost" Tropical Drink Recipes... and the People Behind Them by Jeff "Beachbum" Berry

Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails: From the Alamagoozlum to the Zombie 100 Rediscovered Recipes and the Stories Behind Them by Ted "Dr. Cocktail" Haigh

The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft by Gary "Gaz" Regan

The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America's Most Imaginative Chefs by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg

The World Encyclopedia of Beer by Brian Glover

How to Brew: Everything You Need to Know to Brew Beer Right the First Time by John J. Palmer

Jigger, Beaker and Glass: Drinking Around the World by Charles H. Baker, Jr. (aka The Gentleman's Companion Volume II)

Tasting Beer: An Insider's Guide to the World's Greatest Drink by Randy Mosher

Michael Jackson's Complete Guide to Single Malt Scotch by Michael Jackson

The Ultimate Guide to Spirits & Cocktails by Andre Domine

New Classic Cocktails by Mardee Haidin Regan and Gary "Gaz" Regan

The Book of Garnishes by June Budgen

World's Best Cocktails: 500 Signature Drinks from the World's Best Bars and Bartenders by Tom Sandham

The Complete Book of Spirits: A Guide to Their History, Production, and Enjoyment by Anthony Dias Blue

Cocktails & Amuse-Bouches for Her & For Him by Daniel Boulud and Xavier Herit

Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar by David Wondrich

Middle Row:

Hemingway & Bailey's Bartending Guide to Great American Writers

The New and Improved Illustrated Bartenders' Manual; or: How to Mix Drinks of the Present Style by Harry Johnson (Espresso Book Machine Reprint)

Michael Jackson's Bar & Cocktail Companion: The Connoisseur's Handbook by Michael Jackson

The Craft of Stone Brewing Co.: Liquid Lore, Epic Recipes, and Unabashed Arrogance by Greg Koch, Steve Wagner & Randy Clemens

The PDT Cocktail Book: The Complete Bartender's Guide from the Celebrated Speakeasy by Jim Meehan

Bitters: A Spirited History of a Classic Cure-All, with Cocktails, Recipes, and Formulas by Brad Thomas Parsons

A Taste for Absinthe: 65 Recipes for Classic and Contemporary Cocktails by R. Winston Guthrie & James F. Thompson

The Bartender's Guide to IBA Official Cocktails by Jenny Reese (Espresso Book Machine Printing)

Punch: The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl by David Wondrich

The Home Distiller's Handbook: Make Your Own Whiskey & Bourbon Blends, Infused Spirits and Cordials by Matt Teacher

A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage

The Decorative Art of Japanese Food Carving: Elegant Garnishes for All Occasions by Hiroshi Nagashima

What to Drink with What You Eat: The Difinitive Guide to Pairing Food with Wine, Beer, Spirits, Coffee, Tea - Even Water - Based on Expert Advice from America's Best Sommeliers by Andrew Dornenburg & Karen Page

The American Cocktail: 50 Recipes that Celebrate the Craft of Mixing Drinks from Coast to Coast by The Editors of Imbibe Magazine

The ABC of Cocktails by Peter Pauper Press

How to Make Your Own Drinks: Create Your Own Alcoholic and Non-Alcoholic Drinks from Fruit Cordials to After-Dinner Liqueurs by Susy Atkins

How to Make a World of Liqueurs by Heather Kibbey & Cheryl Long

You sound exactly like my fiancé. He's gotten better, but when we first started cooking together, I was always a little worried because he didn't seem to understand any of the basic kitchen skills I took for granted.

Although you've mentioned your girlfriend is too stressed/busy to cook, consider finding a time where she's actually free, and ask her to walk you through cooking a meal. Like she can demonstrate something and then you finish up, or she can be the one reading the recipe to you, and you just ask if you are unfamiliar with a term/concept or need help executing a task. That is good because then you'll also sort of learn to do it "her way" and she won't come in later to be like "why the heck are you chopping onions like this?? ahhh" (exaggeration there, but still.) Some people are very particular about kitchen things...

Definitely also recommend Good Eats and other cooking shows. There was a YouTube guy named something like "Bachelor Chef" that was really good and entertaining, and geared toward simple recipes for bachelors (or in your case, younger men with a limited skillset in the kitchen). Videos are good because then you just follow what they do and you begin to know what things look like (the difference between a chop, mince, and julienne, for example).

It might be helpful to pick up a cooking dictionary/glossary. My "cooking bible" is "Joy of Cooking" which has a pretty comprehensive index and list of terms, plus basic recipes for almost everything imaginable. Even in the age of the internet, a few hard-copy cookbooks are nice to have as a quick reference, especially if you don't have an ability or desire to bring your computer into the kitchen.

But anyway, just familiarizing yourself with a lot of the terms that appear in a recipe (such as sauté) and knowing basic measurement techniques and conversions (3 teaspoons to a Tablespoon). Oh yeah, and abbreviations for measurements, although most of them are fairly logical.

But really, just go out there and do it. Start small and/or semi-homemade; someone else mentioned doctoring a pasta sauce - that's a great start. Then begin to branch out, adding more and more different ingredients. Also start to develop your palate - be able to taste a sauce and figure out what flavors it needs to be better (if it's too bland, maybe it needs salt? But maybe it actually needs a little sweetness to balance the tartness of another ingredient). That's an invaluable skill as a home cook, because you can actually make a dish you love instead of someone else making something you sort of like, but would have changed.

Not sure the discipline of paleontology is really geared to answer that question... [EDIT] Most fossils I've tasted are tough, a bit salty and frankly too gritty to be on my foodie shortlist.

There's a few factors that goes into meat flavour and texture:

• Fast twitch vs slow twitch muscles determines how 'red' meat is - that is how much myoglobin it has. Birds that fly a lot have red breast meat when compared to birds that fly only in emergencies. For example, compare the breasts of pigeon (red) and chicken (white). This also works with fish: continuously fast moving fish meat tends to red, meaty flavours (eg tuna) vs most fish that have basically white flesh, but have a red triangle of muscle along the dorsal line like hamachi. Ambush hunters like the crocodile are immobile almost all the time, so their meat is more like chicken breast.
  
• Muscles that are continuously exercised are loaded with connective tissue and are tough. Muscles rarely exercised are tender. Compare shin, shank and shoulder cuts (tough) with fillet steak (tender).
  
• Cooking technique - fast and hot vs slow and cool(er). Tender cuts can be cooked hot and fast (grill, fry) and be excellent as long as the internal temperature stays below the mid 60s (°C) otherwise you are in well-done territory [EDIT] and that is the 'stringy' texture in OPs question. Tough cuts should be cooked for a long time to break connective fibres to gelatine making the meat juicy and soft. For tough cuts, temperature can go up into the 70s without necessarily making the meat dry. Think southern BBQ and sous vide ribs. Tender cuts are typically less flavourful/meaty than tough cuts. Chicken thighs need cooking longer than chicken breast, so getting a perfect roast chicken, with moist breast and tender thighs is hard.
  
• Impact of diet. What the animal eats can influence flavour heavily. Corn-fed and grass-fed cattle taste different, with grass-fed being a stronger, meatier taste. Free-range chickens are gamier than factory birds. Water fowl and crocodile tastes a bit 'fishy'. Pigeon and quail more gamey. Traditionally, pheasants and other birds were left to 'hang' (with guts in) in a cool but not refrigerated environment until the meat 'matures' and the tail feather fall out. This fermentation is the main reason for really gamey taste. Personally, I hate it and feel there are too many 'off' flavours. [EDIT] the really fishy smell of not-quite-fresh fish is TMA, caused by the (I think, bacterial) breakdown of proteins in the fish. I am not referring to this off-flavour when I mean fishy.
  
• Seasonality: Animals in areas with cold winters tend to lay down fat in autumn to help the animal survive to spring. There's a strong preference to eating those animals in autumn when the fat content (and thus flavour) is the highest. Higher fat content allows more cooking techniques to be used, and allows the meat to be cooked hotter while remaining moist and tender. Hunting seasons are mostly in the autumn.
  
  So, with Leaellynasaurus, we essentially have a wild turkey-like animal in a highly seasonal environment, eating plants in a non-aquatic environment. Hunt them near polar winter to maximise their yummy fat.
  
  As non-farmed animal, its major muscle groups on its rear legs got a huge workout - its legs would be best for braising and stewing and would be rich, meaty and a bit gamey. Its shoulders and forelimbs a lot less, and so would be more chicken-breast-like, but smaller in proportion. Some small, fried pieces like the Japaneae karaage might be nice.
  
  [EDIT] On reflection, the tail might produce both the greatest challenge when cooking Leaellynasaurus, but also the greatest opportunity. The tail - one of the largest dinosaur tails relative to body size - is full of connective tissue, making poorly cooked tail as chewy as tough jerky and less palatable. However, cooked 48-72 hours at 75°C sous vide, it would be like the best ox-tail stew - juicy, tender and incredibly rich in flavour. It could take some really strong herbs and spices to really up the richness into the stratosphere.
  
  This is just my best guess as a cook who's read the excellent On Food and Cooking. I'd say, give Leaellynasaura meat a try if you can, although finding a restaurant for such a delicacy is pretty hard these days.

If there are red flags I'm doing in these pictures, please let me know.

edit:

1st batch: Craft-A-Brew APA Kit

2nd batch: Northern Brewer's 1 Gallon Bavarian Hefe Kit

3rd batch: DrinkinSurfer's Milk Oatmeal Stout Recipe @HBT

If I could start over I would go straight to the 3-gallon batches. I hovered around them but I think it's the perfect batch size for beginners -- 1) Most people have a stockpot lying around the kitchen big enough to hold three gallons, 2) The batches are small enough so you don't have to drink two cases of bad brew, but big enough so if you enjoy it [which I'm thoroughly enjoying my first APA], you'll have plenty to taste and rate the evolution of the flavors over various weeks of priming and give out to family friends who are interested to try out what you made, 3) I ordered 3 Gallon Better Bottles for several reasons including worrying about shattering a glass carboy as a newbie. They also qualify for free shipping on MoreBeer's website with purchases above a certain price. 4) Even though I brewed a 5 gallon batch, and since I'm brewing solo, I'm already not looking forward to bottling the whole batch at once so I plan on breaking up bottling between two days.

For resources, I lurk this sub like a crazy stalker. The Daily Q&A is full of information both crucial and minute. I listen to James Spencer's Basic Brewing Radio podcast and practically substituted it for all music recently. It's family friendly and entertaining [I heard the other podcasts aren't so much]. I read Charles Papazian's Complete Joy of Homebrewing, 2nd ed. and For the Love of Hops by Stan Hieronymus to get a better understanding of the hops varieties and characteristics. I plan on reading John Palmer's How to Brew and Ray Daniels Designing Great Beers in the future, as well as Brew Like a Monk. Also, the HomeBrewTalk stickies in the forums provide good picture tutorials for several different styles of brewing.

I got into homebrewing so I can brew the, then, only beer style I liked: Imperial Stouts. But as I learned more about the balance and flavors of beer I surprised myself by branching out to enjoying other beers [even the odd IPA every so often]. My narrow scope of beer has broadened more vast that I ever would've imagined it. My brother got me this beer tasting tool kit used for blind taste tests so I try to keep good records and actively taste and appreciate craft beers. I even keep a couple in my wallet for tasting beers on draft.

I really wish I had an immersion wort chiller, a bigger boil kettle, a mash tun, and a propane burner. Those few equipment pieces hinder me from exploring more advanced style of homebrew. I intend to upgrade to all-grain but making the switch is really expensive. I'm still in the look-to-see-what-I-have-lying-around-the-house phase equipment-wise.

Which leads me to: don't be scared to spend money while DIY-ing. Many of you have probably seen my (and many others', most likely) shitty stir plate. DIY should be a balance of doing things on the cheap, but still making it work and function well. There's no point in DIYing if you're not going to be happy with it and just end up buying the commercial equivalent anyway. That's where I am right now.. I'm currently trying to salvage a cooler [no-spigot] I found in my garage and turn it into a mash tun instead of just buying a new cooler with a plastic, removable spigot. I'm certain it would make DIY easier but slightly more expensive.

But the suckiest thing for me about homebrewing is that I don't have a car so getting local, fresh ingredients and supporting my LHBSs is a piece of PITA bread.

My recommendations:

Videos:

1. Tasty videos! They’re short, so you can binge a bunch, but they’re also straightforward and usually on the simpler side. https://youtu.be/zcOsz-dHFe0
   
   
2. “Food Wishes” on YouTube. I’ve been watching them for over a decade - lighthearted, fun learning that takes you step by step through TONS of dishes. I cook almost daily, and I can credit this guy for most of my inspiration. https://www.youtube.com/user/foodwishes
   
   
3. Binging with Babish & Basics with Babish. Similar to good wishes, but a little more laid back (which is an accomplishment) and a bit higher production quality IMO. https://www.youtube.com/user/bgfilms
   
   
4. Bon Apetit! Also YouTube. So many fun personalities, everyone has different specialties, it’s like learning from experts that feel like your friends. Carla & Molly have the best recipes and explanations IMO, but they’re all wonderful. https://www.youtube.com/user/BonAppetitDotCom
   
   Websites/Books:
   
   These are more advanced, but Serious Eats (google it) never lets you down when it comes to recipes, but they’re definitely more involved (hours to days).
   
   One of the serious eats writers, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is a PhD Biologist (I think biology...) who wrote The Food Lab. This man is the god of cooking. 100% scientifically and experimentally tested, this book will teach you everything you ever need to know about cooking and then some. HIGHLY recommend getting a copy. The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393081087/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_DgUuDb85KVPJ8
   
   Finally, if you don’t want to drop $20 (it’s dropped by ~60% since I bought it! Definitely get a copy!!!) on that, but want to be healthy and learn easy, flavor packed recipes, pick up a copy of The Thug Kitchen. It’s vegan, but the skills are useful anywhere and I’ve yet to find anyone - carnivores included - that’s disliked a single recipe. I got a copy for myself, my girlfriend, a good friend of mine, and my brother.
   
   Thug Kitchen: The Official Cookbook: Eat Like You Give a F*ck (Thug Kitchen Cookbooks) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1623363586/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_miUuDb8363PR2

So I don't actually own these two but I was clicking through the Amazon Gift Guide and they both sparked my interest enough to check them out. They're on my Christmas list for sure haha. :)

• Thug Kitchen
  
  This book is awesome. Seriously awesome. It's wonderfully irreverent, well-illustrated, well-organized, it has plenty of really pitch perfect recipes that are simple and inspiring. Probably my favorite thing about it though is the intro since it has a really great holistic approach to just being in a kitchen and choosing food mindfully which is something I appreciate SO much over just a cookbook that is a list of recipes. All the recipes are vegetarian so just keep that in mind. It's kind of the schtick of the book "hey dumbass, eat more vegetables"
  
  
• The Food Lab - Cooking Through Science
  
  For similar reasons as above, I liked this because it EXPLAINS the process of cooking and not just telling you what to do. This is really helpful for me in understanding what I'm doing and creating a strong mental connection to actually learning it. The intro is once again filled with lots of great insight explaining why you might make the choices you make in a kitchen. It can feel a little bit like a textbook at times, but honestly I kind of like that, especially because it's something I'm highly interested in and motivated to learn. Being both studious and epicurious, I was really drawn to this book as I was learning more about it. I will probably buy this book. The recipes, as I can tell from what I saw, aren't really "health-conscious" per se. I think the bigger downside is the potential to turn into a really really obnoxious food snob. But hey, maybe that's a good thing, too. Lol
  
  

Meat, eggs and dairy are the major restrictions. Most meat dishes I've found are pretty easy to rework with tofu or other proteins because it's usually the spices and sauces you're really craving, anyhow. What you use in place of eggs varies, but baking is easy to rework. I was never a big "egg" person (scrambled eggs omelettes etc) but tofu scrambles are a wonderful thing. Dairy is also pretty easy -- soy/nut milks fill the void pretty happily and a few coffee places carry them, just takes some trial and error to find the types and brands you like. Coconut ice cream etc. is a thing. If you end up missing cheese I've heard nut cheeses are pretty great, but I haven't missed cheese enough to seek them out. There's a book "Artisan Vegan Cheeses" about making them yourself. There are also vegan cheeses like Daiya that can work very well on e.g. pizza. Honey is generally not considered vegan. Harder to empathize with bees, but swapping for agave nectar etc. is easy enough that I haven't looked back. There are a few small nonvegan ingredients you have to watch out for like l-cysteine (duck feathers) and fortified vitamin D3 (usually wool, though there are vegan ways to produce it), but you become familiar with them over time and avoiding them isn't very hard. Is It Vegan is pretty helpful when you're uncertain about something. It helps to get a good cookbook. Honestly seeing all the cool recipes in the Veganomicon is what made me realize that this whole vegan thing is actually pretty fun and painless!

re: Celiac, my diet's been mostly gluten-free just on account of living with my aunt who has Celiac's. It shouldn't be an issue at all. Just avoid seitan which is made from vital wheat gluten. I'm not as informed about the restrictions that come with Type 1 diabetes, but being vegan with type 1 diabetes is definitely a thing. Probably someone with more knowledge of diabetes will come around to give you some information. :)

One problem that many new vegans seem to make is only thinking about veganism in terms of what they "can't have". So the first (really large) chunk of this comment is going to be about changing that mentality, not about your specific food dislikes (but we'll get to that).

> My motivation is purely ethical, the health benefits aren't really a factor for my decision

If that's why you're tying this, when you shift your thinking from focusing on how veganism is "restricting" your life, to thinking about the situation as being about "I get to make a choice today that gives me a little control over what happens in the world, that shows who I am and what I stand for", it can give you motivation to try to weather some of the obstacles or setbacks that might come up.

Now, that said, "motivation" is not necessarily the same thing as "practical life skills". You often need a bit of both to make attempted changes to your life sustainable and stick in the long term. We don't just want to you "weathering the storm"

> I've tried going meat free and made it about a week or two and gave up because I was just starving

for the rest of your life and doing this through some sort of great expenditure of willpower; it's important to try to make it as easy as possible to do, as well.

So how do you do this? You change the focus of your thinking from one of "This is restrictive. I miss X, Y, and Z, (animal product) foods. I'm hungry and I really miss ." to "There's really an abundance and diversity of plant foods out there. I'm hungry and I really miss , but there are so many fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts and seeds, legumes, etc., I can try, why don't I try something new?"

(Another note is that, even when there are situations or things that feel like restrictions, it can seem really counter-intuitive, but sometimes placing "limits" on what you use can do the opposite of what you think: it can open up a world of things you never considered, because it "forces" you to think in more creative ways.)

The world of vegan food is astounding: it's already immense and continues to expand. The substitutions or tricks that some vegan chefs have come up with are mind-blowingly creative. Everything from flaked hearts of palm crab cakes to sous vide tomato sashimi to besan omelettes: there's a vegan version of so many things.

Vegan food that doesn't try to replicate animal products is also diverse in its own right, because plants are diverse, flavorful, and interesting. There are thousands of edible plants; there are only a few animal we use for food in comparison.

One of the simplest substitutions to start with are plant milks: there are dozens of them now, which you may be able to find or make. Compared to the number of animal milks you can commonly get (likely only one, maybe two) there's more diversity in vegan food (and this makes sense, because plants are so much more efficient producers of calories than animals, wherever there's arable land, it's often going to be the case that we can grow a wider variety of plants than we can raise animals).

Spices and herbs are all vegan (they all come from plants, right?), and are so strong tasting that we use a tiny amount to flavor other food (even many animal products) with them.

You may have always known the things I just listed (and other things like it), but you're just not going to pay attention to them in these terms unless you "force" yourself to a little, by purposefully embracing and seeing in a positive light (or a shifted perspective) all the plant-based or nearly plant-based ingredients and dishes that do surround you already.

You don't have to use these exact recipes, especially with such specific food dislikes and when just starting out, but it can be helpful anyway just to see what's out there (and you may also be able to adapt some cooking techniques or dish constructions to ingredients that you do like). So take a quick look at some vegan cooking shows to give you more ideas (these tend toward the more gourmet side, if you're curious in trying to see this in a different way):

• Hot for Food
  
• The Happy Pear
  
• Peaceful Cuisine
  
• Good Eatings
  
  So don't just "restrict your diet" and resign yourself to never eating out again: look up some vegan restaurants! Don't just "restrict your diet" and try to "overcome" any cravings you get through willpower alone: learn some vegan substitutions:
  
  
• Beef, sausage: seitan, commercial vegan meat substitutes
  
• Bacon: Coconut bacon or Bac'n bits
  
• Heavy Cream: Cashew Cream
  
• Butter: Vegan Butter, margarine, or vegetable oil.
  
• Cheese: blended up nuts or other things with flavorings or gelling agents, different for different ones. Mozzarella, Ricotta, Feta, Parmesan, Fancy Cookbooks: 1, 2
  
• Eggs: For straight eggs. For baking with eggs, a bunch of different things depending on what you're making.
  
• Crab cakes: hearts of palm
  
• Tuna salad: mashed chickpeas
  
• Merangues: aquafaba
  
  Do you have to become the world's greatest gourmet vegan chef? No! I'm just listing these things to show some idea of what's out there. I'm just saying veganism doesn't have to be as restrictive as "I'm going to cut out these 10 things from my life, and that's it".
  
  You should be thinking: "I'm going to cut out these 10 things from my life because I disagree with them, but I'm going to add 10 things to my life I agree with. Heck, I'm going to add 100 things to my life that I agree with and want to support."
  
  Even just using google can be really helpful here. If you have a specific dish you want to make, don't just think "Okay I can't have Italian sausage any more, ever". Instead, google "simple vegan recipe" or "vegan substitute". Putting Italian sausage, or whatever else, in for the blanks.
  
  ------
  
  My comment has focused a lot on home cooking (even though it's definitely not the only way to get food), because it's particularly relevant to someone who has specific food aversions. When you cook your own food, you get to more carefully decide what goes in it and what doesn't, so it may be the route for you to go. Again, this doesn't necessarily have to mean gourmet home cooked food, there are some pretty simple vegan recipes out there.
  
  
• https://itslivb.com/category/recipes/
  
• http://thevegan8.com/
  
• https://minimalistbaker.com/
  
• http://www.thevegancorner.com/
  
• /r/vegangifrecipes
  
  The Vegetable Problem:
  
  Many people have trouble eating certain foods, especially some kinds of vegetables.
  
  > There are so many things I can't bring myself to eat, like onions, tomatoes, most peppers
  
  You can slowly introduce vegetables into your diet in a number of ways. You may want to start with ones that aren't green (carrots, sweet potatoes) and slowly move your way into the mild green ones (cucumber, celery, iceberg or romaine lettuce, snap peas, bunches of herbs like parsley, basil, dill) and only lastly move into the dark greens or particularly strong tasting ones (mushrooms, bok choy, broccoli, kale, spinach, beets). You can prepare them in many different ways besides boiling them, to change how they taste (try roasting, for example). If you really can't stand them, you can try methods to outright hide their taste or texture altogether, primarily through blending.
  
  Keep in mind also, that you don't necessarily have to eat absolutely every single vegetable in existence, to be a healthy person. You may be able to get away perfectly fine with never eating a handful if you really can't find a way to integrate them into your diet. All you have to do, is make sure you're getting complete nutrition from other sources (other foods, or supplements). It's a different topic (though it's one you'll want to set aside some time to learn about if you do go vegan), but here is a quick guide to vegan nutrition, and you can use an app or website like https://cronometer.com/ (or ask a doctor for a blood test) to track nutrition in the beginning.
  
  (More below)

I see some good advice people have already given you.

Here's mine:

1. Read recipes just for the sake of reading them: If you take pleasure in cooking, then reading recipes will be fun as well. Even if you don't make them, it gives you some general knowledge about cooking and different processes. It's a bit like picking up another language by watching movies or listening to music. Every bit helps. I have some cookbooks on my nightstand.
   
   
2. Books and resources I highly recommend:
   
   Buzzfeed's food section - lots of good advice and recipes there, amazing walkthroughs and tutorials, too, for all levels
   
   Epicurious's Quick and Easy Section
   
   Jamie Oliver's 30 minute meals Jamie Oliver has a book and series out, showing you how to make an entire meal in 30 minutes. Sure, I think it might take you about an hour instead of 30 minutes, if you're new to cooking, but this series is geared towards simplicity and speed, while not making any compromises when it comes to cooking. The food IS delicious indeed. It's also full of great food hacks, useful even for advanced cooks. Get the book, I recommend it. (He also has another one, Jamie's 15 minute meals, with even simpler ones)
   
   Nigel Slater's Real Food and/or Appetite Two great books which show you how to cook simple, basic things at home, with a great twist. Bonus points: The guy is an amazing writer.
   
   Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything This one is a classic. Get it.
   
   Mark Bittman also has a famous series on youtube for the NYT here Check it out
   
   
   
3. Clean your workspace and prep your meal before you begin cooking. It will save you lots of time and frustration.
   
   
4. Clean as you go along. Nothing is more frustrating than cluttering your kitchen with dirty bowls and utensils until you have no space to move around. You spill something? Wipe it now.
   
   
5. Taste your food as you cook it. Goes without saying that you don't taste things like raw chicken until it's cooked, but taste and adjust seasonings always.
   
   
6. Master the basics first. I'd recommend mastering simple things like cooking eggs, grilled cheese, soups, pasta first. Then move on to more complex things, like doughs, etc.
   
   
7. Don't be afraid of herbs and spices. Read up on what the basic classic combinations are, then go crazy and experiment. You'll get the hang of it soon enough.
   
   
8. Eat what you've made, even if it isn't great, and think about how you can improve it next time. Is the bread too tough? Maybe you've added more flour than needed. Too bland? Add more salt next time, etc.
   
   
9. If you go into baking, be extremely careful with substitutions. Baking is an exact science, unlike cooking (mostly), so it's not very forgiving to swapping ingredients at leisure.
   
   
10. Weigh your ingredients (esp. when baking)
    
    
11. ENJOY and share your food with the people you love
    

I am in the same position you are in. Love cooking, no formal training, but love the science, theory and art behind it all. I have a few books that I find to be indispensable.

• How to Cook Everything and How to Cook Everything: Vegetarian by Mark Bittman are two of my favorite recipe books. Loads of pretty simple recipes, lots of suggestions for modifications, and easy to modify yourself. Covers a bit of technique and flavor tips, but mostly recipes.
  
  
• CookWise by Shirley Corriher (the food science guru for Good Eats!) - great book that goes much more into the theory and science behind food and cooking. Lots of detailed info broken up nicely and then provides recipes to highlight the information discussed. Definitely a science book with experiments (recipes) added in to try yourself.
  
  
• Professional Baking and Professional Cooking by Wayne Gissen - Both of these books are written like textbooks for a cooking class. Filled with tons of conversion charts, techniques, processes, and detailed food science info. Has recipes, but definitely packed with tons of useful info.
  
  
• The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters - this is not much on theory and more recipes, but after using many of the recipes in this book and reading between the lines a great deal, this taught me a lot about how great food doesn't require tons of ingredients. Many foods and flavors highlight themselves when used and prepared very simply and this really shifted my perspective from overworking and overpreparing dishes to keeping things simple and letting the food speak for itself.
  
  And mentioned in other threads, Cooking for Geeks is a great book too, On Food and Cooking is WONDERFUL and What Einstein Told His Chef is a great read as well. Modernist Cuisine is REALLY cool but makes me cry when I see the price.

Women generally enjoy stuff that falls into any of the following categories:

• Currency
  
  
• Shiny things
  
  
• Chocolate
  
  So, obviously, chocolate dollars are the perfect gift. Wrap in a fancy box.
  
  I've given it as a birthday gift to a friend and it was very well received. Also: the women at the party spent a while pouring the chocolates over one another on her bed. All in all, I would say it was a success.
  
  You should follow the others' advice though -- take a look at our ideas, but do give some thought to what she enjoys and what would really be special.
  
  I felt idiotic one season when it failed to occur to me to make her a bracelet. She wore a bunch from her friends from all over. Stupid, stupid wasted opportunity.
  
  I made a mahogany puzzle box one Winter. It looked a little like this one. I put a hanayama puzzle in it. Does she like puzzles? They're delightful and expertly designed.
  
  I started a bookmarks folder a while ago with ideas for presents so that I wouldn't have to scramble for ideas ever again. (I suggest this, too. What are the chances of stumbling across something unique in the short portion of the year you're on the lookout for presents? Foresight, my friend!)
  
  Here are a bunch, hope something catches your eye!
  
  
• Fold a dollar into a heart
  
  
• You can get a book of these. She may enjoy that.
  
  
• Unreasonable extravagance as it pertains to soap
  
  
• These go over well. I guess you would surprise her with them afterward. Wouldn't have the same effect if she pulled them from under the tree. Also, protip: don't put rosepetals on beds. Ruins the bedding.
  
  
• If she's a lit-geek, she may find these fantastic.
  
  
• Does she enjoy cooking? Does she want to learn/improve? 1 2
  
  
• Does she enjoy beer? You could use that to find exotic beers for her, or you could get the poster and propose you two attempt to catch 'em all.
  
  
• Have you seen Trigun? Has she seen Trigun? WATCH IT. The original can be found here.
  
  
• Does she find cleverness entertaining? Aaron Sorkin's dialogue is some of the best I've ever seen. Consider "The West Wing" and "Charlie Wilson's War"
  
  
• Does she like science fiction and/or fantasy? I'm getting this poster printed out, and giving it to someone with a marker and a gift card for amazon (I know they have a kindle. Christmas morning activities -- deciding which to buy!)
  
  
• The Fall (movie)
  
  
• Is she interested in travelling? Check out Departures on OLN.
  
  
• Consider getting her one of these: Trine, Braid Trine is a beautiful toy (1 - 3 players). Braid is fun and, genuinely, perhaps the most moving piece of art I've ever experienced. Books, music, movies, plays -- Braid tops many of them.
  
  
• Has she read Calvin and Hobbes? Have you?!

tl;dr: Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything is the best cookbook to get as a beginner, because we expect international and vegetarian recipes along with the old meat and potatoes standards. More subjective reasoning follows below.

I think one of the most important things when selecting a universal cookbook early on is the quality, yet simplicity of the recipes, and how well things are explained. If you make something, as a beginner, you need to know it is going to turn out good, so when you return to the same cookbook later, you are confident the next recipe will be as high of quality. It is also nice to get compliments from others on your cooking, and a well made cookbook can assure this.

Julia Child's cookbooks are certainly of a very high quality, but French cuisine is not suited for beginners, or even novices, IMO. The Joy of Cooking has an enduring legacy brought from its quality of recipes and consistency, and is great for those mainstay dishes that haven't changed in 100 years (Silver Palate Cookbook, Fannie Farmer Cookbook are others in the Joy of Cooking realm). The problem is, tastes have changed since Joy of Cooking came out. It managed to incorporate the introduction of a few international food crazes into its pages, namely Italian and French. The Chinese it incorporates (eg. Chow Mein, etc) are nothing like what we expect from Chinese food today. Let alone Thai, Indian, Japanese, Mexican, Mediterranean, and so on. We Americans today have a much more different palate (fresh/local, international, vegetarian, etc) than what the Joy of Cooking incorporated, even in its most updated versions.

Therefore, I nominate a new Joy of Cooking, for modern times. Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. It hits every one of my barometers for a perfect cookbook. Delicious, easy recipes, of high quality. It is very dense in terms of number of recipes per page (not one recipe, with its photo on the facing page), yet easy to read, because one recipe is accompanied by 3-5+ variations to greatly modify it (eg. rice pilaf recipe, becomes Mexican rice, becomes whole grain pilaf, etc). Everything, from technique, to selecting vegetables/meats/etc., to improvising basics a la Alton Brown is covered. The recipes cover a wide gamut, from vegetarian/vegan, to international cuisines across the globe, to the mainstay standards (with interesting variations to improve/change them). And EVERY single recipe I have made for someone else has garnered wonderful compliments, and has been the best I have made to date.

Okay. Welcome to the wonderful world of chemistry and fire that results in yummy! Hopefully this is going to be a nice, little primer for the absolute essentials for a working kitchen.

The equipment you absolutely must have:

A 10" skillet. Thick-bottomed (the thin ones just warp and get unusable)

An 8" skillet. Sometimes you've gotta cook two things at once.

A quart pot, with lid. A second one is a smart idea, but it can wait.

A spatula.

A wooden spoon.

A liquid measuring cup. I'd get a 2-cup one first, and a 4-cup one later.

Measuring cups. Don't try to get away with measuring liquids with your dry cups. It always ends in tears.

Measuring spoons.

The New Best Recipe. It's like The Joy of Cooking, except more comprehensive, based on the chemical science of food, and half the price. Also, the recipes are frickin' DYNAMITE.

A quality 8" chef's knife. This is a great first knife, and will last you many happy years. I know the 6" one is cheaper. Trust me--you'll be glad for the bigger knife in the long run.

TWO cutting boards of a reasonable size. Mark one as being for raw meat only.

A pair of tongs.

A vegetable peeler

Your basic cooking staples that go into making more or less everything:

Salt.

Pepper

Garlic powder. NOT Garlic salt.

Chili powder

Oil. Olive Oil tastes better, but Canola is more forgiving to learn on.

A cheap-ass bottle of Cabernet. Some of your food's chemical compounds are alcohol-soluble, but not water-soluble. A little cheap booze will liberate them.

Onions

Canned tomatoes. I go with diced. No salt added is a plus.

Flour. All purpose is good.

Sugar

Eggs

Rice

Milk

Boneless/Skinless chicken. Breasts or thighs, your choice.

Chicken stock. The granulated or powdered stuff keeps well and is easier to work with than the cubes.

So, I'll get to a starter recipe in a minute, but before I do, I want to talk about a couple of kitchen axioms before we get there. Follow these guidelines across the board and you'll have an easy time of things.

Read the whole recipe before you start cooking. Always! Every time! Seriously! You'll fuck it up otherwise!

When you're cooking on the stove, if you think you're at the right temperature, decrease the heat. The most basic screw-up is cooking your food at too high a heat.

Never, ever, ever cut raw meat on the same cutting board as anything else. You'll make yourself and others sick.

Do your prep work before you start to actually cook. That means cut your veggies, measure your spices and liquids, and so forth.

Keep your knife razor-sharp. Most kitchen injuries come as a result of dull knives. If it feels like you have to work to cut something, your knife needs to be steeled (don't worry about it for now) or sharpened.

Clean your gear as soon as you're done eating.

The chef's knife NEVER goes in the dishwasher. Dish detergent will screw up your blade.

And now, a recipe to get you started: Parmesan Chicken Risotto.

Ingredients:

1 chicken breast, thawed and patted dry with paper towels.

2 Tablespoons of oil

3/4 Cup of rice

1 cup of chicken broth

1/4 cup of cooking wine

1/2 cup of SHREDDED Parmesan. The grated stuff doesn't work quite right.

1 onion, diced fine.

2 teaspoons of garlic powder.

A carrot, peeled and chopped fine.

1 teaspoon of dried thyme. You can skip this if you really have to, but it's better with.

Salt & pepper, to taste.

Step 1: Put a tablespoon of oil in a quart pot and turn your stovetop to medium-high (a 7, at most). When the oil looks kind of shimmery, but isn't smoking, put the chicken breast in. Let it sit and cook for about 6 minutes. Flip it over with a pair of tongs, and give it another 6 minutes. Take it out and set it aside for now.

Step 2: Turn the heat down to medium-low (like, 3 or 4) and take the pot off of the heat. Let the pot cool down some, then add the other tablespoon of rice. Once it's warmed up, add in your onions and garlic powder, and stir to combine well. Once the sizzling sound has died down, put the pot back on your burner and cook for 8 minutes. If the onion starts to brown at all, take it off the heat and let it cool down. You're looking for translucent white onions with no browning at all. (BTW: This is called sweating, and it's a fundamental cooking technique. Learn it and practice it, because it's the key to almost any dish you cook with onions, celery, peppers, garlic, and a wide variety of other vegetables.)

Step 3: Add in the thyme, carrot, and the rice, and stir vigorously with a wooden spoon. Scrape up the brown stuff on the bottom of the pan that's leftover from the chicken. It's tasty. Cook the rice for about 3 minutes, stirring very frequently, but not all the time.

Step 4: Add the brother and wine, and stir to make sure that no rice is sticking to the bottom of the pan. Lid the pot, bring to a slow boil over slightly higher heat (4, or 5 at the most), and set a timer for 10 minutes. Stir it three times during the 10 minutes.

Step 5: Put the chicken breast on top of the cooking rice, put the lid back on, and set the timer for 15 minutes. Stir it four times during this period. Move the chicken around as needed.

Step 6: Take the pot off the heat, remove the chicken, and stir the Parmesan into the rice. Take two forks and shred the chicken, then put that into the rice. Let it sit for a couple of minutes for the cheese to melt and everything to come down from scaldingly-hot to pleasantly warm.

Step 7: Eat.

I'm a very visual learner, so I got good by watching Julia Child. She regularly peppers her shows with advice about how to get good at something, and how to customise a recipe when things go wrong, or when you want to switch things up a bit. She's got a decidedly French leaning, but French food is a very good place to start anyway. The full set of DVDs of The French Chef can get had for about $50 from ebay.

There's an episode where she was featuring four recipes for potatoes. She was trying to make a potato cake type of thing. She'd added plenty of butter to the pan, and threw in the boiled lightly crushed potatoes. She didn't let it set for a very long time, but tried to flip the whole thing over in one piece. Half of it ended up on the stove. Without skipping a beat, she scooped it off the stove, threw it back in the pan, and said the iconic line "When you're alone in the kitchen, who's going to see?" She then proceeded to dump it into a dish, throw in a load of cream and a few cubes of cheese, and instructed you to let it hang out under the broiler so that it gets bubbly and crisped up. She mentioned that you shouldn't ever apologise for how something came out, and just carry on as if that new thing is what you'd intended all along.

Whenever she had the ability to do so, she'd show you how to do something from scratch, including how to filet a fish, how to separate out a whole chicken, and how to break down larger steaks into serving sized portions. And, because you're watching her do it all for you, you get an idea of what it is you're looking for, step by step.

Another great resource (although their recipes are white, and tend towards the bland) is America's Test Kitchen's TV Show cookbook. On the show itself, they don't go into technique very much, but they certainly do so in the book. There are large, colourful pictures about how each step of the cooking process should look, and hundreds of recipes to try out. They thoroughly test out each recipe repeatedly, using tools that the average home cook will have access to, and taste test the results. It's an excellent resource to have on hand. You can generally find it used for about $20.

If you're curious to try out baking your own bread, I cannot highly recommend enough Bread by Eric Treuille.

https://www.amazon.com/Bread-Eric-Treuille/dp/1409352722/

It has HUGE full colour photos of the final product, and lots of foundational advice about the art of baking bread. They discuss various flours, how to combine them into an existing recipe, and the effects they have on the final loaf. It's one that I turn to whenever I have a craving for home made bread, and it's never lead me wrong.

If you want SOLID advice about how to quickly build up your cooking repertoire, Mike Ruhlman's Ratio is your best bet.

https://www.amazon.com/Ratio-Simple-Behind-Everyday-Cooking/dp/1416571728/

He realised that most basic recipes can be broken down into ratios, so that if you need to scale up or scale down, you can do so very quickly. His technique to teach you how to get comfortable with ratios is very good.

Another EXCELLENT place to start learning to build your own recipes is Julia's Kitchen Wisdom.

https://www.amazon.com/Julias-Kitchen-Wisdom-Essential-Techniques/dp/0375711856/

She gives some basic techniques on foundational recipes, and then tells you how to tweak the recipes to work with whatever you've got on hand. It's less a by the books recipe compendium, and more of a philosophical understanding of how recipes work, and what flavours should go together.

Speaking of flavour. Get The Flavour Bible by Karen Page.

https://www.amazon.com/Flavor-Bible-Essential-Creativity-Imaginative/dp/0316118400/

There are hundreds of ingredients, and the things that go well with them. Instead of giving you a recipe, it gives you ideas of things to combine together, so that they go together in delicious ways.

If you are going to get a ruler, go ahead and get a kitchen ruler:

https://www.amazon.com/Mercer-Culinary-Rules-Mini/dp/B00DT1XYDM/

It's small, but it has a TON of great information on it. Very useful to gauge whether or not you're hitting your marks for whatever size you're aiming for.

Wow, 150 pounds is awesome! Congrats! the last bit is always the worst, I've lost 50 so far and want another 20. It seems like the first 50 flew off. But it's getting there.

As for recipes, I have looked through a number of cook books and they are all good and bad, and you never know which it will be till it's made. Thug Kitchen, as someone else mentioned, is a pretty good one, Veganomicon was considered the vegan bible for a while, still full of great advice and great recipes. It is Vegan but if you want you can always add in the dairy you like, or just enjoy it vegan as most taste awesome anyway and a little more healthy just means faster weight loss. ;)

Oh and, in case you haven't discovered this yet as it can help a lot, tofu isn't evil. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge fan of the pillowy tofu most people make, I've gotten used to it and sometimes enjoy it (especially in Chinese Mapo Tofu with fake ground round) but there's a trick to making tofu awesome! Freeze it and then bake it. I buy the firm or extra firm tofu, open it, get rid of what water there is, throw two or three (trust me, you'll want them) in a ziploc bag and freeze it for at least 24 hours (you can do less, but the longer the better). Defrost it, I throw the bag in a bowl of hot water for a couple hours and just replace hot water halfway through. Once it's defrosted completely (even the middle), give it a nice gentle but firm squeeze over the sink. It's like a sponge at this point, but a fragile one so don't squeeze too hard.

Many just use it like this, and it's not bad, good for soups especially as it soaks up flavour really well. But I like to do one more step, first turn your oven to 300-350 degrees Fahrenheit (150-175 celcius) and then I slice the tofu block into whatever shape I want, I usually just do half inch slices, then I throw it in whatever marinade I want to eat that night (soy sauce, olive oil, garlic and poultry seasoning is one of my favourites) and after it has soaked up the marinade I lay the slices out on a baking sheet or cookie pan and bake them for 20-25 minutes with a flip in the middle. They will turn into pretty decent little fake meat pieces, they don't have the texture quiet right but it's enough, and it's lots of protein as well which is always good.

Sorry for the length, but that tofu thing has made my life much happier and I only learned it after 9 years of being a vegetarian haha.

This is going to be the opposite of what you want to hear. But, you asked for it and I respect that. I think that there's no substitute for going about this old school and traditionally. The good news is that you can mostly do this for yourself, by yourself.

If you're disinclined (due to time or for another reason) to enroll in a culinary program get yourself either The Professional Chef or Martha Stewart's Cooking School

I know what you're thinking, "Martha Stewart? What am I? A housewife from Iowa?" Fuck that. I've been fortunate to have met and worked with Martha Stewart she's smart enough to know what she doesn't know and that particular book was actually written by a CIA alum and very closely follows the first year or so that you'd get in a program like that. It starts with knife work and then moves on to stocks and sauces. This particular book has actually been criticized as being too advance for people who have no idea what they're doing so, despite appearances, it may be perfect for you. If you want to feel more pro and go a little deeper, get the CIA text but know that it's more or less the same info and frankly, the pictures in the MSO book are really great. Plus, it looks like Amazon has them used for $6 bucks.

These resources will show you HOW to do what you want and they follow a specific, traditional track for a reason. Each thing that you learn builds on the next. You learn how to use your knife. Then, you practice your knife work while you make stocks. Then, you start to learn sauces in which to use your stocks. Etc. Etc. Etc. Almost like building flavors... It's all part of the discipline and you'll take that attention to detail into the kitchen with you and THAT'S what makes great food.

Then, get either Culinary Artistry or The Flavor Bible (Both by Page and Dornenburg. Also consider Ruhlman's Ratio (a colleague of mine won "Chopped" because she memorized all the dessert ratios in that book) and Segnit's Flavor Thesaurus. These will give you the "where" on building flavors and help you to start to express yourself creatively as you start to get your mechanics and fundamentals down.

Now, I know you want the fancy science stuff so that you can throw around smarty pants things about pH and phase transitions and heat transfer. So...go get Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking THAT is the bible. When the people who run the Ferran Adria class at Harvard have a question, it's not Myhrvold that they call up, it's Harold McGee. While Modernist Cuisine always has a long, exciting complicated solution to a problem I didn't even know I had, when I really want to know what the fuck is going on, I consult McGee and you will too, once you dig in.

Another one to consider which does a great job is the America's Test Kitchen Science of Good Cooking this will give you the fundamental "why's" or what's happening in practical situations and provides useful examples to see it for yourself.

Honestly, if someone came to me and asked if they should get MC or McGee and The Science of Good Cooking and could only pick one and never have the other, I'd recommend the McGee / ATK combo everyday of the week and twice on Tuesdays.

Good luck, dude. Go tear it up!

Basically gonna echo most of the answers already posted, but just to pile on:

• 8" chef's knife. 10" is longer than may be comfortable and 12" is longer than necessary, but 7" may start to feel a little short if she's ever slicing large melon or squash. I'm a casual knife nerd and I have knives by Wusthof, Victorinox, Shun and Mac. My favorite.
  
  
• This Dutch oven. Enameled and cast iron just like the Le Creuset that a few other comments have mentioned, but much, much cheaper. I own two and they're both great. I also have the non-enameled version for baking bread, but I don't recommend it for general use unless you're a Boy Scout. Here's an entertaingly-written blog post comparing the Lodge vs. Le Creuset in a short rib cookoff.
  
  
• This cutting board and this cutting board conditioner. The importance of an easy and pleasant to use prep surface can't be overstated. I'm listing this third on purpose; this is one of the most important things your kitchen can have. A recipe that calls for a lot of chopping is no fun when you're fighting for counter space to do the chopping, or doing it on a shitty plastic board.
  
  
• A cheap scale and a cheap thermometer. Seriously, these are as important as the cutting board.
  
  
• Just gonna crib this one right off /u/Pobe420 and say cheapo 8–10" (I recommend 10–12" but that's my preference) nonstick skillet. One note I'd add is that pans with oven-safe handles are a bit more dual-purpose than pans with plastic or rubberized handles. You can't finish a pork chop in the oven in a skillet with a rubberized handle. But one could say you shouldn't be cooking a pork chop on a nonstick pan to begin with. The important thing is to keep this one cheap: you're going to be replacing it every couple of years, there's no getting around that. For my money $30 or less, and $30 is pretty expensive for these things.
  
  
  

• Cookbooks
  

  Nothing inspires cooking like a good cookbook collection. The great news about cookbooks is that they're often bought as gifts or souvenirs and they make their way onto the used market cheap and in great condition. Here are my suggestions for a great starter shelf:
  
  

1. The Food Lab by J. Kenji López-Alt. I kind of hate that this is my number one recommendation, but I don't know your wife and I do know J. Kenji López-Alt. This one is brand new so you're unlikely to find it used and cheap, but as a catch-all recommendation it has to take first place. Moving on to the cheap stuff:
   
   
2. Regional French Cooking by Paul Bocuse. This is possibly the friendliest authoritative book on French food out there, and a hell of a lot easier to just dive into than Julia Child (Julia is the expert, and her book is an encyclopedia). Bocuse is the undisputed king of nouvelle cuisine and people like Eric Ripert and Anthony Bourdain (so maybe a generation ahead of you and I) came from him. Paul Bocuse is French food as we know it, and yet this book—an approachable, coffee-table sized thing—still has a recipe for fucking mac and cheese. It's outstanding.
   
   
3. Theory & Practice / The New James Beard by James Beard. These will completely cover your entire library of American cooking. Nothing else needed until you get region-specific. When you do, go for something like this.
   
   
4. Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan. When she died, the NYT ran a second obituary that was just her recipe for bolognese.
   
   
5. Christ, top five. Who gets 5th? I'm going with From Curries To Kebabs by Madhur Jaffrey. Don't get bamboozled into buying "Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Bible" which is the same book, repackaged and priced higher. You want the one with the hot pink dust jacket, it's unmistakeable. This is one of those end-all books that you could cook out of for the rest of your life. It covers almost every diet and almost every country that Beard and Bocuse don't.
   
   
6. Honorable mentions: Here come the downvotes. Pok Pok by Andy Ricker. If you're American and you want to cook Thai, this is the one. Ten Speed Press can go home now. The Book of Jewish Food by Claudia Rosen (so close to making the list). I shouldn't need to say much about this; it's the book of diasporic Jewish food, which means it covers a lot of time and almost every possible country. It's a no-brainer. Thai Food by David Thompson (a perfect oral history of Thai food for English speakers, only it doesn't include Pok Pok's precise measurements, which in practice I've found important). Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish. Not for someone who just wants to become a baker, this book is for someone who wants to make Ken Forkish's bread. And for a casual bread baker I can't imagine a better introduction. Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table by Mai Pham. Andrea Nguyen is out there and Andrea Nguyen is awesome, but I really like Mai Pham's book. It's accessible, reliable and regional. You don't get the dissertation-level breakdown on the origins of chicken pho that you get from Andrea, but the recipe's there, among many others, and it's fucking outstanding. Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. This vegan cookbook is dope as hell and will really expand your imagination when it comes to vegetables. This could actually have been number five.

When I started out, I relied most of the Fannie Farmer cookbook, to be honest, but something like The Joy of Cooking, Bittman's How To Cook Everything or Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for the Food would be good, too. Joy is classic, simple recipes with clear instructions, aimed at beginners. Brown is excellent at explaining the science behind why reciepes work the way they do. Bittman emphasizes showing a technique, then showing lots of simple variations, allowing you to learn a skill and then apply it to different ingredients.

You might also take a look at Rhulman's Ratio --- for a certain sort of personaility, that book can be like a lightbulb going off. It's all about the common principles that underlay many sorts of recipes. Some people find it too abstract, especially if they're just starting (most actual recipes break his rules a little, one way or another), but if you're more of an abstract logical thinker it can be quite helpful.

But cooking in general can be quite diffucult to pick up from books --- techniques that are quite simple to demonstrate can be super difficult to describe. Youtube/the internet can be your friend, here --- Jacques Pepin, America's Test Kitchen, and Good Eats are all good at demonstrating and explaining technique. Check out the Food Wishes youtube channel, too --- Chef John is a former culinary instructor, and he demostrates a lot of classic techniques in the reciepes he does.

At the end of the day though, cooking's like Carnigie Hall. Think of stuff you like to eat, find a recipe for that stuff, and just go for it. If you start off making things you know and like, then it will be easier to tell if you're getting it right as you go along, and that I think is the most crucial and most difficult part of becoming a skilled cook --- being able to tell when something's ready vs. when it needs 5 more minutes, being able to tell if the batter looks right before you cook it, if something needs more seasoning and if so what kind. All that's mostly a karate kid, wax on, wax off thing --- you just got to keep making stuff in order to have the experience to tell when something's right.

I have to agree the BBS method isn't exactly the most traditional, but if it's all the equipment you have then go for it.

As for starting with all grain - I'm completely against that. It's pretty complicated (especially with trying to get sanitation and other skills right the first time) and most people aren't willing or able to drop $400 on equipment on a hobby they just started out with.

Now, to OP's questions:

>does anybody have any experience with the Brooklyn Brew Shop's kits?

Unfortunately, no. But they seem simple enough, and if you've read the book like you said, you should have no problem with their kit.

>Was the information in the B.B.S.'s book sufficient to get brewing with their kits?

Yes, should be. But keep in mind they're probably glossing over some details (I'm just guessing here since their method is a bit nontraditional and it's a one gallon kit)

>Is there something else I should read in addition to my book before I get brewing?

You don't have to read anything before brewing. It sounds like you've got a good handle on this kit, but if you're looking for more detailed books about brewing definitely check out The Complete Joy of Homebrewing - more than likely it will encourage you to switch to 5gal brewing. It'll be easier and more fun than your 1 gal batches.

>Is there anything else I should get to make the whole process easier or more efficient?

Honestly, I think you'll find the 1gal equipment kit is not going to be enough. It's a fantastic starter/learning system, but once you brew and read The Complete Joy of Homebrewing you'll probably want a lot more equipment. Come talk to us then :)

In the meantime, welcome to the hobby, and happy brewing!!

I don't think the truth of my claim and /u/Mutand1s post are not mutually exclusive. I wasn't referring to whether the beer had this mythic provenance so much as the taste of that beer you call IPA is one that will hold up to heat and I think there is a difference. The story about developing this special formula for the voyage sounds a little too clever by half considering that climate and other conditions were the reasoning behind every style of beer.

Brewing, like baking is science as much as art. Humidity, heat and altitude will effect your bread and your beer. This whole thing about inventing a beer is probably a bit overstating things because if your making beer that will go in the hull of a ship sailing for months through the tropics you know that heat will be a factor and you would choose a traditional style off the shelf to meet your needs. Since you are a brewer; you might even add your own twist but that's just it right, you start off with something that has been refined for years and years and you might tweak it a bit with more fermentable sugars but it's mostly still the style someone has been drinking for years.

If you think about it a little bit though this is a question that can seem more obvious as you drill down. The history of brewing, like baking is one of refinement and an effort to bring consistency. There is a reason we arrive at Wonder Bread and Budweiser in the 20th century. These are two very refined and difficult to realize pinnacles of their craft that reflect the eras obsession with science and industrialization to create millions of items that are exactly the same and transparent enough to reveal flaws, remember this is the era that brings us Six Sigma. Try and brew a Bud/Miller/Coors beer or bake a loaf of Wonder at home and you will see how incredibly hard it is. Make fun of them all you want but these two foods were the subject of thousands of years of intellectual evolution.

Which brings us to why an IPA is hoppy and a little stronger than its counterparts. Someone mentions in this conversation that the beer was simply adapted from an existing traditional style, which makes sense. You take into consideration what the characteristics of the voyage will be and you come to the conclusion that a beer that holds up to summer is your recipe.

If you look at German and English styles that are brewed to stand up to summer heat and they tend to be stronger and hoppier than the beers made for other seasons. This is because hops, in general, was added to do a few important things for beer, stabilize flavor and mask off flavors (go to the end of page 262 in the link). High heat is no friend to beer that is sitting in a barrel and higher alcohol and hops is there to help counter and mask the effects. As a historical matter this is what hops is introduced for, make beer taste better under various conditions, help the brewer to attain a level of consistent quality.

Certain yeasts can help too, ale is better for warmer temps than lager. So you pick a hoppy beer brewed to stand up to summer heat for an ocean voyage. Whether or not that was some intricate formula or just an off the shelf solution is an interesting debate, but not the whole story. As you can see from just about any book on brewing history and styles, From Michael Jackson's World Guide to Beer to Charlie Papazian's The Complete Joy of Home Brewing you will see that styles came about as a result of the conditions for which they were brewed. Bud/Miller/Coors are brewed the way they are because of the technology that allows for strict and precise measurement throughout the manufacturing/brewing process. Ale is more forgiving and IPA is probably the most forgiving style for a new brewer to make because you can screw a lot of stuff up and still get it right. That's also the reason why that kind of beer is ideal to sit in the hull of a ship until you get to India.

My staple dishes are curries, Indian and Thai most recently. I love some curry! You can use tofu, chickpeas, beans, lentils, etc. It's a great way to use up the rest of your veggies and clean the fridge. Curries are so flavorful and easy to make. There are even premade sauces if you don't want to make them from scratch.

• Patak's
  
  
• Archer Farms Curry Sauces
  
  
• Kitchens of India
  
  
• Thai Kitchens Curry Pastes
  
  My favorite cookbooks have been:
  
  
• Thug Kitchen: The Official Cookbook: Eat Like you Give a F*ck
  
  
• Vegan Richa's Indian Kitchen: Traditional and Creative Recipes for the Home Cook Her blog is really great as well: http://www.veganricha.com/
  
  
• Chloe's Vegan Italian Kitchen
  
  Some other blogs/youtubers I would recommend highly are:
  
  
• Hot for Food Lauren Toyota also has a blog: http://www.hotforfoodblog.com/ (My favorite recipe youtuber)
  
  
• Edgy Veg
  
  
• Mary's Test Kitchen
  
  
• So You're Dating a Vegan
  
  
• Sweet Potato Soul
  
  
• Show Me the Curry
  
  I am always branching out to new foods, Ethiopian is great for vegan cooking as is Indian, Thai, Italian, and Vietnamese. Soon you will take recipes you love and veganize them. Google search recipes you love and just preface it with vegan, the possibilities are endless.
  
  Build up your spice rack! Amazon is great for this, a great suggestion made to me was buy 1 new thing each time you grocery shop to expand your recipes and cooking.
  
  Thanks for your compassionate choice to join us and feel free to ask any questions you may have.

My advice is to start simple.

I know it sounds like I'm being a buzzkill, but hear me out. A great beer isn't defined by the number of ingredients, but rather the harmony of those ingredients and the skill of the brewer. Look at Deschutes' homebrew recipes. Most of their non-specialty beers only have 3-4 items on their grain bill.

Also, if you only have a few ingredients (2-row, a specialty grain or two, carapils if necessary, and one hop variety) it will be easier for you to identify the character of those ingredients in the final beer. This is the first step in knowing your grains and hops. A malt/hop chart can only tell you so much. I agree that it's overwhelming at first, which is why my advice is to constrain your first few recipes to just a few ingredients.

Once you understand the character of the more common malts and hops, it will be much easier for you to start experimenting and adding more complexity to your recipes. You will also have more confidence that the recipe you put together will actually taste like what you want.

My method was to first start brewing recipes aimed at a very specific style. I picked up Designing Great Beers and brewed a few different styles out of that book. Since I knew what the styles were supposed to taste like and I only used a small set of ingredients, I learned how those ingredients contributed to the end result. Once I built up a baseline I felt much more comfortable experimenting. For example, I brewed a very good IPA and tweaked the recipe slightly to make a ginger pale ale that also turned out really great.

As for things like amount of malts and hops, boil time, etc. Get yourself some brewing software like beersmith. That will help you calculate IBUs and whatnot. Beersmith also comes with an inventory that has some info about the max percentage you should use for a particular grain in a batch.

To conclude, keep in mind that it won't all fall together right away. You'll research a ton and then you'll research some more. Just keep making recipes and keep brewing and eventually it will start to click.

I'm going to give a little balance to what /u/brock_lee said.

It is very easy to make good beer. It is really hard to make great beer. Doing a partial volume boil with extract and some steeping grains, using top-off water to chill it and then tossing in some dry yeast and setting it in a closet to ferment is how most of us start. Brewing that way produces good beer. The initial beer you make should make you happy.

Many of us however aren't happy with just good beer, we want to make great beer. Like the sauce example above, while making tomato sauce using paste is good enough for most people some people want to go above and beyond, selecting the right type of tomatoes, boiling them down and doing everything with more care and attention to detail.

So in the pursuit of great beer: we set up fermentation temperature control; grow our yeast with yeast starters; use RO water that we control the mineral additions to; switch over to an all-grain brewing method; put everything in to kegs to better control carbonation; use conical stainless steel fermenters; setup electronic brewery controls to better control variables during brewing; crushing our own grain to better control the sugar extraction during mashing. All of these things produce better beer so most of us still have that "one last upgrade" to make to the brewery before we are "done". So like many hobbies there is plenty of enjoyment out there for cheap and a deep dark well of effort, technique and polish out there if you decide to develop your hobby into a craft on a never ending journey for the perfect beer.

Oh, and for a great collection of recipes starting out I would recommend Brewing Classic Styles. A nice wide range of recipes that all have both extract and all-grain versions.

I love baking :) I mostly do artisan breads and cookies, and homemade pizza (good pizza starts with good crust!!) but every now and then I'll get on a pie or cupcake kick for a little while.

Ciabatta is probably my favorite bread to make Eat. I also really love homemade pretzels because not only are they delicious, but I can play around with shaping them and make something that is really pretty as well as tasty.

My favorite thing ever is This baking stone It's a lot more expensive than many other stones, but it has been totally worth it. I had 4 others before I finally picked this one up that all ended up cracking in half. This one has lasted me 3 years so far, and I can actually WASH the thing without fear of it exploding next time I use it.

mm... I would also recommend This book to anyone interested in learning to make bread. Its really good and easy to follow, and you can really feel the authors passion for the art.

I'm fairly inexperienced as a homebrewer, but I can tell you where to find some good information. Most people seem to love Jamil Zainasheff's recipes. Here are some samples with links to his webcast and there are more in his book, Brewing Classic Styles, that he wrote with John Palmer, author of How to Brew (for the updated edition, you have to buy the book). How to Brew is the best book for starting out, imho, but there are some other great books, too, particularly if you move to an all grain setup and get more comfortable with brewing. There are also solid recipes in Zymurgy, the American Homebrewers Association magazine, and Brew Your Own is a pretty good magazine, too. HomeBrewTalk is a friendly, knowledgeable and active community and they're always up for sharing and helping out. There are a lot more websites out there, of course.

Anyway, I'm sure that some redditors have some good recipes to share.

/u/eightwebs is in the ballpark, but dropped the ball on a couple things. Let's start from the top.

Brewing your own beer is an amazing, fun, rewarding hobby. I've been doing it for 4 years. To start out, you'll need to get a beginners kit (like this one) which will give you all the specialty equipment you need to make 5 gallons of beer (about 2 cases). You'll also need ingredients which can be found on the same website.

Your first batch will be simple. You will more than likely be brewing extract (which is similar to making a cake from a boxed cake mix -- the finer details are taken care of for you, you just have to follow some easy directions). It will take about 4-5 weeks to be ready. It needs to spend 1-2 weeks fermenting, and then 2 weeks in the bottle.

It probably won't be the best beer you've ever had, but it will have alcohol, it will be carbonated, and I guarantee it will be satisfying. Then you can work on getting better and better.

Brewing is one of those hobbies where book knowledge is good, but you won't actually get good at it unless you do it a lot. Here's where you start: buy this book and read the sections about getting started, fermentation, ingredients, and the extract batch walkthrough. Read them twice. Read the whole book if you feel so inclined. That book is considered by many to be the brewers bible. There are some other good books out there, but none as comprehensive as Palmer's. Then buy the kit I linked above (or a similar one), some ingredients, and get started.

Also, come check out /r/homebrewing. I very active, very helpful place for all your brewing questions.

Feel free to ask any more specific questions you have.

That's great! I'm glad I could help. Did you get a chance to try any non-dairy milks yet? I tried "Tempt" brand chocolate hemp milk the other day it was sooo great. Really smooth and creamy.

As far as recipes go, I'd recommend that you pick up a copy of Veganomicon: http://www.amazon.com/Veganomicon-Ultimate-Isa-Chandra-Moskowitz/dp/156924264X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262068128&sr=8-1

It's helpful in that it tells you how to cook grains, legumes, vegetables and beans quite simply and easily. You can make your own meals using this knowledge. However, it also has a whole boat load of recipes that are almost always delicious.

Personally, I love to cook indian food. This is my basic recipe for a curry: http://www.reddit.com/r/food/comments/ae8q2/i_love_indian_food_and_am_starting_to_get_into/c0h533g

Also, make nut cheeses and creams. They're better for you and the environment than any of the fake cheese substitutes you'll find in stores. Cashew cream is basically cashews soaked in water over night and then blended up in a food processor. It is delicious. Add a few things, and you've got a great "cheese" for a pizza (you don't even need to soak them for this).

Good luck! If you have any questions about anything, I'd highly recommend joining the PPK forums here: http://www.postpunkkitchen.com/forum/index.php - there are plenty of friendly and sane vegans there who will gladly help you. I've also PM'd you my email address and I'm happy to help.

I usually only use cookbooks that are also textbooks for culinary art students. The CIA has a textbook that is phenomenal. I used to own a textbook from the western culinary institute in Portland, which is now a cordon bleu school and I dont know what they use. Those books will teach you the basics of fine cooking. Ratio is also a great book because it gives you the tools to create your own recipes using what real culinary professionals use: ratios of basic ingredients to create the desired dish.

But the creme de la creme of culinary arts books is this crazy encyclopedia of ingredients called On food and cooking: the science and lore of the kitchen. It is invaluable. It should not be the first book you buy (if youre a newbie) but it should be your most well thumbed.

For a sauce pan what you want is something with straight sides. Sautee pans have are a good substitute, but often have bases that have too wide a diameter for perfect sauces. Fine saucepots are made of copper for even heat transfer. Stainless steel is also a good substitute. What you have there is something of a hybrid between a skillet and a saucepot. Its more like a chicken fryer or something. At the restaurant we use stainless steel skillets for absolutely everything to order: sauces, fried oysters, what have you. But when you get down to the finest you need to fine a real saucepot: 2-3 qts will do, straight sides, made of copper. teach a man to fish

I dont really know how to teach you the varied tricks and such. It is something that I pick up by listening to the varied cooks and chefs I work with. What I would advise you is to watch cooking shows and read recipes and pay a lot of attention to what they are doing. Half of the things I know I dont know why I do them, just that they produce superior results. Or, consequently I would have a hot pan thrown at me if I did not do them. And I mean these are just ridiculous nuances of cooking. I was reading The Art of French Cooking and learned that you should not mix your egg yolks and sugar too early when making creme brulee because it will produce and inferior cooking and look like it has become curdled. That is a drop in the bucket to perfect creme brulee making, but it is part of the process.

I wish I could be more help, but the best advice I could give you to become the cook you want to be is go to school. Or barring that (it is a ridiculous expense) get a job cooking. Neither of those things are very efficient, but it is the best way to learn those little things.

You are doing fine. Here are some thoughts...

Keep your current job! Do not quit until you have your next opportunity lined up. Your work experience isn't bad and the employed look more attractive in both the dating and hiring pools.

Love the hobbies. Particularly working out and reading - Keep your commitment to these everyday. (Consider adding a social/networking aspect by joining/starting a business book club and looking into league sports/meetups/fitness classes)

Job Transition Idea 1: Beer/Beverage Industry

Look for analyst or operations positions with goal of getting into account management (sales-ish but sales isn't so bad when you love the product).

Standout from the crowd: Start writing Beverage Industry/Co research on LinkedIn (similar to the project you enjoyed)

Apply to this today: https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=bf45becfe9f077f3&

Job Transition Idea 2: Personal Trainer

You like working out so get certified and help others with their workouts.

Will be tough at first as you build a book of clients so you might need a good part time job - Starbucks would put you in coffee with okay part time pay and benefits.

Check this out for an idea of PT opportunities: https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=part+time+personal+trainer&l=los+angeles%2C+ca

Job Transition Idea 3: Officer in The Chair Force

Commitment and big change.

Physical fitness matters. Readers are leaders. They allow coffee in the morning and beers after work. Other branches if AF isn't for you.

https://www.airforce.com/careers/browse-careers/

..


Bonus! Book recommendation: https://www.amazon.com/History-World-6-Glasses/dp/0802715524


Choose one of these or another path and fucking go for it. All in. All about it. All the time. But keep fit and well read.

Good luck!

I like Lambic and if you make beer, any kind, you have to respect the effort it takes - no matter the style. Let them snicker, just enjoy your Lambic.

Since you are in So-Cal, there are many good places for unusual beer here are just two:

The Wine House
The Beverage Warehouse

Charlie Papazian is the godfather of homebrewing, his books and efforts helped create the current landscape. Michael Jackson was very influential in his own right as well. So, reading up on him is a very good idea. Compared to the previous two, John Palmer is relatively new to the scene but has done some excellent work to make homebrewing more easily understood. His book, How To Brew is really, really good. Read it online or grab it at Amazon for <$14. Worth having.

I have to compliment many of the posters here, they are offering a lot of good information. I had no idea there were so many brewers on Reddit! Read, read, read and the jump in. There's a lot to know and nothing substitutes for doing. PM me if I can help.

Making beer together can be a very fun and rewarding thing to do. I have progressed into making wine and champagne (ok, sparkling wine). I am just about to start to make vodka. But that's a different post.

Watch out for the strong ales! 8-9% ABV will get you ripped. They are twice the alcohol content of your average beer.

Edit:

Almost forgot, try Hoegaarden. It's a good beer and appeals to many. Another that is worth trying is La Chouffe. <drool>

I wouldn't start with a site, but rather a book, How to Brew by John Palmer. Go ahead and spend the 10 bucks on it right now, this isn't an option. You can't just skate by without this book and annoy everyone on /r/homebrewing, homebrewtalk, or IRC channels with questions answered beautifully and organically in this book.

This book answers the basics, from what beer is, what is fermenting, to the process, to the advanced, including building advanced all-grain setups. This will answer nearly all the questions you have, from now to three years of experience on down the road, and it's here in one handy book you can doodle and highlight all over. This is your first investment. Equipment is not your first investment. A gallon of cider and a pack of baker's yeast is not your first investment. A craigslist posting of someone giving away their old equipment is not your first investment. Paying the money right now for this book is your first investment.

While the book is in the mail, you can start reading the first edition online, which gives you an opportunity to reread it all over again in print when your copy arrives. Write stuff down. Highlight stuff. Go to google and bing something if you aren't fully clear. No questions yet, understand what the whole process is, and be committed to a few very important core rules: cleaning is the most important, timeliest part of brew day. Quality goes into the work you do, quality comes out as the finish product. And finally, it's necessary to have a beer while you make beer -- respect the craft you've taken up as a hobby by respecting those who have done so before you.

Finally you can begin to ask the question you are asking now. Where do I go before I brew? First, Midwest Supplies has a coupon about thrice a year that is a big savings and comes with mostly everything -- if you want to wait around for that, in the between time is a good time to invest in the other things, like a large pot, star-san, empty bottles, and so on. If not, do research and don't go buying the cheapest kit -- buy the kit that comes with everything that you want; don't feel short-handed or inundated with extras.

Lastly, that book is your new bible. It has all the answers. Now the bible is a historical recording, and new evidence disproves things in the bible. Some things you'll learn like quick tips and such you'll find just browsing the web, but what's in the bible makes for a correct and complete brewday. But the bibles of the world would be great if it came with the empirical evidence of video recordings. This episode of brewingTV is pretty good at showing what your first brewday should look like. But again, this religion will be lost on you if you don't buy and read the bible first.

And remember, "Relax, don't worry, have a homebrew".

Good question. I always have cinnamon on hand because it works great in both savory and sweet dishes. Also a great way to cut back on sugar, which I have been doing recently. Smoked paprika is amazing because you it works great in barbecue, and with tomato or lemon. Whole cumin because they can be used either way, and it is an irreplaceable flavor in many dishes. Basil and rosemary because they seem to work in a lot of things. Garlic powder because you can throw it on just about anything and it will be good. If you tend not to keep dijon mustard on hand, mustard powder is always good. Whole nutmeg because those things last forever. Thyme is really good; try lemon thyme. Ginger is a lot of fun. Allspice is really good too with both meats and pastries. Fresh lemons or limes are really good. Onions and peppercorns are a must in every kitchen. Don't buy ground pepper. Taste is lost completely.

Best thing to do is pick spices and herbs that span a couple of different types of cuisine that way you aren't having to buy a lot of specialty herbs and spices for nights you want something inspired by Spanish cuisine or Middle Eastern. If you have an extra 20 or 30 bucks, I suggest buying The Flavor Bible. You will learn a lot about flavors and which ones play well in a lot of different dishes.

TL,DR-If this type of dieting works for you, then have at it. Frankly, the diet you propose isn't something appealing to me, and is opposed to my fitness and aesthetic goals, which require greater yields of protein and fat to achieve. Most distance runners look like shit to me, and I don't wish to emulate their physiques in the least, but if you are looking to reap the benefits of a raw food or raw vegan diet, then have at it. I'd prefer to have the physique of Rob Riches crossed with Tom Hardy from Warrior, so I train and eat accordingly.

> The ideal macronutrient ratio for humans is ~80% carbs, ~10% protein, ~10% fat.

Where in the balls did you read this before? How in the world do you think our ancestors managed to thrive and evolve during the millennia prior do that advent of agriculture?

By shoveling handfuls of nuts down their gullets? Doubtful, as the nuts would have high fat content and skew your ratios. By eating pounds of wild berries that were laying around? Even if that be the case, which it wasn't, we have genetically manipulated the fruit in our grocery stores today to make them "sweeter" than that eaten by our ancestors.

You also realize that excess carbs that you don't burn get stored by your body as fat, right?

Serious question. Are you some fruitarian or a disciple of Dr. Graham, because that is the only source I've seen that jocks your ratios.

> Caveat: If someone is under-eating on calories for fat loss, it's important to get enough protein to limit lean muscle loss, so the ratios might be different for those people

The ratios are absurdly different for most persons. If you have any lean muscle whatsoever or are looking to add lean muscle in any kind of weightlifting regimen, such a paltry protein yield would be unable to maintain or enable the growth of muscle.

Protein is also inherently thermogenic, since you burn around 30% of the calories you consumed simply by metabolizing it, while diets with higher fat and protein ratios are more likely to satiate one's appetite than a high-carb diet, so you aren't as apt to "overeat." Consider, how many of the stories on here are about fatties eating chips, french fries, sweets, candy, and drinking soft drinks? There are no stories about fatties gorging themselves on something higher in protein and fat like wings or beef jerky.

> Most professional endurance athletes (including all those super-fast Kenyan runners) eat something very close to this ratio.

Most human beings aren't professional endurance runners or even recreational ones, and as I noted, for persons looking to do things like gain lean muscle, such a diet would be opposed to such a goal. I concur that a person who does a lot of steady state cardio such as someone who trains a lot in distance running, cycling, and swimming would benefit from a greater ratio of carbs in his diet than a strength athlete.

> But UNREFINED carbs (fruit, veggies, etc.) are pretty much the most health-promoting foods around.

Dude, whether it's mere fructose or high fructose corn syrup makes little difference. It's still a carbohydrate, and fructose from fruits can also lead to fat gain. Again, Taubes addresses this in his work which I referenced elsewhere in the thread, so pick up that book if you wish to read the argument he laid out.

> But UNREFINED carbs (fruit, veggies, etc.) are pretty much the most health-promoting foods around.

Again, where are you reading that I am against all fruits and veggies in diet or that they are all unhealthy? I noted that broccoli and cauliflower have excellent attributes making them "super foods," and that fruit can be enjoyed by healthy individuals.

It's actually really easy. Beans + rice or beans + corn and you have a complete protein. I eat tacos, burritos, Thai, Indian (vegan curry), black bean burgers, and stir fry all the time. I thought all vegans were hungry skellies too before I gave it a shot, and it turns out it's really cheap and easy. It is only ever difficult to eat vegan at restaurants because everything seems to have milk or cheese, but I am doing the best I can and don't sweat the small stuff. My BF eats meat but these days at home he doesn't bother because he loves my cooking.

Edit: If anybody is interested in the nutrition of a plant-based diet or would like to try some delicious recipes, I would highly recommend

1. Vegan for Life which is written by two registered dietitians. This book discusses how to feed yourself properly and what vitamins you need (looking at you B12) to make a vegan lifestyle sustainable.
   
   
2. Thug kitchen Is a funny, no-nonsense book which showcases a lot of delicious recipes which I use every week
   
   
3. Some documentaries that I really enjoy sharing which are available on Netflix are:
   
   

• cowspiracy - the environmental impact of consuming meat and meat products
  
  
• Forks Over Knives - discusses nutrition and the effects of consuming animal products and oil and the links between these products and cancer. Big focus on the China Study
  
  
• Food Matters - another nutrition one.
  
  I want to point out that the last two really push the message that 'FOOD CURES ALL' and that is a bit of an extreme message imo. A good diet certainly leads to good health, but modern medicine exists for a reason.
  

An alarm clock to get her used to waking up at 2am? ;-)
I'm not a professional baker, but did work as one for several months 20 years ago. Enough to let me know that although I enjoyed baking, I didn't enjoy doing it as a profession. So these suggestions are from a home baker, not a pro.
I would suggest a cookbook or subscription to Cook's Illustrated or America's Test Kitchen.
I bought The New Best Recipe Cookbook ten years ago for myself and have gifted a copy to several friends since. It goes through not only a recipe, but what changing different ingredients will do to the final product. The chocolate chip cookie recipe was quite informative with illustrations showing not only what different sugars would do, but different fats, flours, and the effect of chilling the dough had on the final product.
There is also Baking Illustrated which is just about baking. It's probably going to be hard to find, but if you stumble across it, it's worth it. Some folks complain that it's just the baking chapters from the best recipe cookbook with a few extra recipes, but if your kid is really focused on baking, this may be a better fit for now and then the best recipe cookbook later when she feels like branching out into thing to go with the baked goods.
I do not own the Cooks Illustrated Baking Book but I have several of their other cookbooks and friends who have this one think highly of it. It's been described as a combination recipe book and class in baking. Like the New Best Recipe Cookbook, it includes not just recipes, but paragraphs about what is going on in the recipe and what changes to the recipe will do.
You may also want to look at getting a large vermin resistant container to store flour. I use a Vittles Vault pet food container to store my flour. It allows me to buy 25 lbs of flour for $8 instead of 5 lbs for $4 and not run out in the middle of a baking session.

Not sure what country you’re in, but I’ve used Northern Brewer and Brewer’s Best for most of my recipes. I started the same way you did with a 1 gal kit APA and was hooked instantly.

I upgraded by buying a kit for ~$100 that came with an IPA extract kit, a primary fermenter bucket, a bottling bucket, airlock, etc that I’m still using 9 batches later. I’ve expanded now to three separate 6 gallon fermenters (they’re only like $20 for the bucket, lid, and airlock!). You’ll definitely want a large kettle as well and I’d recommend getting a hydrometer to test OG and FG so you know the ABV of your beer. All said and done, $200 should get you a really really solid base set!!!!

The biggest thing I can recommend is buying a copy of [The complete Joy of Homebrewing] (https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Joy-Homebrewing-Third/dp/0060531053) by Charlie Papazian, you won’t regret it!

There’s tons of great advice for starters, midrange, and advanced brewers with a lot of good basic recipes. Good luck, and enjoy!

A good profile for WLP 001 California Ale (Wyeast 1056 / Safale US-05) is to pitch around 67F-68F, then monitor the heat and keep the beer temperature (not just the ambient air) around 68F-69F for the first 80% of fermentation. It can help to bump a couple degrees to 70F-71F for that last 20% to ensure you finish fermentation completely and don't get stuck with a few extra gravity points to go.

General Fermentation Temperature tips:

There are some great shows by the Brewing Network on this (itunes podcast or get it from their website) - Jamil does a great breakdown of WLP-001 fermentation profile on the "Jamil Show" about Robust Porters (towards the end of the episode, maybe 3/4 of the way through). They also have a fantastic episode of "Brew Strong" all about fermentation temperature control and why it matters.

Enough about them... First off you want to keep in mind that during the first couple days of a fermentation the temperature will be elevated by a few degrees by the heat generated by the yeast themselves, so if you're fermenting a beer with ambient air at 64F, the beer may be around 67F or 68F. Problems can arise on day 3 or 4, once you're 75% done with the fermentation and that heat source begins to fade; the beer will drop back down to ambient temperature at that point and the yeast may decide to go to sleep early. This is a major cause of incomplete fermentations and can result in a beer that's too sweet at best or create bottle bombs at worst (as that extra sugar slowwwly ferments later)

On the other hand, if you go warmer than around 72F-73F (the temperature of the BEER, not the AIR) then you can start to generate unwanted esters and fusel alcohols. This is particularly impactful on stronger than normal beers (watch out when doing anything over 1.070)

The biggest impact investment i've made to increase my beer's quality and consistency (on par with going all grain) was without a doubt my fermentation fridge. I have a basic dorm fridge that fits a carboy, with a temperature controller hooked up to the fridge's power supply. It allows me to control fermentation at all steps to within about 1/2 a degree, keeping it cool during the initial activity and warming it up at the end to help it finish. There are plenty of resources around the internet if you're interested in doing something like this; i would HIGHLY recommend it.

Edit for some really good knowledge on yeast and fermentation, i'd highly recommend the book "Yeast" by Jamil Zainasheff and Chris White (White Labs)

Totally related! The best advice I have is to start simple. This book by Bonnie Ohara is a really great primer that walks you through bread science and gaining bread confidence. I wish I had it when I started baking!

I also love this book by Ken Forkish. It’s very specifically for those crusty artisan breads that are trendy right now.

Other than that, start out with good recipes. The King Arthur Flour No Knead is a fantastic simple starting point. Whenever you make a new kind of bread, start with a recipe that’s gone through rigorous testing instead of one on some random blog. Good spots to look are Cook’s Illustrated, Bon Appetit, and King Arthur. There’s a bigger chance of success that way. Once you’ve gotten a little more of a feel for what dough should be like for specific breads at certain stages, you can start experimenting and coming up with your own recipes and ratios! There are also a lot of really awesome bakers at r/breadit, r/baking, and r/sourdough who also love to help troubleshoot.

The only other advice I have is to invest in a kitchen scale, a dutch oven, and a bunch of bench scrapers!

Until about a year ago, I knew next to nothing about cooking but I've been learning. I wish I had known this stuff in college. What I did is I bought a copy of Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and went through it. The regular How to Cook Everything is also good. Both of them give you lots of really easy recipes (like how to make scrambled eggs) as well as more advanced ones if you want to serve dinner to people for example.

Also, I watched every episode of Good Eats and learned a lot from that. Most if not all of those are on YouTube. Just start with Season 1 Episode 1 and start plowing through them.

I don't prepare meat because I'm paranoid about germs, but don't let that stop you. The things I've been preparing the most are:

• Eggs: fried, scrambled, omelettes. Hands down the easiest thing.
  
  
• Sauteed, braised, boiled, or steamed vegetables. These are all very easy and once you've done it a bit you start to understand what the best method is for different vegetables and you don't even need to look in a recipe book. Most recent thing I did is sauteed plantains.
  
  
• Rice dishes. Pilaf and rice with beans/peas/other legumes are easy and nutritious.
  
  
• Soups. Things like potato leek soup, french onion soup, split pea soup, lentil soup are all very easy.
  
  
• Simple baked desserts like muffins, banana bread, apple cobber etc.
  
  If you have an oven, it's really not very hard to make your own pizza, for that matter.

If you ever feel adventurous try this book for cheese otherwise the Daiya blocks are tasty. Cashew cheese is easy to make and super tasty

Quick foods:

Rice, beans, potatoes. These things can be eaten cold even, and are super easy to prep in bulk.I'm cooking 2 cups of brown rice as I type this, and when I leave for work I'll start a crock pot of black beans. I regularly bring potatoes with salt on long bike rides, and eat them cold. You can put anything inside a tortilla and it'll taste good. Beans, seitan, tofu, rice avocado, spinach, etc.

Peanut butter and banana sandwiches, agave, jelly, really whatever.

Green veggie and fruit smoothies are an easy portable, and nutritious breakfast.

Fruit, carrots, nuts are all easy snacks.

Chickpea "tuna" is delicious and easy to prep.

Oatmeal is filling, cheap and easy.

Pasta is easy. Start with whole grain, or a hardy gluten free pasta. I have some chickpea protein pasta right now for instance. Red sauce, maybe throw some textured vegetable protein in there.

Frozen vegetables are easy to prep.

The cheapest, dry shelf stable foods are generally vegan. They are also normally available anywhere.

If there's a specialty vegan item that you want there's always amazon. I bought chickpea flour there awhile ago.
Peas and franks red hot is actually pretty delicious.

If you're into faux turkey, my faves (in order): Match, Field Roast (uhh the en croute whatever ones), Gardein, Tofurky. Match (everything they make) is juicy and perfectly flavored. The Field Roast en croute turkey thing was amazing (I loove the crusty part). Gardein is mostly boring because they're my go-to faux meat brand so I'm used to the flavor. Also their stuffing has raisins and weird colorful rice in it. Ew. Tofurky's pretty basic, but they were what I always had before vegan turkey selection exploded, so I might just have nostalgia for them.

This green bean casserole recipe.

Mashed potatoes you make the normal way. Just through whatever vegan butter and milk in them with salt and pepper.

I use a pumpkin pie recipe from a cookbook and I feel weird about posting things like that, so PM me if you're interested?

I don't know how Canadians roll on holidays, and my family's pretty boring anyways (the only difference between what I eat and what they eat besides mine being vegan is they usually microwave a can of corn also) so I can't think of much else thanksgiving-y. Repeat for xmas and easter. Seitan might also be a good idea. If you don't have wheat gluten on hand, I've heard of people making it with regular flour (I think they let it sit longer so gluten bonds can form). I've never made it for holidays, but there's a lentil soup(ish thing) in Veganomicon that would probably be delicious/amazing with whatever you're having. From where I can see, you can see the recipe if you do the "Look Inside" thing on amazon, so that's why I linked it. Just scroll down through the table of contents, it's under soups ("French Lentil Soup with Tarragon and Thyme") and on page 141.

I tried to think of holiday food that didn't involve faux whatever, but I'm definitely not one of those vegans that scoffs at imitation meats and cheeses and whatnot. I eat them all the damn time.

I keep trying to end this and I keep failing: I've never had homemade shephard's pie, and actually never had it before going vegan (I'd never heard of it) but that sound like a delicious holiday thing. Since I've only ever had this premade microwaveable one, I'm linking because I imagine if you combined those ingredients with some yummy spices you would have positive results.

I'm really done this time D:

Don't frown. Here's a cookbook for you!

https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Harvest-collection-semen-based-recipes/dp/1481227041

>Semen is not only nutritious, but it also has a wonderful texture and amazing cooking properties. Like fine wine and cheeses, the taste of semen is complex and dynamic. Semen is inexpensive to produce and is commonly available in many, if not most, homes and restaurants. Despite all of these positive qualities, semen remains neglected as a food. This book hopes to change that. Once you overcome any initial hesitation, you will be surprised to learn how wonderful semen is in the kitchen. Semen is an exciting ingredient that can give every dish you make an interesting twist. If you are a passionate cook and are not afraid to experiment with new ingredients - you will love this cookbook!

Semen is not only nutritious, but it also has a wonderful texture and amazing cooking properties. Like fine wine and cheeses, the taste of semen is complex and dynamic. Semen is inexpensive to produce and is commonly available in many, if not most, homes and restaurants. Despite all of these positive qualities, semen remains neglected as a food. This book hopes to change that. Once you overcome any initial hesitation, you will be surprised to learn how wonderful semen is in the kitchen. Semen is an exciting ingredient that can give every dish you make an interesting twist. If you are a passionate cook and are not afraid to experiment with new ingredients - you will love this cookbook!

I like The Flavor Bible. It lists pretty much any ingredient you can think of and all the flavors that pair well with them.

I love it because if you know a few basic techniques and recipes, then you can greatly enrich your experience by knowing what flavors pair well. Like if you're making a rub for some ribs or whatever you're throwing on the grill but you want to change it up a little bit, you can get some great ideas that way and just try new and interesting flavor combinations. It will also tell you when there are combinations of like 3 or 4 flavors that work really well together.

And as you're trying new combinations, you start to get more of a taste for things. Like a made this rub for chicken thighs with brown sugar, cardamum, ginger, salt and pepper that was awesome. The chicken came out fantastic until I put the terrible barbecue sauce I made that I should have thought through more (I got cocky).

Anyway, because of The Flavor Bible, I made some basil and strawberry brownies because of this that turned out really well. Some orange, ginger, whiskey brownies that were pretty good. I made cayenne, lime, and paprika brownies that were mind-blowing. I made a blue berry tart with cardamum that was damn good. I like desserts... desserts and barbecue.

What's more nomalicious than Chocolate??? This is seriously the best dutch process cocoa powder known to mankind. No really! That much might last you until your next bulkish order...maybe. Being a carnivore, I use this to make an awesome rub for pork and poultry along with ancho chile, a bit of chipoltle chile for heat, and a dash of Mexican oregano. It is available in smaller amounts but costs more per pound then. And on to that most excellent of spices Cinnamon! Once again, this is the most nomalicious Cinnamon known to mankind. I make an unbelievable rhubarb coffee cake and amazing monkey bread with this stuff. It seriously takes any recipe with cinnamon to the next level. It can also be used to add heat to savory recipes. And for my last suggestion I give you Powdered White Cheddar!?!? Nomalicious on popcorn, for making sauces, adding to bread, and sprinkling on vegetables. It does look like recent reviews aren't as stellar as they could be but my experience with this stuff has been all good. Were I to win I'd appreciate The Flavor Bible from my wish list which I'd point you to in a PM ;)

Enjoy! =D

Natural Harvest: A Collection of Semen-Based Recipes

Semen is not only nutritious, but it also has a wonderful texture and amazing cooking properties. Like fine wine and cheeses, the taste of semen is complex and dynamic. Semen is inexpensive to produce and is commonly available in many, if not most, homes and restaurants. Despite all of these positive qualities, semen remains neglected as a food. This book hopes to change that. Once you overcome any initial hesitation, you will be surprised to learn how wonderful semen is in the kitchen. Semen is an exciting ingredient that can give every dish you make an interesting twist. If you are a passionate cook and are not afraid to experiment with new ingredients - you will love this cook book!

This is one of my favorite salads, and something I eat regularly. It's delicious, and we can call it high-class if you want. It's a combination that presents beautifully, and one I frequently serve.

But IMO, I wouldn't qualify it as sophisticated for two reasons

1.) The flavor combination is not particularly complex. By definition, sophisticated is "highly developed; complex." (Or, if you want to go with dictionary.com's definition, "developed to a high degree of complexity.")

To me, complexity in food is a combination of flavors that will interest my mouth in a multitude of novel ways, where there is either a) an unexpected progression of flavor, or b) a certain je ne sais quoi that I JUST CAN'T PUT MY FINGER ON NO MATTER HOW HARD I TRY. This is what can elevate the simplest dish, like mac & cheese, to the highest levels of "sophisitcation" and innovation.

This flavor combination (and the wings recipe above) are both very basic (although delicious) balancing of flavors and textures. So basic, in fact, that I can now go into my local Panera and order that salad ...

2.) Which brings me to point #2. There are movements in food, as in fashion and architecture and every other form of art. And while things may be at the height of innovation one year (I'm talking to you, duck fat and rosemary potatoes. And you, salted caramel. And yes, you, fruit and goat cheese salad.) the cruel machine that is capitalism will eventually get their filthy claws into these delightful things.

And when they do, said flavor combinations cease to be interesting. A well-executed salted caramel brownie can be one of the most amazing things in the world - it has a rich, oaky nuttiness; a slightly burnt warmth. It's layered and complex and slightly bitter, not overly sweetened, covered in icing, and turned ^into^a^cake^pop.

So I see where u/adremeaux is coming from. It's frustrating for those who are looking for new ideas to see the same few over-done and passe flavor combinations mentioned and touted again and again and again as the very height of complexity and sophistication.

That said, I think a lot of redditors that make it to this subreddit aren't chefs. They don't read The Flavor Bible for fun, their idea of a celebrity encounter isn't meeting Grant Achatz, and they're just learning to branch out from spaghetti and sauce out of the jar. They get excited about things that, to some, seem boring or commonplace, and they want to pass that excitement on to others.

You could call this the blind leading the blind, but I'd rather look at it as something beautiful - for every person in this thread getting excited about a little goat cheese salad today, perhaps we'll see another hot potato, cold potato.

Also, for OP:

Honey & Black Pepper Duck Breast

Roasted Chestnuts with Black Pepper Honey

Baked Apples with Blue Cheese, Black Pepper, and Honey

Honey-Black Pepper Mayonnaise - perhaps on Fall 2011's dearly beloved cranberry, brie, and turkey sandwich?

I'm also going to throw out the ideas, sans recipe, of:

Earl grey tea cookies with a honey-pepper glaze

[Insert fruit of choice] shrub soda with honey and black pepper (I think peach would be quite nice!)

Cocktail - I'd suggest rye and a splash of lemon, but I'm no mixologist.

Hope i was helpful! Enjoy your culinary journey :D

Sry...don't find a lot of time to post. And as far as finding ur post... I went looking for it. I cook a lot of proteins and I wanted to see what reddit had to say about chicken breast. It can be very unforgiving, but when done correctly it is an amazing meat. NOW, to address you concerns about nutrition. Yes, brining does increase the sodium level a bit, but lets face it, chicken needs a little help and when you brine its just les salt you will need to add when you season. If you have high blood pressure you may want to watch you sodium intake. Here is a site that attemps to tackel the "how much sodium does a brine add?" Question ( http://www.salon.com/2010/03/23/brining_meats_sodium_add_calculation/) . As far as brining subtracting any nutritional value; I would say, no, it does not measurably reduce nutrition. In my opinion overall; brining a chicken breast as part of my meal is far more delicious and healthy than ordering fast food (and less sodium). If creating a chicken breast meal that makes you want to continue cooking keeps you from ordering take out its a win. As far as my experience... I am just a home cook that grew up in a home that didnt know how to cook. At some point a the family of one of my friends started inviting me to dine with them at some very expensive restaurants. IT BLEW MY MIND!... I had no idea food could be that good. From that point on I made my mission to give food the respect it deserves. I read took the scientific approach, ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0684800012/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/189-1398983-1145564) read the cooking bible over and over and watch guys like alton brown ( http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KKr1rByVVCI).

I'll just leave this here.

https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Harvest-collection-semen-based-recipes/dp/1481227041
>Semen is not only nutritious, but it also has a wonderful texture and amazing cooking properties. Like fine wine and cheeses, the taste of semen is complex and dynamic. Semen is inexpensive to produce and is commonly available in many, if not most, homes and restaurants. Despite all of these positive qualities, semen remains neglected as a food. This book hopes to change that. Once you overcome any initial hesitation, you will be surprised to learn how wonderful semen is in the kitchen. Semen is an exciting ingredient that can give every dish you make an interesting twist. If you are a passionate cook and are not afraid to experiment with new ingredients - you will love this cookbook!

This one takes the cake for me. It is a collection of semen based recipes. Yeah. That exists. The description is killer:
> Semen is not only nutritious, but it also has a wonderful texture and amazing cooking properties. Like fine wine and cheeses, the taste of semen is complex and dynamic. Semen is inexpensive to produce and is commonly available in many, if not most, homes and restaurants. Despite all of these positive qualities, semen remains neglected as a food. This book hopes to change that. Once you overcome any initial hesitation, you will be surprised to learn how wonderful semen is in the kitchen. Semen is an exciting ingredient that can give every dish you make an interesting twist. If you are a passionate cook and are not afraid to experiment with new ingredients - you will love this cookbook!

I worked at a grocery store, cleaning the meat department. It was gross as hell, and I was the best cleaner there, which meant that overall, meat departments are awful awful places. So I stopped eating meat. These days, I think we don't need to kill things to eat, so in general we shouldn't if we don't have to. I try not to be strident or to push vegn eating on other people (I'll still go to lunch with people who eat meat, for example) because it's really annoying.

This was 1992, and I haven't eaten meat, fish, chicken, or anything like that since. I still eat eggs and dairy a little, but lately dairy makes me ill so I am cutting out the milk as well. I eat a ton of soy because it's useful and versatile.

Free-range meat and eggs are just to make people feel a little better about eating them. Same with "happy meat." It's nice that it's not factory farming, but you're still raising an animal for the sake of killing and eating it. It seems hypocritical to me.

Let me see... Favorite meals? I like to make burritos with various forms of TVP and fake meaty things. I make a damn fine dry-fried sake-miso-marinated tofu with udon. I've made a bourbon reduction sauce with spice-rubbed dry-fried fake chicken strips. I've made breaded and pan-fried tofu "wings" in buffalo sauce. I could go on, but you get the idea-- I don't eat brown rice and plain tofu every night, or, really, ever.

Your last question-- tofu shouldn't be lumped in with fake meats. It's not really an attempt to emulate meat in any way-- it's a totally different kind of thing. It does take some thought to cook it-- you need to figure out marinades and different frying techniques, and you can't just throw it in a pan and know it'll come out tasting great without you having to do much with it. On its own it's a flavorless lump, but it soaks up marinades and spices like crazy, and you can cook it a bunch of different ways for different effects. Generally you'll want to cook with extra-firm tofu, and you'll want to press the liquid out of it before cooking it (I put it between paper towels on a plate and put another plate and some books on top for half an hour or so).

Fake meats are useful for converting recipes (like the bourbon reduction I mentioned before) since you can usually drop in a package of fake chicken strips from Trader Joe's in place of chicken in most things. (And you can always get a package of Tofurky and make a sandwich.) Some of them are really expensive; some are not very good. Some are better for cooking in different ways. You may have to try them, or get advice from people who have already done a lot of cooking...

Beware of tempeh. It's a weird sort of fermented grain thing, and it's very difficult to make it totally palatable. I still don't cook with it much since it's easy to do poorly and it's super gross if you aren't careful with it. Consider that an advanced vegetarian protein and get used to cooking with tofu first. 8)

If you're curious, Veganomicon is a FANTASTIC cookbook. You could eat from it for years without getting bored:

http://www.amazon.com/Veganomicon-The-Ultimate-Vegan-Cookbook/dp/156924264X

If you want to cook various ethnic foods, I've had a good time with Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian cookbook:

http://www.amazon.com/Madhur-Jaffreys-World-Vegetarian-Meatless/dp/0609809237

It has all kinds of stuff to try out, and goes into detail on methods and techniques of cooking different vegetarian proteins.

There are also vegan and vegetarian message boards around if you want to ask people who do more cooking and have tried a lot of things.

The biggest problem when starting out vegetarian will be going out to eat. You may find that your favorite restaurants are no longer good places for you to eat, or that going out with friends involves more negotiation. It also depends on where you live. Most largish cities will have at least a few vegetarian or vegan restaurants, or will have restaurants with veg options on the menus. Be prepared for some disappointing or annoying experiences while you figure it out. Finding local vegns to hang out with will help that, but you may have to be firm with your friends and convince them that it's not just a phase and that you're not just trying it out for a while. (This assumes, of course, that it's not just a phase and that you aren't just trying it out for a while.)

Be prepared for people to give you a hard time. Don't be afraid to tell them that it's your decision and if they have a problem with it they can go to hell (or perhaps something more polite). Lots of people will think it's clever to start asking you things like "what about plants? aren't plants alive too?" and "Chickens have a brain the size of a peanut-- they're not intelligent or anything!" and "clams are so simple they're hardly animals at all!" and so on and so forth. A million stupid and time-worn jokes. Just be ready.

People also like to argue with vegetarians about things because they think you're judging them. Ideally, you aren't judging them-- if you are, I'd suggest hiding it unless you really want to get into a fight, since people take it very personally. I usually tell people that it's my decision and I don't really care what they do.

Anyway, it's a great decision to make, although it's not always easy. There are lots of groups of supportive people out there, and it's a lot easier to go veg these days than it was back in 1992 (or earlier! Imagine eating vegetarian in the US in the 70's!). Good luck! Ask questions, and don't be afraid to try stuff!

In this post, I'm going to link to examples. They are examples: I'm not necessarily recommending that specific item. (I'm pretty much doing a search on Amazon and linking to the first thing in the search results that is actually what you need.) It's just an example to let you know what you're looking for.

Yes, you will need a metal stockpot. Five gallons should be sufficient.

You will need some type of stirring apparatus. Some would recommend a large metal spoon, but I recommend using a plastic mash paddle.

I would recommend getting some type of thermometer to put on your stock pot. A candy thermometer is where I'd start, but, if this is a hobby that you'll stick with, it's probably worth investing in something better.

Also, I see that they put a hydrometer in your kit. If you want to take measurements with the hydrometer, you'll need either a turkey baster or a wine thief. I'd start with the baster.

If you need a book on homebrewing, Palmer's How to Brew is pretty much the standard, but Papazian's The Complete Joy of Homebrewing is well regarded. Palmer's book is in its third edition, but you can get the first edition of the book online for free.

Depending on the ingredients that you use, you may need common kitchen items like scissors or can openers.

You'll also need bottles. If you brew a five gallon batch (which is pretty typical… at least in the United States), you'll need about fifty-four twelve-ounce bottles. However, you can't use twist-off bottles; they're no good.

Lastly, you'll need ingredients. Different recipes call for different ingredients. My advice is to buy a kit from a local homebrew store (LHBS) or one online. Some kits make you buy the yeast separately. If so, make sure that you purchase the right strain of yeast.

1. Eat (and learn about) what you enjoy
   
   If you go searching for learn-how-to-cook tutorials and get stuck making some boring ass chicken recipe but don't even like chicken, you'll make the food correctly but have trouble enjoying the results. It's homework. You won't last making food you don't like.
   
   To stay interested, follow the foods you already love.
   
   For me, it was pasta. I went nuts. My first year or so learning, I was making an insane amount of pasta and was always stoked to eat the results, even if they sucked.
   
   
   
2. Learn from someone who actually cooks.
   
   Too many recipes have one-off ingredients you'll never use again. You want to learn how you can improve your food with what you already have (i.e. Don't worry about the imported, smoked, Himalayan pink salt yet).
   
   A person who understands food will give you so much more than a checklist and directions can. Understanding trumps a recipe every time. And you'd be surprised how little you need to make great food. A good cook knows how to do this.
   
   I was really fortunate to have a roommate who's Italian grandma was an amazing cook. He knew his shit. He would coach and correct everything I was doing with my horrible attempts to make pasta. It was fun and quickly showed me how to improve--all with no recipes. It showed me you can taste as you go.
   
   
   
3. Most cookbooks are shit for learning
   
   Today there a more books telling you what to do, and less telling you why you do it. The latter is the key.
   
   These two books really opened a lot for me regarding understanding food and how to make it better:
   
   I'm Just Here For The Food: Food + Heat = Cooking
   
   Cooking (James Peterson)
   
   Honorable mention:
   
   Ratios: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking
   
   Cheers, and best of luck. Now go eat!
   
   
   Also Good Eats and Mind of A Chef are amazing shows to watch. We are so visual nowdays.

Subway bread has a lot to do with steam and moisture levels during the baking process. You can fiddle with your oven by using a spray bottle to mist around in there right when you put in your dough, or drop hot water straight onto a pan at the bottom, but it only gets you so far without one of them fancy ovens subway uses.

As for the beer flavor: probably too much yeast and not enough flavor development through slow rises and/or cold fermentation. You can try and cultivate a sourdough starter, which shouldn't have that sort of flavor (I actually keep a strain that is extremely mild and completely replaces commercial yeast, it has absurd leavening with great taste).

As for adding honey and vinegar to bread, it is more or less a shortcut for developing flavor. There was a recipe I tried a while back that used a little bit of white wine vinegar and beer to try and reproduce the malty flavor of great sandwich bread, I did not enjoy it, but try it out yourself if you like.

As for getting into breadbaking, I recommend starting off watching some of the videos at breadtopia and purchasing this book. It's a pretty good beginner book that covers the basics of using high-hydration, cold fermentation recipes, which are pretty easy to pull off and have significantly better flavor that what it sounds like you have been going with.

As you get further into things, or rather if you manage to fall down the deep, dark path, cultivating bubbling containers of sourdough, splitting off strains and playing to your inner god-complex with yeast cultures, getting bloated from carb-overload and loving it... Then I would recommend getting into the more technical stuff and using that as a springboard.

Cool gift idea!

I'd say, first and foremost, that you aren't going to be able to kit out your boyfriend for homebrewing. There are too many styles for different types of equipment, and it gets very expensive... But a basic kit is good enough to brew just about anything, and it gives him the option to buy new items piece-by-piece as he outgrows the starter ones.

If you want to give him a good start in the hobby, get him 3 things:

1. A brewing starter kit
   
2. A good brewing book
   
3. A good beer kit
   
   For a starter kit, it looks something like one of these: https://www.amazon.com/Share-Enjoy-Homebrew-Brewing-Starter/dp/B0179ZH89Y/ref=sr_1_3
   
   You get a plastic bucket to ferment the beer, cleaning chemicals, hydrometer, bottles, bottle capper, siphon, etc. This should be perfectly adequate for him to brew beer dozens of times before he might want to start tweaking his equipment. The best part is you can replace individual parts of the kit any time you want - it makes it a very flexible upgrade path.
   
   
   For a starter book, it's How to Brew all the way. I'm pretty sure everyone in here owns a copy.
   
   
   For a starter kit, you can pick kits off Amazon. You should know there's 3 major types of beer recipe:
   
   
4. Pre-hopped extract kits. These are the beer kits you can buy in every grocery store. They're "fine", but my biggest complaint is that 90% of the work is already done for you, so brew day is almost boring.
   
   
5. Extract kits. (Get one of these). They include barley extract (usually in jars of thick syrup, but sometimes in dry powder form), hops to boil, and sometimes some extra things like specialty grains, spices, etc. Here's an example: https://www.amazon.com/Imperial-Blonde-Homebrew-Beer-Ingredient/dp/B00AC7Q4JW
   
   
6. All grain recipes. All grain brewing is the most hands-on you can get homebrewing, but it also requires some extra brewing equipment. The How to Brew book goes over it in great detail, and your boyfriend can decide if all grain brewing interests him.
   
   
   So, for all of these things, I gave Amazon links, but you don't have to buy them online at all. I'd strongly recommend looking up local homebrewing stores and just walking in. Most of my local shops are cheaper than shopping online, the staff are fun to talk to (because they really care about brewing), and it's nice to be able to examine some of the things before you buy them.
   
   Whether you shop locally of online, everything I listed above should come in at less than $150.

First I will point you to The Fresh Loaf, as I once was, if you aren't already familiar with it. There is a lot of information on there, as well as beautiful breads that are posted daily to serve as inspiration.

As for books, what got me started was Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish. I knew not a thing about bread making before buying this book, and I can assure you that it is very user friendly. It is very descriptive and easy to follow, and you will yield amazing results by simply following close instruction.

Once I was comfortable enough to expand my repertoire, I picked up Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day. He's regarded as one of the best authors for bread making books and for good reason. You can tell the guy knows what he's talking about as he provides you with an easy breakdown of what and why you will be doing something with simple steps. This one covers a broader range of baked goods (baguettes, cinnamon rolls, crumb cake and more) so you can have fun experimenting.

Happy baking!

35 grams of salt :)

In baking one should ALWAYS weigh ingredients, the most important tool in a bakeshop is a scale. Your final product will taste the EXACT same every time if everything is weighed. For home use you just need a little scale, I use this little guy at home.

Most home bakers hate weighing eggs and find it ridiculous so just keep this simple rule in mind. 1 large egg = 50g. So 2 large eggs for every 100g needed.

The reason for weighing literally everything over using cups, teaspoons and other volumetric amounts is definitely well worth reading into as well. Pretty much every book worth its weight will be done in with weights instead of volume and will have a section explaining why. But essentially with baking its chemistry, everything is done to cause a specific reaction and that reaction is done to a certain degree in the end product.


EDIT: If you want some cookbooks I made a post previously about what I recommend for people depending on what they are into making, so I'll post that up in here

Bibles

• Baking Bible
  
• Cake Bible
  
• The Pie and Pastry Bible
  
  Bread
  
  
• Beard on Bread
  
• Bread
  
• Bread Baker's Apprentice
  
• Flour Water Salt Yeast
  
• Josey Baker Bread (I just genuinely like this guy tho lol)
  
• All of the Tartine books (just get all of them, Chad is the man when it comes to bread)
  
  Caramels/Candys/Ice Cream
  
  
• Ample hills creamery
  
• Artisan caramels
  
• Chocolates & Confections
  
• The Sweet Book of Candy Making
  
• Sweet Cream And Sugar Cones
  
  Jack of all trades
  
  
• Baked Occasions
  
• Baker's four seasons
  
• Flour
  
• Flour Too
  
• Model Bakery Cookbook
  
• Momofuku Milk Bar
  
• Ovenly
  
  Pastry/Pies
  
  
• The Art of French Pastry (this is one of my all time favorites)
  
• Creative Eclairs (whole set is great for beginners to intermediates)
  
• First Prize Pies
  
  Textbooks
  
  
• Baking and pastry
  
• On Baking
  
  
  I'm sure I am leaving out a bunch of great ones but if I had to suggest just 1 to anyone it would DEFINITELY be The Art of French Pastry. Best for somebody who has done basics already and looking to try a little more. Even as a professional baker I find myself coming back and just reading the little spots like how he burned himself on his caramel. Great, great book!

Since I see this topic is posted twice, I'm posting my thoughts here as well:

You're missing How to Brew, and Extreme Brewing (while it has a few decent recipes and has lovely photos) isn't that great a book IMO. Designing Great Beers is good, but a bit outdated and IMO is a lot better after you've gotten a few batches done. Haven't read Jamil's yeast book, so I can't comment on it. Brew Like a Monk is a great volume, but doesn't have the general information you want when you're starting out.

I recommend:

How to Brew - The best single reference on brewing I've seen

Radical Brewing - Great for creative recipes and information on different ingredients

Also, just go and brew something. I brewed my first batch without reading any books and it turned out fine. Brewing will help make the texts make more sense, and the texts will then make the brewing make more sense.

I'm glad to hear you enjoy adobo! The first time I ever made it was also the first time my boyfriend ever tried adobo. Luckily, everything went better than expected - the adobo turned out great, and it is now one of his favorite foods.

Chicken Adobo

From How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman.

Makes: 4 servings
Time: About 1 ¼ hours

This Philippine classic has been called the best chicken dish in the world by a number of my friends and readers. It is cooked in liquid first, then roasted, grilled, or broiled. Here, however, the initial poaching liquid is reduced to make a sauce to pass at the table for both the chicken and white rice, the natural accompaniment.

The coconut milk isn’t mandatory, though it does enrich the sauce considerably.

Other protein you can use: pork chops (bone-in or boneless).

• 1 cup soy sauce
  
• ½ cup white or rice vinegar
  
• 1 cup water (this was not listed in the ingredient list in the book, but it is mentioned as an ingredient in the recipe)
  
• 1 tablespoon chopped garlic
  
• 2 bay leaves
  
• ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  
• 1 ½ cups coconut milk (optional)
  
• 1 whole chicken, 3 to 4 pounds, trimmed of excess fat and cut into 8 pieces, or any combination of parts
  
  Combine the soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, bay leaves, pepper, 1 cup water, and half the coconut milk, if you’re using it, in a covered skillet or saucepan large enough to hold the chicken in one layer. Bring to a boil over high heat. Add the chicken; reduce the heat to medium-low and cook, covered, turning once or twice, until the chicken is almost done, about 20 minutes. (At this point, you may refrigerate the chicken in the liquid for up to a day before proceeding; skim the fat before reheating.)
  
  Heat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit or heat a charcoal or gas grill or the broiler to moderate heat and put the rack about 4 inches from the heat source. Remove the chicken pieces from the liquid and dry them gently with paper towels. Boil the sauce, along with the remaining coconut milk if you’re using it, over high-heat until it is reduced to about 1 cup; discard the bay leaves and keep the sauce warm. Meanwhile, grill, broil, or roast the chicken until brown and crisp and hot, turning as necessary, 10 to 15 minutes total (roasting will take a little longer). Serve the chicken with the sauce.
  
  -----
  
  I have never used coconut milk when making adobo. My Mom and Grandparents never used it, so I just went along with that school of thought. It sounds like it would be an interesting addition though! I have used bone-in and boneless chicken, as well as bone-in and boneless pork for this recipe and have never been unhappy with the results.
  
  I have followed this recipe step by step, including finishing it on the grill, and it turned out great. However, when my Mom or Grandparents made adobo, they would just keep the protein simmering in the liquid and I enjoy it that way too. I have also used this recipe as a reference for proportions, browned the protein, and put everything in a crock pot on low for a few hours. Depending on what types of flavors you like, you can also add onions, peppercorns, whole garlic cloves, extra bay leaves…I’m just naming things that I would find in my adobo when I was growing up. Haha.

I could slap your beautiful face right now. But it's okay, because I know some kick ass cook books that will show you how to make yummy vegan food. Betty goes Vegan is a cookbook that vegan-izes classic american dishes. Also the Veganomicon might as well be the vegan bible when it comes to cooking. Every recipe I've tried in this one has been delicious. Personally recommend the Spiced Sweet Potatoes and the Herbed Scalloped Potatoes because they are pretty easy to make.

Also The Sweetest Vegan is a fantastic food blog that also has amazing food on it. It's another one where everything I've tried has been amazing. I haven't tried out anything on Vegan Dad but I know a bunch of vegans who love his stuff. He also has a cook book out but many of the recipes are online. The Vegan Stoner is good because he/she makes recipes that are cheap and fast. Another one that I haven't tried out too many on but I know is popular.

For raw eating I would head over to Fully Raw Kristina I buy food from her fully organic co-op and she is a huge sweetheart. She has several recipes and tips on her youtube page and she also has her own website with some other information. Also if you can't find the answer to a question you have about eating raw you can easily contact her via email.

Whether it is actually better or not, that's highly debatable and according to taste. But the cuisine in London/ UK is not neglectable and has a very rich background.

One of the most influential chefs in the world such as Heston Blumenthal (which is largely inspired by Harold McGee, an American), Marco Pierre White (he partly wrote modern cuisine, also an awesome person to hear) and Michel Roux (both senior as junior) have worked their careers in the UK. Each of them have defined a part of cooking/ cuisine in their way.

Not to forget the Commonwealth as well indeed, which brought a lot to the UK.

Really been watching too much MasterChef UK/ Australia and to one of my cooking teachers who really loves to read about history/ science of food. Then again, it's awesome to hear and to know as food is a way of sharing love, express your creativity and bonds and is such an important aspect of our lives/ society/ culture.

Some books which are awesome and I also have in my collection are:

• The Fat Duck Cookbook (don't imagine creating a dish of it, it's more about the insight and the science behind the dishes as they are easily a couple of pages)
  
• On food and cooking
  
• The Devil in the Kitchen
  
• Kitchen Confidential
  
  Honestly, couldn't forget the latter of course.

The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart is my number one recommendation for bread. Im also a big fan of Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson. His first book, Tartine is also great btw. I would skip out on Tartine Book No.3 though which seems to have too many errors for my liking. Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish is also one of the better bread baking books out there.

For general baking, im a big fan of Bouchon Bakery. And one book that will surely help you improve as a baker and I highly recommend you cook through is The Art of French Pastry by Jacquy Pfeiffer. Its like a pastry arts class in a book. I am actually cooking my way through this. If you have a serious sweet tooth, Momofoku Milk Bar by Christina Tosi will probably be what you're looking for. And as someone else recommended, the Baked books are all great.

For cakes, it has to be The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Bernanbaum. This is probably the best cake book of all time. I would supplement this with Toba Garrett's Professional Cake Decorating book.

For pies, my favorites are Four and Twenty Blackbirds and Hoosier Mama. One that I haven't tried but am planning to buy is First Prize Pies. If the book lives up to their reputation, it should be an excellent book.

For plated, more ambitious desserts, I like Payard Desserts. I refer to this when I want to impress company.

There’s this cook book called “Eat Like You Give a Fuck”. It’s a cheap cook book with cheaper and easier recipient. Do note it’s a vegan cook book but it’s great, tasty and healthy food that’s vegan. Many recipients are worth trying out because it’s based off of street food and such. No need to go full vegan obviously but it’s my fave cookbook. Through the book it tells you where you find the ingredients in the super market it walks you through super well how to make the food and it teaches you certain things to have proper cooking technique. It’s really such an outstanding beginner book. I can’t speak highly enough of it.


Thug Kitchen: The Official Cookbook: Eat Like You Give a F*ck (Thug Kitchen Cookbooks) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1623363586/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_2wYJDbV4VDJ06

My best resources have been cookbooks, honestly! Every Sunday I pick something that appeals to me and try it. I've learned to appreciate and prepare different veggies in all different ways. And that has opened me up to a lot of veggies I never ate before: beets, cabbage, ALL of the beans. Before I would always buy new veggies to try with good intentions, but just never knew what to do with them.

I know there's some debate over their style, but I really like the Thug Kitchen books. The recipes are pretty easy and creative. I also LOVE Veganomicon specifically because it has a lot of basics and is a good starting point. I recommend checking it out!

Online, I like onegreenplanet.org. They have a LOT of recipes.

Good job on practicing HAES!

See your doctor and explain your issue, first to make sure your meds aren't messing you up too much, and to see if you can afford or if your doctor can prescribe (so insurance covers) a visit to a registered nutritionist or dietitian. They can probably offer some very specific ideas to you that meet your vegan and gluten-free requirements but still will cover basic nutrients.

If you can't see a dietitian or nutritionist, or continue to struggle to eat, ask your doctor if they recommend a vitamin for you. (Some doctors don't or they might interfere with your medication for your bipolar or thyroid stuff.)

I agree with other commenters who say to give yourself permission to enjoy the few foods you do enjoy. If you like simple things like mac and cheese, try doing things like adding stuff into it even if you start with a frozen or from-box dish. Add a can of diced tomatoes, chickpeas, and corn. Voila! A new dish with some extra calories and nutrients.

If you want to check out a fun cooking resource (in case it will jump start feeling more motivated about cooking), try ThugKitchen.com. They're not all gluten-free recipes, but they're vegan and probably can be modified relatively easily to be gluten-free. Cookbook here:
http://www.amazon.com/Thug-Kitchen-Official-Cookbook-Like/dp/1623363586/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417689868&sr=8-1&keywords=thug+kitchen

Both my partner and I are vegetarians and we both like to cook. We often cook enough food to have leftovers, so our go to "quick meal" is often reheating leftovers.

If you like Indian food, this Easy Chana Masala recipe is one of our favorites. You can skip the mango powder if you don't have it/can't find it/don't want to bother getting it.

For making rice, if you don't have a rice cooker, having a gas stove is the best. But if you have electric, the best method uses two burners - 1 on high to bring the rice to a boil and the other on low to cover and simmer on. I usually do a 2 to 1 ratio water to rice and simmer white rice around 15 minutes, brown rice around 45 minutes. I also enjoy a curry rice as a side dish - simmer 1-2 tsp curry powder in butter or oil for 2 mintues; add 1 cup rice, 2 cups vegetable broth, 1 bay leaf, and a pinch of salt and bring to a boil and then simmer 15 minutes for white or 45 minutes for brown rice.

For making beans, canned beans work pretty well when pressed for time, but I recommend using dried beans for better flavor and texture. Soaking your beans overnight really helps to reduce your cooking time on dried beans, but that does mean you have to plan ahead.

I'm not sure if you want cookbook suggestions, but here are a few good ones that I like:

• Veganomicon
  
• The Heart of the Plate
  
• The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook - not exclusively vegetarian, but it has a lot of good vegetarian recipes
  
  If you're looking for recipes, there are a lot of vegetarian/vegan food blogs out there and you can also check out /r/VegRecipes and /r/veganrecipes.

I am a soldier who has to work to keep slim. As a result, I've educated myself some about nutrition, and there are a few things that I've found work.

First off, at 600+ lbs, you should consider seeing a doctor to see whether a hormonal imbalance of some sort is driving your weight gain. A thyroid disorder is entirely capable of driving that sort of gain. You should also consider seeing a physician that specializes in this sort of weight issue, because weight loss at those weights can come with special medical requirements.

You also need to psychologically steel yourself--not for the hunger, or for the work, but rather for how long becoming slim is actually going to take. I am currently helping one of my soldiers lose weight, and it's a constant battle to make this person understand the weight will not all come off in one month. You said you lost weight, but then would gain it all back. As one who has been there, I can tell you it's a result of losing sight of your milestones and goals, and falling back on the habits that got you where you are in the first place.

You also need to arm yourself with knowledge: LEARN HOW YOUR BODY WORKS! If I could recommend a single book that would really get you on the way, it'd be You On A Diet by Doctors Roizen and Oz. A close second would be Why We Get Fat and What We Can Do About It by Gary Taubes. These two books will give you great insight into how your body works, down to details like what foods will sate your hunger pangs and which will cause your body to accumulate fat. One of the most insightful things I learned from these books is that it is possible for your body to be starving, even as you get fat. Please read these two books. Hell, I'll even purchase them and send them to you if you promise me you'll read them.

One key piece of knowledge is calories in, calories out. While there is a lot of nuance to this, at the end of the day I've found that counting calories gives me predictable results. READ THIS, IT'S IMPORTANT:
YOU NEED ABOUT 2,000 CALORIES PER DAY TO LIVE
ONE POUND OF FAT CONTAINS 3,500 CALORIES
IF YOU RESTRICT YOUR DIET TO 1,500 CALORIES PER DAY (NO CHEATING), I PROMISE YOU WILL LOSE FOUR POUNDS PER MONTH

4-8 lbs per month is considered a good rate of loss. Keep in mind, that means that it'll take you a long time to drop. Generally, dietitians recommend not pushing it more than that because it saps your willpower over the long haul to wring your body any more than that. It is entirely possible you may lose more weight on a slight calorie restriction because, pending the diagnosis of a disorder, your body WANTS to lose that weight.

Just remember, though, losing 8 lbs per month is 96 lbs per year. Even making good progress will take a while.

Other things: consider becoming a vegetarian--it is a lot harder to overconsume. Also, get a multivitamin in every day.

It helps to have a support network to keep you motivated. Set those small, achievable milestones, such as "this month I will lose four pounds," and let people know when you meet those goals, and make sure it is positive people that will allow you to celebrate and celebrate it with you.

It will take time, but it is entirely possible to get there. I truly hope that the motivation to see your nephew and niece grow up will give you the strength to put what I've talked about into action. It will take time...years, even, but as long as you can keep the small achievements in mind and within reach, all will be okay.

Godspeed.

for nutrition, head on over to your Health Care Provider's website. They should have many helpful articles on eating right. Failing that, check out WebMD's suggestions.

I'm gonna presume it's just you (for now at least). One of the things you'll notice about a lot of recipes out there is that the serving sizes. Check out r/CookingForOne.

Also look over r/AskCulinary. It has a great FAQ (covers books, equipment and ingredients for beginners and experts alike) and Index.

Watch some Julia Child and Alton Brown videos.

for books, head over to your used bookstore and get yourself a copy of The Joy Of Cooking, Ratio and The Flavor Bible. This last one will help you a LOT with your spices.

Yes, I'm suggesting that you spend money. But the equipment (knives, cast iron, etc) and books are an investment. And you don't have to get them all at once.

Finally, it's great when you find items on sale in the produce section of your local market. But if it spoils before you use it all, it's wasted money and food. This is when your local salad bar can be a great help.

Good luck.

Edit: get yourself a rice cooker/steamer. a simple one-button model is all you really need. Always perfect rice and you can steam your veggies in the basket as well. Much healthier. Also, once you get more confident, you can look up some copycat recipes for your favorite fast food restaurant items.

I really like history books that don't at first seem to be history books, but are explorations of societies sometimes seen through the lens of a single important concept or product. For instance, Mark Kurlansky has several books such as Salt; A World History, Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, The Basque History of the World, Nonviolence: 25 Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea that teach more history, and more important history than is usually taught in US public schools.

History need not be rote memorization of dates and figures. It can, and should be a fun exploration of ideas and how those ideas shaped civilizations. It can also be an exploration of what did not make it into the history books as Bart Ehrman's Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament or his Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why and Elaine Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels attest.

I don't wish to come across as too glib about this, but I feel like the average person might well retain more useful knowledge reading a book like A History of the World in 6 Glasses than if they sat through a semester of freshman history as taught by most boring, lame generic high schools. I feel like often the best way to understand history is to come at it tangentially. Want to understand the US Constitution? Study the Iroquois confederacy. Want to understand the French? Study cuisine and wine. Want to understand China? Study international trade. And so it goes. Sometimes the best history lessons come about from just following another interest such as astronomy or math or cooking. Follow the path until curiosity is sated. Knowledge will accumulate that way. ;-)

Coffee appeared in Europe around the late 16th century and early 17th century. Of course, like many liquids, there were all kinds of opinions about its purported health benefits.

However, the main benefit was the fact that it lead to a decline in the consumption of alcohol. Alcohol had previously been the best way to consume uncontaminated water, so it was common for much of the population of Europe to be mildly intoxicated for much of the day. Coffee offered a better way to consume uncontaminated water without getting drunk, and the mild amount of caffeine was purported to encourage clear thinking.

Coffee was hailed as part of the age of rationalism. Coffee shops became centers of intellectual engagement as part of an increase in interest in philosophy and sciences more generally in Western Europe. While coffee was later surpassed by tea in popularity in the UK, it continued to be popular in continental Europe.

One of the better written sources on the subject is http://www.amazon.com/A-History-World-6-Glasses/dp/0802715524

This is by no means a complete answer (I honestly think that one could write a book on this topic and still not come to a fully satisfying answer) but I hope that this will shed some insight into the history of the taboo and it's social causes.

The earliest academic reference I could find that tried to explain why speaking of money was a taboo was, unsurprisingly, Freud. And, even less surprisingly, he related it to anal eroticism. (As a quick aside, I'm really beginning to wonder if a cigar was just a cigar) 1. There is good reason to believe that the taboo persisted well before that, but it is the earliest reference I could personally find.

Without a definitive start date, some may be inclined to believe that we've always had this taboo-- or at least some type of it. Personally, that's the attitude I went into this question with. After all, money has been around for over 4,000 years 2 and our tribal psychology invites trepidation into situations where our social standing is on the line. Indeed, some have speculated that discussions of money fall under such situations 2 since we often tie worth to income and to financial price 3. This could reasonably lead people to conclude that it's simply inherent to human thought. Talking about money can dredge up a lot of social comparisons and expectations which could trigger that tribal instinct saying "let's not put ourselves in a lower position on the social strata so that we're not eventually ostracized 5."

There's only one problem with this: If it was universal, we would expect different cultures to have a similar reticence to income. But they don't 6. Even countries as geographically proximal as Japan and China have different attitudes about money as indicated by their folklore 7.

So we are left with the idea that this is a western construction. To be clear, I definitely think that the proclivity to tie social worth with the amount of stuff one has probably dates back quiet a while as it would be a handy hint throughout much of human history. But the actual taboo seems to be western in origin.

I don't think that we'll be able to find a specific date, time, or even location to pin this origination on. However, if allowed to venture an educated guess, I would posit that they came from our coffee shops.

It's well known that coffee and tea shops were instrumental to the formulation and actualization of many western uprisings 8. These institutions looked to turn the current social status quo on its head. Inside the shops, everyone was theoretically equal. A certain code of conversation developed, largely thanks to the propagation of two magazines: The Spectator and the Tatler 9. I cannot find any direct quotes from either publication that specifically dictates that one ought not to make note of the socioeconomic differences that exist outside of the shop-- however, there is decent evidence for tacit recommendations via the emphasis on maintaining a tempered and productive conversation 9. I contend that it's difficult to have a good chat when you're being actively singled out as an impecunious peon. Such an account would work fairly well with our theoretical understanding of taboo construction. As it goes, taboos are extremely strong norms and mores that deliver intense social (and possibly even official) sanctions 10. They can develop from social rules and evolve along with the society; hence why some taboo subjects are less taboo as they used to be and others are even more forbidden. I would venture that the taboo for discussing income developed on this track. It could have started off as an expression of politeness and proper etiquette and developed more bite as western society grew more infatuated with the idea of human equality. There aren't any studies that directly prove or disprove this theory (possibly due to a dearth of literature on the topic of money 2), so take it with a grain of salt.

I would also like to recommend the book that U/David_divaD did as well as The Psychology of Money by Furnham and Argyle.

They don't get a lot of love around here (though they don't get much hate either I suppose, lol) but I started with a Mr. Beer from the hobby shop. I quickly out grew it, but it was ~$60 and came with two batches worth of extract and yeast and allowed me to figure out that despite the beer not being as great as I'd hoped, I enjoyed the process. So it was definitely worth the money and effort even though I don't use the Mr. Beer anymore.

As far as DIY equipment, most individual parts of the process are relatively inexpensive. You can save money by using Aluminum instead of stainless steel for boiling your wort (unfermented beer), and you can do without things like immersion chillers to cool your wort and use ice-baths instead. But the beautiful thing is you can upgrade different pieces of equipment as you see necessary. You can start out cheap but decide it's worth the $60 to get an immersion chiller. Or if you are handy with metal and such you can make your own! Again, a lot of answers can be gained from books (and here of course!). Like I said earlier, this book is great. I too was afraid of the cost of the hobby and worried I wouldn't like homebrewing and be out a bunch of money. Turns out I enjoy it enough to warrant the cost!

I just got into real brewing (started with a Mr. Beer 4 years ago and it has taken me this many years to start up again after that nightmare).

The basic equipment is cheap. I spent $89 for a proper starter + add-on kit.

I made a wort chiller for $7 and bought an additional carboy so I can have multiple batches going.

I spent $20 on hops rhizomes (Cascades) and those went crazy this summer.

10 days ago I did a honey wheat (having a friend walk me through the process - and he did most of the work).

He set it up for a 2nd fermentation on Saturday ( since it was so nasty out I wasn't able to get to his place) and I'll bottle it next weekend.

This past Saturday I made a Stout and a Nut Brown Ale. And that is the problem with brewing. I like dark beers that usually take weeks before bottling (looking at 4 weeks to bottling for the last 2 and then another 2 weeks in the bottles).

I really need to start drinking Pilsners. That way I can drink them 7-10 days later.

The point I'm trying to make is that it's cheap and it really is easy but the waiting game sucks.

If you want someone to help you with your first batch just let me know and you can come over and we'll make a couple. I'm going to try to brew 5 gallons a week for a while so I can always have some homebrew ready to drink.

I'd recommend getting a copy of The Complete Joy of Home Brewing

It has everything in it that you need to know and has a bunch of recipes from beginner to advanced.

I also just picked up Clone Brews which has a lot of popular beers in it and how to make them yourself.

And as they say at Midwest Supplies , you really should do 5 or 10 batches from their brew kits to learn the full process and how different ingredients affect the flavor of your beer.

Just my two-cents.

I also started r/TCBrewers but no one has used it yet.

There was some talk of a Brew Party (As Midwest_Product pointed out) that was going to be Nov. 20th but I haven't heard anything about it in quite a while.

Anyhow, it seems there is a lot of interest in a Brew Party so if no one else steps up I could always have it at my place but it would probably have to be outside in turkey fryers. I have a nice bonfire pit so that would be our source of warmth.

My family is mostly German, so meat is a pretty big part of what we ate (sausages, schnitzels, and a lot of bbq-ing). I went veg in high school and it wasn't too much trouble for me - my parents didnt' cook two meals, but just an extra veggie protein for me when I wanted that. The other things were vegetarian anyway (like potatoes, vegetables, and most soups).

I strayed away until I was in my early twenties. Then it was a bit more difficult because none of my friends were vegetarian and we all ate out a lot. It was a short transition (went cold turkey) but I had a package of chicken breasts in my freezer that I told myself I was allowed to eat if I wanted to since I had already purchased them. I never ended up eating them and 3 months later gave the package to my room-mate so they wouldn't go to waste. It was helpful to know that I had this plan in case I got weak, but was motivated enough to not give in.

Veggie burgers can taste amazing or meh... depends on the variety. Many replicate meat quite well and actually taste better considering it leaves you feeling a little lighter than a meat burger. If you want the "meat" kind then avoid grain burgers as they taste a bit more "natural". I personally like those, but they aren't really a replacement.

Downsides are that you can sometimes be considered an outcast at meals - sometimes people make a big deal out of trying to make sure you're "okay", and that you have enough to eat. Just be polite and easy going to get through this kind of stuff. It's no big deal. Also, you need to be careful how you talk about your own vegetarianism - always let others make their own decisions and don't judge them (out loud at least). Having discussions is good, but don't get into any arguments or be preachy. It only turns people off of the lifestyle and reinforces a stereotype of "the preachy vegetarian". Talk about the positives when people ask you about your new diet and leave out the horror of animal welfare and factory farming until someone seems truly interested in these things. You can mention that you're veg for ethical reasons (if that's true), and that you don't want to contribute to the suffering of animals, but don't get into gory details - most people feel threatened by that and it usually turns into a ridiculous argument. Remember that your diet is your choice, and they have the freedom to make their own choices. Show them how easy and delicious being vegetarian is rather than how awful their lifestyle is.

Upsides are plently, here are a couple:

• longer average lifespan
  
• you're minimizing you impact on animal suffering
  
• you're minimizing your contributions to environmental issues associated with meat farming
  
• delicious food options that many meat eaters never experience
  
• usually less expensive than eating meat
  
• a generally healthier lifestyle
  
• not having to have 3 separate cutting boards for meat, fish and veggies - just one for everything!
  
  Before you make the transition, have a plan (buy some alternatives and talk to your family), and also write down the reasons you're doing it in pretty elaborate detail. If you are tempted to eat meat, read your reasons again and remind yourself why you made the change in the first place. Add to the list as you grow and change in perspective.
  
  Lastly, if you plan to cook a lot, get the Veganomicon. I've found this book to be indispensable since a friend gave it to me.

Yes I do! Full disclosure, I got this recipe out of a vegan cookbook called Thug Kitchen.
 
This recipe makes a lot of cauliflower btw, probably enough for like 4-6 people, so just cut it in half if you don’t think you need that much.
 
Ingredients
2 medium heads of cauliflower
1/2 cup flour (I used all-purpose, but it doesn’t really matter what kind you use)
1/2 cup water
1/2 to 2/3 cup sriracha (depending on how much you can handle the heat)
2 teaspoons oil (I used olive, but if you’re cheap you can use pretty much any oil and it will work)
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1/2 teaspoon soy sauce
 
Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 450F and lightly grease a rimmed baking sheet. Chop up your cauliflower into bite sized florets (or just buy it pre-chopped if you’re lazy).
   
2. Whisk together the flour and water to make a smooth batter. Too chunky? Add more water. Too runny? Add more flour.
   
3. Put the cauliflower into a big bowl, toss them in the batter, and make sure they are all a little coated. There should be enough batter to get a nice coating on them. They shouldn’t be soaked and dripping, but they should all be coated.
   
4. Spread them out evenly on the baking sheet in one layer and put them into the oven for 15 minutes. Move them around and flip them halfway through to make sure all the sides get a chance to cook.
   
5. While they are baking, make the hot sauce. Combine the oil, sriracha, vinegar, and soy sauce in a small saucepan and cook on low heat until it’s warm, but not bubbling. You’re just trying to get those flavors to combine nicely, but if it starts bubbling, you might spend some time later scraping burnt hot sauce out of your pan and it will probably mess up your sauce too. Once it’s warm and combined, remove it from the heat until your cauliflower is ready.
   
6. Once the cauliflower is done cooking, take it out of the oven and put them into a big bowl. You can just use the same bowl you used to toss them in the batter before, but obviously wipe it clean before you do. Toss the cauliflower with the hot sauce mixture from the stove and get those delicious little guys nice and coated.
   
7. Put them back on the baking sheet, leaving some extra sauce in the bowl (don’t worry, we’re coming back to it) and bake for another 3 minutes.
   
8. Serve these guys warm (or room temp, I’m just a random internet dude. I can’t tell you what to do) and top with that leftover sauce, or leave it on the side in a small bowl for dipping.

My favorite cookbook is The New Best Recipe, a compilation of over 1,000 recipes from America's Test Kitchen. I love it because they give in-depth descriptions of all the different things they tried in order to perfect every recipe, and so not only do you get a great recipe but you can learn all about why it is great. Most recipes have one or two additional variations included. They cover different products and techniques, and all sorts of information that is useful for both new and competent cooks. It is so interesting that I sometimes read it just for fun.

The chapters cover everything from appetizers to different types of main courses, but also includes lots of chapters on baked goods -- breads, cookies, cakes, pies, crisps, puddings, and more. I would highly recommend it to anyone, and everything I've made from it so far has been delicious!

Hey! I see you're a new vegan! You might want some good resources for vegan cooking and recipes. Check out some of my favourite vegan cookbooks:

Veganomicon has really good recipes and some basic recipes.

Minimalist Baker. She's got an amazing blog that I cook from all the time. It's maybe my favourite vegan source for recipes.

Thug Kitchen. Not my favourite recipes, but the book is hilarious. Also a blog.

Oh She Glows Also really healthy, lovely vegan food. Also a blog.

Good luck with your new journey, and I hope these bring you some fun ideas!

The cookbook is called "Good and Cheap" - it's available as a free ebook or PDF. The author, Leanne Brown, also has a website with those recipes and more (I see I'm not the only person to link it). There are really good recipes!

My wife and I use them a lot. Last week I made her chana masala recipe for my lunches, cost $6 total for all 5 lunches. I admit it got old by the end of the week, but for the first couple days it was really tasty!

Another good resource is budgetbytes (I see someone else also linked that one).

A couple broader "principles" (you may already know them, though):

• Prepared foods are often expensive. Making from scratch is good. But sometimes you don't want to cook and emergency mac'n'cheese is always okay. Add some frozen peas to make it seem healthy
  
• Meat is also often expensive. Tofu and beans (especially dry beans, if you have time to cook them) can be cheaper. Rice and beans is a super filling meal, and you can dress it up with cumin and onions, then garnish with cilantro and sour cream (look up recipes for Dominican rice and beans - "la bandera" - or Costa Rican rice and beans - "gallo pinto")
  
• If this is a temporary situation (some number of months) then you can probably cut a few corners on nutrition and lean heavily on rice, pasta, and other cheap carbs to do the super basic job of being filling. If there's an Asian grocery nearby you can often get a 50 lb. bag of rice for $30-$40 (my wife and I go through one every 8-10 months); Amazon may also help. If your financial situation will last longer (a year or more) then that's a worse solution. But short term, rice'n'spice with a couple fried eggs can go a long way
  
• Do you eat a lot of bread? Bread is not a super expensive item, but you can still save money by baking it yourself. A lot of people rave about Flour, Water, Salt, and Yeast for "artisanal" baking but those are mostly crusty, hearty loaves more than sandwich bread. If you want to go the homemade bread route and mostly need sandwiches, a bread machine might be worth it.
  
  But a lot of these depend on how much time you can commit to food prep. If you're limited on time then your strategy will change a bit.

I started by going through the Bread Bakers Apprentice. I don't really use any of the recipes in there anymore but it gave me a good starting point and it's still a good reference for terminology and methods. Like, it got me really into ciabatta bread from that book. I'm still tweaking my recipe to perfect it.

Starter is a whole different beast. I've used the method found in this youtube series to make mine. He's got a series on sourdough bread, but that channel's non-bread content is pretty fantastic as well.

If you don't have one, I'd highly recommend a kitchen scale. Recipes using grams is so much easier/better than using volume. Also, don't buy those little packets of yeast at the grocery store if you're planning on making bread more than twice a year. You can find two pound bags of dry active yeast on amazon for ~$10.

You might want to buy Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything. Its a book about cooking techniques that I think is precisely the book you are looking for.

Also honorable mention for The Food Lab and The New Best Recipe books as well, those are more recipe based, but they have great info on techniques and ingredients. Both get into the science behind cooking and explain why they picked a specific recipe which helped me learn how to cook without recipes and be able to know when certain things are done(I now judge if something I am baking is done more by smell than time now) and how to save emulsions when to add salt and acids etc. The author of the food lab is also pretty active on the Serious Eats subreddit and will answer questions about his recipes.

Salt Fat Acid and Heat is also pretty good as well, I have not read this one personally though as the first part is waaaaaayyy too much personal narrative from the author for me and I turned off the audiobook after listening to her life story for 10 minutes, so get the print book so you can skip right to the cooking parts.

My 10 Commandments:

1. Keep it simple. Try to highlight one and only one "ingredient" in every dish. Although the ingredient may actually be a sauce, a mix, or even a technique.
   
   
2. Classics are classics for a reason.
   
   
3. There are 5 basic flavors: salty, umami, sweet, sour, and bitter. Shoot for at least a strong note of one and a lighter note of another. Never use umami without salt.
   
   
4. To extend 3: every kitchen should have salt, butter, eggs, and either vinegar or a citrus juice on hand. Even if you think you're using enough of these, you probably aren't. Olive oil is good for you, use more of it as well.
   
   
5. For the busy, chronically ill, disabled, and lazy: Don't be afraid to cook up a big mess of a single ingredient and keep it on hand. I try to keep a tub of unseasoned white rice and some cooked chicken fajita meat on hand at all times. Even when you're sick, you can do something with them.
   
   
6. Don't confuse prep time with total cooking time. Just because something is going to take an hour or more to cook doesn't mean you're going to be standing beside the stove the whole time. If it takes 3 minutes to get it ready for the microwave or the oven, it's the same 3 minutes. There's more truth to the statement "I wasn't feeling very well, so I just roasted a chicken" than you might imagine.
   
   
7. Avoid unitaskers, both gadget-wise and ingredient wise. Only spend money on things you'll use often and in a lot of different ways.
   
   
8. Exception to 7: Items that do one thing extremely well, and you need that thing one very often. My beloved microwave rice cooker is only good for cooking rice, but it's excellent at it and I use it constantly because once the rice is cooked I can just put the whole thing in the fridge as storage.
   
   
9. You do not, in fact, need a knife collection. You need one large workhorse knife (chef's, santoku, or cleaver), and either a paring knife, a utility knife, or both. If you find you actually need another type of knife later you can buy a high-quality single. Don't feel you have to spend a lot of money on your knives, either. As long as it holds an edge and feels comfortable in your hand, you're fine.
   
   
10. Don't worry about cookbooks. Instead, buy books on cooking. My favorites are Ratio and Ruhlman's 20. If you like them, there will eventually be content in /r/CultOfRuhlman

We are short on dedicated homebrew supply shops by me as well. Major city but had none for about a month. Some of the larger liquor stores (Party Mart, Liquor Barn... I know they're chains but not sure if it's just local) have supplies and ingredients. Pretty good selection too. Just don't count on anyone there knowing anything about it. Not sure where you live but there's several in WV according to google.

In the past I've always had good luck with NorthernBrewer.com, but I haven't ordered from them since a LHBS opened near me. And I probably won't since the AB-InBev buyout. But if you don't care about the politics they do a good job.

Stick to extract with at least your first few batches. Do yourself a favor and read a book before you brew. This one was good for me. Opinions vary though. Welcome to the club. Happy brewing.

My pleasure! Photography is expensive, but cooking is a hobby that's easy to get into in measures. I would recommend How to Cook Everything by Bittman as an excellent, excellent first (or even only) book. Check it out next time you're in a bookstore with a decent cooking section - FYI, the newer red cover is updated and (generally) better than the older yellow cover. It's the sort of book you can spend a little time on a Saturday perusing, make a trip to the grocery store, come home, and try something new. And then leave on your shelf for a few more weeks. But if you keep doing that long enough, you'll get pretty decent at cooking. =)

pretty much any kit from any online or local homebrew shop. Will do. Most of them come with a fermentation bucket, a bottling bucket, a capper, caps, a hydrometer, some hoses, a bottling wand, and your first recipe kit Some come with carboys or better bottles (plastic carboys) but that isn't necessary for the types of beer you posted. If you are purchasing for Christmas (IE you don't need it within a week) be on the look out for a Midwest starter kit Groupon. 127 dollar value for 64 bucks plus IIRC 25 dollars shipping.

If you purchase from your LHBS you could ask for an upgraded recipe usually for the difference of what you need (say it comes with a 25 dollar recipe and you want a 30 dollar recipe they will only charge you the kit plus 5 dollars.) at least that is what my LHBS did. Also they will be able to help you with what you need.

As for how to brew advice. on top of your kit get him John Palmer's How To Brew It is the best beginners book in my opinion.

Good places to shop for kits

• Midwest Supplies
  
  
• Northern Brewer
  
  
• Austin Homebrew
  
  As a bonus also try and learn the craft and help him brew. Brewing and bottling are much more fun if you have someone to work with.

>The next best thing to having Mark Bittman in the kitchen with you

Mark Bittman's highly acclaimed, bestselling book How to Cook Everything is an indispensable guide for any modern cook. With How to Cook Everything The Basics he reveals how truly easy it is to learn fundamental techniques and recipes. From dicing vegetables and roasting meat, to cooking building-block meals that include salads, soups, poultry, meats, fish, sides, and desserts, Bittman explains what every home cook, particularly novices, should know.

1,000 beautiful and instructive photographs throughout the book reveal key preparation details that make every dish inviting and accessible. With clear and straightforward directions, Bittman's practical tips and variation ideas, and visual cues that accompany each of the 185 recipes, cooking with How to Cook Everything The Basics is like having Bittman in the kitchen with you.

This is the essential teaching cookbook, with 1,000 photos illustrating every technique and recipe; the result is a comprehensive reference that’s both visually stunning and utterly practical.
Special Basics features scattered throughout simplify broad subjects with sections like “Think of Vegetables in Groups,” “How to Cook Any Grain,” and “5 Rules for Buying and Storing Seafood.”
600 demonstration photos each build on a step from the recipe to teach a core lesson, like “Cracking an Egg,” “Using Pasta Water,” “Recognizing Doneness,” and “Crimping the Pie Shut.”
Detailed notes appear in blue type near selected images. Here Mark highlights what to look for during a particular step and offers handy advice and other helpful asides.
Tips and variations let cooks hone their skills and be creative.


http://www.amazon.com/Cook-Everything-Completely-Revised-Anniversary/dp/0764578650/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411914327&sr=1-1&keywords=how+to+cook+everything

Not OP, but bread in general with a Dutch oven is super easy. All you need is time (8-18 hour to proof) and 4 ingredients—water, salt, yeast and flour. This is my go to easy no knead dutch oven bread recipe. Note, it is not sourdough. I’ve found that water temp at 113.5F seems to work the best and I substitute APF for bread flour at a 1:1 ratio.

You can then get fancy with a proofing bowl like OP used to get the geocentric circles and also start playing around with different starters/flours. You can use whole wheat flour in the above recipe but remember you can’t substitute whole wheat flour 1:1, the max you can do is 50% whole wheat flour so use 1.5 cups whole wheat flour and 1.5 cups APF/bread flour and increase the water to 1 3/4 cups of water. Check your local grocery store, they may have sourdough starters you can buy.

Experiment and have fun with it. I make bread probably 3-4 times per month. The hardest part is just planning out the time to proof the dough. If you really get into it, you’ll probably like this book Flour Water Salt Yeast.

LOL, any bread that can actually be called bread will have crust harder than Wonder bread - they make a point of having no discernable crust, other than for looks.

Seriously, hunt up "Pain de Mie" in your area - mie is pronounced "me" as in "you and...". The focus of it will be less crust, more crumb.

Sorry to hear you ran into bread with bad crusts. Keep in mind that good bread is not purely formula so it is possible to hit a bad loaf now and again. Especially if it's been left out to dry, of course. You'll find bagging in plastic will make most any fresh bread much softer. You'll loose the crunch, of course, part of the experience, but get closer to what you happen to enjoy so that's a good thing.

I make soft-crusted bread for my partner who finds anything with a discernable crust "hard on the teeth", even though I am saddened to do so and lose the joy of a good crust. I do make crunchy bread for myself, though - see the blog I linked to above. So I do get that some folk like their crusts soft to non-existant. Hopefully, however, that doesn't translate to not liking flavourful bread, since it's easy to just grab the sliced bagged stuff and get locked into the idea "this is what bread tastes like".

Can't help you with locating a good bakery since I will guess you're not on Vancouver Island in Canada. Even then if it's a chain, it's nearly guaranteed they use shortcuts to produce large volume or (gasp) do like supermarkets and get their dough pre-mixed from factories or loaves par-baked and merely finish the baking in-store which gets the aroma that gets people buying. It's all very much calculated to get money out of your wallet.

I'd recommend you hunt up small owner-run bakeries where they really care about their product and see what they have for sandwich bread, again this will tend towards Pain de Mie. Or try challah dough bread which makes a lot more than just typical braided challah bread. It's got a very tender crust, in most any incarnation you might run into (seeded, flavoured, etc.).

Or learn to bake on your own - maybe take a bread making course at a local college or store - and then you have complete control of the final product.

If you pick up Peter Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice, there are a lot of great breads to make in there; the very first one, Anadama, is surprisingly tasty (and soft-crusted), even if it looks weird at first reading. It gets into the whys and hows, without going too deep, and has lots of bread porn pictures to keep you intrigued.

Hope this helped out.

"Mastering the Art of French Cooking" is her classic, in every library and its pretty easy to find at a used bookstore for next to nothing. Quite a few of the sauces will involve some creative keto work to get aroud the roux but at least it'll be an interesting experiment.

I just picked up How To Cook Meat second hand and have been working my way through the cuts of meat I would've been less likely to buy on my own. Combine it with a former favorite from my past life, Veganomicon and I've got a nearly limitless supply of new meat and veg dinners.

I'm lucky that vegan years helped me out in the "omg this food is so boring" phases so now I've got all kinds of methods to deal with it but getting a cookbook and plowing through every recipe in it is still one of my favorites. Modifying recipes to be animal product free before and carb and sugar free now makes it all the more interesting. Last month I got on a medieval cooking kicking and started making the amazingly named: Grave of Small Birds.

Wow you're really lucky, I wish I'd got that much to spend on brewing for a grant!

Feel free to ask this subreddit any question at any type of course, and I'm sure we'd also love it if you posted your findings as you study the chemistry too.

Are you completely new to brewing? Do you want to make beer or mead or what?

Some good sources:

Designing Great Beers - Great book full of hard data and numbers on tons of brew related topics. This would be good to use as a reference for experiments.

Brew Judge Certification Program website - This is the official certification site for beer judges and it outlines a large variety brew styles from various types of beer, to styles of mead, and explains what is used to make them, how it should taste, etc.

One of the best things you can do is to train your palate. This way, when you taste something, you can figure out what's in it, and make it yourself if you want. It will also help you to learn what goes with what. For example, dill goes with salmon, lemon with raspberries, tomato with onion and cilantro or basil, etc. That kind of knowledge will help you to invent your own recipes which are catered directly to your tastes.

If you really want to know what makes food do what it does, I would recommend the following books:

• For general culinary science, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee. It is one of the best books ever written which actually explains why things happen in the kitchen.
  
• I usually buy a copy of Shirley O. Corriher's CookWise for anyone who says they want to learn to cook. It is perfect for beginners and has lots of very useful recipes. If you watch Alton Brown's "Good Eats", you will see Ms. (or is is Dr.?) Corriher explaining some of the science.
  
• If you want to learn how to bake incredible cake, Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Cake Bible is indispensable, same for her Bread Bible and Pie and Pastry Bible. I rarely fuck up a cake now, and if I do, I know why. And her cake recipes are brilliant. From learning to make her chocolate butter cake, I also discovered the secret to making the BEST cup of chocolate ever. The aforementioned Ms. Corriher's BakeWise is also excellent for beginners.
  
• The Larousse Gastronomique is probably the most famous book on cuisine. It's an encyclopedia which contains pretty much every cooking term. It's a pretty high-level book, but it is the authority.
  
  Have fun with it! =)

Name: Paul

Age: 25

Location: Minneapolis

Pics (of you, pets, whatever etc.,) http://i.imgur.com/yi0rf7P.jpg (It was for grindr and my only recent pic, please don't judge!)

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What are your plans for Valentine's day?

• No idea, probably game with another single friend
  
  Is there anything you're looking forward to this month?
  
  
• Not quite in this month but the release of the Nintendo Switch and Breath of the Wild!
  
  What TV shows are you looking forward to having come back on for the spring?
  
  
• Very much looking forward to Legion, it seems like there are a ton of great shows coming out soon though
  
  What's one good recipe you would like to share?
  
  
• Not a recipe but a book. If you like baking artisan bread check out this book, it's incredibly well written and helpful: https://www.amazon.com/Flour-Water-Salt-Yeast-Fundamentals/dp/160774273X
  
  What are you currently listening to/watching/reading?
  
  
• Just started reading Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher and it is very insightful and provocative http://www.zero-books.net/books/capitalist-realism
  
  In your opinion, what is the superior pet?
  
  
• Dogs, obviously
  
  What is one subreddit you think everyone should check out?
  
  
• I will revisit this one later

I haven't. I've got a bunch of science-y cookbooks.

Edit: Here is the best book I've found. It's a really heavy read, though: On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen

My other favorite, go to book is America's Test Kitchen Best American Classics. I also do recipe testing for ATK - regular recipes and gluten free.

Oh, and don't forget Michael Ruhlman's Ratio:The Simple Codes Behind The Craft of Everyday Cooking. This is the most amazing book. It's short and to the point as well. You begin to understand how a simple tweak to a recipe can create an entirely different dish.


I love how a great Mindcrack thread became a cooking thread. My 2 favorite things in life.

Oh yeah, I used to be vegan...I am into it.

Taste: It is very bland by itself, but no one that I know eats it straight. It can be made into many tasty things. It is in a lot of faux meats. It is a lot like tofu in that it takes up the flavor of things around it. I think that Isa Chandra is like... the wheat gluten goddess. All of her recipes involving wheat gluten that I've made I've been a fan of. I'm a big fan of her "Chickpea Cutlet" recipe ([recipe here] (http://www.theppk.com/2010/11/doublebatch-chickpea-cutlets/)).

Check out [Veganomicon] (http://www.amazon.com/Veganomicon-The-Ultimate-Vegan-Cookbook/dp/156924264X) and [Isa Does It!] (http://www.amazon.com/Isa-Does-Amazingly-Delicious-Recipes/dp/0316221902/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427495938&sr=1-1&keywords=isa+does+it). Both of those books have winning recipes that use wheat gluten as an ingredient.

Expense: Varies wildly. If you find it at a hippie woo-woo place in an individually sealed package (e.g., Bob's Red Mill), the markup can be insane. On the other hand, you can get it cheaply per pound if you can find it in a bulk bin at a place like Whole Foods.

You can get it at an extra "discount" if you find it in a bulk bin but label it as some kind of flour. ;)

My Experience: I made some dang tasty recipes with the stuff, but eventually, I stopped eating it because I personally find that I don't tolerate it as well (it just made me gassy). But more importantly, the recipes I like it best in have a higher protein to carb ratio than I'd prefer during a cut...and when I'm bulking, I'm too busy filling my face with all the things so I usually forget about wheat gluten.

Hope this helps!

I think a good way to go about crafting your own recipe is to learn a bit about what makes a particular beer style unique. There are tons of guidelines that differentiate one style of beer from another. It has a lot to do with the amount and types of malt that are used as well as the hops and yeast.

Books like Brewing Classic Styles give you a good "baseline" recipe for each beer style as well as what types of ingredients (and in what proportion) are used to create that style.

You can also use some online recipe database like Brewtoad. There are loads of recipes on there all labeled by style.

One thing that I like to do is pull up 3-4 recipes of a style that I'm shooting for and take a look at the average ratios of each type of malt and hops. Then, I kinda wing it from there based on qualities I want in my beer (higher/lower gravity, lighter/darker color, particular hop varieties, etc...)

The real answer to your question though, is to try a lot of pre-made recipes that work well. The American Homebrewer's Association has tons of great recipes, many of which have won awards. After brewing a lot and paying attention to the ingredients, you'll get a pretty good handle on things you like/dislike about different beer styles and recipes.

drmischief links below - but you REALLY ought to buy and read How to Brew by John Palmer.

It's pretty much indispensable for the noob brewer. It's a great blend of easy to understand process, as well as a good helping of science if you really want to understand what's going on.

Make it through that book, and complement it with Brewing Classic Styles and Brewing Better Beer.

You may not be a book learner, but those books have great references that you can look up mid-brew.

Other than that - find someone to mentor you through a local homebrew club if at all possible. I started with a mentor, and have since passed the torch to other all grain noobs.

I adore this cookbook (or any in that series, really). I know, you are asking: why buy a book when you can get recipes online for free? I will tell you: because these recipes will teach you how to cook and they are pretty much failproof.

The book is just a collection of recipes from Cook's Illustrated Magazine and basically it tackles standard recipes rather than funky new ones like many cooking magazines. They don't just grab any ol' recipe for meatloaf, lentil soup, fried chicken or whatever. They meticulously test each recipe and optimize the cooking strategy to make it perfect. Every recipe is accompanied by an article describing exactly why each ingredient is there and how each technique achieves the desired outcome. It is really quite scientific (I love that).

They also have tips/recipes for really basic things, like how best to chop onions or boil pasta which can be helpful if you don't have much experience.

I would always recommend people start with 'The Compleat Meadmaker, by Ken Schramm'. This has been the meadmaking bible for a very long time. You can find supplementary information about staggered nutrient additions, pH buffering compounds, new sanitizers, etc online in various articles and forum sites. Of course, understanding your ingredients can also be very good for any brewer, and water is a huge ingredient. So besides the other element series book 'Yeast' by Christ White and Jamil Zainasheff I highly recommend 'Water' by John Palmer and Colin Kaminski. For those of us making mead in Ferndale, our water is a very key ingredient which comes to us from an underground aquifer treated by the city of Ferndale, and is of very high quality (even compared with the high quality water from the City of Detroit). Understanding honey is a huge area of study. There are many classic textbooks on honey and honey-hunting by Eva Crane that are considered primary sources (but these can be prohibitively expensive for most mazers, and honestly, Ken's book does an awesome job of summarizing her contributions, as well as other historical information about meadmaking, honey, etc). I feel a basic understanding of beekeeping can be highly instructive for meadmakers, and so I recommend that you get your hands on some beginner beekeeping books, e.g. 'Beesentials' by L.J. Connor and Robert Muir and/or the 'Beekeeper's Handbook'. A solid background in wine or beer-making doesn't hurt, either, and there are multitudes of books I can recommend to you on the subject of beer specifically (this is my homebrewing background). My two absolute must-haves for beer brewing are 'Designing Great Beers' by Ray Daniels and 'Brewing Classic Styles' by John Palmer and Jamil Zainasheff. Learning to brew beer can help you if you decide you want to try your hand at braggots.

It has been asked before, so do poke around a bit. But as always I'll recommend Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything as the best place to start. IMO he does a better job covering some of the really basic stuff like how to shop, easiest way to prepare x food, variants on x food, charts for flavors/combinations, etc. Really it's a great primer on HOW to cook and afterwards it's a handy reference.

I think Food Lab/Serious Eats is a better second cookbook because it's a bit less concerned with teaching the basics of a particular food, but a bit better at providing recipes that don't need tweaking. Bittman recipes are super simple but he really pushes you to adapt it to your taste, which in the end makes you a better cook. Food Lab is really into the science/method which is great, but IMO more complex than you need at the very beginning. The perfect burger, Kenji all day long, but WTF to do with that butcher cut you bought on sale, I prefer Bittman.

For a third cookbook, the Flavor Bible is also great.

Do yourself a favor and get a copy of The Joy of Cooking. If you can't afford it, get it second hand or ask for it for xmas or something. If you find a good and/or cheap ingredient, use the glossary to look it up, and there's usually information about it. Once you have the kitchen skills to follow a recipe reasonably closely, you're golden.

Another tip, think about a food you LOVE to eat (something reasonably healthy, whose ingredients are in your budget). Look up a recipe for that, then make it any time you don't know what else to make (why not make it every day?). Keep making it until it is exactly what you want, and you've internalized the recipe; then, move on to another dish.

My advice is to get stuff to measure as you cook, measuring cups, measuring spoons, a thermometer, and a scale. Try to be accurate when you cook.

Familiarize yourself with using knives. Find out how to do basic cuts. Get a chef's knife, everything else, buy as you need them. Do take care of your knife(s), keep them fairly sharp (sharp knives are safer than dull ones). Things shouldn't take lots of force to cut (if you do, you may be doing it wrong)

Familiarize yourself with fundamental techniques: roasting, sauteing, steaming, boiling, blanching. Easy, once you know how.

Everything else (pans/gadgets/dishes), buy as you need them.

In my experience, everything goes on sale at one time or another, so being able to process any given raw material into edible food is important. The more you cook, the better you'll be.

Also, I don't know if you have time, but some cooking shows are very good at teaching cooking. I really like good eats, which is available on netflix. Never be afraid to ask somebody how to do something.

Good luck.

Thanks for the amazing opportunity!

Lets start off with these amazing badass running pants, perfect for everything from working out to lounging about! I chose this because I'm in serious need of new workout pants! I've been wearing my old highschool sweatpants to brave the icy cold weather and they are starting to tear in multiple places and i don't know how long they will survive >.< These not only coming in a VARIETY of styles, they have almost 1000 positive reviews and look extremely comfy!

I am HUGE into cooking/food and have been trying to improve by bread baking skill recently and believe that the Bread Baker's Apprentice would vastly improve my ability to do so! it not only breaks down why a specific bread recipe needs a specific ingredient, but how it compares both chemically and physically to other types of breads and how to do everything from proper kneading techniques and processes!

This Galaxy infused wallet of ultimate beauty would be an amazing replacement for my also dying wallet that I got about 12 years ago! Being able to go about and NOT have my change and important cards falling out would be quite helpful <3 PLUS. I am huge fan of everything and all things space/galaxy/cosmic and all!

Do you have a hydrometer? If not, get one and learn how to use it. It is the most important tool for troubleshooting fermenting beer. There is no other accurate way to tell if a beer is finished.

Most yeast strains have a documented alcohol level that they can handle. Google is your friend. With a precursory search, I'm finding 9% for English ale, but I've gotten higher. 9/10 times the beer finishes, unless you're pushing your sugar to some crazy heights.

I highly recommend picking up some books if you haven't yet. I cut my teeth on The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. It contains a huge amount of information for the beginner up to all grain. Simply laid out techniques, recipes to try, and the origin of RDWHAHB. Designing Great Beers is a great book to get guidelines on a lot of the major styles, it is the one I am using most often these days. Online forums like r/homebrewing and HomeBrewTalk are also great sources of information.

in medieval and tudor times this would certainly be true, but by the victorian period the spice world had drastically changed!

depending on where you lived in the world there may be wild herbs available to forage. mint, fennel, dill probably, garlic for sure all grow wild in the UK, or could be cultivated in gardens. in more arid places like the middle east/northern africa/the mediterranean things like rosemary, oregano, bay would be available.

and during victorian times spices would have been more available to people in the UK and elsewhere in europe because of colonization of india (which started in the 1600s ish, and would have been well established 200 years ago in the early victorian period.).

in medieval and tudor times spices would have been very expensive for sure, but once the east india company and the spice trade really gets rolling they become much more available. a lot of victorian cookbooks mention spices quite frequently, so one can assume they were being used regularly!

and if you're interested in salt, which victorians would have certainly eaten a lot of and been buying quite regularly, mark kurlansky's book "salt" (it's just called salt) is a truly fascinating look at the micro-history of salt!!

I am by no means an expert, but I recommend baby steps. Instead of trying to make up a whole new recipe from scratch, why not try modifying some recipes you are already comfortable with? You can try substituting ingredients, modifying your seasoning, changing the cooking method for a recipe using the same or similar ingredients, or even combining two different but compatible recipes into something new. I would also maybe try to stick to one culinary tradition at first, like French or Japanese cooking, which use a few key ingredients to create lots of different dishes. I learned a lot from cooking from Harumi Kurihara's cookbooks. Stick with what you know until you become more comfortable imagining flavor profiles and methods of cooking in your head and then you can worry about taking on something completely new.

I've also heard from friends who cook that this book, The Flavor Bible, is good at describing how flavors work. I haven't read it myself (still on my Amazon wishlist until I have more $$), but you may want to check it out. Good luck!

edit: added some stuff

First, to answer your question, I have found that How to Cook Everything has really helped me get comfortable with some basics like pan sauces/gravy and seasoning profiles.

As mentioned, obviously you can reduce a recipe proportionally, but as far as instructions go, a 3-4 pound pot roast will take much longer than a 1-1.5 pound one. You really just need to understand what the goal is. Is it color, tenderness, and/or temperature? A thermometer is key. The other two come with experience in adapting recipes.

Another thing about expiring ingredients. This has a lot to do with meal planning. So you have a small bag of golden potatoes. Maybe one night you decide to be classic and have steak & potatoes. So you boil 4 small potatoes, drain, quarter and add butter and dried parsley. Then, maybe later in the week you do breakfast-for-dinner and have eggs, homefries, and maybe you have some leftover steak to make it easier. Another example: Hot dogs one night? Don't let the buns collect mold -- make some garlic bread for some sort of pasta dish a couple days later.

I'm with you on fresh herbs. I use mostly dried spices and it works out for me pretty well. Occasionally I'll buy cilantro or basil, but not always. I only use chopped, minced garlic in the big jar. But I always have onion and bell pepper on hand. Something to check out is the website Still Tasty. I don't really use it often, but I have referenced it from time to time if I'm considering cooking with a produce item I don't use often.

Also, just a tip, buy family packs of meat and use a vacuum sealer such as a FoodSaver to individually package your proteins. You save money in the long run and have better quality ingredients, even if they've been in the freezer for a couple months.

I hate to say this, really I do because I don't want to be the guy who tells you to start on extract, but get yourself an equipment starter set from one of the big brewers supply places like Northern Brewer or Midwest and a kit beer for your first go round. Caribou Slobber and Dead Ringer are good Northern Brewer kits that anyone can make without fucking it up.

Now, go spend the rest of your investment money on a refractometer (measuring the SG of hot wort accurately is the shit, $25), a couple 5 gallon and 1 gallon paint strainer bags from Lowes/Home Depot (BIAB starter set, $2.48 and $3.98 depending on size at HD), and the book Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Z(fuck if I can spell his last name).

Once you've decided that; yes, you and your friend are going to be amazing brewmasters some day (I really miss the boundless optimism of my first few brews before I learned to taste the imperfections), read the book cover to cover. Pick out a style you enjoy, brew the next beer based on the recipe in the book (use the all grain recipe and use the strainer bags with Brew In A Bag techniques). Be amazed that you did this!

Next time, screw with the recipe from the book a bit and make it your own. Change the hops to something different. Use a different Specialty Malt. Use a different yeast... Little changes make huge differences so do one at a time.

Kiss your disposable income goodbye.

Ah, I love non-fictin as well. Though most of my favorites are more science oriented, there should be a few on here that pique your interest.

• Salt: A World History - A fascinating history of humanity's favorite mineral. Wars have been fought over it, it sustained whole economies ... you'll be surprised to learn just how much of human history has been influenced by salt.
  
• A Short History of Nearly Everything - One of my favorite books. Bryson tells the story and history of science through amazing discoveries and stories about the quirky people who made them.
  
• Homage to Catalonia - A mostly auto-biographical account of George Orwell's time fighting for the communists in the Spanish Civil War.
  
• Capital: Vol. 1 Marx's seminal work and a logically sound criticism of capitalism. Whether or not you agree with his proposed solutions, his criticism is spot on. Depending on how leftist you are, you may have already read The Communist Manifesto. It's a nice introduction to Marx's ideas, but you should really go straight to the source and just read Capital.
  
• Why We Believe What We Believe - The neurology of belief, what could be more interesting? The authors go into great detail on how belief happens at the neurological level, as well as summing up nicely all sorts of findings from differing fields relating to belief. The most interesting part is the research the authors themselves conducted: fMRI scans of people praying, Buddhist monks meditating, Pentecostals speaking in tongues, and an atheist meditating.

> Got any cites to legit studies on either side? Would love to read them.

There's two great sources I like because they take a scientific approach in their own ways.

The Ketogenic Diet by Lyle McDonald. It's expensive to buy on his website, but you can get it via torrents. I liked this book because he went into detail on how to do the diet. He doesn't take sides based on ideology and presents the scientific evidence for keto dies, and well as their drawbacks. It gives a very technical way to do the diet with the different ways to do it. "Over 600 scientific references were examined in the writing of this book, and each chapter includes a full bibliography so that interested readers may obtain more detail when desired. Readers who desire further in-depth information are encouraged to examine the cited references to educate themselves."

Summary of The Ketogenic Diet can be found here.

Gary Taubes has written Why We Get Fat: And What to do About it and Good Calories, Bad Calories. I've read the latter of the two and enjoyed it because he also takes a very scientific approach to the matter at hand.

I personally haven't seen any evidence that low carb diets are bad for you. People just argue this point on ideological grounds, and only care about proving their particular diet is the best one, instead of being open-minded. I've read books on both sides, from vegan to keto, and I believe that the evidence points to one thing: The main thing to worry about is eating a variety of foods in moderate amounts.

And some people may need different diets to accomplish this goal. One thing that is especially true of both vegan and keto diets is that they force a person to think about what they eat. It makes food artificially more scarce, thus making it more difficult to over eat. And I believe that that simple fact creates the majority of the health benefits that either diet purport to have.

I’ve been experimenting with multiple bagel recipes over the last couple of weeks using a myriad of different flours, yeasts, and techniques.

The Serious Eats bagels (left) created a slightly tighter crumb that did not fall so much. Otherwise, I can’t say there was a huge difference in overall chew. Stella Parks uses a Japanese technique called “yukone” that is supposed to aid in preservation and longevity.

I cannot seem to prevent the Chefsteps bagels (right) from losing height in the boiling and baking process. These bagels have a fantastically chewy texture but the crumb is not as tight as I was hoping for. The flavor is very good though.

Edit: I’ve also made bagels according to The Bread Baker’s Apprentice that were perfectly good bagels but not as extraordinary as I’m hoping for. The article describing professional bagel shops did encourage me to buy a special high-protein (14%) flour and Stella Parks made me start questioning the yeast I’ve previously used so I’ve been experimenting with instant dry yeast. I’m planning to try the method produced by ATK using vital wheat gluten but I don’t know if this step becomes moot since I already have a high-gluten flour.

Little bit of a different issue, but I would also suggest having a homebrew session with the staff before you open one day. Nothing will teach you about the process of making beer better than doing it yourself, and it really isn't hard. If you still want to accompany that lesson with literature, two great books on brewing are How to Brew by John Palmer (aka the home brewer's bible, full text is also available for free online) and The Complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian

As far as general history and beer tasting knowledge, I'll back up those who have recommended Tasting Beer by Randy Mosher, and pretty much anything written by Michael Jackson. Many of Jackson's books are separated by regions, so it would be helpful to find which one applies to the area your pub/the beers your serve are from

It's up to you. I used to brew with my brother-in-law. He never read a book or had much knowledge in the why's and hows and we didn't have any issues brewing together. If you only get 1 book, How to brew is it.

See my other list of essentials/optionals in this thread. Any kit is going to contain most everything you need except for a pot. I'd also pick up an autosiphon if the kit doesn't include one.

Lagers definitely need specific temperatures. Well, ales do too, but they are more forgiving. See the guide to fermentation temperature control in the sidebar. I'd suggest starting out with temperature control right away even something simple/cheap like a swamp cooler can do wonders for the quality of your beer. Yeast health (pitching rate, O2, sufficient nutrients, and temperature control) is easily the #1 most important part of brewing great beer once you have the basics down. You're really going to need a fermentation chamber before you can make lagers effectively unless your climate is ideally suited.

IPA/APA/Amber/Brown/Dry stout/Porter are all fairly forgiving styles to start out with.

Start by learning to cook some of the foods that you eat from restaurants or buy boxed. Modify where appropriate.

Things like burritos are very easy. Make rice, add beans and assorted vegetables. You can buy pre-mixed seasonings for your beans, or just buy them already seasoned.

Soups and stews are also really easy. These are almost impossible to screw up.

Chop up an onion, two carrots, two ribs of celery and some garlic (1-3 cloves). Saute until semi-cooked. Add chicken (or veg) broth (canned or boxed is fine. Use low sodium, you can always add more salt.) Add (chopped cooked) chicken/turkey, potatoes/rice/pasta, and two or three of the following corn, peas, spinach, tomatoes, bell peppers (any colour), broccoli, asparagus, turnip, and/or beans (green, lima, kidney, etc). Voila! Chicken vegetable soup! Just add bread for a very pleasant meal. This is great for cleaning out the fridge.

Roasting chickens is very easy and will provide several kinds of meals. You can eat the chicken for dinner, make sandwiches with the sliced meat or make chicken salad, and use the remaining meat for soup or pot pie.

Ultimately, you will want to buy a cookbook for beginners. The Joy of Cooking is a classic and highly recommended. They also have a website.

I would recommend a cookbook instead of looking up recipes on the internet. The authors will use the same style to write all of the recipes and after you make a few, you will get a feel for them. You will know how they like to begin, how salty/spicy their dishes tend to be, etc. This makes getting good results a lot easier. After you have a feel for the cooking process, you can branch out more easily to new foods, new recipes or new flavours.

I'm not a great cook, but this is exactly what fascinates me about cooking.

I came across a book a few years ago, Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking. Completely changed the way I look at food.

I still have problems with spices. Knowing the flavors, how they interact with each other, and the right amount to use.

As a side note: After many years of not keeping lard, I do now. It's amazing how easy making a pie crust can be, and the taste is so much better than pre-made. I'm really into savory pies at the moment. Been doing pot pies for a while, and just ventured into hand pies. And biscuits. And pancakes. So many different pancakes. Been playing with butter/lard substitution and at what point it impacts flavor.

And another side note: I used to have a good collection of old cookbooks. Not depression era, but self-published fund-raiser type cookbooks where you get all Grandmother's Old Recipes. Those are some interesting recipes. And they all turn out awesome. Unfortunately, I lost a whole box of them during my last move. I would love to replace them.

A reply you've made makes it sound like they don't yet have a lab. So you are setting up a lab? Fun times!

First, micro is a fraction (large time consuming fraction) of what you'll need to know. Chemical/analytical testing will make up another, say, 1/4. Someone has linked the ASBC methods. This is a great place to start. Brush up on GLP if it's been a while since you've practiced other science streams.


Specifically regarding lab start up, ASBC also has a guide for what you should be testing at different production volumes: http://www.asbcnet.org/membership/getstarted/Pages/growyourown.aspx

Take this as a minimum. More is better, but depending if they are kegging/bottling/whatever not all of it will be relevant.

Expect paperwork review and filing. Shouldn't be too much of a shock coming from a lab. It's not glamorous but it is what it is.

Are they also looking at QA? This will include things like verification, validation, calibration, preventative maintenance, FDA/other food authorities, food safety, cleaning review, auditing, SOP generation and update, training, labelling, acrobatics etc.

Sensory! Can you taste beer? Can you detect faults? Check you ego; you probably don't. But that's okay. Get a sensory training program up and running. This should include training and review of their beers as well as basic defect training using flavour standards. If you haven't accepted you know nothing; these at 1x threshold will get you there. There's also great resources on setting up blind/triangular/etc training on their site: http://www.aroxa.com/beer


Speaking of egos; you mentioned home brewing. We have all met home Brewers that like to tell us about how they know more than us about our jobs. Don't be that guy/gal. Yes it is helpful that you understand the basics and we know you like beer, but that's about as useful as it gets. It's unlikely you'll be writing recipes or making beer.


Some good reading;

https://www.amazon.com/Quality-Management-Essential-Planning-Breweries/dp/1938469151

https://www.amazon.com/Yeast-Practical-Fermentation-Brewing-Elements/dp/0937381969

Any of the America's Test Kitchen cookbooks are fantastic for people learning how to cook. My boyfriend, like you, was a sandwich-pasta-burrito guy before these cookbooks. Now he can turn out a mean baked ziti and a pan of brownies :)

They've tested recipes extensively to find the easiest ways to create the most delicious, flavorful, fail-free versions of favorite foods. For each recipe, they describe the most common pitfalls of a recipe and how they avoid them, provide helpful illustrations, and make suggestions for the best cookware and ingredients to purchase (if you don't already have them). They most often do not recommend the most expensive option ;)

I recommend the Skillet cookbook and the New Best Recipe for starters.

I got started using this book Complete Joy Of Homebrewing I felt this book was super friendly as introductory material.

There is also this book How To Brew I think most people will tell you John Palmer's book is better but honestly both will contain all the information you need to get started. I am sure someone more resourceful than me will be able to direct you to some great (and free) internet resources to take a look at as well.

Edit: A quick Google search yielded This Have fun and welcome!

There is a lot of technique advice in here, which is all well and good. But these are all really basic things.
First, buy these two books:

http://www.cookingforgeeks.com/

and

http://www.amazon.com/Ratio-Simple-Behind-Everyday-Cooking/dp/1416571728/ref=pd_sim_b_3


Cooking is chemistry and art. It is chemistry not just in mixing things, but in how meat is cooked, and veggies brown. Those two books present the science of cooking, basic techniques, as well as some very advanced techniques. For the reddit crowd, they're perfect.


Learn what temperatures oils smoke at. (Smoke means turn dark and start smoking... oil at this point tastes nasty and makes whatever you're cooking in it disgusting.)
Learn how much fat by weight is in butter, margarine, sour cream, cream cheese, etc. Learn how much moisture is in each. These factors affect how they affect your recipe. So if you replace them, you will have different results.


A key example of this is cookies.
A very basic cookie recipe is 1 part sugar: 2 parts fat: 3 parts flour.
So this means 1 tablespoon of sugar to two tablespoons of butter to three tablespoons of flour. Adjusting this ratio in minute ways produces dramatically different cookies.


Add a bit more fat(in poppyseeds which are 75% fat by volume, and the fat renders out in the oven...) and the cookies become creamier.

Add some more flour, and they become stiffer.

Add more sugar and they become gooey.

Change the butter to lard, and it will be like increasing the fat.


Spices are volatile and under heat, they break down. So for stuff that is cooked for a long time, add the spices at the very end of the cook time.

Understand the physics of heating things. When you apply heat from the outside in, this creates a heat gradient. The length of time you apply the heat is how the meat becomes cooked. This is how you can burn a steak and still have it be raw in the center. It takes time for that heat to move, especially in thick steaks.

Learn the science behind techniques, and you will become a better cook. For example, to make a clear carrot-based stock, don't expose it to sunlight. Or, duck confit: the fat molecules are too big to get into the meat so all you're really doing is dry-cooking the meat with an efficient heat conductor. Cartilage and connective tissue turn to gelatin under heat and moisture. Absent moisture, the connective tissue becomes brittle.

My favorite recipe I made using science I learned:
Three day roast beef or: Pulled Beef.
-Marinate the roast in a 1:3 ratio of acids and oils. Only hot spices will be absorbed by the meat at this point, like pepper or garlic. Onion is too delicate. Do this for 24 hours in the fridge.

-Braise for another 8 hours on low in low-salt beef stock. Add some wine, shallots, carrots, garlic, and other spices. I like using dry mustard at this point for an added accent to the meat.

-Let the roast cool and chill in the fridge overnight. Reserve and chill the braising stock for gravy.

-Preheat oven to 300f

-Roast the beef for about 3-4 hours or until the center is hot.

-The braising stock will now have solidified lumps of beef fat floating on top. Use these with an equal amount of flour to make a basic roux. Brown the roux on medium, and add the braising stock on high, stirring vigorously. Add as much or as little stock as you need to the gravy. The gravy will thicken as the water boils off.

-Serve with side dishes such as roasted potatoes in thyme and rosemary.

What this does is produces fully cooked and flavourful beef, which retains its shape(isn't soggy), but is never tough to chew. This is because the cartilage has become gelatin, and chilling it overnight sets the gelatin. The gelatin helps the beef hold its shape, but is significantly less chewy than the original connective tissue.
Learn how to make basic sauces. Every sauce has as its base, a roux. Roux is basically a mixture of flour and oil, and browned or not browned. Add your desired liquid (1 tablespoon of flour = 1 cup of liquid) and stir.

Dairy will form a 'scum' if you heat at too high of a temperature. This is the origin of the word 'scum'. So heat it at low temperatures, with lots of stirring.

Always sear your meat on a very hot pan before you roast or broil your meat. This produces thousands of amazingly tasting chemicals that will add some flavour to your end result.

You rest your meat because its like a vessel of water under pressure. Heat = pressure. As the pressure lets off, the juices settle and won't squirt out as soon as you cut the meat. This ensures your meat will stay moist and flavourful.

Also: FIRST POST ON REDDIT.

I'm not sure my approach to recipe formulation is really going to help here, but one of the things you can do to start learning is to taste a commercial beer and try to devise a recipe that you think would clone it. Then, look up clone recipes online and see how close you came. It really helps you understand some of the different flavors that go into beer.

Anyway, I think I can most contribute by sharing some resources I consult when making a brand new recipe. Firstly, I cannot speak highly enough about [Designing Great Beers](http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Great-Beers-Ultimate-Brewing/dp/0937381500 "Not a referral link, so click away"). It gives you a good understanding of the ingredients found most in styles, and a nice history of why they're brewed the way they are.

Next, I spend a lot of time looking at the Homebrew Wiki Malts Chart. It gives you a really good idea of what flavors and properties different malts iwll bring your beers.

Lastly, I experiment. Try stuff out. Re-brew the same recipe with minor tweaks to improve it.

Sounds good!

In terms of learning more about beer styles, I'd recommend buying and tasting a bunch of different beers - when you find something you like, make a note of it and do some searching to get a general sense of why it tastes the way it does (usually you'll want to look into the basic types of malts, yeast, and hops used, along with any other ingredients that may be of interest). Sites like Beer Advocate are great resources for learning about new styles and figuring out what you might want to try next, and there are tons of local microbreweries with employees/brewers that are happy to talk with you about what goes into making their beers.

Once you actually take the leap into homebrewing, I'd recommend going to a local homebrew store (like Stomp Them Grapes), chatting with the employees, and picking up equipment and ingredients to do a basic extract-based recipe with steeped grains. My personal preference at that point would just be to jump right in - it's not really that difficult, and you'll learn a lot as you progress. From there, you might check into some local homebrew clubs, get some books like The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, How to Brew, or Designing Great Beers, and start creating your own recipes by tweaking existing ones.

Really, the biggest thing is just to have fun. Beer is surprisingly hard to screw up as long as you follow the basic steps and sanitize everything well enough.

If you have any other questions, or want to chat at some point, feel free to send me a PM. I'm in Boulder, but would be happy to help out if possible!

I mean, honestly it's hard to take your question seriously. You very clearly simply haven't looked at what's available, but still wanna come here to laugh at the stupid americans that don't know bread.

You're just wrong. Crusty bread is everywhere in the US.

Walmart sells rye flour: https://www.walmart.com/search/?query=rye%20flour&cat_id=976759&typeahead=rye%20fl and spelt flour: https://www.walmart.com/search/?query=spelt%20flour&cat_id=976759&typeahead=spelt

They also sell baguettes and some other rustic style loafs, though in general for more artisan style bread you'd be better going off going to someplace other than walmart. Walmart is all about cheap and high volume stuff.

This is one of the most popular bread cookbooks in the US: https://www.amazon.com/Flour-Water-Salt-Yeast-Fundamentals/dp/160774273X

I've been to Ken's bakery many times, and can assure you they have nice very crusty bread: https://kensartisan.com/bakery

Here's another regional chain that's popular up here: https://www.instagram.com/grandcentralbakery/

As you can see, plenty of crusty breads of all styles.

You'll be able to find similar bakeries in any city larger than about 50k people, and pretty often even in smaller towns.

Sliced sandwich bread exists for that exact purpose: it's easy to toast, and is a great for making some styles of sandwiches. Crusty rustic loaves are not somehow universally better, that's just *your* preference.

I know that this is an OLD thread but I just found it, and thought I'd share with you my favourite cook book of all time. It sounds like it's right up the alley of what you're after.

I like to think of myself of a fairly decent home cook, and very experimental, but I found Michael Ruhlman's Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking seriously fantastic.

It gives you the ratios, then explains them, and then talks about how you can change them.

I mean, once you know that 2 parts flour and 3 parts liquid (as per that chart) make bread, you can add whatever you want into it to make it just the way you want it. Change the flour, change the liquid, etc.

In the last 12 months that I've had the book I've memorised most of the ratios and now find my cooking greatly improved.

For a bachelor it might just be the perfect book because he doesn't have to think "I need 3 cups of this flour and 5 cups of this liquid", after a while he can think "I have some flour, and I have some liquid, just ratio it out and VOILA".

Hope that helps

I posted this a week or so ago when somebody asked the same thing. There's the link, I only copied my reply.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IWantToLearn/comments/eef8y/iwtl_how_to_brew_beer/

"also, http://www.howtobrew.com/ by John Palmer is a pretty good starting point. He has a book, but here's the free online version. Also, Charlie Papazian released a book in the early 80's called The Joy of Homebrewing, which should also be checked out. http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Homebrewing-Third-Harperresource-Book/dp/0060531053, only $10.

To probably figure out if you want to go balls-out and if this is a hobby you will enjoy, probably starting with extract is a good start. The beers might not be quite as good as all-grain, but you'll get an idea of what the hell you're doing and if you'll like it.

You could also look and see if there are any local homebrew clubs, as more are popping up as craft beer gets bigger and bigger.

fredman has a good point, as a lot of homebrew shops have kits and whatnot to help "clone" some of the more popular craft beers.

Also, as a side note and a cheap as hell way to brew, there is always Mr. Beer--but it's pretty meh."

As for books on yeast, the first one I read was First Steps in Yeast Culture by Pierre Rajotte and Chris White's Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation

Rajotte's book is a quick read and will give you a great overview of the process of propagating yeast for brewing. Chris White's book (of White Labs) is, IMHO, way more in depth into yeast selection, management and testing. But both offer something that the other does not, so I highly recommend the both of them.

As for books on brewing, I started off with what is basically the bible of homebrewing which is The Complete Joy of Home Brewing by Charlie Papazian. But don't stop there. There are plenty of great books on brewing. Papazian's book will cover the foundations of brewing, but other books that deal with specific styles of brewing will give you a lot more information about how intricate the brewing process is. A lot of this information you can also get from perusing online how-to's and articles about specific practices. There are so many you will continuously learn about ways of making bear you never thought were "standard" or possible.

I read Sibel Institute's Technology Brewing and Malting by Wolfgang Kunze cover to cover. It's really informative, but I would focus on the books above and online resources before tackling Kunze's book.

As far as getting a setup like mine, if what you want is to be able to propagate yeast, you don't need most of what I have. Just start picking up pieces when you can. Start out with getting good at managing and making starters for your brews. That's basically what I do, but I'm starting on a much smaller scale. One vial or package of yeast in 1 litre of wort fermenting for 24 hours will give you great yeast growth (as long as you pay attention to temperature). Get acquainted with that process and you'll be able to jump into more advanced yeast management principles much easier.

Heya, I'm two secondaries away from this stage myself. I bought a book that goes into pretty good detail about where to start and the different styles. Personally, it wasn't exactly what I was looking for so I'll save you what I learned:

I started off making an excel sheet that calculates pretty much everything but SRM (or color). While this is great for me (I have it tell me what each grain/hop/yeast contributes) there's better options. I use qBrew for now. Why these softwares are nice is because they allow you to figure out your style. This leads to OG, color, IBU, etc.

You've certainly got some OG ready in there (qBrew claims around 1.085). And you've definitely got some hops. IMO, I would put some more into the boil. I've only done DH once and haven't tasted it yet, but it seems like you're headed for a very aromatic beer with a mild bitterness. That's a lot of grain (around doppelbock levels IIRC) so you might want to consider upping your boils to match and then overcome that maltiness. Not smart enough to comment on your yeast yet. I'm sure its fine :D

If your hops are providing some earthy tones, I could see some orange bitters being a really cool addition.

Edit: if you get a brewing software: http://www.2shared.com/document/0wxR6IAU/soulfrequencies.html

The herbs and spices you get will depend on your tastes, but the windowsill herb garden is a great idea, especially for certain staples that just aren't the same when dried (basil, oregano and rosemary jump to mind).

Different herbs will stay fresh different periods of time in the fridge, its really hard to tell, but most will last at least 2-3 weeks, especially if they have some water in the base of a container.

most of the time I find that toasted\heated spices taste better not worse, so I'm not sure what's going on.

In terms of learning the fundamentals and flavors I am a big fan of the "Flavor Bible" It covers a lot of different combinations, spices, and how to use the flavors contained therein. It doesn't have a lot on how to preserve them, but if you're looking for ideas of things to keep around and how to use them, its a great choice.

Hopefully those are helpful to you.

A great book that would answer all your questions is:http://www.amazon.com/Yeast-Practical-Fermentation-Brewing-Elements/dp/0937381969/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462387187&sr=8-1&keywords=Yeast+book

But I'll give a couple quick responses that hit some highlights:

What is the difference between yeasts? Each yeast strain is a different organism. Each one is going to impart its own flavor profile. Some yeasts leave a lot of flavor behind in the form of esters, phenols, etc (like a saison or belgian yeast). Others will leave little behind and allow the hops or malt to shine (cal ale, us-05). Along with the flavor profile they add, some are more voracious eaters than others so certain strains will give you a lower finishing gravity (san diego). Others may end up more sweet (some english yeasts). Some like to ferment warmer and others cooler. Many times, the yeast determines your beer style more than the grain bill. You LHBS or the yeast manufacturer has literature telling you the yeast profile. Like what temperatures it likes, gravities it may ferment to, flocculation characteristics, and more.

difference between dry yeasts (Safale US-05, Nottingham, etc) and liquid yeasts: Dry yeasts are cheaper to manufacture, ship, and store. They are not recommended for propogating/reusing but they are cheap enough and easy enough to handle that it doesn't matter. Liquid yeasts are better fresh. They can be propogated. THere are more liquid yeasts available than dry. I suggest you go with the yeast that best suits the style you are brewing and not worry about the form it comes in (unless the reasons above impact you).


is low flocculation ever a good thing? Sure. Think about what kind of flavor and appearance you are going for. If you are looking for a beer like a heff, low flocculation may be desired because you want the yeast flavor to be perceived in a beer and it is not supposed to be a clear beer. High flocculating yeasts may also drop out to quickly resulting in incomplete fermentation. For example: if you don't have a fermenation chamber and your house gets cooler at night a high flocculator may drop out and you could end up with a stalled ferment. You could also end up with more diacetyl in the finished beer since it didn't finish up.

Honestly the worst thing about the hobby is that the initial setup (equipment) is really your largest cost factor. After that it's simply a matter of buying the elements of beer (malted barley, hops, vials of yeast, etc). I'm not saying you have to drop a ton of money on stainless steel mash/lauter tuns, HLT, infusion chillers, fermentation vessels, etc or start doing all grain mash brewing (versus simpler brewing techniques such as extract brewing or partial mash) -- although you certainly can -- but it is a hobby that does require some special preparation on the front end before starting.

My best advice to you is to find a local brewing club and attend a meeting. Join them during a buddy brew session and they can help you get started.

As a primer for brewing I recommend reading The Complete Joy Of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian.

Also, great reading (online) is John Palmer's How To Brew

Best advice is to take an existing recipe that is known to be a good example of the style and start there. This is why Brewing Classic Styles is such an ubiquitous book in most homebrewer's libraries. There are other sources too like the AHA Recipe Archive (although some are locked behind membership), Brewers Friend, or Beersmith. Starting with a good, known recipe helps you learn the style as well as the nuances of the brewing methods for it.

Second piece of advice: Avoid the kitchen sink problem. With big, bold beers like this it is soooo tempting to start adding "all the things" and then you end up with a muddled, murky thing. I've had a lot of Imperial Stouts that have this issue. Especially Xmas stouts with every single spice in the cabinet thrown in. (Not that any of my brews have ever had this problem, nope!) Just focus on learning the style and a couple of main flavors. I just brewed one yesterday that's targeting chocolate and cinnamon as "high points" with some minor other ingredients to play support (a pinch of vanilla for example to augment the chocolate).

Finally, don't be afraid to make less in either ABV or volume. When you have limited space (I'm in this boat as well) it's important to get rid of the "I must make 5 gallons!" mentality. Consider making a half batch at 8% ABV instead of trying to force a full batch at 12%. Big beers in a BIAB set up can be tricky to accomplish.

Have fun, be sure to post results! Cheers.

Actually, if you are reading Good Calories, Bad Calories, you can skip Metabolic Typing Diet. MTD is just another system to help you determine how your body processes fats and carbohydrates, which imho is the big variable when it comes to diet. But GCBC covers that along with updated information.

IIRC, GCBC also recommends starting with a super low-carbohydrate diet for a few weeks and then introducing carbs until you start to feel funky again, then pulling back til you feel better. This is pretty common practice for a lot of dieticians now. Incidentally, Taubes wrote a follow-up called Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It.
which is a bit of a rehash of GCBC but focuses more on putting the knowledge into practice. IMHO both are worth reading.

I'm also a huge fan of David Perlmutter's Grain Brain, which talks about the link between carbs and the brain and brain disease and imho is really worth a read. It has a couple of follow up books too (Brain Maker about the vital role that gut flora plays and Grain Brain Cookbook).

Since embarking on my nutritional journey, I discovered I have a gluten allergy (explains all those times I fell asleep at the wheel after eating a sandwich). I cut out grains for the most part and eat primarily protein and veg, very little sugar, definitely no refined sugar.
My mood is better and more consistent, brain fog is gone, weight is easier to maintain, and I have more lasting energy.

It's unfortunate that institutions like the FDA and AHA (who are backed by industrial farming corps) hammered the American public with the lie of the one-size-fits-all Food Pyramid and low-fat, "heart-healthy" diets & that the word "diet" carries a connotation of weight-loss instead of health.

Our generation is paying for it with our health.

The Joy of Cooking is a great basic book! It has a zillion very basic recipes that you can doctor and tweak based on your preferences. I've been annotating mine with my favorite variations, and it's fantastic. It teaches you how to do both complicated recipes and very basic things, too, which is really helpful.

Not a book, but I highly recommend everything Alton Brown has ever done. He has a YouTube channel and a few books, but Good Eats is how I learned. Good Eats is a great place to start because he explains the science behind why things work the way they do. Once you know why ingredients or techniques work, you have so much more independence in the kitchen. If a recipe isn't turning out the way I'd like, I can fix it based on what I know about the science behind what's happening. He also teaches you how to do things without complicated tools or specialized equipment, so it's also helped me build my kitchen tools up with things I use all the time.

Hello! SO I personally am a vegetarian, but my significant other is a vegan and I eat and cook only vegan at the house, alongside that I work at a 4.8 star restaurant in my town and am inches away from getting soux after climbing up the ranks. The official fine dining training helped me exponentially in refining and learning basic and advanced culinary skills that I can implement at home with a plant based diet. As far as references I would consult a large number of gourmet vegan cookbooks and learn the skills at home yourself, after purchasing books like 'Artisinal vegan cheese'
https://www.amazon.com/Artisan-Vegan-Cheese-Miyoko-Schinner/dp/1570672830

and my all time favorite cook book, the vegetarian flavor bible
https://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Flavor-Bible-Creativity-Vegetables/dp/031624418X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1505111621&sr=1-1&keywords=vegetarian+flavor+bible

and learn enough skills in cooking things like seitans and fake cheeses, you can start looking at more contemporary cookbooks about vegetarian cuisine and just sub out the non vegan items with a vegan substitute
I absolutely agree that seeking out a vegan chef and working in their kitchen is the best way to learn good cooking, but in the town I live in, the only vegan restaurant is ran by an asshole so I had to aloft to a omnivorous restaurant, and yes I do have to taste dishes made with meat, but I aspire to veg/vegan place further down the line that could trick any omnivore!

Awesome! Welcome to the greatest hobby there is. If you are really interested in creating your own recipes, Designing Great Beers and Radical Brewing are two of my favorite resources. The former is very technical and contains detailed information on ingredients and how the play with other ingredients to affect the flavor of your beer. The latter is a great, well-rounded brewing book that focuses a lot on brewing with non-conventional ingredients, and how to use them in your recipes.

Good luck! Just a heads up, there is a more active community for beer and wine making over at /r/homebrewing, but n2deep gave a pretty perfect list of items. I started out with Charlie Papazian's book "The Complete Joy of Homebrewing," and I've heard people recommend John Palmer's "How to Brew." It made my life easier, but is by no means a requirement.

Have fun with it!

Okay, I'm gonna give you the "you don't need lessons to home brew" lesson.

First, it's easy. It's easy as hell. All you're doing is boiling sugar, hops, and water, cooling it down, and adding yeast. You can buy the sugar (known as malt extract) in cans, so you don't even have to mess with grains. Later, you can get into creating your own extract (and recipes) with grains and a mashtun, but malt extract is step one.

Second, go buy "How To Brew" by John Palmer. It's the bible of home brewing books. You might see others, like "The Joy of Home Brewing" by Charlie Papazian, but start with Palmer's book. It's more recent, and I feel like it's written to grow with you. Once you get past the extract batch and go to steeping with grains, he's got a chapter on that. Once you go from steeping with grains to "mini-mash" (where you make half a batch of extract and make up the rest with malt extract) he's got a chapter for that. When you've been brewing for 5 years and you go "man, I want to figure out what's up with my water and how I can make it better," he's got a chapter on that.

Third, listen to brewing podcasts. I would highly recommend the Brewing Network. John Palmer (the guy I just talked about) and Jamil Zainasheff (he wrote another prominent brewing guide called Brewing Classic Styles) both appear on there, and in fact have a show together called "Brew Strong." The early episodes of the Session are also great, they've gotten away from home brew in later years, but are making a return to it currently. Doctor Homebrew is great when you're ready to start competing, and Lunch Meet is fun as hell and has nothing to do with beer. Seriously, I've learned more from the BN than I have from reading How To Brew cover to cover. They've got a way of talking about things that makes it fairly easy to understand.

Fourth, some equipment advice. When you buy a kettle, you'll be tempted to save a few bucks and buy a 5 gallon kettle. Spend the extra 20-30 bucks and buy a 7 to 10 gallon aluminum kettle. The biggest problem you're going to have in the beginning is sanitation. If you're boiling your beer in a concentrated boil, where you boil 3 gallons and add 2 once the boil is over, you're gonna have a bad time. Just do a "full wort" boil, where you boil everything, transfer it to your fermenter, and add your yeast. There are so many things that can go wrong in fermentation, and they're all caused by bacteria and wild yeast. Boiling the whole shebang at once decreases those chances greatly.

I would recommend finding someone who might be into brewing beer, selling them real hard on it, and at least having a buddy on brew day, if not someone you share equipment and costs with. Cleanup is easily the biggest killer for most people in the hobby, and having two people to mop, sanitize bottles, and scrub the kettle when it's all said and done can really make the difference.

Also, the homebrewing subreddit here is fantastically helpful. I'd start with /r/homebrewing and Palmer's book, and work your way up.

Radical suggestion: no bad snack foods. They don't sate you and are typically more expensive per-pound than something home-cooked. Replace with things like roasted potatoes, hummus and veggies, fruit, or a portion of a real meal. Plus, you'll get to work on your cooking! Opening a bag or a box does nothing for cooking skills.

Use meat as a condiment instead of a foundation of a meal, like an exception instead of a norm. Use rice and beans to bulk up the rest. Stir fry is a great way to add veggies, rice, and beans while reducing/removing meat. Try going vegetarian once a week; you'll be surprised with what solutions you come up with! Then up the frequency.

I typically have meat once a day, if at all. Plain oatmeal for breakfast. Rice, beans, veg, onion, garlic, and whatever meat (if any) I prepped for lunch this week. Eggs, potatoes, fish, fruit, veg, protein shakes, spaghetti, and peanut butter for the evening.

Full disclosure: I keep my grocery budget under $110 per month for myself shopping almost exclusively at Aldi and Giant Eagle for anything else (fresh ginger, tofu, frozen veggies typically). This does not include alcohol ($60 budgeted per month for bars, state stores, and wine shows; not always social) and restaurants ($50 budgeted per month, once or twice a week; always social).

How is your comfort in the kitchen? $5000 saved * 2 (current expenses) / 12 months = ~$833 per month. I hope you're feeding a family. In that case, implementing vegetarianism will be slower and harder but not impossible.

Links to explore:

• How to Cook Everything: I consult this each week and am trying to cook my way through it via my own odds and ends cross-referenced with the comprehensive index. Many, many recipes use the same ingredients and I typically buy one or two missing ingredients each week to complete the meal. Last week was eggplant curry with potatoes. There is also a vegetarian version that I plan to purchase when I'm done, but I can't speak to its quality.
  
• Budget Bytes: what I used before "How to Cook Everything". Similar deal: Beth is great about staples and taste, giving a price breakdown on each meal.
  
• /r/MealPrepSunday: I cook all lunches and portion them out so I don't have to worry about going out to lunch when I forget to prepare a meal.
  
• /r/slowcooking: I used a rice cooker with a slow-cooking function at the start of my frugal journey. I only use it to prepare rice now because I love using the range to cook. :)
  
• Frugalwoods' Rice, Bean, Mushroom, and Chili Lunch: I use Sriracha with red pepper flakes and yellow onion instead. Surprisingly tasty for how bland it seems.
  
• ERE Wiki Cookbook. Never used, but seems solid in practice.

I started with the Williams kit and it's been great over the last year. It's for extract, but could be upgraded to all-grain pretty easily.

There are cheaper kits out there somewhere, but this was the only one I could find (at the time) that came with a pot (pre-drilled) and wort chiller.

For your first brew, I would advise to follow a kit, and then make the same kit again for your 2nd brew. It will familiarize yourself with the process, and back-to-back beers are a great way to see how process improvement affects the taste and quality of your beer. It might sound boring, but once you got the basics down, then you can really go buck wild with your own recipes. Makes for a lot less hard lessons.

Use the search bar first, but don't be afraid to post questions, this sub is pretty helpful to new guys.

Other helpful tidbits

Brulosophy

Mad Fermentationist


BrewUnited

The Bible

The other Bible

Edit: Many edits...

First I will say brewing extract isn't necessarily "cheating". Brewing with extract is the same thing as baking a cake with one of those mixes from the supermarket - at the end of the day you still have cake, you just didn't have to measure out all the ingredients.

That said, if you want to jump into all-grain first that's fine but I think you might have read way too much into it! It's not nearly as difficult as it sounds like you might have convinced yourself. You don't need to worry about water chemistry, washing yeast, or quantum physics to brew beer. Your best bet to start would be the online version of How To Brew. It is the 1st edition of the popular How To Brew. I would recommend picking up the book, however, since the print edition is the 3rd edition, and there have been some updates. You can also check out The Complete Joy of Homebrewing.

For your first batch you can do something simple, you don't need to worry about water chemistry or getting crazy with your yeast. If you have any more specific questions, there is a daily Q&A on this sub as well.

Stay respectful, stay polite, be patient, but most of all don't lose motivation. You are going to have to change their minds about food and that can be a slow process. "Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." If you lose confidence in your convictions they'll never have faith in your ideas either. This is going to take some work on your part.

You need to be able to have an intelligent, respectful, patient, and informed conversation with your parents about nutrition. To do this you must first educate yourself. I recommend you buy this book, you can find it anywhere http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-About/dp/0307474259/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375280697&sr=8-1&keywords=why+we+get+fat

I would have you read the entire thing before you talk to your parents again about this issue. When you do talk about it you can't just tell them they are wrong. You must explain yourself. When they finally start to get curious where you got these ideas then you ask them to read this book as well. It probably won't end there.

You are still just a kid and some random book you head about on the internet isn't reliable enough. There's a good chance you're going to have to have an actual doctor talk to them. That means you're going to have to use google and your phone to start asking doctors offices if they support low carb. Find one that supports low carb and set up a visit with your parents.

It sounds like a lot of work but if you think about it none of this is particularly hard. It'll just take a bit of determination. I think this is the only way you are going to be able to convince them that this diet is indeed healthy.

I had a lot of fun blasting 80's music and rocking out while cooking dinner tonight! I was only alive for one year of the 80's but I love the music, the movies and in high school I was very inspired by the fashions too! Never really thought about the foods of the 80's before now though, more new things that wouldn't have happened without this challenge.

I made the vodka sauce recipe from the Veganomicon cookbook, substituting cashew cream for immersion-blended almonds. It was so good!! This will definitely become a regular dinner!

The walnuts were simply cooked with some brown sugar.

The raspberry vinaigrette is from the Vitamix website and was easy to make and pretty good I substituted apple syrup and agave syrup for the honey in this recipe.

"Blackened Aspargus" might not actually be a thing, and it's really just sauteed in olive oil with salt and pepper and no cajun spices at all, but I thought that one more 80's element would really round out the meal!

I feel the best way to go about this is to gain a general sense of the outline of history, which isn't nearly so difficult as it may seem as first once you realize that the "history" that mainly gets talked about is only about 3000 years. Learn some sign posts for that span, and then from there you can fit anything new you learn into the general outline you've gained. A couple good books for gaining those signposts are:

A History of the World in 6 Glasses. A phenomenal starting book. Gives very, very broad strokes on the entirety of human development, from pre-history when we first made beer inside hollowed tree trunks (it predates pottery), all the way to the dawn of the global economy with the perpetual success of Coca-Cola.

Roots of the Western Tradition An incredibly short (265 pages!) overview of Ancient Mesopotamia up to the decline of the Roman Empire written in very accessible language. Phenomenal text.

The Story of Philosophy. A bit more dense than the other's, but a tour de force breakdown of the history of Western thought.

Obviously the above is very Western centric, I wish I could recommend similar books that cover Asian history, but sadly I can't think of any (though hopefully others will point some out in the comments). Still though, once you gain the signposts I talked about, learning Asian history will still be easier as you can slot things into the apporpriate time period. Like "Oh, the first Chinese Empire (Qin Dynasty) rose up in the same era as Rome was rising as a power and fighting it's wars against Carthage". Or, "Oh, the Mongols took power in Asia just about right after the Crusades."

As a little bonus, they may not be accurate but historical movies can still help pin down those first signposts of your history outline. Here's a little list.

Video series or anything? I really learned a ton reading The Professional Chef, which is a textbook in a lot of culinary schools I hear. I have the eTextbook version that has a lot of video links and interactivity.

If you're into the science behind cooking I'd also really recommend The Food Lab, I have the hard back version and it's also just a beautiful book.

I also have Cooking and Sauces by Peterson, also textbook quality books.

And of course, the ever popular Better Homes & Gardens Ring-Bound Cookbook, How to Cook Everything, and The Joy of Cooking are staples on my bookshelf as well. Great for reference or a quick look to find a particular recipe just to see how others do it.

I also browse a lot of websites and watch a lot on YouTube. I'll save recipes I find online using the Evernote Web Clipper and tag them so I can find them easily in the future. This works great because I can pull them up on my iPad while I'm cooking.

When a recipe calls for a method, tool, or ingredient I'm not very familiar with I'll usually just search it on YouTube and get some ideas about how to use it. That's worked really well for me so far.

I'm guessing you want some info on brewing not my quest for this redditor's kegs. There are some really good books to pick up that will help you out a ton, learn you some basics real quick and the science behind it. I picked up this one, which is also sort of the standard 101 book. http://www.amazon.com/dp/0937381888/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_caAWub1JT7F56
There is also the sub reddit where you can get some great tips, ideas, and also jelly of other peoples set ups.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Homebrewing

Locally there is Austin Home Brew Supply up off metric and 183. Everyone there is pretty knowledgable and are really welcoming to newbies and vets alike so if you're starting off they can hook you up and get you on your way to a solid first brew.

http://www.austinhomebrew.com/

As for tips, really it comes down to sanitation, that shit is no joke. Keep it clean, take your time, and always have a beer in hand while brewing. You'll need a shit ton of ice to cool down your brew because water here doesn't come cold out of the tap so to chill your wort, you'll probably need more than you expect. Be adventurous when your doing it, try dumb shit, keep a journal/log on how and what you do so you will be able to avoid or repeat things depending on what you want. In general its a great way to have quality brew, that you would pay 10$ a sixer for like 1$ and some change cost to you per beer. Oh, also don't buy bottles, just stock up on empties that are non-screw off tops. Hopefully that spurred your interest to brew battle it out with your friend and pick up a great hobby/drinking habit.

1. I typically spend about $200/mo. on groceries, almost all at Costco, but I eat a lot, so YMMV. To be on the safe side, put down $250/mo. for groceries when you're doing your budget.
   
   
2. When I was sharing groceries and cooking duties with roommates, we'd cook dinner and eat leftovers at lunch. I usually grabbed lunch from Stamp on the days I had class, and one of my roommates would pack some leftovers to reheat.
   
   
3. Costco is the shit for groceries, everything's pretty high-quality and fresh, and cheap as hell. I don't know what I'd do without their freezer-ready packs of chicken and ground beef/turkey. Also, they sell 1lb resealable bags of precooked bacon... mmm, bacon....
   
   
4. If you've never really cooked before, buy How to Cook Everything. It's a really great book, complete with all kinds of recipes, and there are sections in the beginning that you can learn a lot from - knife skills, differences between cuts of meat, tips for grocery shopping, the tools and spices you should stock your kitchen with, etc... It's a really invaluable book IMO. Find some recipes you like and rotate between them.
   
   
5. The biggest tip for grocery shopping is to know what you're going to cook for the week beforehand, so you know what to get and how much. This will cut down on waste and save you money.
   
   Here's a really easy recipe that I've been making this semester with ingredients you can get all at Costco that's pretty versatile. I call it "clusterfuck rice":
   
   Ingredients
   
   

• .5lb pre-cooked bacon, chopped
  
• 1 pack ground turkey (~1.7lb, 80/20 lean)
  
• 1 pack chicken breast (~1.3lb), cubed
  
• 3 cups rice dry
  
• Your choice of produce (try any combination of onions, bell peppers, mushrooms, green beans, broccoli, carrots, snap peas, asparagus)
  
• Seasoning (curry powder-pepper-salt, paprika-garlic powder-cayenne-salt, cumin-paprika-garlic powder-cayenne-salt are ones I like)
  
  
  Directions
  
  

1. Slice and dice produce, sautee in a large pot
   
2. Start boiling 3.5-4 cups of water (adjust for amount and type of rice as needed)
   
3. Lightly brown chicken in another pan (don't cook all the way through), add to pot and stir
   
4. Lightly brown turkey and toss in bacon towards the end, add to pot and stir
   
5. Add dry rice to pot and stir thoroughly
   
6. When water boils, add seasonings to pot, and slowly add all the water
   
7. Turn heat back up to medium-high, stir consistently, waiting until water comes to a boil again
   
8. Once water boils, turn heat down to medium-low, cover pot, stir every 5-10 minutes for 30-60 minutes.
   
   
   Macros:
   
   

• ~5000 kcal
  
• ~150g fat
  
• ~500g carb
  
• ~400g protein
  
  This lasts me about 4 meals usually, but I'm a weightlifter and eat a ton, so if you're splitting food with roommates, this should feed the whole apartment for dinner and whoever wants to take leftovers for lunch.
  

Hey, welcome to reddit, I haven't read the complete joy of home brewing yet but one book I do recommend as something every one should read is "How to Brew" by John Palmer.
He starts off with the absolute basics like sanitation then has a really well structured progression from extract brewing through nutrients, how all your temps and proteins work, water chemistry, all grain brewing even how to fabricate your own equipment! Definitely cant praise it enough, I know it certainly made me step my game up lol.

the first edition is free online http://www.howtobrew.com/
But I highly recommend getting the hard copy 3rd edition and for $5 secondhand you really cant say no lol http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0937381888/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=

So most of my cookbooks are either text dense reference manuals or obnoxiously difficult like The French Laundry Cookbook, but here's a few that are relatively simple with excellent photography:

La Cocina - Cookbook from an organization in San Francisco that teaches low income people to successfully grow food businesses. Photos are incredible.

-

The Berkeley Bowl Cookbook - Excellent photos with a lot of obscure produce.

-

Ad Hoc at Home - Thomas Keller's family style recipes with wonderful photography.

-

Flour Water Salt Yeast - Focused on baking bread and making pizza, but a lot of step by step photos and some awesome pictures of the final product.

My wife has been helping reduce her seizures/headaches with these three things. I will list them by most helpful to least helpful.

1. A ketogenic diet which has been proven to prevent seizures. The most helpful book we read on this diet is this Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It by Gary Taubes
   
   
2. CBD Oil sprayed under the tongue when she feels like a seizure might come soon. This is our favorite brand right now Plus CBDoil Spray 1mg
   
   
3. This works best with number 2 and she likes to take one in the morning and one at night. She says it helps her brain fog, headaches, and fatigue Now Foods Brain Elevate Formula Veg Capsules, 120 Count by NOW Foods
   
   She also notices a big difference trying to get enough sleep and taking steps to reduce her stress and thats free. :) I hope this helps you. Have a happy new year.

Since he has never brewed before I would recommend a basic kit. I'm not saying that you have to get this from NB, but this is an example what comes in a starter kit. I strongly recommend purchasing, How to Brew by John Palmer. This book will clear up a lot of brewing mysteries.

I'd also recommend going to your local homebrew store (LHBS) and ask them for help. If you have one close by, and they are any good, they can be an invaluable source of knowledge for a new brewer. Good luck, this can become a life long hobby if he chooses to pursue it.

As your husband grows into the hobby he will

Silver Spoon is the best for basics/reference. I've got a copy in both English and the original Italian. It's the modern bible while larousse gastronomique is outdated imo.

Cooking by Hand was a big inspiration early in my career

Recently I like cookbooks that are entertaining beyond just pretty pictures of food.

The Dirt Candy cookbook. The graphic novel style is awesome and the recipes are good.

Also, A Super Upsetting Book about Sandwiches

And of course Thug Kitchen