btrettel comments on Low Hanging fruit for buying a better life - Less Wrong

21 Post author: taryneast 06 January 2015 10:11AM

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Comment author: palladias 06 January 2015 03:05:07PM 12 points [-]
  • one-on-one cooking tutoring (get s/o who's good at household cooking to teach you to shop, knife skills, expand recipe repertoire)
  • take a level in badassery (lockpicking lesson, car repair, archery class -- anything that will give you a frisson of pleasure when you think - yeah, I know how to X)
  • trip to unusual/disciplined environment (Ignatian retreat, etc)
  • throw strange, themed party that your friends will remember and discuss for a long time
  • fix whatever egronomic thing annoys you most, at present (standing desk?)
  • pay s/o to reorganize messy thing in way that makes it easier for you to maintain the tidiness going forward w/o ugh of doing the initial clean-up yourself
Comment author: btrettel 07 January 2015 12:54:21AM 2 points [-]

Might seem trivial, but what's a good way to find someone willing to teach cooking skills? Asking friends until you get a hit? Posting on Craigslist or Reddit? I'd like to learn to cook better, but I don't know anyone who would be willing to tutor me off-hand.

Comment author: Brotherzed 09 January 2015 07:21:49PM *  2 points [-]

You can self-teach. I guess it depends on your confidence with knives, but watch videos of how to do knife work, and don't go totally overboard trying to chop as fast as a professional chef, as fingers are valuable. Do the motion the way they do it, but slowly enough to be sure you will not hurt yourself. As you gain practice, you may feel comfortable naturally speeding up.

As for cooking and baking. Look up recipe on the internet. Do exactly what the recipe says. Do you not know what a step means or how to do it? Google it, watch videos, try to follow the directions as precisely as possible, and see if the result is any good. If the recipe is good and you follow the directions, you'll get something good. Cooking, especially baking, is like science, just follow the directions, and you can get close to the desired outcome.

If you're kind of a natural you can learn to spot problems with recipes before you make them, or improvise your own flavors and make them better, if you're not, that's ok. There are a lot of techniques you can learn but dipping your toes into cooking is not that hard, and a non professional can make excellent meals, it just takes more time. If you find a big passion for it then there's a whole world of resources about how to do things out there :)

Comment author: michaelsullivan 12 January 2015 08:37:10PM 0 points [-]

Look to see if there are food or cooking clubs in your area -- a lot of times members will have information classes or get togethers.

I also had a great experience taking some classes in turkish cooking at a turkish cultural center where I used to live. Here's a link if you live near west haven ct:

http://turkishculturalcenterct.com/turkish-cooking-classes-go-ahead-full-speed/

I grabbed a 3 year old item because that's me rolling out some bread dough in the picture, but they still do these.

If you live anywhere near a decent sized city or college town, there's a good chance that "cooking classes <your metro area here>" will turn up something good.

Comment author: palladias 07 January 2015 03:03:10PM 1 point [-]

Yup, I think those are good approaches. There are also franchise-y places like CulinAerie that will offer classes. But I think craigslist/friends might be best if you want someone to tailor to your needs/experience. Also worth finding out wherever restaurant line cooks tend to look for normal job postings and trying to place an ad there.

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