Simple Things in Life
No, I am not posting a receipe! No, I am not taking cooking classes, and there is no way I am a chef. And no, I am not out of ideas to write that I am suddenly posting cooking related content. There is a reason for this post and I am randomly posting it to a community that I don't really post often, but I think maybe my content can be of interest to them. Just as a test to have some fun.
I do cook a meal that I can feed myself and my family. I enjoy cooking for myself, always did. I typically make simple meals and I like eating simple meals with just one item. The reason I came up with this post is quite simple. I was talking to @juanmolina on food. I was discussing what would be the cost of a 1 kilo of chicken and maybe I was thinking, if I can feed my family with it ot not. Then I thought,... I skipped breakfast today, maybe I can cook some late lunch while the wife and kids are away for shopping, and eat. So I did.
I am originally from West Bengal, and the item I cooked is called Dal (lentil curry). Hey, there won't be any step - by - step receipe. Go to the internet for that! I was more interested in the cost.
Ingredients:
- Masoor Dal (lentil 1, like Thing 1) 4 TBL spoon (4 lb = $2.30, 4 TBL spoon ~1 cents?)
- Moong Dal (lentil 2, like Thing 2) 100 gm (4 lb = $2.30, ~12 cents)
- 1/2 White Onion (3lb bag, $2; 10 onions, 1/2 onion = 20 cents)
- 4 Campari Tomatoes (12 oz pack, $5, 20 tomatoes, 4 tomatoes = $1)
- 1/2 garlic pod (1 pod = 45 cents, 1/2= 23 cents)
- Serano pepper (1lb = $1.41, 4 pepper ~ 16 cents)
- Totillas (10 pack = $2, I ate 2 ; 40 cents)
- Mango Pickle on the side (priceless!) my friend made it for me!
- Dal Fry Masala (priceless!) my mom gave me in March!
- Pinch of salt and sugar to taste (don't know the cost)
Total cost = $2.12.... 2 cents of canola oil Grand Total ($2.14)
Man! Tomatoes are EXPENSIVE!
Cooking
Hey, there won't be step - by - step, I tell you again and again! But, this is almost that. That is the point of writing cooking recipe's on hive, anyways? Who do you think will come to hive to read about cooking? Let me answer, NO ONE! Other than your friends of course, who will come regardless!
Its fairly straight forward on a Hawkins Pressure Cooker, anyways! I chopped the vegetables (left, 2/3 of the peppers for garnish). I put a few spoons of canola oil (sorry man, I don't know how much it costs, I bought a 24 oz bottom of Canola Oil several months back for $1.63, and it is still going strong), probably cost less than a cent for a couple of spoon full. Then I fried the chopped onion and garlic till brownish, then added the chopped tomatoes and pepper (part of it) and then the masala and fried it. Added, Thing 1+2 lentils, , and sauted it a bit, and then added 4 cups of water (free) and put the lid on the pressure cooker. Oh, I remember to turn on the fire on step ZERO!! LOL! Oh Oh!! I did add salt and sugar (pinch) to taste! Phew!
It took 1 whistle on the pressure cooker, and it was done! You saw the ugly first picture. Nah! I changed the first picture to the finished product! Deal with it! There will be the finished product picture twice! Then, here in the grocery stores, we you get made Totillas which are basically chapaties that we were used to back home. So here, its easy, you just heat them up.
Done!
Here is my meal. My late lunch/ early dinner (I don't think I will eat dinner tonight) for $2.14. This much Dal will last me the whole next week, as I don't like to cook in the middle of the week. I will likely just make either Totilla, Rice or Paratha to go with the Daal. That's about it.
Currency Conversion & Cost of living
I was born in the developing world. That time people used to say '3rd World' (they still do, behind closed doors). I was born in poverty. I have seen poverty not only in India, but in many places, all over the world, including the United States, which I call my home now. I don't need to worry about my personal living expenses any more, thankfully. I don't know, how I did it, and I don't have a receipe for you. What I do know, I have seen people to have fun within poverty.
That brings me to the cost of living. Often, we just convert USD to a weaker currency and try to understand cost of living. Nothing can be further from the truth. Many items do not convert one-to-one. Cost of a cheeseburger, or a bottle of milk is not a good measure as well. The comparison is complicated. I typically look into a whole bunch of items, food being only one.
I have no problem, Juan Molina, if people earn money from hive. I support that, I want them to do that. What I don't like is if people are rude to me, because I treat everyone with respect. I also don't like if people are trying to say that I am stupid/uneducated and I don't understand, because I understand a lot more than most common people. I have studied most of my life, and still do.
Oh, Juan, it took about about 30 min to cook this meal, and about 10 min to take pictures and eat; and about 3 hours to write with pictures (I couldn't do it straight, as there were inturruptions).
PS. I added the tag #piotr, I have no idea what it does, but I am willing to test it out.
So, How much does food cost at your place? How to you make them? What is your most common meal? One item, two, more? Do you cook, or you eat out? Let me know :)
Looks light a mighty fine meal. We have been trying specifically not to calculate the cost of things in Suriname lately, mostly because many items are up 300% from what they were two years ago, and also the value of the Suriname dollar has fallen 120% since we moved here.
At this point life here is cheaper than my homestate of Indiana in the USA, so that is why we are trying to immigrate at the moment, because our freedom of movement is now heavily restricted, and now the USA actually looks livable for once in my life, at least compared to to our situation here.
I do remember when I worked in the USA as a day-laborer in 2010, I spend roughly 60% of my income of food, and I almost never ate or ate anything fancy. Being a vegan in the land of meat and dairy subsidies isn't cheap.
That is the problem of meat based diet. I personally eat everything. But I don't enjoy or miss meat that much.
Lots of it have been changing here too in a small way. There are lot more vegeterian options these days which are cheaper and healthier. Also people are leaning towards kitchen garden in urban setting, which not only reduces the cost but also gives people healthy options.
That is good news considering we may be in the USA within in a year. We may even visit Texas too, I once read an article about a Cambodian community in the countryside there that grows kangkong, which is technically an illegal invasive plant, but it's sold openly in many Asian grocery stores.
There are many Asian groceries in town. Too many to count actually
I mostly cook when my mother lets me. As you probably know, how mothers are in south asia. But mine taught me cooking almost all Bengali food and I can do a decent job. Even on most complex dishes.
The cost of food can be cut down in any part of the world, as nowhere is entirely poverty free. People find ways to support themselves.
P.S. I don't like to read recipe posts on hive. They feel too mechanical.
ahh..amor.. I told you, I often sense, there is someone waiting for you....
See, things come out even from text :).
Oh, I know very well how moms are over there!
Of course there is no fun in reading recipe post on hive. Most people don't know how to write in a funny positive way to make it interesting. Perhaps this is where we can at least comment and request this within the community. I am not sure if that will help, but at least we will vent our collective guilt about not speaking soon enough.
hey you got me past the third paragraph.
so as regards the cost of a decent meal in this part of the world it all depends on your situation. if you are going to make something yourself, like say rice and tomato sauce (tomato stew), and some beef, that should cost around $10 for a family of 4 and eaten at least twice. However, if you are a single person and you don't like to cook, you can visit the local restaurant and get something similar for a dollar or two.
$2 is reasonable, $10 is expensive. Also I have had those beef stew, you guys put too much spices in them :)
lol inflation rose by 50% here. so everything is expensive.
we love our food spicy. i even find it difficult to eat food that ain't spicy. i tend to throwup
When I used to live at VI, on Lekki Peninsula, I had plenty of that stuff. At the time, Lekki Expressway was just built...
oh I did not know you lived in Nigeria for some time. well, the lekki expressway has been completed. a lot more development still ongoing in that part of the state.
A pretty legit looking meal right here...I'd be happy with it. Nice work!
I recently did a couple of cooking posts, one last week and one only a day or so ago, both simple [like me]. The last one, a pasta dish was so simple it wasn't even funny. Fetta cheese, cherry tomatoes, garlic, basil, oil and pasta. That's it. Was a great meal though.
I'm a keep it simple sort of guy and what I eat reflects that. I don't east out too much either, mainly lunch only but occasionally dinner. I guess I don't see a lot of value mostly, and am not into fast food so...Home cooked. Healthy mainly, not too many carbs. :)
Man got to eat :)
Lentil is generally good. Fiber and Protein... and Indian people have a lot on options on the Lentil front.
Spoken like a truly educated man.
I never used to like dhal much as a kid...Now...Gimme! (and a plate of roti's)
Yeah... as you grow wiser (read older) your doctor ask you to cut down on meat, especially red meat. Mine do. So not much of a choice mate :)
Yeah, that happens...The older/wiser thing (generally) and the doctor-restricted diet. Ah yes, the joys of getting older.
That is looking delicious. I love roti always. I love eat food at home because cheap and delicious for here Suriname. But when I lived in Cambodia I would like eat outside some time because it not expensive like here and delicious. 😊
Roti is good, but I am lazy to make it from scratch. Although I admit it tastes better if I make it from scratch.
It looks very good and has high nutritional value, another thing you can do is buy tomatoes in season, because they are really expensive and you save something there, I think it's all about reinventing yourself and looking for the twist, life is so simple just that sometimes we complicate it.
Yeah. I guess I can grow my own tomatoes... that's an idea!
Dada, I'm not entirely convinced we can compare the cost of food between two different locations on a home cooked meal. It will result in an underestimation of the actual contrast. This meal that cost you $2.14 would roughly be the same on a home cooked daal curry in Bangladesh too. While this shows that it is possible to eat well on a limited budget in the US too, but the actual cost difference would be much further apart when we compare eating out.
But then again, eating out isn't essential. So how do we actually compare the cost of meal between a developed and a developing country? "Food" for thought eh dada! ;)
Agree doc. Food is only one thing and there are many other things we can compare prices. We can compare car prices, or NVDIA graphics card prices, or even cost of education on a comparable degree like MBBS or MD :)
That will be a fun exercise, don't you think?
I've never been a big fan of lentils, so no lentil based dish will ever look good in my humble opinion. Full marks for effort including sprinkling some chillies on top for garnish 👍
Man got to eat!
I love lentils for the record
I'm rather selective when it comes to food(I do not like to eat), so I rarely eat out. I also don't like to cook, so I mostly make simple meals.
The food I eat the most is spaghetti. I can easily make that with $2.
The cost of feeding in my place is dependent on the type of dish and quantity. It ranges from $0.50 (noodles) to about $10 for a standard pot of soup or stew.
That looks delicious, what a good preparation and precentacion, I congratulate you!
Hi @azircon
It doesnt really do anything.
As you already know, Project.hope is being steadily forced to shut down its doors on HIVE and since we're being forced to power down our resources and move elsewhere.
Several PH members already gaved up on HIVE as they do not see future any more here. However, some decided to stay. So I will support them as long as I still have some voting power left before I will say my final good-byes to hive. If those members still see future for themself on HIVE, then I will not be discouraging them.
Anyway, congratulation @azircon. I'm fully aware of your hostile feelings towards me. You won.
I can only imagine your joy to know, that you've managed to destroy our community and that soon PH will cease to exist.
Hi there; I understand what this tag do now. :)
Let me state some facts and there are no such things called "alternative facts":
You mentioned that several people from "your" community are leaving, while it is unfortunate, if I am being blunt, it's not a loss for hive. As lot of your members are from Venezuela; due to the unfortunate socio-economic situation there, no hive will be bought from there in recent future. So it's a net financial drain from a pure investment point of view. If you are correct and they do abandon hive, it's a net financial gain. I am sorry for being blunt but this is not a territorial comment it's just a fact.
We want people to buy and hold hive as that lowers inflation. Therefore, boosts price of the currency. Venezuelan people, of all places should understand that, as they are fighting hyper inflation on the ground.
Hello, Azircon. I have no interest in the context between Piotr and you or why this conversation is taking place, and I don't profess allegiance to him or his project, but I do feel I need to address your opinion about Venezuelan presence in the platform.
You say that, from a pure investment perspective, Venezuelans are a drain because we don't buy Hive. I daresay that applies to the vast majority of Hive members, as most people join this project because of its blogging model, that's the one unique value that Hive can offer the world, there are lots of better coins for financial adventures. Venezuelans may not be able to buy the token, but we invest our time and effort in producing and curating content, which is what the platform's for, and the ultimate driver behind the token's value, adoption and use. Moreover, you may not be aware of the fact that we're by far the largest Spanish-speaking community in Hive and likely the crypto-world as a whole right now, because of the reasons you mentioned and many others that are far less obvious to people who don't live here. Cryptos have been a growing influence in our social fabric for years, due in part to Russian and Chinese involvement with the chavista regime. There are Venezuelans in every blockchain-based project you can think of.
Therefore, I encourage you to review your claim that the absence of Venezuelans (or Nigerians, Cambodians, Indonesians, Filipinos and members of many other nationalities who don't buy Hive) from the platform would be no loss or that it'd actually be a gain, financially or otherwise.
First of all, thank you for the comments. It is rare a get a thoughtful comment like this from the Venezuelan community. Pardon me, but even with Piotr, I mentioned that my comment is not territorial. I just don’t know any other way to put it.
Seems like we do agree on some facts that for example Venezuelans do not buy hive, and I agree with you so does most of the people on hive. So why single out Venezuelans? I will answer it. Because I was talking to an individual, Piotr, who had been taking advantage of this situation at our expense. This is the part that is unacceptable to me.
That said I do agree that this is a relevant discussion. Why don’t you write about it and point to me some to the major and leading contributors from your community?
Yes, I can see what you mean about Piotr, and yes, sadly you may be right about the thoughtful comments. Thank you for the suggestion, I've been thinking I should write more about these topics for a while. See you around!
I just checked your blog about runes.
Looking at this first few pictures don’t you think looks repetitive? People seem to think so. 4-5 comments total.... one from hive-buzz.. other comment like this?
Do you think people are caring about what you write? Are you making a difference? Again just asking the hard questions bluntly...
Thanks for perusing my blog. If you're interested in knowing why I do what I do, I exhort you to read my posts, I explain my process in far more detail than I could ever effectively expound in a comment. Don't worry about my impact, I have it well in hand. Blessings!
Very well said @drrune
And here is the rub Piotr; if you DV in retaliation we have enough idle VP to counter it. So it will be a waste of time. I can even ask someone to write a few lines of code that will automatically counter your DV. Just saying.
One more comment @azircon
May I also ask you this question: what would you do if you were in my shoes?
Assume that you have years of experience as a social media marketer. And you're managing strong network of bloggers and influencers (not only on steem/hive). On top of that you have budget (all powered down hive) to support financially every single person from PH, which is willing to share their negative story with others.
What would you do? Would you give up on this fight? Or would you bring it on another level? Outside HIVE, where your enemies cannot do anything to you any more?
If you were me - wouldn't you become long-term enemy of those who destroyed your project? Wouldn't you do everything in your power to bring as attention to hostility, bullying and centralization on HIVE, which would bring more negative PR?
I'm actually very curious. What would you do.
I am in no position to advice you. However, since you ask for my opinion I will give my opinion. If you are a successful social media personality you should try and do something that gives you some return on investment as it seems to me like you are motivated on money.
Personally I don’t have any monetary objective, so I can’t tell you too much about how you should earn using your social media prowess.
Outside of hive you can do whatever you like. If your effort gives Hive some publicity that good for Hive. As I am sure you have learned by now from reading the global news over last several years, that there is no such thing called bad publicity; it’s only publicity ;)
Enjoy your day, Piotr.
Interesting @azircon. Do you consider good publicity to share info about level of bullying and abuse on hive?
And that's a mantra repeated by those people, who do not understand online marketing and PR in general.
And your words are far from truth. You're intelligent enough to understand it. And every solid marketer would disagree with your statement.
Thank you. I will. And regardless how much I despise your behaviours in the past - I appreciate your polite and matura attitude and I also wish you good day ahead of you.
Hey @crypto.piotr , does PH has a monthly payment plan? Do you pay people to post 150 comments? Dude! This is beyond creepy!! What kind of human being are you guys?!
I wonder where did you get those information from @azircon. Did you just made it up? Just to justify your hate towards our community.
Go on. Give people more reasons to feel that HIVE is hostile place.
Hi @azircon
Since you decided to be quite mature and polite while replying -> I will then "return the favour".
I don't want to go deep into most of those false accusations (memo spam stopped year ago after hive forked out from steem; steem shilling never took place and it's just hostile propaganda, which noone ever could back up with any evidence; and PH is not selling votes - even representative from Blocktrades carried on their investigation and they recognized us as a legit community).
What I want to focus is this:
I'm truly astonished by those words.
Do you really assume that only Venezuelans are the ones who decided to leave? Did it ever occur to you, that some middle-sized stakeholders would also decide to start powering down while seeing all this hostility on HIVE blockchain?
Our PH discord has few hundred users. And many of those users are part of other discord servers and other communities. For entire month so many talks (on various discord channels) were related to this conflict. Our members would bring up this topic wherever we could - trying to bring more light to hostility by @acidyo, @themarkymark, @pfunk and yours.
I personaly know few users with over 30k HP (their own stake), which moved away from steem because they considered Steem to be a high risk investment (investors do not like to put their money into places of conflict). And now they consider HIVE to be a high risk investment and decided start powering down.
Your actions do not only affected our community and our content creators, but also affected all those who are supporting us with an upvotes. You cleared out their rewards for few weeks straight. So it isn't surprise to me, that some of them already decided to quit HIVE as well. They may not move back to steem, but they as well won't be around here any more.
And there will be more of them, since it's becoming my priority to discourage people to continue their investment in HIVE. Which you made super easy.
You may believe me or you may not believe me, however you've created quite a huge additional selling pressure. If you add stake being powered down by those few suppoerter and 50k which PH is being forced to power down and sell -> you will easily exceed 7 digit number of HIVE tokens which will be sold.
Is that your end game? Something you wanted to achieve?
I have no problem with “selling pressure”. People who wants to sell can and should sell. People who don’t like the ideology of hive can and should leave.
You personally seem to fall in that category. Learn from your own teaching and leave. No hard feelings.
Please don’t try and give me investment advice first, you are not qualified and second, I have forgotten more financial education than most professional money managers ever learn in their lives :)
Why don’t you relax and have a good time? There is lot more to life than hive or steem. Happy Friday!
Oh Piotr.... please don't lie
Blockchain keeps record. Please don’t make me prove it :)
If you think I've been hostile after spending 200+ comments trying to push it through your greedy skulls why the scheme you were running is against everything Hive stands for and in the end losing my patience and using vulgarity, I can show you what real hostility is after seeing the way you're treating a user who wants nothing to do with your cult.