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Can Real Food be Faster than Fast Food?

Please join our global discussion group
every Tuesday at 12pm noon U.S. Pacific / 3pm Eastern time

This Tuesday, Sept 28 at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

Click here to teleport to the Epoch Institute in Second Life™
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Wells/97/56/27

This Week’s Topic

Can Real Food be Faster than Fast Food?

We eat fast food. We eat a lot of it. The amount is going up, and going up dramatically over the last couple of years. Why is this? Some people say it’s about speed and convenience. Some say it’s cost. Perhaps the answer is simpler.  People can’t figure out how to cook in a way that fits the reality of today’s lifestyle and so in the absence of a way to “make it work,” fast food becomes the only way to “get it all done in the small amount of time left” in a day.

We watch “chef battle” cooking shows, where people who have years of culinary training create gourmet meals in amazingly short times. Does this help? Maybe, in that it gets people thinking about cooking themselves. However, just as photoshop fakery of model pictures creates an image of people that is unattainable, these shows create an image of cooking that is similarly unattainable to many.

Whenever the topic of food and cooking appears in our We Are The Network discussions, the group gets totally energized, and it basically derails whatever else was going on, so I figured this week “let’s just go with it.”

Is it really possible, without any gaming of the numbers or process, to actually cook real food at home in the same or less time than it would take to take the fast food route. Before you leap up and say “of course it’s possible” – let’s talk about the full time investment, including preparation, cleanup, shopping for food – everything.

If you’ve already got this “all figured out,” let’s hear about your magic for choosing recipes, food shopping, when and for what, which kitchen skills you need to work on to make things flow quickly, techniques to get things done quicly, and how to not end up with a mountain of cleanup (a time sink that real people know about, but the recipe books so conveniently ignore when they say “simple, 30 minute prep”!)

Bring your ideas. Bring your recipes. Maybe don’t show up hungry (don’t say I didn’t warn you!), and let’s have a fun and very different session.

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon U.S. Pacific / 3pm U.S. Eastern time for an interactive discussion, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

If you do not have a Second Life account and would like a quick start to attend the session, please contact me for more information.

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and see you soon!

Jamie Oliver’s TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food | TED.com
http://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_oliver.html

Eating at Fast Food Restaurants more than Twice a Week is Associated with More Weight Gain and Insulin Resistance in Otherwise Healthy Adults (U.S. National Institutes of Health)
http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/dec2004/nhlbi-30.htm

Fast Food Booming in Wake of Global Recession (report on 3news.co.nz)
http://www.3news.co.nz/Global-recession-sees-increase-in-fast-food-consumption/tabid/372/articleID/93326/Default.aspx

Fat and Calorie Content of a Fast Food Meal versus a Home Cooked Meal (Monster Information Please – data source for article)
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0934642.html

Food Matters – A Guide to Conscious Eating (Mark Bittman)
http://content.markbittman.com/books/food-matters

The Food Matters Cookbook – 500 Revolutionary Recipes for Better Living (Mark Bittman)
http://www.amazon.com/Food-Matters-Cookbook-Revolutionary-Recipes/dp/1439120234/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1284660910&sr=1-1

Copycat Cookbooks – Cook Your Favorite Restaurant Recipes at Home (These are obviously not the real recipes, but designed to taste similar!)
http://www.fastfoodrecipes.net/

How to Cook Quickly (About.com)
http://homecooking.about.com/od/howtocookbasics/How_to_Cook_Basics_Quick_cooking_instructions.htm

Fast Food for the Home Cook (Squidoo)
http://www.squidoo.com/fast-food-cooking

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Please Note – Mixed Text and Voice Session:

We Are The Network is an open, mixed voice / text discussion session. Please feel free to participate in voice or in text, to your preference. The facilitator and some participants will be using voice, so you may wish to enable voice in your viewer so that you can hear the voice portions of the session.

To enable voice, choose Preferences from the Edit menu, click the “Voice Chat” tab along the left of the form, and then make sure that “Enable voice chat” is checked. Again, speaking is not required for this session, however if you do not enable voice, and use speakers or headphones, you will not be able to hear part of the discussion.

Thanks for attending!

Joel Foner (Second Life: Joel Savard)

http://joelfoner.com/about
http://twitter.com/JoelFoner