It’s time to liberate the people. Just the other day I saw a guy buying brown sugar at the store. It was the only think he bought, he had come to the grocery store for the one ingredient that he needed.
It’s time for the people to learn that you can make brown sugar with molasses and suger. All it takes is 1 tablespoon of molasses and 1 cup of sugar to make a cup of brown sugar. Don’t buy brown sugar, just buy molasses, you can keep it in your cabinet for like decades and it’ll be fine, then you can buy one big bag of sugar and you’ll have everything you’ll ever need.
Sometime’s when I worked at the grocery store I realized things like this, people would buy things and I would wonder if they knew they could do those things themselves. I mean, I don’t wanna sit around and make philo dough from scratch, there’s some things that it just makes more sense to leave to better processes. And I suppose some people, especially if they can afford it, choose to buy pre marinated chicken for example, it saves time. I can’t blame them, the number of times I go to make chicken that I need to cook and I’m like, “man this woulda been great if I marinated it last night.” So, I get it, theres a time and a place where it makes sense.
Other times though, I would sell people spatch-cocked chickens. You can spotch-cock a chicken yourself. Now maybe that’s obvious because, yk, you can tell its nothing special, its just been cut up for you, so it’s likely that anyone who’s buying one KNOWS you can do it yourself but CHOOSES not to. Maybe they don’t trust their knife skills, maybe they want to save time, who knows. But I wonder if they know what it takes, yes it’s clear it’s just a cut up chicken, and maybe they’re just scared to do it themselves, but surely a few people out there that are buying spatch-cocked chickens would try it themselves and see that they could totally pull it off themselves with some practice.
The same is true for sourdough, they could make their own. Now that one takes some time and effort, its not exactly rocket science, but it definitely takes some patience and some active effort. Again maybe people just wanna save time.
But the same is true for kombuca. You could make your own pretty easily. In fact, at one time or another, I, or my roommates, have done all of the above. Some of them are hard, some are annoying, some aren’t worth it, but some are. If you make your own kombucha you can control the flavor yourself. If you make your own sourdough you can make sure its not dry. You can even make your own chocolate for brownies and not need to get a bar of chocolate.
I’m defintely not sayin it’s necessary to do ALL of these things yourself, that would be a full time job. Maybe you could if you want to, but I don’t think its necessary is all. But knowing how to do it yourself is pretty cool.
Surely people know they can make their own hummus. Does it take a while? No. Does it take more time than ripping open a container of Joseph’s and going to town on it with a bag of baby carrots? Ya absolutely. So it’s a trade off for sure, not everything is worth it. But sometimes I wonder if people even know that pickling your own beets or cucumbers is an option!
Let’s liberate the people, let them know they can make their own brown sugar.