House Meal
According to Tamar Adler, a house meal is a meal that routinely falls back when there no other options on the menu. A house meal can be easily modified to other various dishes whose recipes are only known by the cook. In the case of Adler, rice and beans were her childhood house meal. He mother could change the dishes by adding more ingredients. For instance, she could prepare pigeon peas and yellow rice that is colored using annatto. In another modification, she made lentils and rice or spiced greens. All these dishes were just a modification of the house meal; rice and beans. They all have different taste, but the mechanism of preparing them was similar to that of rice and beans. A house meal must also be adaptable and prepared from readily available ingredients. It must be fast to prepare, as it requires fewer skills. Adler (2017) argues that a house meal should be prepared according to a person’s ideas about healthy and philosophy.
Adler thinks that every person should have a house meal because it is inspiring and allows people to plan and think and purchase items when they want to enjoy homemade dishes in tall orders. The need for such a homemade dish enhances the value of a house meal. Adler explains this concept using her personal experience. The time when she benefited most from a homemade meal was when there were barriers to preparing one. For example, when she and her husband were hungry and tired a few minutes before dinnertime and when one person was spiritually or physically weary of preparing the meal making it easy for the other partner to rest. In another illustration Adler (2017) indicates that one should have a house meal because during the festive season the body feels like it has enough of festive food and it begs for a simple meal and when a friend is sick and request someone to cook for the. In these cases, a house meal is important because its ingredients are readily available in the house or a nearby store and are made to be finer than restraint food.
It is incredible how I have grown up eating the same food over and over again, and it tasted better only with a slight change. I did not discover until recently when I visited my parents and shared diner with them, that growing up, we had only one specific meal that we could for a whole week. The particular house meal I had when growing up was beef curry, a dish prepared from beef and spicy curry. I have vivid memories of the aroma of the curry filling the whole house as my mother would cook the meat for hours, and sitting at the dinner table enjoying the delicious pieces of beef on a bed of rice. My mother prepared this dish almost every day and sometimes with a slight change whereby she could put less or more spicy to make more delicious. Whenever I visit my parents, my mother prepares beef curry and rice as a treat for me since I rarely go there.
My current house meal is spaghetti and green beans. A simple spaghetti dish can be prepared with simple ingredients that are readily available in my kitchen. The ingredients include fresh garlic, chilies, olive oil, cheese, and spaghetti. Sometimes I change the dish by having it with tomatoes, shrimp, lentils, or asparagus instead of green beans. Whenever I am bored with festive food or when I am tired, I would prepare spaghetti with green been because making it is easy and fast. I always keep cooked beans in my fridge, so whenever I am hungry, I just set a simple house meal within some few minutes. It helps me reduce my dependence on processed food and allows me to maintain a healthier eating habit (Galvin, 2019).
References
Adler, T. (2017). Everyone Should Have a House Meal: In a world filled with aspirational recipes and preciously staged photos, one cook finds that true comfort comes from replaying the same simple dinner…over and over and over again. Retrieved from https://www.bonappetit.com/story/why-every-home-needs-a-house-meal
Galvin, S. (2019). Everyone should have a house meal in their back pocket. Retrieved from https://www.producer.com/2019/03/everyone-should-have-a-house-meal-in-their-back-pocket/