Xan: Weighing the benefits of kitchen scales. Also, cookies.

In the kitchen I prefer work first, reward second.  I go to great lengths to avoid making things dirty because I don't want to have to clean them up later!  When possible, I do manual prep work up front, rather than using a kitchen machine (even if it's much quicker and easier) that I then have to clean.  Even if it takes less total time to clean the machine than it took to do the manual prep work, I prefer to do the work first and get my reward second.

That may seem odd.  But if I do the work first, it's just part of the cooking.  If I do it second, it becomes a chore I have to force myself to do now instead of later.

Sometimes I will fail and procrastinate, making a bad situation worse.  But even when I succeed in forcing myself to clean in a timely fashion, it's still worse than if I didn't have to force myself.  Just as, even if you successfully exert the willpower to abstain from an unhealthy slice of chocolate cake, you are still worse off than if the cake didn't exist to tempt you in the first place.  Exerting willpower is costly.  Making yourself do things now instead of later is draining.  So I avoid it when I reasonably can.

I would rather clean a knife right before I use it than right after, even though it would seem to take the same amount of effort in the naive view of things.  In either case, you have a clean knife while you're using it, which is the only time it really needs to be clean.  Unfortunately, your cohabitant may prefer the knife to be clean the rest of the time as well.

This explains why I often make the seemingly odd decision to do things manually that "should" be done a more modern and efficient way.  My most preferred cleaning method by far is to not make things dirty in the first place!

You can roll your eyes all you want -- and probably would, if you saw the lengths I've gone to in order to avoid the food processor -- but I know how my brain works.  As cooking goes from a hobby to a regular routine, even small differences in costliness start to dominate my decisions of what to make and which pans to use.  I pretty much don't care how much work a dish is the first time I make it, because making new things is exciting.  But by the 10th time, it's just not happening if there's something annoying about its preparation.

And so, to the title of this post.  The kitchen scale has become one of my favorite kitchen tools.  It doesn't get dirty by use; to the contrary, it is a substitute for getting things dirty.  It strictly dominates using measuring cups, because it is faster, more precise, and doesn't get anything dirty.

I make pizza dough maybe once a week.  This involves a bowl, a fork, and a scale.  That's it.  I put the bowl on the scale, pour the ingredients right out of their containers by weight, and mix it up with a fork.  It's 5 ingredients: flour, salt, yeast, water, olive oil.  The mixing takes like 15 seconds.  It's so easy that adding measuring cups and spoons would easily double the amount of prep work involved.  And then I would have to wash them!  Even if it was just a rinse to get the flour or yeast off, the measuring cups just might sit there on the counter to be dealt with later.  Ugh.

In fairness, it's a no-knead dough so then I have to wait till the next day to use it.  But that's not the kind of procrastination problem I have.  Personally, I have no trouble cooking ahead, I only have trouble cleaning ahead (I hate cleaning, but I like making dough, so why would I put it off?).  Your mileage may vary.  My approach in the kitchen is not for everyone, but it works for me.

Every so often I buy a sack of onions from Costco and thoroughly caramelize a whole batch of them.  I freeze them in an ice cube tray and then I can put caramelized onions on every pizza I want by microwaving half an onion ice cube for 10 seconds.  It's a fancy and delicious pizza, and honestly the "hardest" part is grating the cheese!

And I cook it in a cast iron skillet.  It does not stick, and just leaves a little oil behind.  For months now, I've cleaned my cast iron with a soapy sponge, because it's easy and my prior method was definitely not.  They say not to use soap, but what do they know.  There's no sign that I'm ruining the seasoning and every sign that I'm easifying the cleaning.


Catherine's kitchen philosophy is so different from mine.  Today she made Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies using both the Kitchenaid Mixer and the Cuisinart Food Processor.  This simply blows my mind.  Meanwhile, as she was making her cookies, I made a pie crust using this recipe, which is notable because it requires not a food processor, not a pastry blender, but a fork.  Mix flour, salt, and butter by hand, mix in some sour cream with a fork, done. I was so excited!  The recipe does say to "vigorously whisk together the flour and salt"...but ha!  Surely you jest! Like I'm going to dirty a whisk to mix flour and salt.  Wait...would anyone do that?  I mean, that is the most pointless use of a whisk I have ever heard of.  (Technically false).  90% of the time a recipe calls for a whisk, I use a fork anyway.  I know, right?  Forks are the best.

We'll see how the pie turns out tomorrow.  Meanwhile, the cookies were really good.  But I must warn you, there were a lot of them.  I should not use the past tense because there are still a lot of them.  I've never seen so many freshly baked cookies in my entire life.  We filled the cookie jar, and two whole plates, and another bag, and our stomachs!

"How many cookies did you eat?" "I don't know..."

That's not even all of them.  She's still in the middle of cooking them.

Let's check out another angle, just to drive the magnitude home:

OMG SO MANY COOKIES

These are pretty much the best cookies ever, for the record.