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Comment by munk-a | Hacker News Reader

Home cooked fruits and veggies end up getting a lot more expensive when you factor in frequency of shopping needed to maintain a stock and time required to cook. I applaud everyone who manages to cook every day and I strive to do so, but both of the people in my relationship work full time and waste about three hours a day commuting, round it up to about twelve hours a day lost to work - cooking and then collapsing after that is un-affordable without getting lost in a spiral of depression.

We cook and eat well on the weekends, we try to reserve food for the week and I continue to be amazed by people worse off than us that are working as much as we are _and_ a part time job on top of it.

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Just eat fruit raw! It's not exactly difficult to find fruit that requires no significant preparation, needing nothing more than a quick rinse under tap/removal of skin (according to taste), if even that, before you can put it in your mouth and eat it. I particularly like apples and tomatoes, but there are other similarly straightforward fruit options. Bananas and oranges seem to be popular.

Pick the right type of fruit, and you'll be done in less than 1 minute. You probably just spent more time than that writing a post about how you don't have time to eat fruit! - just think how much better your life would be had you spent that minute eating a banana.

(Many types of vegetables do require cooking, but, again, you have options: bell peppers, onions, spring onions, most types of lettuce...)

Frozen vegetables can help a lot with that, especially the miracle that is microwave "steam in bag" frozen vegetables.

This. Around 50% of my veg and fruit intake comes from frozen organic bags. They're cheaper, last longer, and quicker to make. My go-to lazy meals involve throwing frozen rice, broccoli or kale, and beans in a glass bowl and heating it up in the microwave.

Those "steam in bag" vegetables are convenient, but way expensive considering you can just get a plastic microwave steamer for $10.

> and waste about three hours a day commuting

Jesus. 3 hours! That sounds awful. I'm unhappy when my commute is more than 20 mins each way.

Cooking shouldn't require so much time, at least not needing to collapse. I have a similar commute time. Morning cooking time is 10-20 minutes, evening about the same.

> Home cooked fruits and veggies end up getting a lot more expensive when you factor in frequency of shopping needed to maintain a stock and time required to cook.

What sort of meals are you comparing? To cook a steak, sausages, bacon and eggs and things like that can take more time than cutting up some vegies and making a basic salad. A lot of veggies like beans and lentins can be stored dried, their shelf life is infinitely longer than meat and bread.

> I applaud everyone who manages to cook every day and I strive to do so

It sounds like your comparing cooking to takeaway/frozen rather than comparing cooking veggies to other food.

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