Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Satisfaction vs. effort

Tonight I was very much looking forward to trying out Short and Sweet's gnocchi recipe. I love gnocchi and I think it's adorable how it almost rhymes with nookie. I went and bought kumara and spinach and flour and ricotta and water to boil it in (ok, ok, I already had that). I also bought a whole heap of other things. On the way home it occurred to me it that it would take a bit of effort to peel and boil and kumara. And that it would be much quicker and easier to saute some of the scallops I'd just bought.

And I realised that in a tradeoff of satisfaction and effort, the scallops win hand down. I had them with Israeli couscous and salad. Did you know that Israeli couscous is not couscous? I always thought it was a grain. Turns out it's just a wheat pasta. Huh. So anyway, the meal I had scored about a 5, calculated as satisfaction/sqrt(effort). In this case satisfaction = 8 and effort = 2.5. Now, I realise it's quite sad that I've spent the time to work out this ratio, and even sadder is the fact that I've made up a wee graph in illustration. But I like to think it shows my level of dedication to my blog readers.


I anticipate that the gnocchi would have scored about 3.5 (s=7, e=4). The glass of wine I had with dinner scored 10 because it was already open and chilled, all I had to do was pour a glass. It's possible to go off the scale if effort is very low, for example if someone were to pop chocolate-covered raspberries into my mouth I imagine that would score, say, 4957.

Portuguesa Nova's quinoa loaf, despite the fact that I encourage her to make it and report back, scores a dismal 1.5 on my scale. Obviously the scale is scientifically proven and not at all subjective. So therefore I won't be making quinoa loaf anytime soon. Also, I think quinoa is a native American grain and unlikely to be in the supermarket in hicktown Australia.

R.

posted by flying kiwi @ 2:56 AM