Eating "Real" Food
I just listened to an excellent interview via NPR with Michael Pollan, author of "In Defense of Food". My thanks go to the Slow Food Seacoast blog for bringing it to my attention.
I have not read his book, but one of Pollan's main points during the interview was that "real" food is often steeped in tradition. The food that our grandparents and great-grandparents ate was often grown, canned, prepared, preserved, cured right in the home. Over the past few years, cooking, meal-times and quality food has not been a priority in this country. Fortunately knowledge is power, and what many people are discovering, (and what I've discovered for myself), is that their not willing to trade saving a few dollars on disgusting processed food for poor health down the line. Personally, I'll take the yummy food and healthy life behind door number two, thanks!
Over the past few months I've been trying to use my time more wisely to cook from scratch more often. Sundays is a great day for me to prepare things ahead. One of my favorite things to have on hand is home made chicken stock. Once I made stock for myself, I vowed never to buy it in the store again. Not even the organic free-range stuff can match up to the deliciousness of home made stock!
What you might choose to put in your chicken stock will vary from mine, because of personal preferences and what you have in your kitchen. I won't share a recipe for stock here, but I thought I would share some of my stock-making tricks.
* I hate wasting food. Growing up my mom had a compost bin in our yard and we wasted little. Here at my apartment I'm not able to compost, but I can re-use vegetable scraps in my stock. Oftentimes when I cook, I'll end up with too many veggie scraps to use at once. So I've started freezing them. I just stuff the scraps into a tupperware container and when I'm ready to use them chip off chunks of veggie goodness. Your tupperware will look like it's filled with a nasty mixed veggie ice-cube, but trust me, it's good stuff.
* Speaking of ice cubes - freeze your leftover wine. My husband, Matt, is straight edge, so it is a rare occasion that I will crack open a bottle of wine just for myself. When I do I often have an enormous amount leftover. I freeze this into cubes to add to my cooking. This is great for other things besides stocks and soups...like add a cube or two to a stir fry, or for pan braising meat.
Cheers!
I have not read his book, but one of Pollan's main points during the interview was that "real" food is often steeped in tradition. The food that our grandparents and great-grandparents ate was often grown, canned, prepared, preserved, cured right in the home. Over the past few years, cooking, meal-times and quality food has not been a priority in this country. Fortunately knowledge is power, and what many people are discovering, (and what I've discovered for myself), is that their not willing to trade saving a few dollars on disgusting processed food for poor health down the line. Personally, I'll take the yummy food and healthy life behind door number two, thanks!
Over the past few months I've been trying to use my time more wisely to cook from scratch more often. Sundays is a great day for me to prepare things ahead. One of my favorite things to have on hand is home made chicken stock. Once I made stock for myself, I vowed never to buy it in the store again. Not even the organic free-range stuff can match up to the deliciousness of home made stock!
What you might choose to put in your chicken stock will vary from mine, because of personal preferences and what you have in your kitchen. I won't share a recipe for stock here, but I thought I would share some of my stock-making tricks.
* I hate wasting food. Growing up my mom had a compost bin in our yard and we wasted little. Here at my apartment I'm not able to compost, but I can re-use vegetable scraps in my stock. Oftentimes when I cook, I'll end up with too many veggie scraps to use at once. So I've started freezing them. I just stuff the scraps into a tupperware container and when I'm ready to use them chip off chunks of veggie goodness. Your tupperware will look like it's filled with a nasty mixed veggie ice-cube, but trust me, it's good stuff.
* Speaking of ice cubes - freeze your leftover wine. My husband, Matt, is straight edge, so it is a rare occasion that I will crack open a bottle of wine just for myself. When I do I often have an enormous amount leftover. I freeze this into cubes to add to my cooking. This is great for other things besides stocks and soups...like add a cube or two to a stir fry, or for pan braising meat.
Cheers!
posted by Geek+Nerd at 8:16 PM
3 Comments:
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/EtsyNHStreetTeam/
here is the link to join the NH Street team...glad you are interested in joining us...the more the merrier!!!
Hallelujia on cooking from scratch! I've been working on doing this lately, too. That Barbara Kingsolver book is really eye-opening, isn't it?
GENIUS ideas for freezing leftover veggies and wine! Thank you for sharing - I'm incorporating these right away.
And your house smells good when you cook from scratch, too!
Post a Comment
<< Home