As this coming year is about moving our kitchen skills (by "our" I am speaking of those listed on the "players" page) from point A to point B, I was
pondering how to describe a starting point. This seems pretty futile.
When you read Amazon reviews of cookbooks, you'll see people using terms
such as, "this is for the advanced beginning home cook", and bless
their hearts for trying, but what does that mean?
Here in our kitchen, we don't use convenience food . . . but what does that mean?
Currently, that means we have no boxes to cook from or defrost, no
cream-of-anything soup. We don't have a microwave. But still . . .
compared to my great-grandmother, we use convenience food. We have dried
pasta, someone else cans the tomatoes, and there are frozen fruits in
the freezer. We sometimes make mayonnaise, but not always (yet). Our
attempts at ketchup have been disastrous so far, but we do make our own
salad dressings, chutneys, and the like. Jams and jellies come from the
store, and to buy them at the prices charged for the lack of
nasty additives is a grievous thing for sure! Gareth turns out two
loaves of bread most days, but we are still purchasing other bread like
hot dog buns. Vegetables are bought or grown whole and a knife (or food
processor) turns them into something else - no steamer bags. We often
buy meat that someone else has broken down. We do "grow" most of our own
eggs, as our four ducks give us more than two dozen a week.
Fresh, local . . . often organic, with the immune disorder that the little ones have. But that is the goal and not descriptive of all of our food by a long shot.
There is a place to go from here. I love the thrill of finding a
cookbook at the thrift store that has informed and inspired many, and I
am so excited to wander into my bookshelf. I am so excited to have the company of My Sweetie, Araminta, and Lucinda. And I am so excited to see where Sophia and Gareth's projects will take them this year, as well.
Let the adventure begin!
