By back the basics, I don't mean lets go cook over a wood fire in an open fireplace.* What I mean is cooking from raw ingredients. When my parents were still alive I would often go down at Thanksgiving, and cook. The last time I did it, my sister was living with my parents providing care of them, and we went grocery shopping for the goodies to prepare dinner. When I wasn't looking my sister put the mushrooms in the cart, pre-sliced mushrooms. Now this is better than pre-cooked, or some prepackaged mix, but when did chopping a box of mushrooms become to much work?
About 30 Saturdays a year I go the local farmers market and buy fruits and vegetables. I focus on a few vendors that I know grow all or almost all of the fruits and vegetables that they sell. Another vendor that I buy eggs and cheese from represents a community of Amish farmers (he also has dairy, and some frozen meats.)
When I want to bake bread, I start with water, flour, yeast, salt, and maybe a little melted butter or olive oil. I could start with frozen dough, but where is the fun in that. I can be creative, varying the ingredients and the proportions as I wish, you can't do that with frozen dough.
I read cookbooks, like many people read novels. The best cookbooks include history and social context in addition to ingredients and technique. I enjoy reading them, collecting them, and sometimes referring to them when I feel like making something new. Though often I just wing it based on what I know, and make up anything I don't know as I go along.
That is creativity in the kitchen.
* We spent a few days without electric power in the house in Lexington one winter after and ice storm. The kitchen was all electric, I cooked in the gas fireplace quite successfully. I was surprised what I could do when I tried.
Cooking in a gas fireplace is quite a feat!
ReplyDeleteIt worked.
DeleteWe, too, don't buy canned foods, pre-packaged foods, or .... I feel faint ... pre-chopped mushrooms!!! I enjoy cooking and creating and tasting and adjusting and not just opening a package or can or box for a meal.
ReplyDeleteLuckily we have a gas stove and can cook if we lose power.
And the way you cook is SO much healthier than eating processed food!
ReplyDeleteI just returned from the farmers market. My favorite Saturday morning activity.
DeleteGood for you! Good and healthy food is so important.
ReplyDeleteAnd I enjoy it.
DeleteGood message! I learned to cook with the basics...from scratch and use fresh, when possible from my aunt.Another reason I started my own herb garden. What a difference in taste. My most prized dinner and one Im most proud of every year is Thanksgiving.
ReplyDeleteOur only semi-outdoor space faces northwest, I gave up on trying to get anything to grow.
DeleteLocal and fresh is always the best. This is the time of year when I make things to freeze for the winter: stuffed peppers, cut up tomatoes, pesto, herb butters, roasted red peppers, roasted cherry tomatoes. It's sad when the first hard freeze comes...that's the end of fresh tomato season.
ReplyDeleteA lot fewer tomatoes at the market this morning.
DeleteI'm a good enough cook but I am much lazier than you, David. :)
ReplyDeleteI have time and I enjoy it.
DeleteThere could be a strong association between looking after parents and buying sliced mushrooms. Be ever grateful to the woman who cooks for her family day after day, year after year, until the children leave home, and then there is more often than not, a husband who still expects to be fed.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about the bread. You may as well just buy a loaf than waste time using premade dough, and I would have a careful check of the ingredients in a premade dough.
My parents ate out a lot after the kids left home.
DeleteNothing like fresh ingrediencies
ReplyDeleteSo true
DeleteI love reading cookbooks. I used to look for them in antique stores. They often tell interseting tales of what food meant as well as historical dishes.
ReplyDeleteI have one from the 80's that has heavy cream in half of the recipes
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