An exploration of food, with a taste for authenticity and an eye towards good value.
We are a family of four, 2 of whom are children (ages 13 and 8). My wife and I have full-time jobs as university professors of architecture and we’ve decided to start thinking more critically about our food preparations at home, in response to the economic circumstances, and our global environmental challenges. Our personal challenge is to maintain a tasty, healthful diet, without being extravagant or wasteful. We try to include the girls, because they enjoy being in the kitchen, but because we also want this to offer lessons in self-sufficiency and good nutrition. And fun as well!
Shopping: we shop at 2 kinds of grocery stores: a local food coop, where we try to buy organic and locally grown produce, and a locally-owned conventional supermarket, where we try to stock up on industrially-produced staples, canned goods, etc. We’re not obsessive about it, and we’ll buy produce at either one if the time is right. The organic grocery is closest to our house and our daughter’s school, and we shop there as a matter of convenience as much as anything. The meats and produce are excellent, but tend to be a bit more costly. You get what you pay for.
We appear to be reducing our meat intake gradually. Not really hyper-intentionally, but we’ve just noticed that we have several meals a week with no meat. I attribute this to learning how to cook more flavorful vegetarian dishes. Maybe our tastes are changing as well. In general we do subscribe to the theory that bacon does make most things better. Soups definitely benefit from chicken stock or a smoked hock.
I’ve done essentially all the cooking in our house in our 22 years of marriage, and have rarely kept track of what or how I cook. I use recipes as a guideline, and am never afraid to stray away if it seems appropriate, or second guess a recipe’s original author. So for me measurements can be kind of approximate, and if you’re using these recipes consider them to be close approximations. When baking I try to be more exact.
I take all my own photos, in a lightbox on the dining room table, with a remote, off-camera electronic flash and a hand-held digital slr camera. More of my food photos can be found on Flickr.
Cheers,
Nils
