Healthy, "Slow"...and Practical: February 2011

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Why You Don't Need To Buy That $150 Knife, No Matter What That TV Chef Says

Contrary to appearances, I have managed to survive both the holidays and football season. (Woo hoo!!! World Champion Green Bay Packers!!!) So now that my stress level has gone down dramatically, my plan is to be more consistent about posting.

To that end, I'm easing into things with one of the most practical subjects there is related to cooking--knives. Let's face it, you can't cook much of anything without them!

To read on, please click "read more"!

Why This Blog?

So, why am I here, writing this blog? The short answer is that my husband Ricky and some of his co-workers (who smell his homemade lunches heating up in the office microwave) have been saying for a while now that I needed my own food blog. Ricky especially, because he knows how interested I am in learning about food, food production, and cooking.

What do I mean when I talk about healthy food? Mainstream food producers would have you believe that reduced fat cookies and frozen entrees are healthy. Go to a health food store and it seems that you need lots of supplements and strange foods you may never have heard of. I'm somewhere in between. I do make reduced fat foods, but homemade ones that don't resort to the kind of trickery with ingredients that mainstream food producers use. I'm also fairly adventurous with ingredients and I do like to try some of those strange things at the health food store, but only if they fall within the realm of something that is actually recognizable as food.

And "slow" food? It's a term you've probably heard quite a bit lately if you have an interest in food. Essentially it's the antithesis of fast food, home made, minimally processed, sustainable, preferably organic, and preferably locally produced.

Finally, how does practicality fit into all this? Over the years I have learned to pick my battles. Sometimes you really do have to use real butter. Sometimes you can't make your vegetable stock from scratch and you need to buy it in a package. It's all about learning how to make the best choice from the available options. I won't suggest that you grind your own grain into flour because there are great products on the market that make that unnecessary. I won't say that every single thing you eat should be locally produced, because I live in Wisconsin and if I myself did that I'd be living with no produce but stored potatoes, winter squash, and apples for six months a year. I won't suggest that you personally slaughter animals for your own meat...but I very strongly encourage you to get to know the farmer who does that for you.

In this blog I hope to provide some ideas that will help people make their own food, make healthier food, and do it efficiently to make it possible to easily fit homemade, healthy food into a busy modern lifestyle.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Why You Don't Need To Buy That $150 Knife, No Matter What That TV Chef Says

Total Pageviews