As I was kneading bread yesterday morning, it occurred to me that it had been awhile since I shared the ins and outs of farm life...country life on this blog. I have been on a continual journey learning how to take care of my family and home as I learn to be a better homemaker. As I walk this journey, I would love to share some of the things I am learning here. Also, I would love to hear your insights and experience.
In My Kitchen
We do most of our cooking from scratch (we shop around the outer ring of the grocery store, if you will). There are a lot of misconceptions about this style of cooking- that it takes forever, its so cumbersome, etc. I want to talk about that, but first, let me explain why we do it:
Health: When I cook from scratch, I know what goes into it. My bread contains only flour, water, sugar, yeast, oil and salt. I know how much salt is in my soup and that the cheese we are eating is actually...a dairy product.
Expense: We don't have a lot of money to throw at the grocery store, and buying basics helps stretch those dollars. We aren't fanatic about it, we just mostly buy staples. I have a wonderful recipe book called "Make A Mix Cookbook" that shows many of the bought mixes and how to create them for much less money. I love it!
Space: We don't have a lot of room to put boxes and boxes of different things- or even cans and cans of things. Our pantry space is small, and the way I need to store things is cumbersome (in plastic containers). I find that piecing meals from scratch helps me to make the best use of that space.
Joy: This isn't done out of hum-drum requirement. Though at first I was overwhelmed with the idea of cooking all of our meals, I have learned to really love providing food for my family. There is a real sense of satisfaction I get when I sit down to a meal purposefully made. Oddly enough, it is something deeper than the satisfaction I ever felt when I stopped by the drive-through on the way home.
Love: We. Really. Like. To. Eat. And the time spent cooking, delving into that skill set has allowed us to make more food, better food, healthier food.
Next...but doesn't it take forever? Do you LIVE in your kitchen?
4 comments:
I was just thinking about this the other day. There is an intrinsic factor in doing these things yourself, almost spiritual, knowing you are more self-sufficient, more respsonsible, more connected to the food and what it is. Also, more connected to our past and our ancestors when we do things like they did.
Its so true! I never expected it to be like that, but it is. One of my favorite teachers in learning these ways to keep house is by looking at how women did it so long ago. I would love to be able to learn from my great-grandmother...
I had the opportunity to learn from my Great-Grandmother and I think what I learned most from her and my Gramma was the "love" that those things were done in. Never, ever did I feel that what either of them did was out of a duty, an assignment, it was always given out of a willful service to the family that they both so loved. It make all the difference in the world.
I as well have come to enjoy making food from scratch. However I did not come about it in the same way as you. Even though we grew up in the same house and we learned to cook from scratch (practically all of our meals seemed to be that way), I loved making food from a box once I got married. It was so easy! But then my beautiful baby arrived with an onion AND egg allergy. Since EVERYTHING in the store has one if not both of those products in it, I have learned on my own to make things from scratch again. And I relly like it. Mostly because I know what is going in to our food. But I still sometimes long for the simplicity of cooking dinner out of the box, bag or drive-through.
You still need to give me some recipes!
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