Eating Simply
(Sorry if this doesn't make much sense. I just sort of sat down and shot it off - there's really no rhyme or reason to it.)
Many of the blogs I read have made posts at one point or another in their bloggy existence about eating simply, healthily, and frugally. In two weeks or so I'll be heading down south to set up permanent residence with EJ and this topic has been weighing heavily on my mind. I still have so much to learn.
The environmental standpoint is only one aspect from which I look, self-sufficiency and survivalism are much higher on my list. So my thought process goes more like "How easy would it be to sustain our diet as it is right now if we were cut off from all importation lines?" What then? Too, how much does it cost to buy all those extraneous items when you could be eating a simple, semi-vegetarian diet from hunting or your own gardens - or, if you don't have readily available lands, from container plants, bulk sales, or farmer's markets?
It's funny how one changes, but whenever I read a recipe now I try to take it back to its most basic level. For instance, if a recipe calls for 1 cup of flour, I wonder exactly how much wheat I'd have to grow, thresh, and grind (without electrical equipment) in order to obtain that 1 cup; if the particular item needed is tempeh, I want to find out how to grow the materials and make my own. And if, as in the case of tempeh, a starter is needed, I don't like the thought of ordering it off the web rather than finding out how to start it myself (again, what if you were suddenly unable to order anything?). I'm beginning to judge food and food preparation not by its difficulty of preparation once you're in the kitchen, but by its total ease of production from beginning (seed or starter) to end (belly).
Granted, this doesn't mean I don't like foods with exotic ingredients, just that they would go the way of the dodo in the case of an emergency.
EDIT: Just after writing this I came across some other ingredients which I totally took for granted, but that I'm not sure I'd be able to make on my own: baking soda and cream of tartar (baking powder is usually a combination of the two along with some other ingredients). How do you bake without those? Really??
Many of the blogs I read have made posts at one point or another in their bloggy existence about eating simply, healthily, and frugally. In two weeks or so I'll be heading down south to set up permanent residence with EJ and this topic has been weighing heavily on my mind. I still have so much to learn.
The environmental standpoint is only one aspect from which I look, self-sufficiency and survivalism are much higher on my list. So my thought process goes more like "How easy would it be to sustain our diet as it is right now if we were cut off from all importation lines?" What then? Too, how much does it cost to buy all those extraneous items when you could be eating a simple, semi-vegetarian diet from hunting or your own gardens - or, if you don't have readily available lands, from container plants, bulk sales, or farmer's markets?
It's funny how one changes, but whenever I read a recipe now I try to take it back to its most basic level. For instance, if a recipe calls for 1 cup of flour, I wonder exactly how much wheat I'd have to grow, thresh, and grind (without electrical equipment) in order to obtain that 1 cup; if the particular item needed is tempeh, I want to find out how to grow the materials and make my own. And if, as in the case of tempeh, a starter is needed, I don't like the thought of ordering it off the web rather than finding out how to start it myself (again, what if you were suddenly unable to order anything?). I'm beginning to judge food and food preparation not by its difficulty of preparation once you're in the kitchen, but by its total ease of production from beginning (seed or starter) to end (belly).
Granted, this doesn't mean I don't like foods with exotic ingredients, just that they would go the way of the dodo in the case of an emergency.
EDIT: Just after writing this I came across some other ingredients which I totally took for granted, but that I'm not sure I'd be able to make on my own: baking soda and cream of tartar (baking powder is usually a combination of the two along with some other ingredients). How do you bake without those? Really??
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