If the saying, you are what you eat, is true, it’s time to do some serious soul searching as a culture.
The first step to figuring out who we are is figuring out exactly what we’re eating. Unfortunately, in America we eat so much processed food that we have forgotten the process of making food. Welcome to mamaguru’s newest column, Making Groceries, where we will explore the recipes and techniques to make everyday foods which are commonly bought processed. This is a back-to-basics idea to rediscover and reclaim what used to be collective human knowledge. By learning how to make our own groceries, we can begin to understand the most fundamental truth of what we are eating.
Obtaining nourishment is one of the rudimentary responsibilities of all life forms. We have not evolved past that biological imperative, so it’s time to stop acting like we have. Proper nourishment takes time and effort. Our grand experiment in out-sourcing our diets to corporations has proven to be a catastrophe. The more processed food we eat, the worse our health becomes and the shorter our life spans. It is that simple. On the bright side, we don’t have to return to the pioneer days of toiling all day for a meal. Technology has created wonderful gadgets and appliances that can help us expedite the process of making wholesome food.
Let me explain a bit about me and where I am in terms of the typical American diet. As a mother and a home cook, I am on the front line of what Jaime Oliver calls the Food Revolution. I am the person who plans, shops and cooks for my family of four. We eat about 90% whole foods, far above the national average.
A few things awakened me to the growing problem of processed foods. The first is Michael Pollan’s totem on the economics and politics driving America’s food problems, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. If you haven’t read it, you must. Secondly, as my skills developed as a home cook, I naturally gravitated towards wanting to learn more and more. I like to challenge myself with new recipes and techniques. Also, during the past few years my family has struggled financially. Knowing that my grandmother raised seven kids on a shoestring budget made me look towards the past to discover ways to save money today. The only real way for her to stretch her budget was at the grocery store and in her kitchen, so I took some lessons from her.
The primary cause of my awakening has to be my children. When I feed them I think not only of what goes into their bodies in the moment, but also the pallet that they are developing. I want them to like whole, natural foods. I want them to appreciate the sweetness of a summer peach without a high-fructose corn syrup soda to compete against it. We can’t escape our childhood. There is a part of us that always hankers for the food we grew up with. I am taking advantage of that fact now as I mold a healthy, robust and natural pallet. My sons may rebel later, but by then their taste buds will already be set to crave real, good food.
This column is called Making Groceries, but since I don’t live on a farm I will still need to buy the components to make them. The difference is I will buy the only the most elemental ingredients. Each week I will create a homemade version a food commonly purchased at the grocery store. Sometimes I will use own my tried-and-true recipes, so and my tone may be more of a teacher. Other weeks I will look outside of my knowledge base and learn from chefs or other home cooks and share my experiences with you. I will track the equipment needed, the cost and the overall flavor and let you know if I think it’s worth the effort of making it at home.
I hope you follow along, try the recipes and tweak them to your personal taste. Please comment with feedback, share with your friends and generally make a raucous about it. Let’s make a conscious choice and a concerted effort to become what we eat. Let it be: whole, real and delicious!
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