Introductions

I am a latecomer to the kitchen scene.

I did not grow up helping my mother bake cookies, prepare salads, or even set the table. Family dinners were a rarity, and my sisters and I learned early on the in's and out's of Ramon, Kraft Mac & Cheese, and Oscar Meyer. Don't get me wrong, my mom DID cook. She had a handful of dishes that she was particularly proud of, and that we all loved. As the tomboy of the group, however, I rarely deigned to enter the kitchen to do much more than serve myself.

In retrospect, maybe feeding people was something inherent to me ...

Times have changed though. Oh, how they have changed! This non-traditional California girl somehow got hitched to a traditional(-ish) Southern boy from Louisiana. This once tough Army chick now finds quiet pleasure when he opens the door for me and just feels all 'glowy' when he changes the brakes on my car. My part in our partnership roles is to make sure he is fed regularly. A particularly lovely part of our courtship was spent together in the kitchen, me learning and trying out recipes, him happily complying with requests to get this, measure that, or chop something (but... not onions, never the onions!). The result of those evenings was I fell in love with him, and with cooking.

My Southern boy. And yes, I cooked those. 

So, I cook now. A lot! And the more I cook, the more curious I get about food, and cooking in general. Crazy how that works. I don't have a fabulous kitchen; it is actually rather small. I don't have a lot of shmancy gadgets, for a couple of reasons. First, the more you have, the more you have to clean. I hate cleaning. Second, I have limited space for storage, so I focus on multi-taskers. One splurge I finally made was a stand mixer. I spent years wanting one but talking myself out of it, due to the expense and the lack of space. When I started making my own butter and grinding venison, however, I very quickly talked myself back into it. It is lovely for those jobs, as well as the myriad other things it does with the proper attachments.

We are blessed with enough. Enough for me to (frugally) buy organic products. Enough to be able to follow my passions (reading, teaching, cooking, writing, in that order). Enough to have dreams and plans of eventually buying property on which to create our own mini-'homestead.' I want to collect the eggs for our morning omelets, harvest the vegetables to can for winter, pick the fruit that I preserve, and maybe (a BIG maybe here) even milk the goats for the cereal and butter. How much more basic can you get than that?! (OK, I could mill my own flour, but that is probably not going to happen. Craziness is what that is!)

One of our raised beds at our current home.

You see, the more I cooked, the more fascinated I got with cooking. In order to learn how to cook better I started breaking the food we ate into the basic elements needed. Quality raw produce, milk, grains, nuts, meat. This is what everything boils down to. Once you understand the basics your imagination kicks in; you start fixing dishes that you dream up on the fly instead of having to limit yourself to recipes. Because, let's face it, following recipes kinda sucks. Half the time you are left with bits of this and that you have no idea what to do with! (Ever buy a tub of creme fraiche or a jar of sun dried tomatoes for a special recipe and only use a 1/4 cup?)

These are my explorations into food, my culinary adventures. Creating menus that use up everything, maximizing nutrition through the variety each season offers. I hope you join me in my exploits!