Expectations

One of my current cooking goals is to make all my family's "convenience food". The snacks, the frozen dinners, the stuff you grab when you need something quick and easy. Making them myself is healthier, cheaper, and one more way for us to stop supporting the industrial food system that makes me cringe.

I figured I'd start with the easy stuff, like crackers and granola bars. Today I made multi-seed crackers from one of my favorite baking books.....

King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking

Finding the time and energy to make these delicious snacks has not been the hard part. Its surprising how much of the week's baking you can get done in one short afternoon. What has surprised me is how much my expectations of what food should look and taste like has been shaped by the boxed foods available at the market. I feel like if all my crackers are not a perfectly uniform shape, size, and color, I must have done something wrong.

This is not what crackers from a box look like....


Granted, appearances, taste, and texture will improve with more practice. But really, these crackers are delicious. More and more I am realizing that making your own food from scratch requires a rethinking of what exactly real food is.

PS. My new favorite thing to eat on crackers, toast, sandwiches, right out of the container, is homemade yogurt cheese. Its like a very tangy cream cheese. This is fool-proof.

Yogurt Cheese

1. Start with plain yogurt, either full or low fat works. I haven't tried non-fat, but it probably would work to.
   
2. Scoop the desired amount into a piece of butter muslin or very-fine weave cheese cloth. About 2 cups is usually enough for the week for my family.
3. Tie up the corners and hang the bag with the yogurt over the sink or a bowl for 12-24 hrs.
   
4. Remove from the cheese cloth and enjoy! Refrigerate.
5. Be creative, add any herb combination that strikes your fancy.
   

Fresh Bread - Quick and Easy

My husband and I are passionate about food. The kitchen is without question the center of our home. I also firmly believe that one of the greatest tragedies of our modern American culture is the general lack of importance we place on our food and food production. It is no secret that in general American's have horrible diets, with poor health, rapidly deteriorating natural resources, increasing food costs, and ever growing concern over food security and safety a direct result.

Long ago we gave up the highly processed, "quick-and-convenient" diet that has become the norm and replaced it with a vegetarian, cooked-from scratch menu. We don't count calories, worry about our cholesterol or fat-intake, stress over whether or not we are getting enough fiber and whole-grains, or need to supplement with endless bottles of vitamins and fortified foods. A plant-based, diverse diet takes care of all that for us.

However, very little of our food comes from local or organic sources. This does not sit well with me. I love farmer's markets and 100% believe that buying local, organic food makes a measurable impact on both our family's and community's health. But we just can't afford it. I want to change that.

I figured one of the easiest ways for me to start was by baking our own bread. We easily consume a loaf / week of your standard sandwich bread. I've aspired to baking all our bread for sometime. Our shelves are filled with lovely, quality books on artisan and whole-grain baking. But it was always so much work! And then, I found this....

The breads in this book are all based on the slow-rise method. Which means they are really easy and I haven't failed at one yet. It's like making muffins. I throw all the ingredients in a bowl (takes all of 10 minutes) and let them rise overnight.


Just give it a quick stir and toss them in some bread pans - no fancy shaping, no need to worry about deflating the dough....

Let rise for a few more hours, bake while you and the kids are eating lunch, and bingo! Fresh bread for the week. It takes the same amount of time to make one loaf as two, so I make two and throw one in the freezer. So easy!

Just to make sure this was worth it, I did a little rough math at the store today. At my local big-box discount market, a loaf of whole-grain organic bread costs $3.70 / loaf. I can bake the same bread with local, organic flour for roughly $1.75 / loaf. The price drops even further if I just buy some bulk flour from the same discount market. Yes, it's true, you can buy a loaf of bread for less. But it is most likely full of preservatives and additives, has no redeeming nutritional value, and in my opinion doesn't taste nearly as good.


But here's the secret to truly great bread. Store it in your Grandmother's bread box, so every time you need a few slices, you are reminded of your Grandma's kitchen and then your Mom's kitchen, and you can look forward to the day your daughter is reminded of your kitchen when she is baking bread for her future family.