Day 40: Cooking Your Own Food From Scratch

Dear Student,

Cooking from scratch (whether using the bounty from you own garden or from other healthily grown sources) can be an amazingly rewarding experience.

These days, it’s become all too common that families don’t cook or eat together, and the value and social nature of this human experience has been lost to us. Not only is cooking your own food healthier without fail—you know exactly what’s in each bite you take—but it’s also cheaper.

There are so many benefits to cooking from scratch…

• You’ll begin to taste food differently, noting more nuance and subtle flavor and texture differences…
• You’ll start to appreciate the connection between your body and the food you put in it…
• Your monthly food bill will be reduced, and you could reap major savings on eating at home, ordering takeout, and eating out…
• You’ll see that it’s not much harder than preparing store-bought processed foods in many cases…
• You’re likely to enjoy the pastime and begin to looking forward to cooking and having family fun in the kitchen…

Many of us cook on occasion, or maybe a few times a week, but it’s easy to forget that there are so many simple, tasty recipes that can be made with little effort—plus they can be frozen and enjoyed later with no effort but the reheating.

And, again, food has always been the great social activity of our species. We gathered around the fire pit way back when, and we gather around the grill to this day. Food creates community, identity, and culture. Any meaningful holiday revolves around food. Kids gather in the kitchen for an after-school snack and tell their parents what they learned that day and who their new friend is. Parents meet in the kitchen after work to share their day with each other. Families get together at a big table once or twice a day to interact when they might not have otherwise.

Bring sociability back to food in your home. Unite your family around cuisine, trust me, it’s the world’s greatest ice-breaker and the most natural way people tend to get together. You and yours will benefit not only from the amity of cooking and eating together, but your wallets and waistlines will also thank you.

Cooking From Your Own Produce

If you’re cooking with produce from your garden, you can even control when things come to harvest based on when you want to cook them. Plan your garden so that growth cycles yield the ingredients you want when you want them. For example, plant some basil to mature in time for your tomato crop harvest—then you’re all set to prepare some incredible tomato sauces made with the freshest of ingredients—to be eaten immediately or canned for later use.

Getting Started In Cooking

There’s no shortage of free recipe sources these days… borrow your mother or grandmother’s cookbook, look online, watch some cooking shows, ask friends and family for their favorite recipes, follow your favorite TV chef on social media, download a recipe app… the world is your oyster.

So I won’t try to waste your time today giving you recipes, but I do want to focus on how easy it is to cook at home, how few ingredients you really need, and how basic the kitchen gadgets you’ll need are to use.

A lot of folks are intimidated by cooking. Start slow and simple, and once you’re confident in a few different basic techniques, you can begin to add to your repertoire.

To produce just about anything, all you’ll need is:

• Stove
• Food Processor (optional but handy)
• Thermometer (oven)
• Sharp knife
• Grater
• Measuring cups and spoons
• Colander
• Whisk
• Vegetable Masher
• Vegetable Peeler
• Slow cooker or pressure cooker (an amazing number and variety of meals can be made without the use of stove or oven, simply using the humble slow cooker—consider an Instant Pot, which combines slow cooker and pressure cooker, and has a great many other functions, too—even a breadmaking function).
• Baking/roasting tin
• Pots and pans

All the above can be bought secondhand for just a couple hundred dollars.

Consider all the things that you could make at home (try to cook in bulk whenever possible, and store, share, or sell the excess)… here’s a list of basic suggestions to get your cogs moving:

• Salad dressings
• Chicken stock
• Roast chicken/beef/pork
• Sauces of all kinds (for pasta, for dipping, pizza sauce, etc.)
• Popsicles
• Pasta
• Cakes
• Pastries
• Pizza

All of the above are easy to make and store, and are all good suggestions for bulk-cooking.

Anything you order in a restaurant can be made at home for a fraction of the cost. Depending on the complexity of the recipe, you might need to work your way up to some of your favorite dishes, but you’d be surprised how easy most things are.

I love tuna tataki and am shocked at how much restaurants charge for it (I’ve seen it for as much as US$18 or more for a few slivers). Buy a sushi-grade slab of tuna (a quarter-pound is about US$7, which would be enough for a few servings), coat it in sesame seeds (US$4 for a bottle that would last you a year or more), and sear it for about a minute with some teriyaki sauce (US$3 for a bottle that would likely also last a year or more) on the side, and voilà: homemade tuna tataki for a few bucks! It seems fancy and daunting, but once you break it down to the basics, it’s easy and cheap.

The only things you really can’t make at home are what many in the movement now call “food-like products.” Why don’t Twinkies ever go bad? Because they are no longer food—even bacteria won’t eat them.

Things that can only be made with complicated machines that reconstitute organically based components into “food” are not able to be made at home… but they also offer no nutritional value and come with many potential adverse health effects, so these shouldn’t be a high priority anyway.

The Miracle Of Slow Cookers

You don’t even need a stove to cook most things, as anything you can make on a stove can likewise be made with a simple-to-use, cheap-to-buy slow cooker.

Simply throw the ingredients in the pot, turn it on, and return when it’s done. Many now have timers so you really can’t go wrong. A lot of working families leave ingredients in the morning to return home to a fully cooked, homemade meal in the evening. Or you could let it work for you overnight, waking up to a ready-made breakfast for the family, lunches ready to be packed and taken for the day, or with the evening’s dinner that you just set aside until you’re ready for it.

There are whole cookbooks, websites, magazines, and chefs devoted to slow-cooker cuisine, and there are some truly amazing recipes out there easily available (and for free in many cases), so, again, I won’t waste space on them here. You’ll soon be inventing or tweaking to make them your own anyway!

Just to serve as some inspiration for what’s possible, consider the following examples of great slow-cooker ideas:

• Soups and stews
  • Vegetable
  • Mushroom
  • Meat
  • Curry
  • Chili
  • Chowder
  • Beef stew
• Pastas and sauces
  • Lasagna
  • Stroganoff
  • Ravioli
  • Rice
  • Cannelloni
  • Ziti
  • Mac and cheese
  • Beefaroni
  • Pasta sauces of all kinds
  • Bolognaise
• Casseroles of all kinds
  • Shepherd’s pie
  • Pot pie
  • Veggie casserole
• Vegetables
  • Potatoes: mashed, boiled, scalloped, etc.
  • Carrots, broccoli, etc.
  • Stewed beans
• Roasted Meats
  • Pot Roast
  • Chicken
  • Roast Pork
  • Pulled Pork
  • Sloppy joe
  • Pork chops
  • Chicken Wings
  • Ribs
  • Fish
  • Meat Loaf
• Desserts
  • Peach cobbler
  • Granola
  • Cake

So, go on, give it a go!

Once you have rediscovered the fun of cooking, you’ll begin to see all the personal and health benefits that go with it.

Enjoy, and bon appetit!