Initial Thoughts

I most often decide what to eat haphazardly; there is rarely any narrative, only emotion. I feel like Sushi. Tamales. Pasta. Or, if I'm feeling lazy, just a reliably satisfying hunk of cheese. Being trained in food doesn't help limit my stream of consciousness -- actually, it throws a wrench in. I inevitably have a long mental list of recipes and ingredients that I'd like to try out, which usually doesn't help out the coherence of my meals. In The Omnivore's Dillemma, Michael Pollan eloquently describes this aimless eating as a uniquely American culinary identity crisis. Without a strong culinary tradition, the poor American cook is vulnerable to innumerable trends, hype, fear and insecurity. Preparing such meandering meals also produces a lot of waste. Because there is not a core group of ingredients, little snippits are left to languish, forgotten, and irrelevant to the dinner of the next day. Every time I clean out my fridge I find myself awash with guilt as I uncover scraps of leftover tofu, a handful of slimy spinach that I forgot about and sometimes the tragedy of an avocado half which has turned to mud.

Being financially conservative is certainly practical and relevant (and timely given the much talked about ballooning of food prices), but it is not the only reason this experiment is interesting to me. Using your ingredients well and fully is arguably the highest respect that you can bestow on them. It is a different level of intimacy with your ingredients. I am learning to gauge how much flour per week I will need to make bread, when that is my primary source of starch. Ingredients suddenly have heft. Their mass is relevant. Kitchen management feels a bit like shepherding the flow of ingredients as they pass through this strange kitchen/human beast. The various elements must be put to good use, and at the right time. Wheat enters the kitchen, then is turned into bread. The bread keeps for 4 days, then the crust must be removed from the remainder and frozen for croutons or allowed to dry for use in other dishes. Produce is the trickiest. Pears that are verging on overripening must be cooked before they go bad. A gift of garden-fresh cucumbers must be eaten within a few days, or else pickled. Kitchen management is a much more complex task than just producing a good meal. And the product of kitchen management is much more than just a tasty dish, it is a dynamic process. A tricky, interesting process.