7 minutes left in the day

Valentines Day is nearly over (sigh of relief) but I thought I should close the day by showing my readers some love.  Thank you all for supporting me through the tough times and through the good times as well.  My readers, you are lovely people.  You share your precious insights with me, you keep me motivated, you show me compassion and support, you make me feel connected to the world.  You share my passion for caring for this earth, for eating locally, for eating good food, for living frugally and with meaning. You do good. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I was thinking about giving myself a Valentines gift this year, but really the best gifts are the intangible ones.  A great gift, a great gift of love, is listening, really listening, when someone is speaking.  Not just listening to hear what you want to hear.  Not just listening while you silently plan your response. Not just looking to use the other persons’ comment as a way to justify your own beliefs.  But listening to hear what the other person is really trying to say.  It’s tougher than it sounds, especially when you’re in pain or are feeling stressed or worried yourself.  But it’s worth the effort.

This seems like it’s just a gift to the other person, but it’s not.  Whenever we fully submit ourselves to the moment and to addressing another person’s needs, when we acknowledge our sameness, our connection, we find ourselves deeply touched, deeply submerged in joy.  We may feel a sense of purpose like no other time in our lives.

I’ve been thrown a couple of curve balls this week – actually, it was just one, big, hairy , hurtful disappointment amidst an otherwise exciting, interesting time in my life.  Suffice it to say that when people let us down and hurt us, it’s easy to get distracted from what keeps us grounded.  It’s easy to get lost in our heads, to forget that others need our full attention.  In the next couple of weeks I will be bouncing around heading off to miscellaneous out-of-town conferences, conducting workshops, hosting events, all while trying to digest this recent change in my life.  But I will aim to allow myself the opportunity to sink in to the moment, even just briefly, to appreciate the stillness that is around me.

With love,

Jamie Oliver v/s Amy Dacyczyn: Finding a frugal balance in the search for foodie fulfillment

In an interview with Jamie Oliver last November, a Globe & Mail reader sent in the following question:

How do you balance the demand for healthier meals for British, and now American school children, with the cost considerations of poorer parents who may not be able to afford fresh, good-for-you foods and ingredients?

Jamie Oliver said in response:

Well, I always say that through history, the best food has always come from the poorest people, because they’ve had to use their imagination, knowledge and skill to create meals from very little. So ‘good’ food isn’t about having money, it’s about having knowledge.

Amen, Jamie! Knowledge is far more important than money, and perhaps Albert Einstein was right again, that imagination is more important than knowledge. After all, cooking is not all that difficult to do; in fact even if we were completely devoid of  information, we could learn just by experimenting.

Sometimes it’s also about unlearning, that is, unlearning what we’ve been taught about food.  Boiling vegetables until they are mush, insisting on table salt, cooking a piece of meat until it resembles a hockey puck, believing that a meal must consist of a piece of meat, a starch, and a vegetable – once popular wisdom among some cultures, these old practices ought to be retired for good.

I think another necessary component to good food is a genuine interest and desire to increase the quality of one’s diet.  In “School Dinners” Jamie put together beautiful, nutritious meals for school children for 66¢ a person, but in the “Ministry of Food” the adults often complained that they did not have enough money to purchase healthful ingredients for their families. One woman complained that she was too poor to buy all kinds of fancy ingredients, and decided instead to feed her little girl “cheap”(?) take-aways like chips & cheese or kebabs from chip wagons.  She explained her dilemma to Jamie with a cigarette dangling from her lips.  Of course, different individuals have different ways of coping, but someone must want to change before they can start making a significant change to their diet.

On the other spectrum, I’ve been reading The Complete Tightwad Gazette lately, which is a whole other universe of frugality.  Amy Dacyczyn’s classic newsletters are still great for a few tips and also a few laughs.  Although I commend her for raising her family of 8 on a combined income of $30,000 while managing to save a hefty portion of her husband’s income, Dacyczyn promotes cooking practices that I think are devoid of imagination. Dacyczyn started writing when total tightwaddery were imperative to her family’s survival, but over the years her family did well enough that they no longer needed to resort to extreme measures. During these more comfortable years, the family continued to practice frugality as a matter of principle and also because they enjoyed doing so.  Some of it is helpful and/or inspiring, but I am definitely turned off by some of her ideas.  For example, her family would chuck the leftovers from dinner into a big bucket that she kept in the freezer, and once the bucket was full, she would create a soup or casserole out of the contents.  Yes, they manage to use up every bit of leftover food, but were they really making the most out of the food that they had? I would answer no, and that kind of carelessness is tantamount to waste in my mind.

Taste is important, and this is something I’ve emphasized time and again on the blog; we are given the gift of being human, and while on this earth, I want to live, be present, and enjoy my senses to the fullest extent. I don’t want to go through life just eating food as a means to an end.  I don’t just want to eat something that’s just cheap, or even just healthy. I want sit down with that meal and say, “oh wow, is that ever good.”  I want make the kind of quality food that I hope to get at restaurants, but usually cannot find.

Eating my own food rather than eating out or eating convenience foods has so many advantages. It means I get to eat great tasting, healthy food, that lets me almost effortlessly maintain a healthy weight.  And it means that my food costs are low.  The main drawback to cooking most food from scratch is, of course, the time involved. But there are always solutions. In order to manage my time, I’ve recently starting my own version of batch cooking.  On weekends, I tend to make two soups at the same time.  Making two soups at once is faster, and it also provides me with some variety throughout the week. The leftovers get portioned out into smaller containers for freezing.  The soups do not contain meal leftovers like Dacyczyn’s; instead, I choose the ingredients based on what I have in the fridge, first using up the foods that spoil the quickest.  For example, last week I made a Minestrone and a Cabbage & White bean soup; this week I made Cauliflower & Cheese.  Two other recent successes include White Bean w/ Bacon and Carrot & Parsnip w/ Ginger. When making the soups, I also prep some ingredients that may be used throughout the week, for example I might prepare some roasted garlic (which can then be added to pasta, pizza or bread)  and then use the residual heat from the oven to make delicious “sun dried” tomatoes that might otherwise spoil. I will make enough salad dressing to use on a week’s worth of salads, or perhaps bake bread.  I find it much easier to eat healthful meals throughout the week if most (or all) of the prep work is already done.

My experiences in frugal cooking have led me to some truly wonderful places, and I am still learning.  Sometimes I have flops, but when I make something truly delicious, I get excited for the years ahead.  I wonder what kind of cook I’ll be in 20 years if I just keep practicing and experimenting.  I may not be the most glamourous cook in the world, but then again, eating locally and in season has its own rustic charm.