Friday, December 11, 2009

Shifting gears

I think it's about time I change things up around here-

I haven't been posting much lately- in fact, I think I went almost a year between posts at one point before coming up with a few new things. But I want to start posting a lot more stuff soon. Problem is, I don't often come up with new 'recipes' or items that are 1. my own, and 2. interesting enough to share. But I've noticed a gradual change in my eating habits over the last six months or so. I'm getting further and further away from store-bought, pre-packaged stuff and more and more into making as much stuff from scratch as is practical. Things like tortillas (both corn and flour) hot sauces, soymilk (and other non-dairy 'milks') bread, yogurt, mayonnaise... pretty much anything that isn't too complicated or expensive to make myself. I even checked out grain mills to see about making my own flour, but decided that that's not really feasible for me at this time (due to a variety of factors, cost being the among least of them). So probably starting sometime in January (December being the busiest month of the year for me) I plan to start posting about the stuff I've made from scratch. Nothing fancy, nothing schmancy, just the simple stuff I make on a regular basis for myself and anyone who happens to be near me and hungry. Not that I'll be posting a lot of stuff or anything- once, maybe twice a month on average- but if I've made something from scratch and liked it (as I did recently with flour tortillas) I'll write something up about it and post the recipe and any changes I might have made, as well as where I found the recipe (if it wasn't something I came up with on my own). I think it's going to be fun. I'm looking forward to it. Homemade is always better (and healthier and cheaper?) than store-bought, and it also doesn't always have to be time-consuming (Artisan bread in 5 minutes a day, anyone?) In fact, I'm somewhat of a lazy cook, anyway. It's not that I just want to get in and out of the kitchen in 10 minutes; I have no problem spending hours prepping and cooking, but I want to strike a balance between time and simplicity. I don't like making complicated stuff. I think the most complicated thing I've made were those tacos I blogged about awhile back, and those are actually quite simple- it only looks complicated when you read about it; actually making them is no big deal. So anyway, here's to making much more stuff from scratch in 2010. Also, I'm always eager to hear about anyone else's experiences, so if you make your own- whatever (doesn't even have to be food, really- I'm going to try making my own version of Burt's Bees Hand Salve pretty soon) please, leave a comment and/or a link to a recipe- I'd love to hear about it!

Cheers.