Happy 2011 to my friends and blog-readers! After rolling thoughts around in my head for a few days, I thought it was time to hop on, give a shout and say hey there. So here I am. Hey there.
As I look through the past year here on Tummy Treasure, I’m sorely disappointed with myself. Where was my blogging? Where was my eating? It was a year of big change for us, and that big change included a great big helping of convenience. After spending years and years living in a small town, moving to the city provided to be an exciting change to our diet. But it didn’t take us long to acclimate to grabbing a pizza a little too often. Or hitting a drive through for a quick meal for the kids on the way to an activity. Our dining at home often included convenience items or something picked up at one of the amazing grocery store delis.
It seems that all the homemade goodness that I’ve stood for over the years quickly fell to the wayside with the enticement of convenience on every corner. This year, that is going to change.
For starters, we’re going back to scratch cooking as much as possible- and taking it even further than we’ve taken it before. We kicked off the new year by indulging in ice cream- a rarity this time of year to be certain, but we ramped it up by making it ourselves. Using local dairy products and strawberries which we harvested and froze last summer, we churned up a delicious batch of homemade strawberry ice cream. And boy, did we enjoy it!
New Year’s Eve, when dining with friends, we were treated to some homemade whole-wheat noodles, and I’m still thinking about them. They were so, so delicious, and the perfect texture. I have a pasta maker and I never use it! I usually buy noodles when I need them- but why not make them myself? They’re easy! That silly pasta maker only comes out when I make sheets of pasta for pierogi or ravioli. Not anymore. This Friday I’m making homemade noodles to eat with a delicious, locally raised organic chicken. (Oh yes, I’ll be sharing here.)
We’re also going to spend more time this year discovering and supporting local purveyors. We live in paradise for this, my friends! From olive oil to tea- it can all be had from a local business person, and we intend to uncover each and every one of them. We discovered this year how wonderful local, humanely raised chicken is- honestly, the flavor difference between real chicken and grocery store chicken is staggering. Worth every penny in price increase. We’ve met a few of the local butchers and meat markets as well, and really would like to limit all our meat buying from a select few if at all possible. The garden this year is going to be a great success, (now that we know more about where we live), and when we are unable to grow something ourselves, the local farmer’s markets will provide what we can.
The thing is, while we support eating locally as much as possible, we’re more about eating from local providers. Whether that local provider has raised their own chickens, or worked very hard to source the best teas from around the globe to sell in their shop. It’s people we’re supporting, and for us, that’s far more important than consuming only food produced in our neck of the woods. We wouldn’t be eatin’ much this time of year if that was the case!
By supporting local people, we’ll take care of our number one goal this year of no more garbage. If we’re going to have pizza for lunch, I’m going to make it from scratch- not purchase a frozen cardboard circle loaded with preservatives. OR, we’re going to buy our pizza from that little local guy on the corner who only has the one pizza store- instead of buying from a large corporation. We slipped in our better eating goals last year, and this is a new year to remedy that.
I’m going to continue with my cookbook challenge and we’ll eat our way through the 1960 Woman’s Day Collector’s Cookbook. After a few weeks off for the holidays, I’m looking forward to getting back into it. However, I have decided that I’m not sticking to the letter of the recipes anymore. These recipes were written when canned soups were the savior of the housewife, and the less we eat of them, the less we enjoy their presence in our meals. A simple homemade white sauce will fill in in those instances. I also plan to spend some time visiting every single cookbook on my shelves. I have tens-of-thousands of delicious recipes at my fingertips, and don’t turn to them very often these days. This will change, and it will be a delicious change.
2011 is going to be a great and exciting year, and I hope you’ll stick around while we decide just what healthy eating means to us.