New Habits: Kitchen & Diet

Posted: January 5th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: Uncategorized | 7 Comments »

Disclaimer: As always, I have some caveat with language. Diet is a word that has been maliciously co-opted by people with low self-esteem trying to sell books to people with low self-image. I am reclaiming the word diet, which means “The stuff you eat.” Good and bad. Diet means the same thing in our house that it means on National Geographic.

Yesterday, my wife read to me the basics of a brilliant post by Sarah Welch.
January Challenge: Waste Less Food
It’s brilliant, and totally in line with several goals that we have. So we are jumping on the bandwagon, and I am leading the charge (with several of my own, individual goals)!

Our January Challenge

• Waste less food (us)
• Clean up the kitchen (me)
• Adopt a slower-food lifestyle (us)
• Reduce the consumption of artificial ingredients (us)
• Become a comfortable caretaker – which means comfortable cooking! (me)
• Bring lunch to work, instead of spending so much $$ (me)

My wife already eats better than I do. She is already comfortable in the kitchen. She is already a completely amazing cook. She is also pregnant, as you know, so I am stepping up and doing my part to provide for her.

Waste Less Food

I need to create more clearly defined goals for this, but the immediate goals are clear and simple.

• Inventory all the food we have
• Throw out anything that’s already spoiled
• Consume everything that will spoil soon
• Donate anything we should not or will not eat
• Be mindful of what we buy

There is a certain mystery to our current food inventory.  Last night, I went through the freezer, gutted it of everything in there, washed it out, and then we inventoried the food as I replaced it.  The list is insane.  I had no idea that much of that stuff was in there.  This tells me I’m not paying enough attention.  I need to play a much more active role in the kitchen.  Only a couple things got thrown out in this cleaning.  A couple other things were moved to the fridge for consumption this week.  (I had some of them for breakfast today!)  The rest were reorganized a bit so they’ll be easier to find.  Dairy together.  Meat together.  Grains together.  Veggies together.  Fruits together.  Everybody went into one group or another.

This process will be repeated tonight on the fridge.  The entire kitchen will be inventoried by the end of the week.  I will use those lists to create menus.

Clean Up the Kitchen

Going through the food is part of cleaning up the kitchen.  Dishes, cabinets, counters, floors, window sill and walls make up the rest.  We have more stuff than we use, and we could use more stuff than we have.  Some glasses can be moved to storage (to bring out after we break another, later on).  A pressure cooker would be nice, though.  Maybe a slow cooker or crock pot would be good to have, too.

At the very least, I suck at staying on top of the dishes, and need to fix that immediately.

Slow Food Lifestyle

Slow Food is a concept created in Italy that has since spread throughout the world.  It is an attempt to return to a slower, simpler time, before food companies employed vast numbers of chemists, before “mouth-feel” was used to describe the residue left by artificially altered lipids.  (Like you get from cheap donuts.  You know what I’m talking about.)

Specifically, my goal is to learn to make foods from scratch.  Generally speaking, this will accomplish MANY goals:

• Eat higher quality ingredients
• Eliminate artificial colors and flavors
• Eliminate artificial ingredients (hydrogenated oils, chemicals, etc)
• Learn to cook
• Learn to use raw ingredients

I’m not sure what food it was, but I know that at some point in my relationship with my wife, she was talking about making something and it had never occurred to me before that people MAKE it.  I thought we just BOUGHT it.  It was a big a-ha moment.  It wasn’t pasta – I knew how to make that – but it’s the best example I can think of right now, so let’s go with that.

Do you know how to make pasta?  Do you know that it can be done without a machine?  All you need is pasta, water, and maybe egg, as well as something long and round (to roll it out).  That’s literally it.  It’s not particularly time consuming.  It requires far less packaging.  It’s actually FUN to make.  I never made pasta before I met Kia.  I’ve still never made bread.  That’s my next goal, once the kitchen is clean.

Comfortable Caretaker

My wife has pointed out (sympathetically, not with harshness) that I’m really not a natural caregiver.  Protective, yes.  Caring, yes.  Compassionate, too.  But when it comes to having an ill spouse, I have very little clue what to do.  Feed a cold, starve a fever?  What won’t upset her tummy?  Let her sleep?  I just don’t know.

Well, I’ve gotten better over the last few years.  Incrementally, not exponentially, but improvement is improvement.  And it’s a trend I want to continue.  Maybe exponentially.  So cooking would be a heck of a start, right?

Two things: Bread and Soup.  In that order.  I’m going to learn how to make them.  And it’s winter, so it’s PERFECT.  Bread will warm the house and make it smell wonderful.  Soup is warming, filling, and hearty.  Terrific.  We’ll be dining in a winter wonderland.

Soon, I will be caring for mother and baby.  If I can’t take care of mother NOW, how will I ALSO be able to take care of baby THEN?  Yeah, I gotta get on this.

Take it home, daddy!

I’m going to do all this.  The house will look amazing.  I will be amazing.  My wife will be amazed.  In summary:

Clean Home
Nourished Wife
Badass Me

Happy Everybody

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