Thinking About Food (one of my favorite subjects!)

A couple of weeks ago, I heard a story on NPR about Leanne Brown. That story is here (though since it's been written, the download count has more than doubled). I immediately bought the book on Amazon and downloaded it from the website.

Since it came in the mail, I've read through it twice. I honestly think that every high school student or recent graduate should receive a copy, as it contains some awesome home economics at the beginning, especially, and throughout the book.

It's not strict "you must use exactly this much and to exactly this" kind of recipes. It's a thought-provoking book, with the idea of teaching readers to cook intuitively by getting comfortable with a method and experimenting. I love doing this, and I love anything that helps expand my imagination in this regard.

It has me thinking (and rethinking) a lot about how we cook. We are getting ready to move and are looking forward to having a bit more room to store things. Our pantry here has wire shelving, and it stinks because things get off-balance, and smaller items fall through.

We have been thinking about food storage and emergency preparation, anyway, and one of the things James said is that he read you should eat the kind of food you have in your emergency prep provisions, so that if you ever need to use it, 1) you've rotated it out so you're not stuck with old, rotten food and 2) you're used to eating that stuff so it doesn't feel like a huge change.

I'm not saying we're swearing off of fresh produce, but I think I want to purposefully implement some more dried stuff (beans, lentils, etc.) and canned stuff (modern canning makes many canned vegetables as nutritious as "fresh" out of season items, and much cheaper).

We've been doing eMeals for several years, and I love it. But sometimes the "buy it all for a week" thing doesn't work for us very well. Inevitably, we end up having left-overs or eating out one or two days during the week, and that cilantro I bought eight days ago... sad. Fortunately, now their app lets you pick as many or few meals as you want with their customizable meal plan, so I only get 4 of each meal (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) and that usually does us for at least 7 days.

But one of the things we're also thinking about as we prepare to move within the next year is proximity to a smaller shopping center (like we used to live fairly close to Fresh Plus in Clarksville) so that I could ideally ride a cargo bike to the store two or three times a week, This would allow us to buy only a bit of produce at a time, so it would have less of a chance of going south -- and, by the way, thanks to my Facebook friends for the vinegar soak idea -- but it would also allow us to take advantage of specials and sales.

For now, though, I'm still thinking about things.

In fact, Friday, I decided I should try to do something with some of the lentils we've had in the pantry forever. I'm going to be honest: If we didn't have the Instant Pot (IP), I'd have been a lot less excited about working with them, but with our IP, I can decide to have beans for dinner using the dried beans I found at lunch time.

I ended up making lentil burgers on Friday. They were delicious! The internet rocks. I just thought, "I know you can make lentil burgers," so I Googled it, and there were tons of recipes. The one I used had bread crumbs and oatmeal as well as some carrots, onions, and herbs. The patties were amazing. I made them large and square because we didn't have buns, only regular bread. So, so good.

When I was in the pantry retrieving the lentils, though, I noticed something. We have a lot of stuff in there.

So my new goal is to see how long I can go without buying major groceries. Like, without taking a full-fledged trip to the grocery store. And when I do, I want to see how little I can buy, and how much we can save so we can have more money to put toward our savings, our move, or whatever.

By the way, I have quite a few of the GoPicnic "meals." I adore them for several reasons: They're delicious. They don't have to be refrigerated. They're balanced. Most are non-GMO and some are gluten-free. They are portion-controlled. They are easy. But just to put it in perspective, if you pay full price for them (and I have not yet), they're $4. That's the entire DAY'S allowance for food if we were on SNAP.

I think we can tighten our spending a bit. I'm excited about the neat ideas, mostly meatless, that Leanne Brown has. I am also looking forward to getting more protein in my diet. That's the one thing on which I am consistently low any time I track what I'm eating. I don't adore meat (tonight, James and I had BLTs for dinner, but I just had an LT with cheese), but I do like beans and their versatility, and I love nuts and nut butters.

Oh, one of the things Brown mentions in her book is how shrimp can be a treat, and stretched to make them cost-effective. That's definitely one to buy when they go on sale. I remember back when D was very small and I was trying to lose weight, I'd just heat up cooked frozen shrimp in some chicken broth, then throw in spinach leaves toward the end. It was a LOT of protein in a tiny package, and the soup was so tasty.

Another fish she uses as "flavor" is anchovies. I've never had one before, but I'm willing to try. Here's to new culinary adventures, and budget-friendly ones, at that!