Bits in the Fridge: The First Post

Monday, April 25, 2011

The First Post

Sure, everyone has a blog. I have four, but don't let that worry you. They're not all about cooking.

I'm no chef, in fact I'm only picky when I can be and at the moment I live in the tiniest town you can imagine. The store just a minutes walk from home has the bare minimum, and none of it is organic. The eggs, I'm pretty sure, are the healthiest eggs I've had anywhere. And the milk and cheese are fantastic. Scotland is good for those things. I can also tell what is local - the tomatoes are from Spain, potatoes are grown here, green beans come from Egypt. I'm trying to stay as close to 'home' as possible, so nothing from the Americas or South Africa. But I think Egypt deserves my financial support at the moment, seeing as they just had a revolution.

I don't own a car, so what I find for ingredients are either from the local store, the store in the neighboring town, or from a town I took a 45 minute bus ride to reach. That's where I got the really good chevre, and some pretty good double glocester. Also, the wine is cheaper over there.

But here's the point: I'm not running down the street in my fancy car to get all the prime organic, free-range, local ingredients available. I don't want to own a car, ever again. I live extremely inexpensively, and I enjoy making that work. If I could, I'd buy organic. But I make do. And I'm finding that I can make some really delicious food. So you can, too. I'll try to post photos with my recipes, and I encourage you to do something very important: shop around.

My strategy is this: maybe I have risotto, some onions, garlic, and bottles of red wine handy. What do I do with that risotto? Well, I look online. I find a bunch of recipes for risotto and I read them all, noting similarities and little tricks that some people include. Then I realize I also have jalapeño peppers - does anyone make jalapeño risotto? Blackle search reveals that I will not be the first. Again, I read multiple recipes. In the end I choose a basic three cheese risotto recipe, and incorporate those jalapeños when it seems appropriate. That is my first recipe post... coming right up.

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About Me

I started this blog so I could keep track of the recipes that I have tried and want to save. Instead of keeping a recipe book of hand-written recipes, it all goes online.

For five years, my husband and I moved around Europe, house-sitting. We were constantly shopping at new supermarkets or village shops, often without things that we want to cook with. Sometimes it was challenging to come up with new ideas because we'd get set in a pattern of easy meals. But when I find a new recipe that works, I try to keep track of it with this blog.

So some of this blog will be about planning and serving meals that are enjoyable and healthy. Other parts might be about the way we eat while we're vagabonds, camping and riding our bikes. Or maybe you'll see a big blank time space where I don't post a thing.

The Idea and Inspiration

Cooking isn't always natural-feeling. Especially if you haven't done much cooking. As you go, you get used to certain dishes - the stereotypical male who can make spaghetti, perfectly, because that was the one thing he learned and perfected. Well, you can get that good at just about any recipe, if you try it enough times. Read a recipe carefully, prepare ingredients before you start anything on the stove, and figure out which steps have to come when. Prepare! That's the best way to make anything, and then a recipe and ingredients are all you need.

Once you get a few things down, like frying onions and garlic, you can start to integrate those core skills into the rest of your cooking. Fry onions for your eggs, for your pasta sauce, for your risotto, and suddenly you are naturally adapting to recipes.

Then you'll have a few recipes down, and you can start to garnish your meals by always including a bit of salad or side potatoes or green beens. Now you're cooking.

I grew to love cooking because it was an adventure of discovery and mastery. Not that I am a skilled chef at this point. But now I have fun attempting to cook things I've never tried before. I hope my experiences can help you to enjoy cooking, too.