Food, Glorious Food

I did a little mini-marathon of cooking yesterday.

I made pumpkin bread and muffins. Next time I'll have to freeze some right out of the oven, because it's all gone! And no wonder. This stuff rocks!

I also made a loaf of bread from this awesome book. It was a whole wheat loaf with oats and yogurt in it. Just smelling it felt nutritious. The yogurt gave it a really good sort of slightly sourdough taste. Yum.

And I made a big old pot of cabbage soup. It might not sound good, but oh my god! This stuff is so good. I can hardly wait for lunch. I've tried it with other vegetables, but for some reason I just really love it with cabbage. The cabbage sort of melts into the soup and gives it this amazing flavor. The main recipe comes from this book's The Soup. I make it with browned onions.

I think the one thing I was most excited to get during my trip to Las Vegas was a copy of Make Your Own Groceries by Daphne Metaxas Hartwig. I just love this book. I can't wait to try the recipes. I'm keeping my eyes open for an affordable copy of the original book.

Go check out Casaubon's Book's post about how and why the price of food is skyrocketing. Nearly everything we eat is somehow dependent on corn, which we are now using to fuel our SUVs. It's important to know how to cook some slow food, and to acclimate our families to it now, before it becomes an absolute necessity. If you can get your kids to clamor for your pumpkin muffins, they'll be less shocked when you can't buy them processed treats anymore.

Five years ago I was feeding Adrienne, Nick and me on less than $100 a week. We weren't skimping over much (although I've always been frugal)or eating ramen noodles three times a day. That's just what it cost to feed three people.

Just a year ago I was buying most organic, high quality groceries for five for about $125 a week.

Now it is a struggle to feed the same five people on store brand food with no access to organic produce or meat, for $150 a week. A real struggle. At first I blamed the monopoly the grocery stores have here. There is no competition. All the stores are stocked by the same company, so the sales are the same every week at all three stores. The nearest real competition is 180 miles away. Then I looked at the ads when I was in Las Vegas. I couldn't have done much better there.

So the mission is to learn how to make special food out of inexpensive yet wholesome ingredients.