Summation and the future

The project officially came to a close two days ago. I wish I could regale you with tales and photos of a beautifully assembled and delicious from scratch celebration meal that was a culmination of all the skills I have developed over the last two months. But alas, I petered along to the end just as I had all along. I didn't even keep very good track of what I ate in the final couple of days. I do promise you however that I remained faithful to the end. In fact, I have grown so accustomed to this manner of eating that I am committed to keeping it up now in my regular life. (Upon seeing a contraband package of goat cheese in the refrigerator used in a recipe made for someone outside of our family, my husband recoiled in shock.)

There will be a few slight modifications based on what I have learned so far. The following items will be admissable:

1. Canned tomatoes, tomato puree, tomato paste. (Tomato season is over, it is too late for me to learn how to can and put up tomatoes to use all winter, and these are useful in so many recipes. This is a rare instance where fresh produce is an unequal substitute, and the effort is not worth the reward. I hope to be canning like a frontiers-woman by next tomato season and we can amend this rule at that time.)
2. Olives (I love olives, and my research shows that they are extremely time consuming to cure, and there aren't many places to buy raw olives, and I hate buying things online for some reason. Also, olives are the kind of thing that people spend their lives perfecting, and I don't think I am going to make them better. Perhaps down the road when I am looking for a challenge I will investigate this further, but for now I want to enjoy some kalamata olives free of guilt.)
3. Salted nuts. (Because it is silly not to allow them.)
4. Dried Fruit. (I haven't bought any because of the sulfur dioxide counting as an ingredient. I think that's a little over the top for everyday living.)
5. Beer (Because I want to stay married. And, although I did go to the beer making workshop, and actually we need to drink that beer... this is another thing like the olives where I think that people dedicate their entire careers to making delicious beer, and I'm not going to all of the sudden make better beer. I want to experiment with this, and I do intend to make my own beer, but it also requires an investment in equipment, and in addition to hating to buy things online, I'm not crazy about buying special equipment in general. I like to improvise out of what I have, but maybe eventually I'll break down and buy some stuff to make beer. We'll see.)
6. Some combinations. Like the 13-bean soup mix that is just 13 beans. Or I saw a 10-grain cereal at the store, the ingredients are just 10 grains. That's one of those silly distinctions I am not going to worry about.
7. Homemade items made by someone else. (At the grocery store I go to they sell jam that is homemade by a person in the neighborhood. I support this idea and I intend to buy some of that jam. This will be applied on a per case basis, but if something is 'artisan' made and I support the ideology and practices I will buy it.)

These are the modifications I can think of right now. It's pretty minor stuff. Someone asked me on Saturday if there were specific things I really missed. Surprisingly I thought, not really. The things on this list were inconveniences I will be glad to leave behind or things I just don't see the benefit of making myself or not supporting. But I haven't woken up in the middle of the night jonesing for an olive or a beer. There are some foods I haven't really had that I look forward to eating sometime. Things like cheese, or a sandwich. But what I really want is to learn to make wonderful, springy, sandwich bread and a fantastic sharp cheddar cheese. I think I have mentioned that numerous recipes call for parmesan cheese and it is inconvenient not to have it available to me, and it takes a long time to make. But I have to some interesting conclusions about food and how we consume in relation to this project. Most fruits and vegetables are ready for consumption right off the tree or out of the ground. We can modify them to any degree we wish, but they are ready to eat right away if needed. Milk is more or less the same, you could drink it straight from the tap if that were available to you. But all other dairy products require some processing. You can do most of that processing yourself in your own kitchen. It just requires heat and time. The amount of time required seems to correlate well with how we should regulate our consumption. There is really no limit to the amount of fruits and vegetables we can eat in a healthy diet. Very few people are in danger of overindulging in vegetables. (I have eaten too much fruit and paid the price, but this isn't the same sort of problem as eating too many cheeseburgers). Dairy products are filled with important nutrients, but they require a little more moderation. The fact that it takes 24 hours to make a soft white cheese might make one think twice before slathering it so thickly on a bagel, and waiting 10 months for parmesan puts it into the luxury category where it belongs. The same can be said for meat. It always needs to be killed, butchered and cooked before you can safely eat it. This effort says that it is something to be eaten with a little less frequency than something that is ready immediately. And a step further, bacon takes a week to prepare, and should be eaten with more discrimination than a chicken that can be roasted within hours of being killed. This is rambling, but I hope it makes a little bit of sense. I don't miss the foods I haven't had, I look forward to enjoying them and the effort that goes into them on occasion. In the meantime, I have eaten more interesting and varied food in the last two months than in any similar span in my memory. I have been too busy loving the food I have been eating to miss anything else.

I plan to keep you all updated on my culinary adventures going forward. There are so many things I haven't made yet. I feel like I have barely scratched the surface on making things from scratch. I will no longer bore you and myself with lists of my daily meals. But I will continue to update with recipes and ruminations. And I will continue to want to hear your thoughts.

One Ingredient

The Rules:
For the month of October I cannot buy any food that contains more than one ingredient. I can make and assemble meals of as much complexity as I am capable, but I must start from single ingredients. This means I have to make my own bread, cereal, salad dressing, and dozens of other things that I haven't even thought of yet. There is one concession that I am making that will make things easier, at least to start... I can use things that are already in my house. Meaning, we have access to the mayonnaise and Worcestershire sauce that is already here. But if we run out, we either go without, or make our own. (This is to avoid wasting things I have, as well as to provide a bit of a transition)

I made the decision to do this on Sunday and I was tempted to go out and buy a bunch of contraband before the deadline, but I resisted...to a reasonable degree. A brief panic set in when my husband mentioned that this harebrained scheme meant no beer for a month, but calm was restored when we determined that wine was admissible since it is just fermented grapes and water, and water doesn't count as an ingredient. So I bought four bottles of everyday wine at Trader Joe's this afternoon. Now that I'm thinking about it, I don't really know what goes into making wine, and there may in fact be more involved, but it was an innocent decision, and the wine is here now, so it is fair to drink it. I'll figure out the details on that one when we run out. Other than that, there were only two other things that I bought that were suspect... 1. A medley of Mediterranean dried fruits (Figs, Apricots & Cherries). The fact that three fruits were mixed together is of course a problem. But more importantly: sulfur dioxide, potassium sorbate, rice flour, sugar and sunflower oil were all listed as well. I don't know why, but I really wanted this medley, and I was afraid they wouldn't have it in a month.
Suspect purchase #2 Buttermilk - this was very surprising to me. Ingredients: Grade A Milk, Grade A Nonfat Milk, Culture, Salt. This is on the cusp, I think. I'm not bothered by the whole milk/nonfat milk combo, I think that is permissible. It's the salt and the cultures... borderline ingredients, part of me wants to make a case for it being ok, but I don't want to fudge the rules this early in the game... but these purchases were made on September 30th, so they are fair game anyway. And this is nothing compared to the innummerable other processed foods we have in our house and will ration out over the next 31 days.

The reasons for this experiment are varied. I will try to go into more detail about them over the next month. But for an overview... I've been moving in the direction of making more of my own food from scratch for a long time. However I always fear doing new things and it usually takes me weeks of imagining myself doing something before I take any real action. The decision to make something new and complicated from scratch is generally made at 9:00 at night, just in time to dash out to the store for supplies before closing, and the dish is served around 1:15AM. I think this challenge is going to force me to try the things I have been avoiding so that we will have something to eat.

So we will see what happens. I have three hours and five minutes to go out and buy all the prepared and processed foods I can find. I think I'm going to fight the temptation by making some granola and possibly drinking the last beer. It's almost 9:00.