Slow Cooking, Fast Living - Part I

I've known about Weston A. Price for over three years, and Sally Fallon for almost two, but it is only in the last few months that I have truly implemented traditional foods and cooking styles in my kitchen. In the past I've taken the bits and pieces that fit easily into my life. I've been making my own mayonnaise for awhile, although it took me awhile to give up the safflower oil I was using for it. I soaked my beans, but not for long enough. I started to eat more meat, but I didn't shell out the money for grass-fed.

I'm not sure what changed. Probably a combination of my baby being old enough to party on her own for a minute, finally having my own kitchen, and by virtue of my partner being in school full time, sliding into full on housewifedom. In the book For Her Own Good by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, the authors describe how industrialization took over the important duties of mothers in the home. We used to be the makers of medicine, the healers, the food providers, the clothing makers, and much more. The work that women did was significant and skilled. I'm not advocating liberation through housework or any sort of naive regression to the old ways, but I do think that returning meaningful work and expertise back to mothers is vital for our spirits (and the physical and emotional health of our families!!). It certainly has been for me. Doing laundry, scrubbing toilets and toasting pop tarts, doesn't cut it. Making all of our food from scratch is hard work, but it's a skill, which means that it is something that I can practice and excell in. I need that in these days where people ask me what I've been doing with myself and I find the word "nothing" coming out of my mouth. I'm busy from morning to night raising my daughter and caring for our household, but in the light of my bustling young adult peers, everything that I do seems void. At least I'm not bragging about dumpster diving shitty pizza.

Sometimes I feel extremely overwhelmed with the amount of time I spend in preparing food for my family. While I'm cooking I feel all the love going into the food and I take great pride in being able to cook well and put tasty and beautiful meals on our table. While I'm doing the dishes, I fantasize about frozen food, plastic packaging, microwaves, and washing just three plates and three forks. I cook and breastfeed all day and then I sleep and breastfeed all night. Some days I lose it and we eat expensive restaurant or prepared grocery foods. We do the best we can.

This week I've been making a concerted effort to prepare food that I can eat on for several days or freeze. I tried out two recipes from Nourishing Traditions, Empanadas and Fish Cakes, and both came out great. I'm also planning to have another dumpling making extravaganza in a week or two, we have a great recipe from Cook's Illustrated, I'll post it up later. Additionally, I have spent the last four days soaking and roasting walnuts, cashews and almonds so that we can have some snack foods. I'm not a nuts person so I hadn't thought to bother with proper nut preparation (ala Sally Fallon) because I never choose to eat them. Now that I have, I am totally surprised at how good nuts taste after they have been prepared in this fashion. The first batch of walnuts I roasted were so tasty that we ate half of them while they were still being roasted (warm, buttery walnuts, yum!) and ate the other half as soon as they came out of the oven. I find that the nuts taste less bitter and have a more pleasing texture after they have been processed through soaking and roasting.

Read "Slow Cooking, Fast Living - Part II"...