Back in the Saddle
I have been absent for almost two years and was inspired to return through a recent epiphany: Cookbooks are plentiful, but the majority are terribly impractical.
I have been using these last 20 months to improve cooking skills, gaining more knowledge about new foods and just generally being lazy. It has been through this process that I've gained a greater appreciation for women like my Granny. They didn't have cookbooks because the majority of the time they barely had food in the cabinets. Meals were thrown together out of sheer necessity. She had 11 kids to feed in poor rural Kentucky, and the object of cooking was to make sure no one starved to death. Now, I am by no means in the dire straights my grandparents sailed, but in my real world there are months when choices have to be made and I can't purchase the salmon fillet for $11 when ground chuck is on sale for $3.49.
My husband and other family members have been buying me cookbooks for the last several years, and it was only when I tried cooking better meals for my family that I discovered the land mines in the cookbook realm. Many tout promises with words we want to believe, like "simple," "fast," or "pocketbook friendly." But when you start grocery shopping for ingredients in a little town somewhere other than the East or West Coast you end up not being able to find or afford half the ingredients. It then becomes easy to just give up and grab the box of Hamburger Helper you just found on sale with a coupon.
So I have decided that I'm going to take cookbooks on head to head and see if they can pass two tests. The first being, can the recipes be made without breaking the bank at the end of the month? And secondly, can they be prepared in a kitchen with limited cooking utensils while being observed by two dogs and a toddler stopping the preparations every five seconds to ask if she can help?
I'm eager to tell you how many can stand up to the Rural Kitchen challenge.
I have been using these last 20 months to improve cooking skills, gaining more knowledge about new foods and just generally being lazy. It has been through this process that I've gained a greater appreciation for women like my Granny. They didn't have cookbooks because the majority of the time they barely had food in the cabinets. Meals were thrown together out of sheer necessity. She had 11 kids to feed in poor rural Kentucky, and the object of cooking was to make sure no one starved to death. Now, I am by no means in the dire straights my grandparents sailed, but in my real world there are months when choices have to be made and I can't purchase the salmon fillet for $11 when ground chuck is on sale for $3.49.
My husband and other family members have been buying me cookbooks for the last several years, and it was only when I tried cooking better meals for my family that I discovered the land mines in the cookbook realm. Many tout promises with words we want to believe, like "simple," "fast," or "pocketbook friendly." But when you start grocery shopping for ingredients in a little town somewhere other than the East or West Coast you end up not being able to find or afford half the ingredients. It then becomes easy to just give up and grab the box of Hamburger Helper you just found on sale with a coupon.
So I have decided that I'm going to take cookbooks on head to head and see if they can pass two tests. The first being, can the recipes be made without breaking the bank at the end of the month? And secondly, can they be prepared in a kitchen with limited cooking utensils while being observed by two dogs and a toddler stopping the preparations every five seconds to ask if she can help?
I'm eager to tell you how many can stand up to the Rural Kitchen challenge.
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