The Truly Most Essential Ingredients

During my mini-series I listed the items that I believe are the essential items to stock in your pantry, your fridge and your freezer. Like I've said before, they are by no means and exhaustive list of what you should/could stock in your home, but are the base items that will allow you to throw together a wide variety of meals at the drop of a hat. Something has been bothering me, though.  I've read and reread those lists several times and something was missing. Something that I couldn't quite figure out. Until I was well in the midst of The Great Dumpling Caper, that is. Suddenly, I realized what things I'd left off the lists: Motivation and Elbow Grease. Without these bosom buddies, your kitchen adventures will not become a reality. 

Here's the thing. Way back when, if you wanted to eat it, you had to make it. Anything and everything had to be made from scratch and even deeper than that, you actually had to procure the ingredients yourself (ie, milk the cow to then churn the butter, gather the grain to grind the wheat to make the flour). Then, over time, the paradigm shifted. Our society embraced, whole-heartedly and with complete abandon, the idea that convenience and fast and instant were the gold standard when deciding what we feed ourselves and our families. 

We are aware that some of the best family time happens around the dinner table. Research suggests that having dinner together as a family at least four times a week has positive effects on child development such as  a lower risk of obesity, substance abuse, eating disorders, and an increased chance of graduating from high school. What better to help us in this effort than prepared foods and convenience foods? Right? Well, it isn't as simple as that.

In a March 11th article in The Atlantic, editors Elinor Kohs and Tamar Kremer-Sadlik report that:

Americans cling to the ideal of family commonality as an elixir for personal and societal ills (e.g., children's vulnerability to drugs, smoking, and obesity) and as de rigueur for kindling children's school success. Many parents regret that for pragmatic reasons they cannot routinely prepare and enjoy a meal together as a family. They cite busyness -- workplace obligations, children's extracurricular and school activities, and scheduling conflicts -- as occluding this opportunity. Yet the study reveals that the busy lives of family members outside the home are not the only culprit in the saga of the American family dinner. Even when all members of a family were at home, eating dinner together was a challenge in many households. Why?

Two less acknowledged reasons for why family dinners were a challenge for the families stand out: convenience foods filling refrigerators and cupboards supplied individualized snacks and meals for family members; and family dinnertime often gave way to intergenerational conflicts surrounding children's food choices. The consumption of pre-prepared convenience foods, many of which are packaged as individual meals, stand alongside busy schedules as a root factor in undermining dinner as a family event.

So, the very thing that is supposed to be making the whole thing easier is, in fact, gumming up the works. Upon reviewing more of their data, the researchers found the following interesting items:

• 73% of weeknight meals were "home-made"
• Only 22% of those meals were made with little or no convenience food.
• Home-cooked meals took an average of 34 minutes of hands-on time and a total of 52 minutes to prepare. 
• Heavy reliance on commercial food did reduce hands-on time significantly, but the difference was only 10 to 12 minutes.
• Moreover, there was no significant difference in the total cooking time for dinners made primarily from convenience foods and those made primarily from fresh ingredients or a combination of fresh and some or limited convenience foods. 

These findings suggest that relying mainly on commercially prepared foods for dinner does not actually save a great deal of time for busy parents. 

From my observations, I truly believe that we are in the midst of yet another paradigm shift. People are wanting to learn how to do things that their parents and grandparents held as common knowledge. I think this is apparent in the number of do-it-yourself kits that have appeared on the market in the past few years, but really in full force in about the past year. I've seen (and own) make your own cheese kit, and a mushroom growing kit. There are also various kits for making your own beer and for making vinegar out of leftover wine (which, between you and me, how would you even ever do that? I mean, who's ever heard of leftover wine?!). There is a whole world of crocks out there for making any of your fermented items - your kombucha, your sauerkraut, your kimchi. For the even more adventurous (and for those who don't have a pesky HOA breathing down their necks) there are beekeeping set-ups, as well as those for poultry keeping. I believe that the increased interest in these items reflects a longing to reconnect to a simpler (albeit more labor-intensive) time.

So, what's this got to do with the truly most essential ingredients? You've got to be motivated to make changes in how and what you eat. And, you have to be willing to use elbow grease, that is, to actually do some work to prepare your meal. Sure, yes, you can cut corners by buying the shrimp deveined and shelled, or the cheese grated, or the bag of pre-shredded cabbage slaw mix, or the entire prepared casserole, etc. but based on the research presented above, I'm not certain you're saving much time or making it all that much easier. I would, however,  be willing to bet that the quality of those items will be sub-par when compared to less processed items that you prep yourself. 

Roll up your sleeves, get to work and Happy Cooking!
sld

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