Some practical tips, and things we've learned along the way:
- Remember, you get out of food what you put in.
- Start simple. Be comfortable boiling water before you take on Julia Child.
- Avoid individually packaged meals for your dinners. Even if you're dining alone, eating a pre-packaged individual meal will make you feel more alone. Regardless of if you dine alone - there are cheaper ways to eat. Instead, buy a box of pasta and a head of garlic and a bunch of spinach... it will cost about the same, will give you several meals, and does not take much more time than the pre-packaged meal (and it's way more nutritious).
- Butter, sugar, and salt will not kill you, but margarine, high fructose corn syrup, and added sodium might.
- Find a wine store that doesn't turn up its nose when you tell them you need a decent bottle of wine for $10 or under (if you're in the Twin Cities, I highly recommend Surdyks).
- Invite friends to dinner regularly: cook together, eat together, laugh together, cry together.
- Before you eat with company, either pray or (if your guests are not of a faith persuasion) make a toast: it blesses the company, it blesses the food, and is becoming a lost art.
- Likewise, storytelling is becoming a lost art. Tell stories. Tell your story. You might not find it very interesting, but someone else might. If you're not ready to be that vulnerable, borrow someone else's story. With storytelling, it's never stealing, for the story takes on the life of the teller. (Or... you can borrow stories from books you've read, lives you've imagined, or stories others have told you.)
- When you sit down to dinner, leave your clock elsewhere. We make ourselves so busy that we believe we cannot take the time to eat, making us more inefficient with the tasks we do have.
- Figure out how to disable the smoke alarms in or near your kitchen. Buy a fire extinguisher, or (if you rent), make sure your landlord provides you with one. Leave the ones by your bedroom intact, though!
- Figure out how to disable the smoke alarms in or near your kitchen. Buy a fire extinguisher, or (if you rent), make sure your landlord provides you with one. Leave the ones by your bedroom intact, though!
Staples in our pantry/refrigerator:
- Butter
- Eggs
- Milk
- Flour/yeast (making your own bread is one of the delights of winter in temperate climates)
- Kosher salt
- Black pepper
(a note on spices: salt and pepper will season anything. Aside from these, especially if you are on a tight budget, purchase only those things that you use regularly... we literally have fewer than 20 spices on our rack and can make just about anything we find in a cookbook)
- Sugar
- Olives
- Cheese
- Tomatoes (in season - do fresh; otherwise, canned (best: can them yourself!))
- Potatoes
- Onions
- Garlic (for the love of God, eat garlic! Further, garlic salt and garlic powder make your breath far worse than fresh garlic - so use real garlic!)
- Dried pasta
- We try to budget for 1 bottle of wine per week. We typically purchase bottles that are under $10 unless it is a special occasion.
Some suggestions of types of wine for which you can find a decent bottle for under $10: Jumilla (Spain), Cabernet (domestic or otherwise, they tend to do well), Malbec (Argentina), GSM - Grenache/Syrah/Merlot (often French), and table wines, which tend to be the combinations of odds and ends in which the weaknesses of some vines are mitigated by the strengths of others (since some of them have multiple wines under the same name, I have pictures for the pertinent ones):
A note: Pinot Noir has, historically, been one of my favorite wines. I have found, however, that I have been disappointed in bottles that run under $15, for some reason... they tend to have a flat flavor, as opposed to the fullness that I appreciate from Pinots. Zinfandel (NOT white; it's a red!), likewise, though I have had a bit better luck with Zinfandels under $10 than Pinots.
