Trade-Offs (I)

Confession: I've hardly cooked this week. When I have, it hasn't been noteworthy or photogenic, with the exception of Katerina's Strawberry-Rhubarb Cobbler, which I forgot to photograph anyway. Even worse, I haven't used any of last week's CSA share... I'll put the picture with this week's for you to see, but it may go to waste, and I feel guilty.

Usually I really like the challenge of cooking and feel energized by it. But sometimes, especially when my kitchen is messy or I'm not feeling great, cooking a "real" meal is too daunting. You've all been there, right?

I think in my case it's also complicated by my sometimes-conflicting goals for food and cooking. I want to support local farmers, but that often takes more time and money. I want organic food where possible, but again - more expensive and harder to find. I want to make quick meals on weeknights, but cooking with produce and grains = lots of prep (usually), and I'm worried about the BPA in the canned food I use to save time. I want to be vegetarian and it's difficult when I eat outside my home. And I recently started reading more about low-carbon cooking, and the author of the book advises against oven- and stove-intensive cooking like roasting, but that's my favorite way to cook my local produce. So health, economy, environment, taste, time, and budget - trying to do well in all those areas really narrows cooking choices. That's why I end up eating leftover soup, or fried rice with frozen veggies....

This post is called trade-offs (I) because I want to revisit this set of challenges as I get better at navigating them. So please forgive the complaining. Next time I will try to have more solutions.

Happy New Year!/SpinachPizza

After a looong hiatus, due to starting a new job, moving, and misplacing my camera's USB cable, I'm back and ready to blog again. I've been cooking (and taking pictures) for the last 7 months, so I have plenty to write about: my first yeast bread, sweet potato & black bean tostadas, quinoa (hated it at first, love it now), lentils every which way, several soups, lots of cookies, and more.

These are my food-related goals for 2010:

• Try three foods that scare me.
• Shop more at farmers markets, less at Meijer.
  
• Grow tomatoes on my balcony.
• Learn and try some new food preservation techniques (I got this book for Christmas).
  
• Eliminate high-fructose corn syrup from my diet, as much as possible.
• Learn more about local, sustainable eating.
  

In the interest of getting things started again, here's what I made for lunch today:

It looks fancy, and Chris and I felt like we were in a nice restaurant. However, as anyone who has made pita pizza knows, it's really simple: pita, sauce, cheese, bake. If I'm just making one, I'll put it in the toaster oven, but I made two today so I used the big oven. As usual, don't worry about the measurements - I'm guessing.