I'm Popeye the Sailor Man

[schemingreader]

I have many ideas for blogging about half-homemade dishes--premade foods mixed into or as the backbone of, my homemade food. The only problem with this one for me is that I'm not sure what counts as a premade food. Thinking about pre-done cooking tasks, though, I think my favorite convenience food these days is spinach. I have come to believe that adding spinach to dishes is an easy way to make them awesome. I also like other greens—but spinach is the best.

Prewashed fresh greens ( why I think they are a convenience food, and how they can add greatness to your meals )

Frozen, chopped spinach( in some ways, even more convenient )

I like the way spinach tastes, I like the color, and I like the way it gives people super strength. I feel blessed to live in a period when it's also possible to present it as a convenience food, a good candidate to be part of a series of posts about food that's only half homemade. Even if you think it doesn't qualify, I hope you'll still try eating more spinach.

Half-HomeMade as a Learning to Cook Strategy

[glinda]

Half-Homemade pretty much perfectly sums up my cooking style, so it seemed an excellent topic for me to dive into this fest and write about.

It is, after all, largely the basis of how I learned to cook. I went to university knowing the basics, I had a short list of meals I could make and keep myself reasonably well fed and that was that for the best part of four years. During the stress of my Masters, I decided to learn to cook properly as a way of taking better care of myself. Sundry LJ folks weighed in with ideas and recipes (most notably moviegrrl) and I trundled off on my training wheels.

Cookery confession number one: I've never made a proper stock in my life. I spent five years cooking for one and in the years since I've never yet cooked a proper roast. Boiling the bones and making a stock for soup is something I've seen my mother do dozens of time, but I've never done it myself. I've never bought stock either (so many recipe books talk about buying it and keeping it in the freezer/larder, but frankly I don't have the space), whether I'm making soup or a sauce, my stock involves a crumbled up Oxo cube and some boiling water. Speaking of half-Homemade, they used to do a range of herb and spice cubes that were the perfect hand hold for the beginner cook, venturing into Italian or Chinese or Mexican cuisine who had not yet the time and/or finances to establish a proper spice collection. I took my first steps into cooking outside my comfort zone (without a tried and tested recipe from a friend or my mum on hand) with the recipes on the back of those packets, cooking ingredients I'd never tried before reassured that Oxo wouldn't lead me astray – they rarely did. It's taken me years to find a Chinese Five Spice that satisfactorily replaces those little cubes and doubtless by the time I finish the jar, they'll have stopped selling that particular mix and the dance will begin again.

Some people are a bit sniffy about cook-in sauces and packet kit meals. I have to wonder how they learned to cook anything outside their comfort zone. I learned how to make Lasagne from the back of jar of sauce and fajitas from a kit box. Through time and experimenting I've learned what bits I can make on my own to my own taste and which bits are best left to the professionals (making guacamole was an interesting and frustrating experience and I believe it to be an art that I do not have the patience to master). But those sauces and kits remain a great way to try out new things without having to buy a bunch of expensive and sometimes really hard to source ingredients you might only use once, because it turns out you don't like it or your parent/kid/spouse/flatmate turns out to be allergic. If they turn out to inspire you to experiment with ingredients or replicating your favourite sauce all the better, but equally if you like it just the way it is, you've just cooked and eaten something tasty and nutritious, so you'll excuse me if I don't see a down side here.

I keep passata and pesto in the cupboard (neither of which I have the time, patience or space to make from scratch) along with the tins and the pulses – lentils I will happily soak overnight, chickpeas always come out of a can. Some days I'm happy to spent half an hour experimenting with herbs and spices and odd things I found in the cupboard to make a new dish of my own, others I just want to chuck some sauce over the chicken to bubble away reassuringly without having to stand around faffing with a rue. I always keep an emergency packet of couscous in the cupboard, for the days when I don't fancy rice or potatoes, or the days when I just want to chuck some cold meat in it for protein and eat the couscous straight out of the damn jug with a spoon. You find the combination that's right for you and you change it up if it doesn't work.

I, for instance, am going veggie next month...it's going to be interesting.