The Humble Kitchen

“We are eating too much and we are paying too little for our food.
My philosophy is to eat modestly and buy the best you can afford. In our crazy world a chicken costs less than a cinema ticket. Our obsession with cheap food has destabilised farming throughout the world, polluted our soils, driven small producers and small shops into the ground, allowed the supermarkets to monopolise our lives, and made us fat.
Look at any shopping trolley; it is stacked with convenience foods, processed foods, crisps, biscuits, bloated bread, cheese that tastes like soap, and meat that has been reared in conditions that would make you retch. Factory farming and factory food is disgusting. No wonder it has to be plastic-wrapped and disguised with every kind of flavouring and E-number.
Real food has taste, and it is good for you and good for the planet. Of course, it means cooking, but how much better to sit down to a proper meal with family and friends, than to microwave a tray of rubber pasta in fake tomato sauce.
Life is too short to eat badly. A bit of planning ahead makes it possible to eat well even when we are at work all day. A slow cooker will casserole your chicken for you or simmer your hearty vegetable stew. I make stacks of my own fishcakes and freeze them. Sauces for pasta can be stored in the fridge for up to five days. Nothing is faster than an omelette and salad, or Eggs Benedict on toast. Fillet steak, fresh spinach and grilled tomatoes can be on the plate in fifteen minutes. Sunday beef can become Monday beef curry, with fresh ginger, garlic, chilli, onions and spices, in the time it takes to cook the brown basmati - yes, twenty minutes. The rice cooks while you prepare the rest, enjoying a drink, listening to the radio, and winding down at the end of the day.
Convenience food is a con. Fast food is a fib. We need pleasure in our lives, and one of life's true pleasures is real food. What's the big hurry to slump in front of the TV with a plate of factory gloop?
Set the table, take the time, enjoy your food.”
by Jeanette Winterson