A Quick Word about Minimalism

There is a big movement now towards minimalism in the kitchen.  Kitchens equipped with just a few, well crafted and versatile utensils.  Cooking with just a few, fresh, flavorful ingredients.  Minimalism!

I am the antithesis of minimalism.  Seriously.  It is not a joke.  People theorize that "hoarders" tend to have a certain personality type and that some sort of trauma is what kicks that personality type over the cliff into hoarding.  I am that personality type.  If I am going to do something new, I want to go at that task armed with a variety of objects that have been specifically designed to help me complete that task.  Cleaning products?  I don't want a general purpose cleaning product.  I want one for sinks, one for glass, one for kitchen counters, one for bathroom counters, one for the bathtub, one for the sink, one for the toilet, one for rugs, one for linoleum, one for tile........You get the picture.

When we were first stocking our kitchen, I took this approach.  I have three drawers of cooking utensils. A huge cupboard filled with pots and pans.  I have four different types of flour.  I have five different types of salt.  I have 13 different cup measures.  Again.....you get the picture.

Recently, the Husband and I have been working to get things under control (this change may or may not have been spurred by my three day Hoarders marathon....).  We are two people in our late 20's (me) and early 30's (him).  We have 2 dogs.  No kids.  At one point in time, we have more than filled a 3 1/2 bedroom house with stuff.  Excessive.  We cut back a huge amount.  The kitchen and the closets are our last frontiers.
I have plans!  I want to pare down our pots and pans collection (5 frying pans?  A rarely used wok?  7 pots of various sizes including a pasta pot and 2 stock pots?).  I want to get rid of all of our ludicrously specific knives (A fillet knife?  I don't eat fish at all, let alone bring home large cuts of fish that need to be filleted with a fillet knife!) and stick with just a few good quality chef's knives, a bread knife and a paring knife.  Basically, I want to cut down on the excess and instead have a kitchen stocked with a few, good quality items that I can use a variety of different ways.

In terms of ingredient use, (And trust me, those numbers I threw out before were not exaggerations....) I keep running into a roadblock.  I am still working on building my confidence and knowing ingredients well enough to be able to know what I can substitute when and how.  If a recipe calls for a mix of all-purpose flour and cake flour, do I really need both?  Why does it call for both?  Is there a way to get the same effect without adding to my ever-expanding collection of flour?  I don't know yet!!!  So part of this experiment in expanding food boundaries is to further expand my knowledge and understanding of food and ingredients and the versatility of foods.  By expanding in one area, I am hoping it can help me cut back in another!

So....that's all!!  Just a quick thought on how I want to move forward on my cooking/food journey.  Expanding horizons and shrinking kitchen cupboards.

I would also like to point out that this "quick word" was now turned into a 6 paragraph entry.....You see my problem here...

An Introduction and An Explanation

Now that the first post is out of the way, how about a quick introduction.  As you may have guessed, I am a picky eater.  I have tons and tons of food rules that I have spent my life following.
I don't generally eat chicken because I don't like dry meat and chicken is easily overcooked.
I hate mushy foods.  And unless you too are a mushy food hater, you have no idea how many foods fall into that category.  It also means that I hate eating most fruits.  Ever since I was a kid, I would make my mom by super under-ripe fruits because they were the only kind I would eat.  Unless that peach/pear/plum/nectarine crunched when I bit into it, I wanted nothing to do with it.  Same with veggies.  I have gotten better recently, but I used to refuse to eat any veggies that had been cooked.
I hate jiggly foods.  This is a much smaller food category, but I have an intense level of hatred for it.  Seriously, I can get nauseous even watching someone eat Jello.
I tend to go through weird food phases.  I had a period of time when I was about 10 where I dyed all of my food green and had an intense love of making lemonade from scratch (and then dying it green...).
As a child I hated having foods touch.  When my mom made BLTs, I would get a piece of toast, a few pieces of bacon, a slice of tomato and a piece of lettuce all laid out separately on my plate.  I hated peanut butter and jelly sandwiches because I couldn't separate them.  This has now turned into a general hatred of peanut butter.  I hated pizza for the same reason.
I hate fish.  I hate mushrooms.  I hate citrus.  I hate oatmeal.  I hate yogurt.  I hate cottage cheese.  I hate swiss cheese.  I hate wheat bread.  I hate mayo.  I hate bananas.  I hate olives......I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

There are two important pieces to being a picky eater.  The first and most obvious is that it is incredibly limiting!  Which is irritating because I love food!!  I love cooking food and watching programs about food and talking about food and looking at food and reading about food.  I want to be able to branch out and truly enjoy food and to open myself up to new food possibilities.  That is what spawned this desire to start a food blog to help encourage me to push my own boundaries.

The second piece is that I don't think I actually am a picky eater!  I know that sounds weird, but I think I just got all of these rules and assumptions stuck in my head from when I was very young and have never bothered to question them or to test them.  I simply accepted them as true and lived my life while following them.  I firmly believe in questioning assumptions about ourselves and in finding those places in ourselves where we have been limiting our own development and our own opportunities.

So this blog is my journey to explore food and to decide consciously, what food I like and what I don't like.  It is also a place to celebrate food and to celebrate the rituals around food which are a critical piece of our culture.  And!  I get to combine cooking, eating, writing and photographing food!  All things that I love!  So welcome to my food blog!!!  I hope you enjoy your visit!  Please feel free to leave comments!  And any suggestions for food explorations are appreciated!