What is this? No fresh ingredients in my Chewy Bar? BLASPHEMY!

Most of the time when we look at the ingredients on the boxes of the food we eat, there are a bunch of words that you probably don’t even understand within the list of ingredients. All of these crazy names for what is put into our food just makes everything even more clear: if we simply use fresh ingredients in the foods we cook, we can achieve sustainable cooking.

I went home over Mother’s Day weekend, and was able to have access to another bookstore besides Ackerman. I went in there and sat down and basically got lost in the collection of Alice Waters cookbooks at the Borders in my hometown. As I was browsing through her cookbook of recipes for her restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, the reoccurring theme of the cookbook was fresh ingredients. Although I have many recipes in mind for my cookbook, one thing I constantly have to keep in mind is the aspect of fresh ingredients. We don’t realize the extensiveness of processed foods infiltrating classic recipes such as marshmallows on our yams during Thanksgiving, or graham crackers for our piecrusts. Therefore, all of the recipes I have been looking at for inspiration, I must take into consideration the aspect of almost ALL fresh ingredients, and surprisingly its a lot harder than it seems.

I also had the opportunity this weekend to go to the Mountain View Farmer’s Market. It is definitely a lot larger than the one in Westwood, and it was a lot of fun walking around. There was an array of fresh vegetables, meats, and nuts. I never realized that you could buy meat at farmers markets. I got there around 12 pm and by that time, all of the meat and eggs from the main stand were all sold out. The meat and eggs were grown on a purely grass fed, local farm, which was exactly what is discussed in Omnivore’s Dilemma as a sustainable source of meat. I realized that I want meat in my cookbook. I am not a vegetarian, and do not plan to be one. There are a lot of people, like me, who do not want to give up meat, but also recognized the importance of eating sustainably. Therefore, I think it would augment the number of people joining the sustainable movement, if they don’t feel like they need to change all that they eat by keeping meat as a constant.

Coincidentally enough, this week’s Omnivores Dilemma reading discussed the seasonality of meats. I never realized that meat also has a season. But you all will have to wait for my presentation to see how I incorporate Polan’s seasonality of meats into my cookbook.

At the beginning of my cookbook, I plan to include go into depth about the discussion of where to get sustainable ingredients. This is not completely clear cut because places like Whole Foods provide a significant amount of sustainable alternatives, but at the same time fails to provide complete sustainable products such as their shipping in of produce from all around the world.

My goal for the end of this next week is to confirm my recipes so I can get started on the concrete version of my cookbook. I even was able to run to Michael’s this weekend to gather art supplies like paper and stickers to make my seriously GREEN cookbook. (Pun intended) J