housekeeping – The Kitchen Illiterate

The Time Has Come

I created The Kitchen Illiterate over six years ago, when I decided that I should probably learn to cook some foods that didn’t come out of boxes. It has been a wonderful adventure: I discovered a whole world that didn’t exist to me before this. I learned so much and developed a passion for good food and a comfort in taking up my place in front of the stove.

Over those six years, the world of food blogging has grown into something substantial and mature. When I started, there were a handful of people taking pictures in their kitchens and sharing their experiences, both successful and, ahem, less so. Now, the internet is full of so much breathtaking work: incredible photography, innovative cooking, witty and insightful writing. I take great pleasure in living in a time when ordinary people can showcase their amazing skills on the web, and can share what we create easily and inexpensively.

For those of you who have followed my growth as a cook, enjoyed my recipes, and given me encouragement and support, thank you so much for being part of this with me. I’ve realized recently that this space is one that I no longer feel that I need, but it, and you, have been so important to my culinary education (not to mention my growth as a writer and photographer). Lately, I’ve found that cooking has been woven into the fabric of my daily life so deeply that I no longer feel the impulse or need to share it. While I still have so much to learn, my desire to record it all has waned, and so I think it’s time for me to say good bye to The Kitchen Illiterate.

The site will not disappear, so if you’ve got recipes bookmarked, don’t worry! You’ll still be able to access them. But I won’t be updating here anymore.

Of course, I am still writing, and occasionally even about food. If you’d like to keep up with my crafting, cooking, and general homebody-ing ways, you can find me at laurapants.com. Thank you so much for reading, sharing, and being part of this experience with me.

What We’ve Been Eating

I haven’t been blogging much lately, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been cooking. When I first decided to teach myself to cook, and started writing this blog six years ago, I shared every meal, because every one felt like a tiny revelation. I learned so much every night at dinner time. Now I have a solid set of techniques and favorite recipes in my apron pocket. I find that I don’t have as much to say about dinner, because these days it’s often something tried and true, with maybe one or two slight twists. I still love to cook, but I don’t feel the same thrill of learning something new (well, not all of the time, though there are still nights when I’ll pick an intense-looking recipe with some unknown-to-me ingredient or technique).

So what does the kitchen look like, now that I’ve settled into more of a predictable rhythm? What recipes are part of the Kitchen Illiterate repertoire these days?

I still love soup, especially now that the evenings are cooler. Soup is incredibly versatile, which makes it a no-brainer for a weeknight when there are things I’d rather do than cook dinner. I loved this lentil and swiss chard version, with carrots and turnips.

Pizza is another favorite. You can see I’m a fan of flexible meals. You can put anything on a pizza. This one was particularly lovely, with some leftover cooked chicken and sauteed spinach. Yum.

Chicken has become a staple. This braised chicken, with couscous and green beans, was really bright tasting and tender. I believe the recipe was from Bon Appetit.

Remember Johnny Machete? Oh boy, I do. And it really is delicious. Throw off your disdain for the hearty casserole and dig in. You will not regret it.

One evening, I sliced up the last of the summer tomatoes and eggplant and zucchini very thinly, and layered them in a baking dish. I drizzled the whole thing with olive oil, and a sprinkling of salt and oregano, and baked it until everything was soft and melted together into one happy summery dish. We ate it simply with a baguette. I love this kind of dinner: no thinking required.

And there have been salads, crunchy green salads with peppers and radishes, cabbage and almonds, apples and avocado, and whatever delicious things I can find in our crisper. Sean makes a mean salad dressing. A salad and a grilled steak make for a perfect dinner sometimes.

My cooking has become an exercise in agility, using a template in my head and filling it in with the ingredients I have on hand. In some respects, my fascination with cooking has gone from a rolling boil to a quiet, steady simmer. I’ve focused my drive to learn and take on new challenges in other areas (I’m a little obsessed with my sewing machine right now). The years I spent teaching myself to cook have paid off, because I’m confident in the kitchen now, and I can whip up a healthy dinner any night of the week without having to think about it too much. I still love to try new recipes from time to time, and I do hope to still take the time to share those with you, but my singular obsession with it has dimmed a little, it must be said.

If you haven’t yet delved into the world of cooking, it is such a completely worthwhile endeavor. Knowing how to make a meal changes things. I eat better and healthier than I ever have in my life, and I would never be able to say that if I hadn’t decided, back in November of 2006, that I wanted to have a food blog.

Building your Batterie de Cuisine: Part One

I think one of the biggest hindrances for people who are trying to learn to cook is not having the right tools for the job. Trying to prepare even the simplest recipe with dull knives or the wrong kind of pan makes cooking stressful and un-fun. But if you’re just starting out, how do you know what you need? Sure, there are all kinds of starter boxes out there that promise to give you every thing in one fell swoop (and I can be a total sucker for anything that comes in a kit). But most of the time the stuff in those boxes is crap quality, and using crappy cookware sucks. Plus you’ll have to replace it all soon anyway, when the handles start to fall off and the cheap aluminum warps.

I’m certainly not the first blogger to share my list of essential kitchen tools. Anyone who really gets into cooking becomes at least a little obsessed with gear. But I think most food bloggers are people who cook a lot and have tons of little speciality tools that they love and want to evangelize. And if you’re just starting out, that stuff can be kind of daunting. I don’t want you to be daunted. I want you to cook. So I came up with the bare bones list of things you really need to be successful in the kitchen.
Continue reading Building your Batterie de Cuisine: Part One

Santa Cruz in Photos

I’ve been promising some Santa Cruz photos, and I finally have them for you. Somewhere else.

Busy Bee

It would be pretty swell if I could spend my days cooking and baking, and writing and sharing it all here on this blog. Alas, food blogger is not my full time profession. And sometimes life gets in the way of me doing the things I really want to do. This week I’ve been so inspired to be in the kitchen, but life is getting in the way. This week is particularly nutso, and this weekend will be the second weekend in a row that we’re heading out of town (and away from my kitchen).

All this is to offer apologies for my absence, and sincere promises for some sweet treats and savory wonders coming next week. I might also have some great pictures to share of one of my favorite places on earth, as we’re heading to Santa Cruz this weekend for a little getaway/business trip.

To tide you over, here are a few things that have been inspiring the crap out of me this week:

Now that I’ve successfully produced my first souffle, I can’t wait to try another. Eggs on Sunday’s cheese, leek, and herb souffle is on the list.

I have been obsessing on New Orleans lately. Joy the Baker’s pictorial travelogue just took that up a notch.

These beautiful photos from The Yellow House, and the Marge Piercy poem selected to accompany them, are a great reminder for me to slow down and focus on the small, beautiful, and productive moments of my life.

Love & Lemon’s Green Enchiladas with Cashew Cream have to happen. I am counting down the days until I have time to make this happen.

Also, Joy the Baker’s chamomile cupcakes have inspired me to create a cookie in their image. I cannot stop daydreaming about these cookies that haven’t even been baked yet. The thought of them is keeping me going.

If you’ve never heard of Ernest Callenbach, I recommend you pick up a copy of his book,Ecotopia. It might be a little dated, but it was a life-changing book for me when I read it 15 years ago. Callenbach passed away last month, and Mark Bittman’s touching memorial is a reminder to me to focus on what really matters, and to always be hopeful that we can bring about change.

I hope your days are a little less manic than mine right now. Amidst the craziness, there are pockets of joyful things to look forward to: Dinner tonight with my brother, the aforementioned weekend in Santa Cruz, and those cookies. I’ll be back soon, and in the meantime, I’m sure the internet has no shortage of things to keep you occupied and inspired.

Cooking for Cinco de Mayo

I grew up in Southern California, so Mexican food is like comfort food to me. Burritos are a staple in my life. Enchiladas are an endless canvas for inspiration, and my chicken enchiladas are a dish I am perhaps overly proud of. I survived on large pots of beans during my poor college years. And this weekend, well. Cinco de Mayo might not be a particularly important holiday in Mexico, but in California, Cinco de Mayo means its time for Mexican food. And, if you’re lucky, a Mariachi band.

If you’re looking for something fun to make tomorrow to celebrate the awesomeness of Mexican food (that’s what that holiday is about, right?), here’s a round up of my favorite Mexican food recipes.

Starting with enchiladas:

These Sweet Potato Black Bean Enchiladas are a great riff on a classic.
Continue reading Cooking for Cinco de Mayo

Recipe Organization

If you’re interested in food, and you spend any amount of time on the internet, it’s likely that so many amazing looking recipes cross your path every day that you can’t possibly remember all of them. I’ve experimented with many different recipe organization tactics, but through it all, I always had my blue folder. This folder contained recipes I’ve been collecting since I was 10 years old. Most of them are printed from websites, and stained from use. There are pages torn from magazines, emails from aunts, and even some typewritten sheets from my youth, when I practiced typing by copying recipes from magazines.

The recipes have never been organized in anyway, and I rarely used them because it was too much of a pain to sort through the messy piles and find what I wanted. Last week, the folder finally gave up the ghost, and it was time to find a new solution.
Continue reading Recipe Organization

The Everyday Chef Challenge

So, I entered one of my recipes into a contest sponsored by Pacific Natural Foods, and today, it was selected as the Everyday Pick winner! I don’t win things that often, so I got kind of excited about this one. I could still win the whole fancy contest, if you go and vote for me. I don’t usually like to solicit votes for things, but I feel encouraged that my recipe was featured today, so I’m making my pitch.

You can vote for my recipe, and see all the other contest entrants, on the Pacific Natural Foods website. And hey, you can easily enter your own recipes to win, too.

Culinary Disasters: Gnocchi

As proof that I still encounter my fair share of disasters in the kitchen, let’s talk about gnocchi. Specifically, my attempt this past weekend to make some. I’ll just say up front, I did not eat gnocchi this weekend. This was an epic kitchen fail. In fact, it failed so hard that even my pictures didn’t turn out that great (I’m still trying to adjust to the new lighting situation in our apartment, six months in. I think it might be time to break down and buy some proper photographer’s lights). So what went wrong here?
Continue reading Culinary Disasters: Gnocchi

October Unprocessed

Over the past few years, I’ve been slowly moving toward a diet based on whole, natural foods, and it gets easier and easier all the time. But there are always things that sneak into the refrigerator and onto the plate that hark back to the factory a bit more than the field. That box of penne purchased at Target, the crackers I pick up when I need an afternoon snack, or the hamburger bought from the stand down the road that probably isn’t using grass-fed, organic beef or locally made buns.

No one has to be perfect, and striving for some kind of ascetic culinary life probably isn’t very healthy, mentally or emotionally. But sometimes it can be good to step back and take stock of our real dietary habits, and to be more aware of what we’re putting into our bodies. When I read about the October Unprocessed Challenge, this sounded like a great opportunity to do just that.

Andrew Wilder at Eating Rules came up with this idea two years ago, prompted by the question, “What would happen if I went for an entire month without eating any processed food?” Last year, over 400 people participated, and this year, it looks to be growing. I decided to sign up.

Andrew’s definition of unprocessed includes anything that could be made by a person with reasonable skill in a home kitchen with readily available ingredients. I don’t know exactly what that means for me, but I’m leaning toward a definition gleaned from Michael Pollan: If a package has more than five ingredients, and you don’t know what even one of them is, it’s a processed food. I don’t know that I could make cheese in my kitchen, but I don’t necessarily consider it a processed food (although, that really depends on the cheese, or cheese product, as the case may be).

The point of this challenge isn’t to strive for perfection, or to attempt to reach some kind of holier-than-thou culinary position. It’s to spark thought and dialogue about where our food comes from, and how we relate to it. I’ll be writing about my experiences in an unprocessed kitchen over the next month, and I urge you to sign the pledge, too. Especially if you think it would be impossible. You never know unless you try, and I can’t think of anything more meaningful to try for.