A New Food Blog? Really?

 

June 11, 2015

 

Does the world need another food blog? Well, it doesn't matter, I guess, because this is a new blog, and it's about food. I come to it with blogging experience, www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com and with plenty of cooking experience (some 40,000 meals, by a rough reckoning). But this is the first time I have put the two together.

 

Most of the postings will be about food that is fast, because it is important to know that you can prepare great food, healthy food, quickly. That might encourage you to do it often. I hope so.

 

I use the word "fearless" because there is a whole generation (or maybe two) of eaters who for one reason or another never learned how to prepare for themselves the food that they want to eat. And now their kitchens are covered in cobwebs (except the microwave ovens, where they boil water for their coffee). A recipe looks daunting, what with all those listed ingredients. A stove looks daunting, what with those potentially red-hot burners. In fact, every aspect of cooking is unknown and thus scary.

 

Well, if this describes you, fear not! I'll accompany you into that hostile territory.

 

There are essentially two ways to cook "fast." One is to cook everything at the last minute. The other is to have a few things prepared in advance (some might call these "leftovers") that you can parley into a quick meal. Both of these ways are valid; over the life of this blog, we'll mix and match these techniques to reach the goal of quick and healthy meals.

 

Baby Spuds

 

And moving from the abstract to the practical, let's talk about potatoes. I could write forever about mashed potatoes: how best to make them; a mother-in-law's comments about mine; why it's important to make twice as many as you need; shepherd's pie; mashed potato cakes (and so  many variations on this). If I had any Yukon Golds or russets in the house, I'd forget the quinoa and rice mixture I have in the fridge and just make mashed potatoes for every meal.

 

But this is the time of year for new potatoes, not mashed. It's even a little early for the  new ones, though maybe there will be some at the market on Saturday that the farmer has tickled from beneath the plant. I'll boil them in their jackets until just tender (I start proinging them with a fork after five minutes), drain them, put the pan back on the burner to dry them a bit, pour in more olive oil than I mean to (story of my life), and sprinkle them with pepper and coarse sea salt while I shake the pan to oil every bit of the little spheres. Then dump them into a bowl and eat them.

 

A far cry from mashed potatoes, of course, but I'll wait patiently for the Agria and Yukon Golds and Dakota Pearls to appear, finally, so I can indulge in the mashed version. You'll be hearing more about this.