A lot of people I interact with online are culinary experts, or at least people with culinary ideas. Chefs and cooks, both amateur and professional, are common in the Common Class, and they have fun ideas.
All those chefs and cooks will enjoy this series and maybe they’ll try a couple of my ideas. But I’m aiming for a slightly different audience here. Sympathetic people, who face an uncertain future and who lack confidence in their ability to prepare their own food.
One thing’s for sure…life without food is, uh, death. Preparing food at home is one way to avoid death. Most people know one or two ways of preparing food at home. They might be Preppers, laying in a stockpile of rice and beans because they know it’s a full profile of essential amino-acids. Similarly a Prepper knows to have fat on hand, anything from Manteca to Corn Oil. In theory, if you have all the Amino Acids and all the Fatty Acids, you can survive indefinitely.
In practice, you can’t survive if you don’t learn to cook different things. This series will show ways to cook different things confidently, without being some kind of cocksure celebrity chef.
I figure, if you have about eight recipes, about eight techniques, you’re in survival territory. It’s also good to diversify the portfolio, to have skills in various techniques, e.g. baking, saute/pan-frying, grilling, smoking, canning, fermentation, etc.
Learning this stuff does take some investment, of course, and these seem like parlous times to make investments. But it’s your life on the line. Sooner or later, you cook for yourself, using whatever comes to hand, or you die.
Having said that, don’t freak out when I tell you what’s in my kitchen:
- Crockpot, AKA Slow Cooker
- 7″ French Knife
- Cutting Board
- Seasoned Cast-Iron Skillet
- Microwave Oven
- Regular Oven
- Dishes
- Heavy Mortar and Pestle
- Sugar
- Salt
- Olive Oil
- Butter
- Cheese
- Cornstarch
And so on. If you don’t have this stuff, don’t panic and try to get it all at once. Instead, just learn what it takes to make yourself one tasty meal you didn’t have before. Do that eight times, and you’re in survival land.
Good Luck and Godspeed!