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An Introduction

Hello, all!  This blog is an experiment - partly to see if I will stick with blogging, and partly to track our family's progress toward more ethical and from-scratch cooking.  My partner-in-crime Karen and I have been doing a lot to try to reduce our carbon footprint and to take better care of ourselves, and much of that revolves around food.  We're lucky to be in a fairly large metro area, where CSAs and farmers' markets and co-ops exist in abundance.  We are hoping the blog will encourage us (well, me) to stay serious about our new eating practices.  Our schedule tends to be more open in the summer, so now is the moment to give this a try!

How do I cook?  I like to have a weekly plan.  I am a meal prepper, with snacks and lunch for the week made in advance.  Because we're committed to ethical meat (and moving toward ethical dairy as much as possible), we tend to be "semi-vegetarian."  We are low-to-no soy household due to allergies.  I strive for heart-healthy foods.  In addition to loving veggies and seafood, though, we adore all that bad-for-you stuff that one should avoid, including a deep and abiding addiction to chocolate chip cookies. (My dad loves sweets and my mom loves salty stuff, and I inherited BOTH.)  We love to cook for friends and think dietary restrictions are a fun chance to try new recipes.  Our kitchen is fairly small - the homestead is a townhome - but well-supplied.  Because I like meal prepping, you should expect stuff made with the slow cooker, the pressure cooker, the standing mixer, and more. 

Where the magic happens: the kitchen.


My partner-in-crime is the baker extraordinaire around here - and she is *incredibly* good at it.  She has perfected pie crust and macarons (yes, the French sandwich cookies, not the coconut ones).  Around the holidays, choosing what cookies to make is a complicated negotiation of family recipes, balance, and how many gift packs we expect to put together for beloved friends & neighbors.


In addition to the two of us, the house has two kitty children (Freddie, a girl, and her brother Xander) and three chinchillas.
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