Gratitude Day 15: Food

I love to cook and bake.  And I love to eat (maybe a little too much!).  I like to take raw ingredients and make something delicious out of them.  I like to see people enjoying what I make.  And I enjoy shopping for food.


I was about 10 or so when my mom started a summer 4-H club.  Half the time we spent on cooking and the other half on sewing.  At the tine, I didn't much care about sewing.  Threading a sewing machine was beyond me.  But I loved the cooking lessons.  I was curious about the hows and whys of cooking.  Why did milk curdle if heated too much?  What process made wet, runny cake batter turn into a dry, soft, solid cake?  How did sugar become candy?

I don't remember much about that first summer of 4H but that was the beginning of my interest in food.  I took home economics classes in middle school and high school and then when I entered college, I majored in Nutrition and Food Science (NFS).  My focus was Consumer Food Science.  I took a lot of biology and chemistry classes and learned a lot about food, nutrition, how different foods were made, food safety, etc.

I had several internships with food companies that helped me apply academic knowledge to real world situations.  Although I never held a "real" job in the field of food science, I apply what I've learned in my life.  I use the principles I learned about nutrition, color, texture and taste to plan meals that look good, taste good and are good for us.  One year CM did a science fair project in which she tested if it made any difference in the final product if the temperature of the water used to dissolve the yeast was cold, warm or the recommended temperature.  I used my old lab reports to help her design an experiment and to document results. 

This past Monday, there was an article in the local newspaper about eating nutritious food on a budget.   Essentially, if you know how to cook ingredients such as beans, rice and vegetables, you can create a healthy, nutritious meal that cost less than buying packaged or processed food that is less healthy.

We had a discussion about this at dinner not too long ago.  I can't remember what brought it up.  I mentioned as an example that I could buy a 10 pound bag of potatoes for about $2.50 from the grocery store and get about 6 meals out of it.  Of course, we would have other foods besides just the potatoes but I could make that bag of potatoes stretch much farther than a bag of potato chips that cost nearly $4 these days.  And the potato dishes are (for the most part) much healthier than the potato chips.

I'm grateful that I know how to cook and can make a good meal from a mess of raw ingredients.  I am grateful to have a safe and reliable food supply.  I hope to add to this knowledge in coming years by having a vegetable garden, fruit trees and berry bushes.