If you're wanting to tackle a lot of environmental and health issues of our time, a really good way to tackle a few things at once is making a greater portion of your food from scratch.
Making your own bread, pasta etc gives you greater power to avoid packaging, palm oil, sugar, salt and to save money. Making your own is seriously satisfying, delicious too and great way to gain better connection to our food.
Lots of people genuinely do not have time to make their own. Do not feel guilty. Many work long hours, and making their own is just not practical. However, if you have time to watch two hours of TV in the evenings, you have time to make your own food. There are solutions, do you not have to be in the kitchen all the time... freeze, preserve and meal prep your way into a different system. Worryingly there is an increasing number of premade items available in the supermarket. By vetoing premade food as much as you can, as we said before you hit a lot of ethical nails on the head. Many processed food is good in moderation too. By making your own, this perspective is closer to home.. it's harder to eat 10 homemade cookies than 10 from a packet... trust me ;)
Common things that can be bought premade & packaged but are super easy to make at home and common ingredients found in bulk shops!
- Pasta
- Bread
- Crackers
- Chips/ Roast Potatoes/ Mash Potatoes
- Muesli
- Popcorn
- Pizza
- Cakes
- Biscuits
- Sushi
Some of the things we do to make things a little less plasticky and much easier and time efficient to cook more ourselves...
- Chop up heaps of onions and freeze (do not keep in the fridge).
- Pre make our breakfasts for a few days in the form of overnight oats.
- Pre freeze all smoothie ingredients together, mostly things a bit squishy and hence perfect for blending.
- Make bread in the evenings. Bake and slice, and chuck in the freezer. They can be defrosted and toasted as needed!
- Meal prep for the week with whole meals!
- Premake falafels and freeze.
- Make heaps of crackers, freeze some cook some keep some.
All of these techniques are also incredible ways to reduce food waste too! Meal prep is our best method to plan out what we eat (less stressful) and maintain efficiency with food purchasing.
If you're a nervous cook, the best thing you can do is TRY! We all make mistakes in the kitchen, its natural. The more you cook the better you'll get. It's also an amazing learning curve where you'll get a better feel for how certain ingredients work, what can get heated quickly, what goes in at the end etc etc. Experimenting with small quantities is the way to better your confidence and your confidence.
So instead of reaching for the pre made plastic wrapped chips, get some fresh potatoes! It honestly is so so simple.