Opsec, this is how I learned to cook (you'll appreciate this story):
My wife and I would go out to various cafes around town--typically ma-and-pa places, usually foreign, and whenever we had something we liked, I would take a good look at it, analyze it, and figure out how to reverse-engineer it. (Consider my personality...).
I got pretty good at it, and can make all sorts of exotic dishes. Tomorrow for example we are having Phud Thai which of course is easy to make, but mine is pretty authentic.
All was well and good, until I started figuring out that all of us were in trouble. I started cutting back on luxurious ingredients. Something that contributed was that my hand has been somewhat forced, in part because few families can cook anymore--they buy ready-made junk--and in part because some ingredients are just disappearing anyway--maybe getting too expensive. In any case, it's getting hard to find certain ingredients. Plus, I am not willing to search, because it adds time and expense.
Something else that happened is that I decided I just had to simplify my life.
A few years ago, I decided that I wanted to come up with a repertoire of dishes that could easily be made out of global commodities (flour, rice, lentils, etc) enhanced with garden vegetables.
We could call it "New World Order Cuisine".
My idea was further refined to "anchor" meals around either rice (pilafs), bread, noodles or dumplings, or something pancake-like, like Injera or a Dosa. Maybe one more option: something between a sauce and stew served over starchy tubers or fruits (for tropical climates). Add seasonal vegetables and optional meat for a complete meal.
The reason is that I can come up with huge numbers of variations on those themes, and throw in whatever I just happen to have on hand. I like the idea of being flexible with whatever is on hand, better than the idea of going to the grocery store with a shopping list of ingredients for a recipe that specifically calls for them. I would always have flour and rice on hand. Another reason was to design recipes that have built-in complimentary proteins.
Now for some ancient history...
Back in the 1970s, the USA had already hit its own peak oil production. At the time, there was a lot of political activism going off in all sorts of directions. One group of political activists were concerned that the shift from US petroleum production, to foreign offshore production, would result in a shift in the balance of global power favoring "the Arabs". Of course it never happened, since the House of Saud was easy to control, and because the USA does not import oil from that far away.
But it motivated these activists to infiltrate other groups in the San Francisco Bay Area, and get them to promote a more-or-less plant-based diet, in order to use less petroleum to first raise crops to feed to livestock (corn and soy), and then raise the livestock.
More on these people later. Let's jump ahead:
The problem I have with what they were promoting, was that they wanted people to switch to a plant-based diet, and then take their economic savings (soybeans are cheap) and basically donate it to various causes completely contrary to their own self-interests.
I have a problem with that.
A viler evil to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as a virtue. A viler evil than to throw a man in a sacrificial furnace, is to demand that he leap in, of his own free will, and that he build the furnace besides.
--the character Francisco D'Anconia, Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
What I want to do is take some of the same ideas, but not only do it right this time (soybean-and-macaroni casserole is NEVER going to take off...), but apply the better ideas to helping people help themselves...as the only way they will ever be economically viable in a post-petroleum, massively competitive "globalized" world.
I am not ideologically-driven. Not promoting "vegetarianism", but rather, a diet based on what is most abundant. The purpose is to save lives when times get hard.
One thing interesting I am finding. I suspect my current, fairly lean-and-basic diet, is actually improving my health. I think several reasons for that, I might discuss later.
I am up very late (or very early) baking rolls for a project that my younger son has been recruited for. They are "due" later this morning.
