Let's do it...again.

I started this blog over a year ago and though I started it with gusto, I managed to let it fall by the wayside. 


I am officially announcing the relaunch of Domeschtik. 


This time around I will refrain from the random posts about my camping trips or vacations etc. If it isn't related to domesticity it will not be here. This time around I will be sticking to the original mission: my attempt to impart my basic culinary knowledge to the twentysomethings who are lost in the kitchen and afraid of answering the question "What's for dinner?". This will be writing about cooking in a way that I hope will be appealing to young adults. I will tell you now that there will be an emphasis on healthy cooking and most of the recipes will be vegetarian.


The next few entries will be what I call "back to basics". Discussions about how to read a recipe, how to plan what you're going to eat for the week, how to grocery shop without taking 3 hours or without making you want to stab the hipster blocking the aisle at Whole Foods. We will also discuss why you need to spend money on good knives and why you simply can't have red cups at your parties anymore. (Seriously.) 


What it really comes down to is outlined in my first entry, but for now, I will leave you with this quote from an NYT review of Mark Bittman's book Food Matters:

Of all the challenges confronting the "Food Matters" plan for "responsible eating" -- agribusiness lobbying and marketing, the low price of subsidized junk food, even evolutionary factors that attract us to high-calorie foods -- probably the single most obdurate is the fact that so many contemporary Americans simply don't know how to cook. By "cook," I don't mean being able to concoct an impressive dinner the one night a month you have guests over while otherwise subsisting on nuked Lean Cuisine. Real home cooking means having a good repertoire of reliable, quick, uncomplicated recipes and understanding enough of the underlying principles to improvise when needed. It means knowing how to stock a pantry and plan your menus so that you shop for groceries only once a week. It's a set of skills manifested as an attitude, something you can acquire only through regular practice, and it's the one thing that can make a person truly at ease in a kitchen. (An example of this everyday expertise is Bittman's suggestion that, when determining how long to steam a vegetable, you "try bending or breaking whatever it is you're planning to cook; the more pliable the pieces are, the more quickly they will become tender.")

In short, this is home economics -- although when I was taught that subject in high school, our time was largely wasted on learning how to bake perfect biscuits, a special-occasion food if I ever heard of one. Like writing, driving, touch typing and balancing a checkbook, basic cooking is a life skill (not an art or hobby) that everybody needs, and it ought to be taught in public schools as a matter of course. The fact that cooking can also be a craft, featuring a certain amount of self-expression, or that contemporary star chefs have been exalted to a degree far exceeding their actual cultural worth, shouldn't be allowed to obscure that humbler truth.