Seth's Kitchen: Intro

I have a funny life. When I was an undergrad I was a total meathead, surfed a ton, lived in the dorms all 4 years cause I could check the surf from my bed. This meant I ate in the dining halls, food was essentially just fuel. During the summers I began to cook, but not much. Graduated in '96. After college I figured out how to cook by reading a gazillion cookbooks. Also had a rule that I had to eat everything, no waste if it wasn't tasty, this encouraged me to make good food! Around 2001 Jamie Oliver's first cookbook introduced me to organics. 2003 I moved to IV and began shopping at the food co-op and the farmer's market. Around 2009 I started gardening and now a pretty substantial amount of the produce I consume I grow. So ingredient quality is going up, which helps a ton. All told, in the last 19 years of my life ~98% of the food I have eaten was cooked by me or an amigo/amiga, and at this point pretty much everything I eat is organic. Cooking/gardening are massively important to me as it allows me to control ingredient quality/ethics, and do so affordably. Organic, free range, grass fed, ARE annoying elitist terms, but they also mean the item is real, it was grown without chemical/synthetic crap, and the plant/animal lived a good life. And really, in 1920 everything was organic and grass fed, and people cooked, so what is elitist now really should instead be considered normal. It sucks that in the modern age real sustainable food has such a premium price and junk food is super cheap and accessible. It pains me that home cooking is a vanishing art. Cooking/food have been great for me, I'm super shy, but sharing food makes things easier. Sara and I were talking about this and she suggested a Seth's Kitchen series of posts, so here goes, practical/accessible cooking/sustainability/gardening.

topics:
kale, yogurt, red sauce, thai curry, sorbets, dal+grains, water (pasta water, rinse water, grey water), cooked greens, pizza, de-glazing/stainless steel, refried beans, fermented stuff, emeril sauce, chile pickle, comal, brown rice, tarts, list/pics of cookware - pots, spatulas, gadgets that i actually use, roast chicken, stock, vietnamese, bosch (standmixer, stickblender)