The benefits of home cooking include time, budget, nutrition, and sustainability. Home cooking is an approachable style of preparing food that balances cooking from scratch and utilizing time saving convenience foods to making delicious wholesome meals.
From Scratch Cooking
Cooking from scratch, means taking base, whole food ingredients and making a meal or other food with it. No premade mixes or highly processed food. Many times cooking from scratch requires you to cook with seasonal items. Very often from scratch cooking uses high quality, locally sourced meat. For us this is freezer meat raised locally or on our farm. This is a really great way to get delicious tasting food and save money at the grocery store. However cooking from scratch all of the time can be less than achievable if you work outside of the home.
My idea of home cooking is doing what I can to make meals from whole food ingredients, as much as I can, when I can, to nourish my family. And I just don’t worry about the rest.
Limiting Highly Processed Foods
I think at this point we all know that having a diet with too many highly processed foods is not good for us. Home cooking allows you to prioritize whole foods over convenience foods. Convenience foods are those that have already been processed in some manner to make them more convenient for busy cooks. This can range from pre-chopped veggies to TV dinners. I am big believer in giving myself grace, especially in this busy season of life. We eat 80-90% whole foods, three meals a day, seven days a week. So the other 10-20% can be whatever makes life easier and tastier!
Home Canning: The Original Convenience Foods
I want to stress here that I do use convenience food quite frequently; canned beans, frozen veggies, store bought sauces. However, I try to be choosy about those convenience foods to be sure I’m getting more nutritional bang for my buck. You won’t find me turning my nose up at pre-chopped butternut squash or canned fruit. But I do also have a secret weapon; homemade canned foods and mixes. Home canning is a great way to add convenience foods to your pantry without adding highly processed foods. I always have whole tomatoes, tomato juice, green beans, salsa, apple butter and jams, pickles (and dilly beans) and my favorite cowboy candy. These items are so wonderful to have on hand for quick and wholesome weeknight meals.
Meal Planning, Meal Prep, and Grocery Shopping
If you’re like me you don’t have time for extensive meal plans, marathon meal prepping and constant trips to the grocery store. So how in the heck do you cook every night of the week without going crazy? Have no fear, I work off of the farm full time and my oldest child has entered the “afterschool activities” phase. I know how busy weeknights can be. I’m not perfect, but I’ll share my best tips for simple doable meal planning, meal prep, grocery budgets and lists. Anything that saves me time, money or sanity… you’ll be the first to know!
Zero Waste Cooking
It is important to me that my kitchen be as sustainable as possible and that little to no food goes to waste. The home cooking method allows me to get creative with my food scraps and leftovers. I often freeze vegetable scraps for homemade broth and turn leftover meat into soups. Additionally by buying little to no processed foods, I don’t end up with as much packaging from the store. Creating a low waste or zero waste kitchen is easier when you buy whole food ingredients in bulk.
Home Cooking Recipes
My home cooking recipes need to be tasty, simple, and reliable. I don’t have time for complicated or lengthy preparation meals. (Check out one of my favorite dinner shortcuts.) I also need to know my recipe will turn out every time like these no-fail yeast rolls. No time for a do-over here. We’ve got three hungry farm kids (and a hungry farmer)! Lastly I need to know that my recipe will be tasty and enjoyable for my whole family. I’m lucky to have kids who aren’t extremely picky. They go through phases like all kids, but they know good food when they taste it!
My idea of home cooking is simply that. Tasty food, cooked at home with real ingredients, and made with love. (Like this delicious apple skillet cake.) So if you’re looking for ways to save on your food budget, want to eat more whole foods, create less waste in your kitchen, or you’re simply looking for some quick easy home cooked dinner ideas, I hope you’ll find inspiration here. Consider joining my mailing list so you never miss a recipe!
