“Think ingredients…”

There finally seems to be a rise in the “think local” movement in Canada, with corporations realizing that they can turn this to their advantage (as in this ad), and as much as I agree with the idea, I think there is something even more pressing and more basic that we need to change in the way we think about food: ingredients. The “think ingredients” approach can also include local ingredients, but puts the focus not solely on the provenance of food but also on the ingredients that make up the food we consume.

When is the last time that you cooked something at home that had more than 15 ingredients? How about 30? Personally, I don’t think I have ever made something with that many ingredients. And yet we consume large amounts of processed and prepared foods that contain such high numbers of “ingredients”.

Point in case: I found an envelope of onion soup in my cupboard with the following ingredients: dried onions, corn syrup solids, corn starch, salt, monosodium glutamate, beef fat, hydrolized soy/corn/wheat protein, yeast extract, colour, dextrose, sugar, spice, disodium guanylate, disodium inosinate, hydrogenated soybean/cottonsead oil and sulphites. Wow! When you make it yourself, you take some unsalted butter and caramelize onions slowly until they turn a rich brown. This makes them naturally sweet. Then you add beef broth, maybe a little bit of pepper; and that’s it.

So, the idea is also to make things from basic ingredients as much as possible and feasible. Not only is this fun (if you are a do-it-yourselfer), it is also healthy and fresh, home-made food always tastes fantastic. In my opinion, the path to healthy living is to have a good relationship with food, that food be a pleasure to find, make and eat.

To elaborate on these ideas, I will prepare a series of posts on making things that we have forgotten how to make. Things as basic as butter and mustard and other simple recipes for making things that we consume regularly like granola bars and bread. Stay tuned.

• The long-lost art of butter making
• How to make sugar from sugarcane