On food and foodies...

I came across this blog post here, about the nature of cooking and being a foodie. There is a weird kind of snobbishness about this that I see across the political spectrum.  But I have been on the receiving end of fights about cooking being something of an elitist activity.  As money has been tight over the last few months in the O'Neill household we've been cooking a LOT more, I've also been a lot more practical about shopping.  The arrival of the basement in the new house has meant that I can buy canned and large scale basics at Costco in ways I'd never have been able to in the apartment.

The other issue is that both of us have put on historic amounts of weight over the last decade and we're trying to lose them.  Cooking at home makes it a LOT easier to manage what you eat.

So, we've been cooking at home and mostly loving it.  The freezer is full of meals, I've dusted off my cook books and been working on a new recipe a week, especially from the Indian cook book.  It takes a little more time, but interestingly our monthly grocery bill has gone down from when we'd eat out more and plan less.  And, so far, over the course of the year we've both lost over 6kgs...  slow, boring, 0.5kg a week loss.  Not bad, especially given the run-in with pneumonia and the 3 long business trips.

I like cooking, I like creating something interesting and I like seeing how tastes go together.  It's not always convenient and we've occasionally given in to the take out menu, but we've saved a small fortune over the year.

Now I'm looking forward to the weather getting better so I can clean off the BBQ and start that again too.