Start in the kitchen: good, better, best

As I shared in this post, the first step toward living a simple life is not purging your closets or getting chickens or even starting a garden, but to start in the kitchen. Read the other posts in this series here.

One of the easiest things you can do to simplify your kitchen is to think about the ingredients you use to make your family’s favorite recipes. Choose one item on the ingredients list and ask yourself:

“Is this a good option, a better option, or the best option?”

If you’re choosing to make a meal, snack, dessert, or drink from scratch instead of something pre-made or pre-packaged, I’d say you’re already at the “good” option. Way to go! So how can you improve on it?

Let’s use pizza for example.

• A “fine” option would be a pre-made, frozen pizza in a cardboard box from the grocery store. Hey it’s still food, it still gives your body protein and energy!
• A “good” option would be takeout. You’re supporting the local economy, and the pizza is created and baked fresh.
• A “better” option is to buy a pre-made crust, jarred pizza sauce, bagged shredded cheese, and other ingredients for toppings to assemble yourself.
• A “best” option would be to make the crust from scratch, pop open a jar of home-canned tomato sauce, and top with homemade mozzarella cheese, home-grown peppers, and fresh basil from a windowsill pot.

Now I do understand there needs to be a balance between best price and best quality. My family lives on a very tight budget (a Christian-school-teacher salary will do that to you), and I’ll admit we cut corners in some places to make room in others.

In the pizza example above? I do make my own crust, I use the peppers I diced up and froze over the summer, and I just recently got a basil plant for my kitchen window. But we have a favorite store-bought jarred pizza sauce we love, and I buy packaged pepperoni and pre-shredded cheese.

One step at a time!

Also remember that time is money. It’s an afternoon of work if I want to make homemade pizza, from mixing the dough and letting it rise to frying up bacon. We used to have “Friday night pizza night” every week, and eventually I just got burned out from a long week of other commitments. We switched up our nights, and now Saturday is pizza night and Friday is movie night (with popcorn and a basic charcuterie board). We also do get takeout pizza every month or two.

Individual ingredients within our pantries can often be improved, and this is something I’m very slowly working on. Unfortunately, organic, un-processed ingredients often cost more than their conventional counterparts. Do I buy organic cheese and pepperoni? No. But my pizza crust is made with unbleached flour, real salt, and pure cane sugar.

Thankfully, shopping options like ALDI and Azure Standard are making it possible for these better ingredients to be available at decent prices.

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Simplifying your kitchen ingredients can be as easy or difficult as you want to make it. Most people don’t have the time, desire, or finances to throw away everything conventional in their kitchen and immediately replace them with the best, most-non-processed options.

So take it slow. Take one ingredient that you use regularly and make one step up, from fine to good, good to better, better to best. And once you’ve landed on a suitable replacement, choose the next ingredient, and the next, and the next.

Your recipes and your body will thank you.

What ingredient or recipe are you going to think about shifting first?