Hello Interwebz!!  Welcome to Erin Plays With Food where I hope to take the mystery and anxiety out of the kitchen.  Where hopefully all of us, as a population, can get back to making real meals with real food in our own homes.

Yeah, I know, no one really gives a flying rat’s patootie about what I have to say.  I’m cool with that.  This is something I promised my brother I would do years ago (way back in the dark ages when I was still doing HTML), but never once thought about a blogging platform to get the job done.  I had a whole website designed around it.  So it never really happened.  Now he’s no longer with us, and now I feel compelled to carry through with my promise of over a decade ago.

To give you fair warning, this is a site showing you the basics of how to feed yourself.  We’re talking everything from homemade mashed potatoes to hamburgers to soups and stews.  This is not Creative Cooking 101.  This is not pretty plating and eye candy.  This is simply a promise I made to him to show the world that you don’t have to eat out of a bag, a box, or a drive-thru.  I’m in the midwest here folks — yes, I enjoy a good fish and salad dinner as much as the next foodie, but I also enjoy a meat and taters dinner or a good ol’ hearty stew on a cold snowy evening.  This is completely and totally about the **nourishment** you’re supposed to be receiving from your food.  I do not cook with calorie content in mind, I cook with nutrient content in mind.  Well, except for tuna casserole and chocolate cake… but, cake.

Fats, good fats – not those rancid frankenoils that are so cheap – are my friend.  I will use a metric butt-ton of butter.  There will be coconut oil.  There will be bacon drippings and lard.  There will be all those things that your grandparents and their grandparents used with no detrimental effects to their health.  What you will not see is what I like to refer to as the “not-food” fats.  If it’s made in a factory and marketed to me, it’s probably in the not-food category.  And sugar.  Very little sugar.  Sugar not only has no nutritional value, it pulls nutrients OUT of your body in order to be processed during digestion.  It’s very much a not-food.  But… cake.

I suppose now would be a good time to tell you I’m a huge fan of Weston A. Price.  He had this food thing figured out 80-90 years ago.  You can’t argue with the pictures and his observations of people around the world.  So I’ve jettisoned the modern concepts of “healthy” eating and simply adopted the mindset that the middle of the grocery is an evil, evil place and that fermented foods are the original health food.  I like gut bugs — super interesting critters — I grow many of their pre-gut incarnations on my counter 😀

So, now that we’ve determined that I will not be garnishing every plate with parsley and an orange slice (how outdated is that anyway??), that the photos will not belong in a magazine, that this is real food, using mostly whole ingredients, cooked and prepared as easily and as simply as possible to fit in with the modern busy schedule, that this is just FOOD, unprocessed and unadulterated, and if you’re still here, well, carry on then.  Just enjoy your cooking but most of all, enjoy your eating.

And ya know… if you’re in touch with the “other side,” well, hey… say “Hi” to my brother for me, would ya?