the cooks

Our kitchen is tiny, our budget is small, and our appetite for yummy home cooked food immense. Somewhere along the way seeing Lucy, Lily and Lena grow, both Mama and Papa decided to make it a point to prepare a dinner from scratch and serve it on a dining table. Every day at six o’clock.
And that’s what we do. We cook, we eat, dig in and dish out. The affair is mostly noisy and always smells good.

We slowly changed our eating habits until even the frozen (organic) pizza was phased out. We made the point to friends of ours that what we cook should be tasty for all of us and that the girls will end up eating what we prepare. They can only say “no” so many times. Now that we share our adventures on this blog, the heat in the kitchen has been cranked up. We talk much more about food amongst ourselves and to friends; we find new places to shop fresh locally grown ingredients and meat from animals raised on pastures. We hope that through the blog we get to exchange about cooking with more people, receive more feedback and ideas, and by sharing help others to live as tummy-happy as we do.


As an insight into our simple routine and to compare your own insane schedule to how we slice and dice this thing, here are a few steps we take and have worked well for us so far. Since both Mama and Papa are working, we shop at the weekend. We try to hit the cheaper groceries, preferable those that offer organic fair, and occasionally local markets and co-op groups of local farmers. This is all in keeping with our wallet, time, and convenience. And we make a lot of compromises, not to be overwhelmed or discouraged. We have figured out that small changes in our routine end up being more sustainable. We spent up to $200 for the whole week on ingredients. That includes breakfast and lunch. For 3 girls and 2 parents.
To know what to purchase we make a meal plan every Saturday that takes us through the week. For weekdays we pick out recipes that should take us about half an hour to prepare. Both Mama and Papa have been fortunate enough having a work schedule that fits and the girls activities that make this happen. The rest is easy, now that we are showing up and the fridge is full, all we have to do is sharpen the knife, put on the apron, and start cooking and eating. By doing so, we love to touch everything with out hands, to measure by taste and feel, to wait for the good fragrance, discover textures, and school our tastes. We hope that at some point we can rely more and more on our own experiences and less on full recipes. But for now we are hungry to learn.

Papa has widened his joy with hurling around the pots and pans, and it is mostly him who asks the three girls to help. Mama still has to fix the pizza once a week, now from scratch, since she makes the best, and fills in when Papa comes home late from work.

With the blog we hope to learn, hear, and taste new ideas, and about the trials and tribulations from others. We won’t ever stop cooking and eating and so we might as well try to improve the ride.

Or as A.J. Liebling put it once (and even though we try to be mindful of our health): "The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite. Without this, it is impossible to accumulate, within the allotted span, enough experience of eating to have anything worth setting down. Each day brings only two opportunities for field work, and they are not to be wasted minimizing the intake of cholesterol. They are indispensable, like a prizefighter's hours on the road."

Happy cooking and thanks for sharing,
LLLLT (Lucy, Lily, Lena, Liz, and Tobias)