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Can Those Cans

Last week I talked about how to recognize excellent food when dining out in order to elevate the basic concept of eating out of the humdrum “feed the machine” place that it languishes in for far too many of us. I advised becoming incredibly picky about food when dining out and becoming what I called a “food snob”.

This week, we are going to start learning how to bring that food snobbery home. Our first step is deceptively simple:

Stop purchasing food in metal containers

Yep. Now that you are not eating so many meals from crappy restaurants, it is time to make some changes in how you deal with your food at home. If you have made it past step 1 without copping out with some excuse about your hectic life or how you really do love boiled-meat fast-food burgers, then you have likely stocked your kitchen with as many cans and boxes as you have space for, so that your dinner is as simple as open, microwave, inhale.

Well, that ends now.

The elimination of canned and tinned goods from your food life will forever change your relationship to food. Trust me. If you are following along with this series and doing the steps, this is the point where either you start seeing serious benefits from doing this and become a convert, or this is the point where you decide that I am a complete nutjob and stop reading this series.

Through the elimination of tinned and canned goods, you will no longer have to contend with any of these:

• condensed soups
• mushy vegetables
• flavorless chilis
• potted meats
• cheap pre-made pasta sauces

But what will you do without these things? Well, you’ll have to get in your kitchen and cook them yourself. No longer will your kitchen be somewhere to store beer and throw away your junk mail. It will become the center of your culinary life; the axis around which your food snobbery will orbit.

You may have considered doing some cooking in the past, but somehow all your attempts to do so have ended with thoughts like “My kitchen is too small”, “I don’t have time to cook” or “ooh, look, Gilligan’s Island is on”. Well, no more excuses, it’s time to start doing something about it.

You might have some cheap pots and pans gathering dust in a cupboard, and maybe some mega-lo-mart dishes you never get around to washing, but you lack the tools and skills to actually prepare anything worth eating. Heck, you can’t even find your “What To Do When Mom’s Not There” cookbook, can you?

Don’t worry. None of it is nearly as hard or as complex as you have been telling yourself it is. By getting closer to your food, becoming more directly involved with it, you will reap enormous rewards in a very short period of time, and like the guys that hang out in the magic shop, you will be in on the secret that it really isn’t all that hard to do…

Next Week: Setting Up Your Kitchen

Read the rest of this series:

• Part 1 - Scheduling
• Part 2 - Variety
• Part 3 - Moderation
• Part 4 - Being Picky
• Part 5 - Can The Canned Goods
• Part 6 - Get Your Kitchen In Order
• Part 7 - Think Like A Chef
• Part 8 - Technique
• Part 9 - Mise en Place