Announcement

I won't be able to update this week like I thought I would. I'm going out of town to visit family. I promise next week there will be sausage stuffed shells!

Adventure No.1: Risotto

I must admit, this is the second time I've made this dish. However, this time I made it a bit different from the original recipe found here. For starters, I didn't use peas because I don't like their disposition. I also don't like their taste. Secondly, I didn't use pearl barley (although I did the first time). No, I wanted to make a traditional risotto made from rice.

The shopping

Ideally, I would have made the risotto today so I could get most of what I could at the farmer's market.  Alas! My hunny's grandma is turning seventy-five today and we're going to her BBQ. So I went to a local organic market called Mama Jeans.  This place is a local hotspot and sells all sorts of goodies for hipster foodies and new domestics. I think my favorite item I found was the powdered peanut butter (why?).  As expected, everything was twice as much as you would find at a supermarket. But they also displayed where the produce came from, which was pretty cool. As far as I could tell, all of the produce came within the United States, and some came from within the metropolitan area.

So I started off with the rice. Turns out, you can't make risotto with just any rice. You have to make it with an Italian sounding rice called arborio rice. NBD, I thought. They might have it.

Holy Frack! That rice better have some special powers!

To say the least, Josh and I were very careful of how much we put in our bag. We put at least a pound in, which is about two cups, which, I found out later, was twice as much as I needed. But whatever. The rice was definitely the most expensive item on the list. The rest weren't exactly cheap, but we weren't checking to see how much they weighed. Especially since most the rest of the ingredients didn't cost per pound (minus the onion). 

After we left Mama Jean's, Hunny and I continued are regularly scheduled grocery shopping. For this risotto, I decided to make my own vegetable stock. I bought those ingredients at the regular supermarket for two reasons: 1) it's cheaper, and 2) I didn't see any carrots or celery at Mama Jean's. (I want to note, I was at the smaller location. Their main store has all the things including carrots and celery.)

The Cooking

So, making a stock isn't nearly as hard as you would think. I mean, when you think about making a stock as opposed to just buying some, it sounds much easier to just say, "Screw this hard work! I'm buying Swanson's TM." But really the whole "work" part is a sham. The most work you put into it is cutting the vegetables. And because it's stock, you don't even have to do a good job at it. The recipe I looked up required:

• 3 onions (I used one HUGE one)
• 3 medium sized carrots
• 3 celery stalks, minus the leafy bits
• a bulb of garlic (I just used a large clove)
• a bay leaf for aromatics (I used rosemary and thyme)

I chopped up my veggies and placed them in a stock pot with four cups of water.

T'was a thing of beauty.

The most intensive part of making a stock is time. After you finally bring this bad baby to a boil, you simmer it--forever! Or at least an hour. Stirring isn't an issue, but it helps to check up on it (and also smell your aromatics).  I really enjoyed making a stock as opposed to buying it and definitely loved the scent it left in my kitchen.

Once an hour had passed, my stock was ready. I drained it into a mixing bowl, then put it back in the pot on low for the risotto. It was at this point I realized I totally pissed away all my prep time for actually making the damned dish, so it say there for a bit while I did my prep work.

Prep work for risotto doesn't involve a lot, but it helps if you know how to finely chop an onion. I possess no such skills, so I just chopped it up as best I could. The recipe called for a single onion, but my onion was GINORMOUS, I only chopped a quarter of it.  Then I sauteed it in a table spoon of olive oil.

I recommend doing this on a medium heat, otherwise you end up burning your onions (which was what I learned the last time I made this dish). I stirred the onions often, but took the time to finish my prep work in chopping my chives. When I got my chives out, I realized something was wrong.

The didn't quite look like the chives I bought for the last dish. There were thick, flat, and wide. Not thin, round, and skinny. I turned over the package and realized that they were garlic chives not onion chives. And for a brief moment, I panicked. I weighed my options. I could a) scrap this project 2) go out and buy non-local onion chives, or Spoon) use them anyway. I went with Spoon and found that it didn't make a lick of difference. I then asked Hunny to mix my chopped chives with 4 oz. of cream cheese. He obliged.

Once the onions were translucent, I added my rice. You need a cup of rice for every four cups of stock (and vice versa). I sauteed the rice like the instructions told me (because I didn't go into this blind) then added my stock, and then stirred. Then added some more stock. Then stirred some more. Then stock, then stir. Stock, stir, stock, stir. I did this for twenty minutes, so you know. My arm hurt. And just to cut off any questions, the way you know to add more stock is when the rice is looking creamy.  Be sure to stir constantly, because that's how the expensive magic rice releases it's starch.

STIR MOTHERFUCKA!

Risotto needs to be al dente, which means it's firm to the bite, but not crunchy. It took me about 20 minutes to get it to that point. When it was firm enough, I added in my chives which were mixed in with the cream cheese. Adding the cream cheese made the creamy risotto that much creamier. For a moment, I was scared that there was too much liquid and my risotto would become soup. It didn't. 

Yummy!

You have to eat the risotto *immediately* otherwise it get's all gluey. It tasted great, but needed a little salt. Over all, I don't think I did too bad.

The Cost

Monetary cost

At first glance, the cost of the organic ingredients didn't seem to much. My total at Mama Jean's came to about $12.72. So about $13 if you want to round it up. Here is the itemized cost.

• Onion- $1.74 ($1.49 per pound @ 1.19 lbs)
• Cream cheese- $3.68
• Chives- $2.49
• Magic rice- $4.25
• Tax- $0.56

It doesn't seem so bad, until you realize that this risotto could serve 4 people max. So it's a little over $4 per person per serving. Let's look at some alternatives from other stores.

• Onion- $1.68 ($0.88 per pound @ 1.98 lbs from Walmart)
• Cream cheese -$1.19 (from Aldi)
• Chives- $2.24 (from Walmart)

The only exception to the rule is the rice. Although you could make risotto our of long grain rice, it won't have the right consistency since it's not made from dreams and gold. It also won't release the starches. Regardless, at Aldi, 3lbs or long grain rice goes for about $1.79.

And this isn't even adding in the cost of the stock which came to a total of  $8.84 (w/o tax), including the aromatic herbs. Minus the herbs, it cost $4.36 (w/o tax). 

Temporal cost

This dish costs a lot of time. I mean a *lot* of it. Even if you don't make your own stock, it's thirty minutes for cook time. With the stock, add over an hour. Prep time for both the stock and the risotto cost about 20 to 30 minutes give or take a few. It's long, arduous, and it wears your arm out.

Conclusions

I won't lie, this project showed me a glimpse of why new domesticity is so popular. Making this dish was fun and yummy! The aromatics of the stock, the taste of the risotto, and the satisfaction of my belly all made for a good time and it did make me feel good. But I have the means to have such fun. I have the time and the money. Most don't have that. So the score is thus{

New Domesticity- 0 

Reality- 1

Next week: Sausage stuffed pasta shells.

The New Domisticity Movement

A few years back, I read a book by Barbara Kingsolver titled Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.  In it, Kingsolver chronicles a whole year of eating locally: buying at farmer's markets, raising her own turkeys, and making her own food items. I remember being entranced by the idea of making and eating wholesome foods and knowing where your food came from. At the time, I could find no fault with Kingsolver's disposition on eating locally and engaging in new domesticity.

Not so much, now.

As the new domesticity movement gains momemtum, I'm more aware of the problems within.  It is, by and large, a very classist movement. It is no longer an economical advantage to can your own food, sew your own clothes, make your own items. The idea behind new domesticity is that it provides alternatives to corporate materialism and encourages environmentalism and overall improves the life of it's participants. But who can participate?  Not everyone can buy fresh fruits and vegetables at their local farmer's market. Not everyone can afford a decent sewing machine or even the materials. And that's just currency. Only a few can afford the time it takes to make artisan bread in a Dutch oven or cut out a pattern. The New Domesticity seems to be made for folks who can afford it so that they can feel better about the lives they live. It doesn't really do much for anyone else.

So my purpose in creating this blog is to show just how much time and money it costs to do it the "old fashioned way."

Rules I've set out for myself:

1. I will do one project/update one project once a week.
2. I will buy locally when I can. That means if it's available and affordable locally, I'll buy it and use it.
3. If I cannot fulfill rule #2, I will buy it where I can find it. 
4. I will monitor the cost of time and money for each project.

My first project will be cooking. Once a week, I will cook a meal made from scratch and blog the entire process from buying materials to the finished project. Each project will tabulate the cost for both time and money and will also weigh this against the alternatives for those who cannot afford it.

First up: Cream cheese and chive risotto.