Cooking with Fresh Ingredients

05 Sep Cooking with Fresh Ingredients

Making great dishes and meals requires time, patience, and the best ingredients you can find. Obviously, fresh mushrooms are preferable to canned ones whenever you have access to them.

But you don’t need to break the bank to make all of your favorite dishes. Many items can be very expensive when out of season, and some are just expensive all the time.

Where you find your fresh ingredients can help cut the cost of what you are buying, and sometimes it is necessary to visit multiple stores to find every ingredient. I recommend making a few stops in order to get everything you need.

Where to Find the Best Fresh Ingredients

Shopping for all the fresh ingredients you need at your regular grocery store is certainly convenient, but often you only have a limited selection. Supermarkets charge you more because they can.

Plus, items labeled organic can be deceiving. The term organic may refer only to the seeds, the soil, or the fertilizer being used. Where the product came from can also be unclear.

Farmers Market

Every city and town has a farmers market, as do many communities within these cities. Here you can find fresh produce, dairy, meats, and homemade goods.

Rather than shop for everything on your list at a grocery store, I recommend that you support your community by going to a farmers market. You will get a much better deal, items are rarely pre-packaged, and they have all been grown very close to where you are buying them.

You can often find other great freshly made food items, like pies, jam, juices, and dairy items. Every cent you spend there goes directly to the person who grew the food and transported it to you.

Local Markets

Most towns also have open markets, corner markets that sell fresh fruits and vegetables, and other areas where you can find all sorts of wonderful fresh foods. If you live in a larger area, you can find lovely ethnic foods, coffee, and so much more.

These places are much less expensive as they often only deal in produce, fish, or cheeses. By shopping at these local markets, you open yourself up to so many more options, lower prices, and an overall wonderful experience.

When you shop local, you support your community and you are not paying the overhead for an entire supermarket. I have found that it’s always worth the effort to stop by a local market, and when shopping for fresh ingredients to make one of the recipes found in my cookbook Cooking for the Family: All You Need Is Love, But a Great Meal Doesn’t Hurt, locally grown, fresh ingredients just can’t be beat.

Grow Your Own

It’s frankly amazing how much the balcony gardener can produce. If you have a balcony, patio, proper backyard garden, sunroom, or even just a sunny window, you can grow all kinds of your own vegetables and fresh herbs.

You just need a few pots, some sun, the seeds, and a bit of love and patience to easily grow tomatoes, peppers, herbs, garlic, leeks, lettuce, radishes, and so many more fresh vegetables.

If you have the space, put up a little greenhouse or convert a small room or sunroom into a space where you can grow some fresh produce. Many of these foods, like peppers and tomatoes, can be grown directly from the seed you remove from the vegetable.

If you have a garden where you can grow a lot of food, think about a share program with your neighbors. Perhaps you can trade your zucchini for a pie with a neighbor who loves to bake. You could also consider giving your berries to someone who will return them as jam.

I’ve found that growing your own food gives you control over it all, so you know what is on it and in it. There is something so satisfying about picking your first cherry tomatoes off the vine.

Getting Fresh

If you can’t always find the ingredients you need or you can’t afford them, make do with what you can. Canned tomatoes and frozen peas work well, and often people won’t even know the difference.

I’ve found that it’s important not to skimp when the ingredients you need are the star of the dish. Instead, you can make amendments somewhere else. Or, make something else and get those ingredients in season. It’s not always worth buying out of season, as the produce is often grown under different and unnatural conditions. If you’d like more cooking tips and a variety of delicious recipes that use fresh ingredients that you can make at home with your family, check out my cookbook Cooking for the Family: All You Need Is Love, But a Great Meal Doesn’t Hurt. After all, the best meals are those we share with loved ones. Making a great dish is only second to those with whom you share it. No one will care if you don’t find all the ingredients, as long as they can all share the meal with you.