Today I noticed a recipe for Steak Sauce in my inbox. I thought it might be interesting; I always like to make things from scratch. Less additives, and less costly too, usually. Ew- I was a bit disappointed to find out that the major ingredient in this "steak sauce" was Campbell's Condensed Tomato Soup. Loaded with sodium, don't you know...
Ah, but "Campbell's Kitchen" is one of the "partners" at allrecipes.com, where the recipe was coming from. So I guess that explains the promotion for a recipe using stuff that's already been "prepared". Personally, I would classify "cooking" as preparing your own recipes with basic ingredients. If you're just using processed foods as ingredients, perhaps it should be called "assembling"?
Also, if you're big on the Locavore movement, trying to eat more and more of whatever is grown locally (and not shipped miles and miles from farms to processing plants to warehouses to grocery stores to home kitchen), then it makes sense to prepare more foods truly from scratch. But, of all the canned foods to consider using, I must cast my vote for tomato paste. Consider that some farm out there is growing tons of tomatoes and processing them in no doubt a highly efficient way that can hardly be duplicated in the home kitchen. The product that is shipped is concentrated, so no extra gas is spent transporting a watered-down product. That's all good, right?
As we aspire to do good in our communities, respecting the planet by reducing waste and pollution, perhaps we need to put our minds to it, to see what changes, even small ones, we can make. Switching to recipes that call for more basic ingredients is a start. But this concept is harder to sell; basically, there's just not as much money in it. Less middlemen.
When our society revolves less around money and profit at any expense, perhaps more folks will live more righteously in tune with the planet. We can only hope!
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