PREFACE

In 2016 I gave up going to the grocery store for an entire year to see if it was possible to better connect with the local food grown within and around my city. In this year I learned much about growing my food, sourcing local ingredients, and how to preserve the seasons; all for my health and the health of the planet.

It was not easy, but in the year of my swearing off grocery stores, I realized why City Dwellers found difficulty in cooking simply. They lacked:

Access to local and fresh ingredients

Time to prepare food from scratch

Money to afford the best

Space to grow, cook, and store food

Quality foods available locally

Shelf life to keep foods long enough to prevent food waste

Routine shopping, prepping, and cooking consistently.

and the skills to cook food simply.

I have to admit that while I have always desired to be a chef ever since I was a little girl nature and grocery stores have always intrigued me more than the cooking itself. I love ingredients. I love to admire their colors, textures, and scents. I am nothing short of obsessed with perusing a gourmet market and finding new ingredients to sink my teeth into.

My journey as a chef began in 2010 when I was hired as a cook at a gourmet food and flower market in Berkley, MI. This is where I was able to nourish my passion for ingredients. I would walk the market after my shift had ended chatting with the butchers, cheesemongers, and produce clerks learning all I could, and then checking out with a few items to cook with them at home.

Over a decade later, I crave this experience again. However, my grocery store encounters are a far cry from gourmet.

Now upon entering most grocery stores, we are greeted with carts that rattle, bright fluorescent lights, subpar produce and processed food, so much processed food, and the grocery clerks, most cannot identify a beet. The experience is stressful and after a long day’s work, you just want to fill your cart and go home.

After fighting through the market, we arrive home to ask ourselves “What’s for dinner?” We open the fridge over and over hoping that eventually, a genie will appear with a full meal already prepared or we grab our phones to scroll countless recipes online in hope we find one that sounds simple enough to prepare and one that we have all the ingredients for.

We repeat this process weekly, if not daily and it is exhausting.

It’s no reason that being a chef is a full-time job. It’s why the rich and royal never cooked for themselves. We City Dwellers, are fighting a losing battle.

For us to find freedom amongst our vegetables, we must reset it all. The way we approach cooking, our kitchens, our grocery stores, and the art of dining amongst our prepared creations.

This guide to cooking simply is just the beginning of creating a better food system.

In the pages to come, we will reset our kitchens, learn how to better navigate the market, learn about ingredients, and most of all how to cook them simply.

Throughout this book, I may reference ways that I cook in my restaurant kitchens, and let me be very clear this book is not meant to make you a chef, though if you are one or aspiring to be one the lessons in this book will certainly come in handy. but I would be silly to think there any difference between any two kitchens commercial or otherwise.

Now that you know a little about me I hope to learn more about you too. I encourage you to chat with me chapter by chapter as after all this book only works if it works for you too.

Tell me a little about your experience shopping and cooking in your day-to-day life. What do you struggle with most? What do you love or desire to cultivate more in the kitchen?