From many estimates, it appears we are now seeing the second generation of western adults that are either unable to cook, don’t think they have the time or are simply disinterested. Too many people merely survive on expensive, awful-tasting prepared foods when they could thrive on fast, fun, tasty meals prepared with inexpensive fresh ingredients.
My goal is to share meal ideas that can be prepared in less time than it takes for restaurant food to be delivered and with little more skill than it takes to heat frozen food in the microwave. You can cook and once you begin eating fresh (ideally organic) ingredients, you’ll realize how bad processed food actually tastes.
Now go get a glass of wine and check out some of the categories or just browse the blog for inspiration. If you have any questions or wish to share a great idea, please get in touch at kevin@www.kevskitchen.com. I’d love to hear from you!
About the Recipes (added 24 October 2020)
The more current recipes are written with ingredient weights versus volume measures. This makes the recipes easier to scale, dirties fewer dishes and brings consistent results. Think about a teaspoon of very fine salt versus a coarse or kosher salt. That would be a huge difference in saltiness whereas five grams of those same salts would all bring equal saltiness to the dish. Rather than using multiple measuring spoons and cups, you simply place your bowl or cooking vessel on the scale, add an ingredient by weight, zero the scale to add the next and repeat. To get started cooking this way you’ll need two scales: a standard kitchen scale for measurements over about twenty grams and a pocket or gram scale (drug dealer scale) for the lower weights such as spices.
A Note About Vegetable Oils (Added 23 September, 2017)
Anytime I list canola, grapeseed or other processed vegetable oil, please replace it with a cold-pressed, non-heated oil. Many are strongly flavoured as nature intended, but not ideal for the flavour profiles in the recipes. Olive oil is fantastic if you like the taste and when a more neutral oil is required, I find avocado to be very mild. Chosen Foods brand available at Costco is simply wonderful.
When I began writing recipes for this site, like most people, I was operating under the dogma that saturated fat is bad and cholesterol causes heart disease. In the past couple of years, learning about nutrition and metabolism has become a passion. In that time, I’ve learned the cholesterol-heart disease hypothesis is dead wrong and has never been more than an unproven, but great sounding theory that’s easy to sell with imagery like clogged pipes and such.
Current research is pointing to processed vegetable oils such as canola, grapeseed, soy and palm as being literal brain killers. When you think about it, it makes sense. How could oils that are extensively heated then, treated with powerful solvents to neutralize the odour possibly be good for your body? They aren’t and when you consume them, they replace/oxidize the fats that comprise much of your brain. Yes, vegetable oil is now being shown to be a major contributing factor in the increased incidence of degenerative brain diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. The scary thing is avoiding vegetable oils is difficult when you eat processed foods. Take a look. They’re in nearly everything because they’re cheap and easy to manipulate.
I could go on about how fat doesn’t make you fat and how if we ate as our ancestors did even just ten generations ago (not a long time in evolutionary terms) most of us would be eating loads of leafy greens and animal flesh. That means the whole animal, including collagen-rich meat cooked on the bone along with organ meats and loads of saturated fat. We wouldn’t be eating bread and starch every day just as we wouldn’t if left to fend for ourselves in the wilderness today.
I’ve linked to a couple of simplified summaries above, but if you’d like to learn more on your own, get in touch. I’d be happy to point you in the direction of some well-researched and cited works.
Happy cooking and healthy living,
Kevin