As I’ve pointed out before, processed and prepackaged foods usually have something in them you’d prefer not to be eating.  In the case of many non-dairy “milks” such as soy, rice, or almond milk, that’s the seaweed-derived thickener carrageenen.  Carrageenen is interesting enough to me that I’ll devote an entire post to it in the near future so you can revel in all the gory details, but for the moment I’ll just say that I have not been favorably impressed with the results of the research on carrageenen.  Because our household attempts to keep dairy consumption as a pretty small part of our diet, that meant that I took some time last weekend to whip up some homemade almond milk.  It’s surprisingly simple, and it does have some side benefits beyond carrageenan avoidance, as you’ll see at the end of the post.

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I’m going to be honest here.  Because I really do like things simple, trying to figure out which processed foods I could buy if I cared about fats was pretty much the deal-breaker for all processed foods.  It turned out that it was easier to make my own food than to decipher a lot of the information on fats.  Seriously.

Basically, when you get into fats, things get slippery.

Ha.

Puns aside, I will do my durndest to boil this information down to the bare essentials.

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Here’s something that shouldn’t come as a shock to you (not least because it’s one of my favorite talking points): Processed foods are generally a bad idea.  Even when you think they’re a good idea, they probably aren’t.  You’re better off skipping the heavily-processed cheese-filled crackers and the store-bought cookies, and you’ll also benefit from making your own pasta sauce and soups.

In an ideal world, maybe we’d have all have the time and energy needed to be make our own bread and paint the Mona Lisa.  Unfortunately, there’s a lot going on.  Sometimes, you really want chili, and you forgot to plan ahead and soak the beans, or you just don’t have the 20 minutes you need to pressure-cook them.  So…canned beans.  Should it be done?

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Eating healthily and naturally is a lot easier with a well-stocked pantry. In this section, you can find information on all sorts of good stuff, such as:

• whole grains
• legumes (beans and lentils, oh my!)
• sweeteners
• basic kitchen spices
• essential kitchen equipment
• how to read a label
• how to store produce

This portion of the site is under construction, so stop back often for new tidbits. Also, if you have something you’d like the Simple Spoonful to cover, drop me a line with your suggestion at laurel (at) simplespoonful (dot) com!