What ingredients do you like to splurge for? Expensive imported olive oil? French sea salt? Black truffle oil? What are your special ingredient guilty pleasures?
These are ours.
1. Milk in glass jars. We think it tastes better, oh so much better, and we love that the bottles are reused indefinitely. We’ve tried to go back to plastic cartons for budgetary reasons and find we can’t. We’re partial to the Straus Family Creamery milk, a local and eco-groovy brand sold here in Sonoma County. I’d love to take our commitment to good milk further and try raw milk, but just can’t seem to work up the courage. Perhaps I need to get to know some dairy farmers and have them try to convince me…
2. Balsamic Vinegar NOT made in Italy and laced with lead. This sounds counter intuitive, right? I recently learned that the balsamic vinegar I was pouring over my salad every day contains lead. In California all markets selling balsamic vinegar must post a Proposition 65 warning which states that balsamic vinegar contains high levels of lead. Apparently balsamic vinegar manufactured in Italy (the good stuff, right?!) has especially high levels of lead due to older water pipes laced with, you got it, lead. Some, but not all, balsamic vinegars manufactured in the United States contain lead as well. I recommend purchasing a brand that tests for their lead levels. We are especially partial to the local O Olive Oil brand. While not organic, at least I know that we’re not lacing ourselves with lead and, wow, their products are tasty!
3. BPA-free canned goods. You know all those canned goods in your pantry? Well, they’re laced with BPA in the sealing process. Eden Foods is our organic, go-to brand for canned beans. While they are more expensive than the competition, they don’t contain BPA and for us that makes them worth it. One of my goals this summer is to soak and cook garbonzo beans, but I still like to use Eden cans for black, pinto and navy beans that take longer to cook.
4. Locally made cheese. After ordering my favorite salad at the Underwood Bar and Bistro too many times to count, I realized that I could make it myself with the exact same cheese: Point Reyes Farmstead Blue Cheese found at our local Costco for a fraction of the price at Whole Foods.
And despite the steep prices of these items, they are still much cheaper than a fraction of the amount we used to spend eating out. For me, it’s the simple pleasure of good quality, local organic ingredients that make a family meal even more special.
Now it’s your turn. What do you like to splurge on in the kitchen?