If we had just one rule for the foods we ate, it could be this: Start with single ingredient foods that still look the way they did when they came off the plant.

If we wanted apple and pear juice, we would start with apples and pears and juice them. If we wanted potato chips, we’d begin with potatoes and make them into crisps by slicing and baking. If we wanted bread we would start with wheat berries. Animal products would get the same treatment. Meat would be unprocessed (not corned, reformed or covered with marinade). Cheese would begin with milk. Butter would start with cream.

Now I don’t know about you, but that would sure slow me down. No more eating packets of corn chips almost without thinking. After as much time and effort as it would take to make them, I reckon I would savour every single crunchy delight.

And that is the point. If we had to start from scratch with everything and process it ourselves, it would drastically slow down our intake plus it would ensure that we were eating food we could recognise from its native state. We would be aware of exactly what went into each meal before it went into our mouths.

There’s always pain in trying a grand experiment like this. For me, it would be … if I wanted chocolate, I would have to start with cacao beans and sugarcane. And I’ve read enough about other people’s experiments to know that chocolate is hard to get right from scratch and often ends up grainy, which doesn’t give that subtle mouthfeel of excellent chocolate.

Obviously, this means we would have to think about our food more and take time over its preparation. But food preparation does take time and we have ignored that in our downward spiral of filling our supermarket trolleys with prepackaged, chemical-laden items that pass for food and buying fast food to eat on the run. We’ve also ignored the fact that simple foods—raw fruits, salad vegetables, eggs—actually don’t take long to prepare. So in a way, the much-vaunted sophistication of our tastes has robbed us of our good health.

If we followed the principle of eating food as close to its origins as possible, even most of the time, we would find our diet automatically being better. One simple rule would make the world of difference. And we’d steer clear of any recipe that starts with, open a jar of simmer sauce.

We don’t like to think of ourselves as such, but even in the free world we are slaves for much of our lives. When we are young we are bound by the schooling system and are under the control of our parents. As adults, we are tied to our employers because we are the slaves of credit cards and other kinds of debt, and credit cards hold sway because we live our lives under the thumb of sophisticated advertising and the expectations of others (who have also fallen into the trap of ‘must have’ marketing).

We try to keep up with the Jonses who are trying to keep up with the Kafoops who base their lives on the Lowells who in turn look up to the Cabots.

We are enslaved by many things. Fashion. Sugar. Alcohol. Nicotine. Other substances. Addicted.

Anyone who breaks out of this stupidity is considered a maverick—or a hippie or some other kind of alternative-living dropout.

We are so influenced by others, but what if they are wrong? What if, by ourselves, we could land on the right track and give ourselves an abundant, brilliant life not encumbered by what others think?

I read a lot about food. I read about people who go paleo, vegan, low GI. I read recipes from the all-raw fanatics and some from the moderation-in-everything brigade. But I believe that being a blind follower of anything means giving up your independence and thinking ability. It hands your personal power to others and opens the doors to corruption. So I’m not any of those things. I don’t have a label pinned to my lapel.

Having said that, I admit I’m chained to some things (chocolate comes to mind), but I see myself as a thinking slave. I know what’s happened but I also believe I can free myself by changing my perception of what I need to be who I am. And chocolate does not define me.

It is perhaps when we are open to other ways of living that we have an opportunity to break out of the vicious cycle of our own society’s forms of slavery. When we look at how other societies live, we can start to see more clearly our own society’s mores and how they have shaped our thoughts and consequently our actions.

We have enshrined the concept of freedom, yet we live our daily lives in thrall. It’s time for that to end … time for us all to do a little of our own thinking.

It’s always a good idea to know several ways to prepare each of the vegetables that most often reside in your refrigerator. It adds a greater flexibility and interest to your meals without having to buy vegetables you don’t usually cook. Having said that, I find that when I have a little spare time for domestic goddessness, it’s also fun to come home from shopping with one or two kinds of vegetable I don’t normally purchase. But back to the idea of vegetables that multi-task. Let me pick a couple of examples.

Green beans can be steamed, stirfried, put in one-pot wonders alongside other vegetables or cooked, cooled and eaten as a bean salad with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Capsicums can be eaten in salads, added raw at the end of stews to give some crunch and colour, drizzled in olive oil and roasted, used as an edible bowl (stuffed with rice and vegetables and topped with cheese then baked), put in omelettes or a myriad other ways.

Potatoes are the master chameleons of plant food. They can be everything from mash to hasselback, roast to steamed to chipified. They can form the basis of creamy potato bake or be used cold in potato salad. Whole recipe books have been devoted to the humble potato!

Tomatoes go well raw in salads or gazpacho, cooked into bolognaise-style sauces or cooked to a concentrate that adds depth and colour to so many dishes. They work overtime in Italian and Mexican cuisine.

We’re lucky that we live in an era where we can choose cuisine that is multinational and pretty adventurous. But let’s not leave it to others have all the fun in the preparation of interesting food. Our own kitchens deserve to have their own 15 minutes of fame. So, out with the sharp knife and the chopping board. Where are my tomatoes?