How do I know if I'm being minimalist?

Gypsy asked me a great question - how do I keep my meals minimalist?
I have an answer for what I do for meals and cooking, and I can explain why I think it is minimalist.

1. Vegan cooking - takes a lot of the complexity out of meal planning, cooking, and cleanup
2. Home cooking with fresh foods (mostly) - cheap and healthy.  We are what we eat.  And being healthy has got it all over being sick!
3. Meal plan - we stick to some basic meals with simple variations
4. Bulk buying - I stockpile what we eat when it's even cheaper than usual, and we are members in a wholesale grocery outlet.

But looking at my list of meal activities, I wonder, "Am I kidding myself?  THAT'S minimalist? What exactly have I minimised?"  Lots of our time and space are invested in our food system.  We have large cupboards and a good sized fridge freezer in our kitchen and a very large extra pantry and extra freezer downstairs.  I've minimised expenditure, but maximised complications elsewhere.  Are such exchanges inevitable, and how do we know whether they are worth it?

I remember a couple in a tiny apartment who don't ever cook in their kitchen.  They always eat out.  They don't have to shop, store food, cook, serve, clean up, etc.  I envy people in eco-villages like Earthsong (here in Auckland, New Zealand) who often share a communal kitchen for meals, making food preparation really efficient and friendly compared to the one-kitchen, one-family grind.

But I've made a minimalist choice if what I'm doing is the simplest way to my own goals.

My goal is to stay at home with my young children until I don't want to anymore.  Since I don't want to be forced out to work, a huge part of my job is keeping costs down.  And eating out is just not as cheap in New Zealand as it is in New York.  No kidding, I'd still love to live at Earthsong; one of my dearest friends was a founding member and it is fantastically kid friendly.   But in this case we are minimising my husband's commute - he can't work entirely from home yet.  And as he's bringing in the dosh, that's a major goal component.

So each path to minimalism is individual.  But it must be a conscious and evolving one.