Mine is way too big.
I'm trying to get rid of 1/2 of my crap right now. I'm starting with the kitchen and my wardrobe. More on the kitchen later.
To get going on figuring out the balance between need/want in the wardrobe, I interviewed my Gramma. She's in her 90s, not very far in, and lived through hard times before the Great Depression, and then the depression. She grew up in a tiny town in Iowa on the Mississippi river in the 1920s. The 20s may have been "roaring" elsewhere, but she says that for rural people, they were tight financial times.
I asked her how many outfits she had as a kid. She said her family was better off than most in the clothing department because her grandmother (my great great) in South Dakota was a dressmaker. Gramma's mom would get the kids' measurements, send them out in a letter. Then, their gramma would make clothes using material from the old clothes given by some of the ladies in town. She made dresses, shirts, pants, coats and underwear. As a result my gramma said she often had 6 or 7 outfits. This was quite a few. She said that the other better off families in town, like the people who owned the store, had 2 or 3 outfits per kid. The poorer had one outfit and one Sunday outfit. The very poor, and she said that was quite a few, had one outfit per kid and no undies. So they were cold.
She had 2 pairs of shoes. One for school and one for Sunday. Her father took all the kids to town each fall and got them shoes and they each also got to pick out a new cotton blanket. She said it was a big deal to have your own new blanket each year. Many families had one pair of shoes per kid. Others had zero.
I asked if her family was rich. She said she didn't know if they had more money or if her dad was more likely to spend his money on his kids. Maybe both.
When she got to high school, which was in another town so she worked for her room and board there, she only had one pair of shoes and fewer clothes. I think this was after the depression had begun. Also, her gramma wasn't making her clothes anymore. I don't know if that gramma had passed away or just gotten too old to do it.
She also told me about farming out kids. Her siblings weren't farmed out that I know of, they had gardens and a milk cow and bees and other things to do at home. Other kids, especially in poor families, were. She told me about Lyle. I knew him when he was an adult and I was a little kid. He was farmed out when he was 6 years old. He was sent to live with a farm family and help out. He went home on the weekend. She said that the family he worked for was very good to him which was not always the case. He went to school and they fed him and clothed him. I think he's the one she said got underwear from the wife of the family he worked for. When he went home on the weekend his mother would take the undies and put them on another kid before she sent him back to the farm. This way she ended up with underwear for all the kids. Undies are apparently a big deal. They were for warmth as well as hygiene. I can imagine your pants and shirts get quite a bit stinkier faster without undies than with undies.
So, back to my quest. 6 or 7 outfits seems reasonable. And yet...I think I'll shoot for 10 per season for the moment. I consider an "outfit" to be the pants/shirt combination and I wear my jeans multiple times between washings, fewer times in the summer or when doing fieldwork.
I think I could get by with 3 pairs of jeans (I've made do with 2 in the past but sometimes you have to wear damp jeans when it's that tight) at a time. For summer 1 or 2 pairs of lighter weight field pants and a pair of jeans. Right now I've been rotating 3 sweaters (those Norwegian ones from the thrift store) and 2 or 3 shirts for my winter work wardrobe. No one has said I look unprofessional, in fact I've gotten compliments on every outfit. I do need turtlenecks or mock turtle necks under these and I think I've been rotating about 4 of those. In summer I usually end up rotating 7 or 8 buttondown shirts. Let's go with 8 to make this less painful at the outset. Easier to donate another shirt than to buy it back from Goodwill. On the weekends I wear t-shirts or a t-shirt with a sweatshirt depending on the season. T-shirts are also important for fieldwork and gardening. Let's say 10 t-shirts for the first cull.
I have one formal event outfit and 3 scarves that go with it (Thanks for the scarves Chris!)
So that comes out to:
Winter
3 jeans
3 sweaters
3 shirts
4 turtlenecks
Summer:
1 jeans
2 field pants
8 shirts
Non-work wear:
10 t-shirts
2-sweatshirts
1 formal outfit (in case of weddings or a friend being inducted into some hall of fame)
I do have the occassional conference or meeting requiring a bit more spiff than my regular work days. For those it would be nice to have 2 decent shirts and one nice sweater. I wear either black or brown pants with these.
Conference wear:
2 shirts
1 sweater
1 black pants
1 brown pants
Then there are shoes. While 2 pairs, or 1....or none, may be a livable situation, it isn't practical for me. Right now I probably have too many partly due to my reluctance to get rid of those that are worn out.
For hazmat fieldwork I need one pair of old hiking boots and a pair of rubber knee boots.
For non-hazmat fieldwork I have a pair of "good" hiking boots (not as worn out)
I wear the good hiking boots to work most of the winter.
In summer I have a pair of brown walking shoes and a pair of black walking shoes.
For formal events I can use one pair of brown and one pair of black boots (non-hiking). Right now I have 2 black and 1 brown pair, but none of my "formal" (like for conferences) boots is less than 10 years old so I think I'm OK there.
And then there is the winter weather gear. I'll save that for another post.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Friday, January 25, 2013
Most Excellent and Thrifty Movie
I watched a very cool Chinese film (obviously).
The Piano In A Factory.
It's about a couple who are divorcing. The wife has hooked up with someone who makes more money and moved away, while the husband is staying in the same defunct industrial town making little cash. He believes that his daughter will choose to live with the parent who can give her a piano. Hijinks ensue. There is, obviously, a theme about money and it's place in our lives.
To add to the fun, lots of Russian music. Quite humorous really.
Since this DVD is from Film Movement (which someday someone will get me a subscription to....) it comes with a short film. Noeud Cravat (Necktie) about what we give up to climb the corporate ladder and whether it's worth it. The cartoon is French, but there is no dialog so it doesn't matter.
The Piano In A Factory.
It's about a couple who are divorcing. The wife has hooked up with someone who makes more money and moved away, while the husband is staying in the same defunct industrial town making little cash. He believes that his daughter will choose to live with the parent who can give her a piano. Hijinks ensue. There is, obviously, a theme about money and it's place in our lives.
To add to the fun, lots of Russian music. Quite humorous really.
Since this DVD is from Film Movement (which someday someone will get me a subscription to....) it comes with a short film. Noeud Cravat (Necktie) about what we give up to climb the corporate ladder and whether it's worth it. The cartoon is French, but there is no dialog so it doesn't matter.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Sugary Drinks Are Apparently Evil
As my friends from college know, I was once a serious diet coke addict. I even drank the off brands...shasta, whatever was on sale at Fareway. I'm not proud, but if I needed to pull an all nighter to get a paper done, or because I worked midnight to 8am that one semester and then taught french from 8-8:30 (note the very very short transit time between jobs...yikes), and then had class all day with once a week an evening seminar that was supposed to end at 10pm but often ran until 11, the buses only running until 10:20pm...and the walk to my job being about an hour.
Anyway, drank lots of crappy sweetened carbonated beverages with known toxins like saccharine, aspartame, etc in them. I've stopped partly because of the costs. Even off-brand pop costs more than tapwater or tea (especially if one reuses the tea bags).
It looks like this has also helped my mental health. Sweetened beverages are linked with depression.
http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/sweet-sodas-soft-drinks-may-raise-risk-depression-183000091.html
So, in addition to the direct cost of the pop, the disposal costs whether recycling or trashing the bottles/cans, and the expected healthcare costs of getting diabetes from sugar or cancer from aspartame, now we have to add in the costs of mental health care. WTF?
I do have the occasional sweetened beverage now, but it's almost always a stevia gingerale or an all natural gingerale and I rarely exceed 3 servings in a week. I don't know if I'm less depressed, but according to science, I have less chance of being depressed.
Now for a rant on the stupidity of some of our medical research conclusions in this country:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/02/health/overweight-mortality/index.html
Read the title of this:
Anyway, drank lots of crappy sweetened carbonated beverages with known toxins like saccharine, aspartame, etc in them. I've stopped partly because of the costs. Even off-brand pop costs more than tapwater or tea (especially if one reuses the tea bags).
It looks like this has also helped my mental health. Sweetened beverages are linked with depression.
http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/sweet-sodas-soft-drinks-may-raise-risk-depression-183000091.html
So, in addition to the direct cost of the pop, the disposal costs whether recycling or trashing the bottles/cans, and the expected healthcare costs of getting diabetes from sugar or cancer from aspartame, now we have to add in the costs of mental health care. WTF?
I do have the occasional sweetened beverage now, but it's almost always a stevia gingerale or an all natural gingerale and I rarely exceed 3 servings in a week. I don't know if I'm less depressed, but according to science, I have less chance of being depressed.
Now for a rant on the stupidity of some of our medical research conclusions in this country:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/02/health/overweight-mortality/index.html
Read the title of this:
Being overweight linked to lower risk of mortality
According to this, being fat means you might not die. Uh. Yeah. You're gonna die. We're all going to die. Get over it. Fat or thin, young or old, at some point you're going to die. This sort of asinine research conclusion is common in the US. I wonder if the rest of the world thinks they too can avoid death.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Fall Update
Wow...like 6 weeks. Suck.
Anyway, been busy/bored. BUT some fun and possibly frugal or possibly spendthrift things have come to pass.
I bought a "luxury vacation home" called "Wagner Haus" (must be said with a rough bad german accent).
It's a 17 foot 1972 camper. No electricity, not even battery. Therefore CHEAP (1100$) and parked on friends' land up near Newport, Washington. It's fun. I get to try out simpler ways of living. Such as using more blankets because no electricity = no furnace (the fan...). The fridge would work on just propane but hardly need it now. I've been using candles and flashlights. It gets cold at night but with plenty of blankets it's been surprisingly cozy. I got up one morning and it was 25degrees inside the camper, but the only really hard part was putting on my pants which were also 25 degrees.
I'll be digging an outhouse shortly. I was going to do it this week while I was up there this week. But, there were complications (ironically I had diarrhea...couldn't leave the friends' real bathroom long enough to do any major digging). I did get a great deal on a seat for the outhouse! 2$ at a thrift store for a camp toilet. It's like a little folding stool (heh heh) but with a toilet seat instead of a canvas seat. It's meant to be used with disposable bags (puke). I remodeled it by cutting the bottom out of a 5 gallon bucket and JB Welding that to the camp toilet. Total outlay: 10$ (includes the new JB Weld which will be used on many many projects...probably only used 1$ of it for this). I've got some heavy gauge pallets to tear up for the outhouse foundation. For now, the "walls" will be a tarp.
Speaking of tarps. I spent 25$ for two good tarps and some rope to cover the roof of the camper for the winter. No reason to tempt fate.
SO, that is mostly money out in exchange for a great deal of fun.
Today I did something that I'm not sure is thrifty. We'll see. I bought winter tires with a set of rims for the new Subaru. It was 1000$! I could get a vacation home for that!!! The rims were 60ish $ each. This investment will be returned in 3 seasons of swapping them out for free at Les Schwab rather than paying each time which you do if they aren't on their own rims. I had to argue with the young man at the tire place. I asked for walnut tires. He kept saying they didn't make them any more. I kept saying I checked online and they do exist and Les Schwab sells them. He tried to sell me a "walnut pattern tread." I got firm and snotty and said "It's NOT a pattern. There are walnut shells in the rubber." He repeated they didn't make them. I stared at him. He called the boss over...yep. Totally make those. Toyo Observe tires. They were right there on the shelf. DUH. Don't question me. I know what I'm talking about. I don't understand all the ins and outs of tires though and it seems that putting different rims/tires on disconnected the automatic tire pressure monitor thingy so for now I have to stare at the tire symbol on the dashboard. Oh well. Better to have a light flashing at me than to end up in the ditch on an icy drive.
Will these 192$ tires be worth it? I think so, but hard to say. The last walnut tires I bought (same brand but smaller for the old car) lasted 6 winters at about 10-15,000 miles per winter and would have gone one more summer. And, they really help me stop on the conditions we have here in the winter. I like stopping.
Spending as much on tires/rims as I've spent on a vehicle in the past...a crap truck that I overpaid for at 800$, and almost as much as my luxury vacation home...that's hard for me. I'll be really glad I have them as soon as it snows.
Ok...the computer is acting funny. I'm going to try to post this before I lose it.
Anyway, been busy/bored. BUT some fun and possibly frugal or possibly spendthrift things have come to pass.
I bought a "luxury vacation home" called "Wagner Haus" (must be said with a rough bad german accent).
It's a 17 foot 1972 camper. No electricity, not even battery. Therefore CHEAP (1100$) and parked on friends' land up near Newport, Washington. It's fun. I get to try out simpler ways of living. Such as using more blankets because no electricity = no furnace (the fan...). The fridge would work on just propane but hardly need it now. I've been using candles and flashlights. It gets cold at night but with plenty of blankets it's been surprisingly cozy. I got up one morning and it was 25degrees inside the camper, but the only really hard part was putting on my pants which were also 25 degrees.
I'll be digging an outhouse shortly. I was going to do it this week while I was up there this week. But, there were complications (ironically I had diarrhea...couldn't leave the friends' real bathroom long enough to do any major digging). I did get a great deal on a seat for the outhouse! 2$ at a thrift store for a camp toilet. It's like a little folding stool (heh heh) but with a toilet seat instead of a canvas seat. It's meant to be used with disposable bags (puke). I remodeled it by cutting the bottom out of a 5 gallon bucket and JB Welding that to the camp toilet. Total outlay: 10$ (includes the new JB Weld which will be used on many many projects...probably only used 1$ of it for this). I've got some heavy gauge pallets to tear up for the outhouse foundation. For now, the "walls" will be a tarp.
Speaking of tarps. I spent 25$ for two good tarps and some rope to cover the roof of the camper for the winter. No reason to tempt fate.
SO, that is mostly money out in exchange for a great deal of fun.
Today I did something that I'm not sure is thrifty. We'll see. I bought winter tires with a set of rims for the new Subaru. It was 1000$! I could get a vacation home for that!!! The rims were 60ish $ each. This investment will be returned in 3 seasons of swapping them out for free at Les Schwab rather than paying each time which you do if they aren't on their own rims. I had to argue with the young man at the tire place. I asked for walnut tires. He kept saying they didn't make them any more. I kept saying I checked online and they do exist and Les Schwab sells them. He tried to sell me a "walnut pattern tread." I got firm and snotty and said "It's NOT a pattern. There are walnut shells in the rubber." He repeated they didn't make them. I stared at him. He called the boss over...yep. Totally make those. Toyo Observe tires. They were right there on the shelf. DUH. Don't question me. I know what I'm talking about. I don't understand all the ins and outs of tires though and it seems that putting different rims/tires on disconnected the automatic tire pressure monitor thingy so for now I have to stare at the tire symbol on the dashboard. Oh well. Better to have a light flashing at me than to end up in the ditch on an icy drive.
Will these 192$ tires be worth it? I think so, but hard to say. The last walnut tires I bought (same brand but smaller for the old car) lasted 6 winters at about 10-15,000 miles per winter and would have gone one more summer. And, they really help me stop on the conditions we have here in the winter. I like stopping.
Spending as much on tires/rims as I've spent on a vehicle in the past...a crap truck that I overpaid for at 800$, and almost as much as my luxury vacation home...that's hard for me. I'll be really glad I have them as soon as it snows.
Ok...the computer is acting funny. I'm going to try to post this before I lose it.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Documentaries on Whiteness
So, I'm at a conference where most people are not "white." One guy made a joke about needing a "white liaison" for his Tribe (because of all the federal agencies that have a Native American Liaison to help them communicate with Tribes). Funny.
It made me think. There are all sorts of resources for me, a white person (no one is shocked right?), to understand people of other identities. But what are the resources for learning about white people? Specifically, white Americans?
I thought about the great writers like Hemingway. But really, he presents what he THINKS we want to hear. That would be like trying to understand most Chinese people by reading Mao. You'd understand something of a general mindset that some Chinese may have, but as for relating to the Chinese man or woman on the street, not very helpful.
Then I remembered how much I like movies.
Here are some movies that I think would help people understand the basics of white Americans:
Documentaries:
Grey Gardens (the original documentary not that bit of fluff with Drew Barrymore)
The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia
Harlan County USA
Sweetgrass
Herb and Dorothy
Anything by Errol Morris (in fact, just watch the whole oeuvre)
The Interview Project (http://interviewproject.davidlynch.com/www/#/all-episodes/121-spira)
A Class Divided (also available online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/etc/view.html)
Jesus Camp
Narrative Films (dramas, comedies, ungenre-able)
The Straight Story
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Fargo
Spinal Tap (OK, bit of a red herring but the movie itself is a cultural phenomenon important to my people)
The Lost People of Mountain Village (actually, this whole flick is free online: Part 1 http://youtu.be/hzoN2MFkCXI , Part 2 http://youtu.be/-1TIeJSUr6I)
Tiny Furniture
Wendy and Lucy
Annie Hall
To Kill a Mockingbird (also the book, obviously)
A Mighty Wind
A Christmas Story
Harold and Maude
Television:
The Simpsons
(I'm sure there's more here but I haven't watched enough TV in recent years to know what's out there and what's real and instructive about my people).
It made me think. There are all sorts of resources for me, a white person (no one is shocked right?), to understand people of other identities. But what are the resources for learning about white people? Specifically, white Americans?
I thought about the great writers like Hemingway. But really, he presents what he THINKS we want to hear. That would be like trying to understand most Chinese people by reading Mao. You'd understand something of a general mindset that some Chinese may have, but as for relating to the Chinese man or woman on the street, not very helpful.
Then I remembered how much I like movies.
Here are some movies that I think would help people understand the basics of white Americans:
Documentaries:
Grey Gardens (the original documentary not that bit of fluff with Drew Barrymore)
The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia
Harlan County USA
Sweetgrass
Herb and Dorothy
Anything by Errol Morris (in fact, just watch the whole oeuvre)
The Interview Project (http://interviewproject.davidlynch.com/www/#/all-episodes/121-spira)
A Class Divided (also available online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/etc/view.html)
Jesus Camp
Narrative Films (dramas, comedies, ungenre-able)
The Straight Story
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Fargo
Spinal Tap (OK, bit of a red herring but the movie itself is a cultural phenomenon important to my people)
The Lost People of Mountain Village (actually, this whole flick is free online: Part 1 http://youtu.be/hzoN2MFkCXI , Part 2 http://youtu.be/-1TIeJSUr6I)
Tiny Furniture
Wendy and Lucy
Annie Hall
To Kill a Mockingbird (also the book, obviously)
A Mighty Wind
A Christmas Story
Harold and Maude
Television:
The Simpsons
(I'm sure there's more here but I haven't watched enough TV in recent years to know what's out there and what's real and instructive about my people).
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Cooking As An Act of Economic Disobedience
Wow. I'm reading the book The End of Food by Paul Roberts.
Real eye opener and I'm just in the background information bit. It's
due at the library and I'm going to have to get it out again or
something. Too much information to process all at once.
Anyway, the bit that has grabbed me at the moment is the evolution of
the food industry. Specifically the convenience food industry. It's
not like I'm unaware. It's more that I haven't seen it all laid out in
an organized, endnoted, fashion like this. Pretty compelling stuff.
The current food industry, according to Roberts, is dependent on "the continued decline in consumers' ability to prepare or even understand their own food." That's not the only thing, there's advertising, engineered consistent flavors, etc. I can't do much about the other factors. But I can totally cook from scratch and understand food.
How far removed are we from a time when most American households not only cooked, but often grew, their own food for every meal, every day, all year, their entire lifetimes? I'm thinking "not very" is the answer.
Before Columbus sailed the ocean blue (1492), there wasn't much in the way of a prepared food industry here, though there was some. Dried and smoked fish and meats were traded a bit. Grains were traded, or stolen, a bit after drying which is partial processing or "convenience." Flavoring agents like salt and peppers were traded after some processing too. But really, not much compared to heading to the Quickimart for a hot pocket which you stick in some appallingly spattered microwave while you hit the equally appallingly spattered restroom. (Remind me to do a later blog on the "convenience" industry dealing with the outcome of food consumption someday.)
After the pilgrims landed there was some trade with the local folks for dried or at least harvested grains and vegies and some for meats. But mostly, if you wanted to eat you'd better have a family member or servant dealing with that everyday all day. I guess paying servants is another form of convenience food. We've outsourced servitude. I remember being impressed that my aunt (Hi Marcie!) had servants while she lived in India. She was of the upper social group in her area so that was the accepted social convention. They probably helped cook. We had no servants other than Mom who slaved away on food everyday. But sometimes we got a frozen pizza and there was breakfast cereal, canned soups, and etc. I think I remember her mostly cooking from scratch. I remember epic sessions of canning and freezing foods for winter from the giant garden and going to pick berries.
The big annual family "vacation" was geared around going fishing during blue gill spawning season and bringing home tons and tons...ok, pounds and pounds of frozen filets that we ate through the year. The deep freezer was perhaps our most important appliance. If it failed and everything thawed, we were screwed. Other vacation time was spent hunting. Deer was the prestige food, but we ate other things. Fred still occassionally eats squirrel (barf...greasy little bastards they be).
I remember getting beef from "retired" dairy cows on another aunt's farm. I'll have to ask how often that happened. I also remember weekly trips to the Jack and Jill grocery store (which I assumed was somehow linked to me based on the name). I estimate, and will ask, that the greatest portion of our food was cooked by mom, mostly from scratch with the exception of bread. There were stints of bread baking, but mostly that was bought. As was the butter. Don't remember her churning any.
A very large portion of our protein was killed by someone in the family. I think for the folks, it still is. They eat many many fish caught and cleaned by Fred. There is a cleaning station in the garage with hot and cold running water which anthropologically indicates 2 things...the importance of this food source and the desire of Sher not to have fishguts in her lovely cherry wood kitchen (Kitchens By Slugs).
When we lived in the first house in Waverly, there was a very large garden on the neighbor's land in what had been the bottom of the river so probably pretty fertile. During those years, a good portion of our vegies came from that garden but I have no estimate on how much.
Let's go back one more generation to Gramma and Grampa and their folks. On my mother's mother's side they produced approximately 100% of their own food and much of the neighbors' food and had food based businesses. I remember the stories of the honey production. I think Gramma said her dad had a thousand hives but I'll have to ask again. They sold the honey and made honey vinegar and attempted honey wine though the story goes that Gramma's gramma thought that was sinful to spiked the bottles with a bit of mother of vinegar thereby increasing the vinegar output. Still a saleable product but not worth as much as booze. (Aside: I'm attempting some honey vinegar right now...there are facinating stringy thingies in the jar so here's hoping.) They had chickens, a milk cow, large gardens, and fished the Mississippi. They shared and sold and traded the extra and sometimes what wasn't extra. I'm guessing they would have purchased the flour for bread and will ask.
I remember Gramma talking about how her mom was on the annual trip to South Dakota to introduce the newest baby to her folks, she'd stay like a month or so, and Gramma's dad decided to get a new stove for the wife. The first one arrived on the train and he declared it not good enough and sent it back. Greatgramma like to sit on the oven door to keep warm and he thought this one was flimsy and would break right off. I think that was a wood stove but not sure. Later, a kerosene stove for summer cooking was purchased. These events were very big deals and meant to increase the convenience of cooking at home. I'll have to ask if they ever ate in a restaurant or bought prepared foods. They did quite a bit of canning and root cellaring. I'm sure there was hunting as there were several boys and some guns.
So, 1 generation back, my mom, most food from scratch and quite a bit killed or grown or foraged themselves. 2 generations back pretty much 100%, let's go with 90% because of the flour, killed, grown or foraged themselves.
For my sister: She grows the odd tomato after Fred plants her garden. Picks cherries off her tree and eats and jams them. She sometimes cooks from scratch and often uses convenience foods and often eats in restaurants.
For my brother: Has grown his own beef and turkey. Hunts. Fishes. I suspect that a very large portion of his protein is killed by him. I don't think much in the way of veggies. Right now a large portion of his eating at home is home prepared rather than TV dinner sorts of convenience foods, but I don't know how much is from "scratch" and how much has some convenience food like industrially canned tomatoes.
For me: Lately too much restaurant eating because I don't want to turn the stove on in the summer (a summer kitchen is a priority part of my imaginary cabin). Probably 7 meals a week are restaurant or grab-n-go sandwiches. I have been drinking Zevia gingerale more than my homemade kombucha. And, almost all of the food I eat is grown, killed, or foraged by someone else. I do cook from scratch for the other 14 meals per week and have trained myself to minimize the convenience foods when shopping but do still buy pre-ground wheat (aka "flour"), pressed oils, etc.
I think for all of us we use the "convenience" foods of butter, oils, cheeses (except for me) and the like rather than churning, pressing or cheesing our own. I used to buy pre-fab almond milk but have found that it's actually MORE convenient to make my own from almonds. Since getting a tiny ice cream churn (just 1 pint at a time!) I also make my own sorbets and non-dairy icecreams but I still buy the nuts and berries and sweetener pre-made. In the summer almost all of my vegetables come from my CSA, which is local and not part of the big industrial ag machine, or my tiny wee garden. In the winter, I do my best with preserved foods but sometimes I just want to open a can of soup. It's so damned convenient.
So, all that to say, that those of us who cook from basic ingredients, "scratch," are performing one level of economic disobedience. Every time I grind up my own almonds with water in the blender, that's one more time I don't send money to a subsidiary of a multinational corp for my almond milk. Every time I make my own stirfry rather than buying a bag of prewashed, precut, premixed, pre-whatever frozen sealed in plastic veggies, I keep a little of my own money in my pocket rather than sending it to the half dozen multinational corporations who run the food world.
Think of every bit that you garden, if you garden. Even a pot of tomatoes or basil on the patio or a windowsill takes a tiny bit of money away from Nestle or Kellogg or Birdseye or whatever megacorp (which has personhood now, by the way). Good for us.
The community garden here where people can not only eat food grown right here in river city, we/they learn about how to grow it. We start to understand our food. Just this year I understood that sweet peas picked too late taste like crap and give me the farts. That's good to know. I also learned that they are still edible.
OK, long way around the topic, but it's so compelling. There are really only 2 big seed companies in the US. That is a monopoly people. Please grow your own food, with seeds from the heritage seed companies or buy from local farmers, preferably those who save and use their own seeds or buy from those heritage seed companies. You keep money in your community, understand your food, increase your food and financial security, and carry on with important elements of being human. Providing your own food and sharing it with others. (Now, off to the store for a big box of Ding Dongs.)
The current food industry, according to Roberts, is dependent on "the continued decline in consumers' ability to prepare or even understand their own food." That's not the only thing, there's advertising, engineered consistent flavors, etc. I can't do much about the other factors. But I can totally cook from scratch and understand food.
How far removed are we from a time when most American households not only cooked, but often grew, their own food for every meal, every day, all year, their entire lifetimes? I'm thinking "not very" is the answer.
Before Columbus sailed the ocean blue (1492), there wasn't much in the way of a prepared food industry here, though there was some. Dried and smoked fish and meats were traded a bit. Grains were traded, or stolen, a bit after drying which is partial processing or "convenience." Flavoring agents like salt and peppers were traded after some processing too. But really, not much compared to heading to the Quickimart for a hot pocket which you stick in some appallingly spattered microwave while you hit the equally appallingly spattered restroom. (Remind me to do a later blog on the "convenience" industry dealing with the outcome of food consumption someday.)
After the pilgrims landed there was some trade with the local folks for dried or at least harvested grains and vegies and some for meats. But mostly, if you wanted to eat you'd better have a family member or servant dealing with that everyday all day. I guess paying servants is another form of convenience food. We've outsourced servitude. I remember being impressed that my aunt (Hi Marcie!) had servants while she lived in India. She was of the upper social group in her area so that was the accepted social convention. They probably helped cook. We had no servants other than Mom who slaved away on food everyday. But sometimes we got a frozen pizza and there was breakfast cereal, canned soups, and etc. I think I remember her mostly cooking from scratch. I remember epic sessions of canning and freezing foods for winter from the giant garden and going to pick berries.
The big annual family "vacation" was geared around going fishing during blue gill spawning season and bringing home tons and tons...ok, pounds and pounds of frozen filets that we ate through the year. The deep freezer was perhaps our most important appliance. If it failed and everything thawed, we were screwed. Other vacation time was spent hunting. Deer was the prestige food, but we ate other things. Fred still occassionally eats squirrel (barf...greasy little bastards they be).
I remember getting beef from "retired" dairy cows on another aunt's farm. I'll have to ask how often that happened. I also remember weekly trips to the Jack and Jill grocery store (which I assumed was somehow linked to me based on the name). I estimate, and will ask, that the greatest portion of our food was cooked by mom, mostly from scratch with the exception of bread. There were stints of bread baking, but mostly that was bought. As was the butter. Don't remember her churning any.
A very large portion of our protein was killed by someone in the family. I think for the folks, it still is. They eat many many fish caught and cleaned by Fred. There is a cleaning station in the garage with hot and cold running water which anthropologically indicates 2 things...the importance of this food source and the desire of Sher not to have fishguts in her lovely cherry wood kitchen (Kitchens By Slugs).
When we lived in the first house in Waverly, there was a very large garden on the neighbor's land in what had been the bottom of the river so probably pretty fertile. During those years, a good portion of our vegies came from that garden but I have no estimate on how much.
Let's go back one more generation to Gramma and Grampa and their folks. On my mother's mother's side they produced approximately 100% of their own food and much of the neighbors' food and had food based businesses. I remember the stories of the honey production. I think Gramma said her dad had a thousand hives but I'll have to ask again. They sold the honey and made honey vinegar and attempted honey wine though the story goes that Gramma's gramma thought that was sinful to spiked the bottles with a bit of mother of vinegar thereby increasing the vinegar output. Still a saleable product but not worth as much as booze. (Aside: I'm attempting some honey vinegar right now...there are facinating stringy thingies in the jar so here's hoping.) They had chickens, a milk cow, large gardens, and fished the Mississippi. They shared and sold and traded the extra and sometimes what wasn't extra. I'm guessing they would have purchased the flour for bread and will ask.
I remember Gramma talking about how her mom was on the annual trip to South Dakota to introduce the newest baby to her folks, she'd stay like a month or so, and Gramma's dad decided to get a new stove for the wife. The first one arrived on the train and he declared it not good enough and sent it back. Greatgramma like to sit on the oven door to keep warm and he thought this one was flimsy and would break right off. I think that was a wood stove but not sure. Later, a kerosene stove for summer cooking was purchased. These events were very big deals and meant to increase the convenience of cooking at home. I'll have to ask if they ever ate in a restaurant or bought prepared foods. They did quite a bit of canning and root cellaring. I'm sure there was hunting as there were several boys and some guns.
So, 1 generation back, my mom, most food from scratch and quite a bit killed or grown or foraged themselves. 2 generations back pretty much 100%, let's go with 90% because of the flour, killed, grown or foraged themselves.
For my sister: She grows the odd tomato after Fred plants her garden. Picks cherries off her tree and eats and jams them. She sometimes cooks from scratch and often uses convenience foods and often eats in restaurants.
For my brother: Has grown his own beef and turkey. Hunts. Fishes. I suspect that a very large portion of his protein is killed by him. I don't think much in the way of veggies. Right now a large portion of his eating at home is home prepared rather than TV dinner sorts of convenience foods, but I don't know how much is from "scratch" and how much has some convenience food like industrially canned tomatoes.
For me: Lately too much restaurant eating because I don't want to turn the stove on in the summer (a summer kitchen is a priority part of my imaginary cabin). Probably 7 meals a week are restaurant or grab-n-go sandwiches. I have been drinking Zevia gingerale more than my homemade kombucha. And, almost all of the food I eat is grown, killed, or foraged by someone else. I do cook from scratch for the other 14 meals per week and have trained myself to minimize the convenience foods when shopping but do still buy pre-ground wheat (aka "flour"), pressed oils, etc.
I think for all of us we use the "convenience" foods of butter, oils, cheeses (except for me) and the like rather than churning, pressing or cheesing our own. I used to buy pre-fab almond milk but have found that it's actually MORE convenient to make my own from almonds. Since getting a tiny ice cream churn (just 1 pint at a time!) I also make my own sorbets and non-dairy icecreams but I still buy the nuts and berries and sweetener pre-made. In the summer almost all of my vegetables come from my CSA, which is local and not part of the big industrial ag machine, or my tiny wee garden. In the winter, I do my best with preserved foods but sometimes I just want to open a can of soup. It's so damned convenient.
So, all that to say, that those of us who cook from basic ingredients, "scratch," are performing one level of economic disobedience. Every time I grind up my own almonds with water in the blender, that's one more time I don't send money to a subsidiary of a multinational corp for my almond milk. Every time I make my own stirfry rather than buying a bag of prewashed, precut, premixed, pre-whatever frozen sealed in plastic veggies, I keep a little of my own money in my pocket rather than sending it to the half dozen multinational corporations who run the food world.
Think of every bit that you garden, if you garden. Even a pot of tomatoes or basil on the patio or a windowsill takes a tiny bit of money away from Nestle or Kellogg or Birdseye or whatever megacorp (which has personhood now, by the way). Good for us.
The community garden here where people can not only eat food grown right here in river city, we/they learn about how to grow it. We start to understand our food. Just this year I understood that sweet peas picked too late taste like crap and give me the farts. That's good to know. I also learned that they are still edible.
OK, long way around the topic, but it's so compelling. There are really only 2 big seed companies in the US. That is a monopoly people. Please grow your own food, with seeds from the heritage seed companies or buy from local farmers, preferably those who save and use their own seeds or buy from those heritage seed companies. You keep money in your community, understand your food, increase your food and financial security, and carry on with important elements of being human. Providing your own food and sharing it with others. (Now, off to the store for a big box of Ding Dongs.)
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