scoop and nuke : a lesson from wee ones in the kitchen

This morning as usual, I asked my son what he wanted for breakfast – eggs, oatmeal or homemade granola and yogurt.

He answered “eggies”, then grabbed a big ladle and ran around the kitchen hollering

Scoop and Nuke! Scoop and Nuke! SCOOP! AND! NUKE!

Ah. Yikes.

Of course I burst out laughing. He’s never said “Scoop” or “Nuke” before . . . but clearly he’s been paying attention to his parents in the kitchen.

I do a ton of batch cooking and leftover nights in our house are universally known as Scoop and Nuke.

This morning’s hilarious outburst got me thinking about how things would be different if we had a different food culture in our house.

thriftiness

This year in the Langford household, instead of resolutions for the year ahead, we’ve set a single value, notion, idea as our goal . . . The value of thriftiness.

We have a long way to go with this old homestead; rooms yet to paint, furniture to buy, a barn to be restored, draughty windows to address, a HUGE heating bill to manage, fences, animals, seeds, tools . . . not to mention a growing boy and always hungry husband.

Life is expensive.

See, the thing about striving for a self-sufficient life . . . It’s pretty much free of instant gratification.

Eventually our farm will be able to provide most, if not all, of our nutritional needs, our seeds, our entertainment, our exercise, our shelter, our heat, even some of our income.

EVENTUALLY is the operative word.

In the meantime . . .

neighbourliness part two : things that make me want to dance

We have been on the farm for two full months now. Already I know my neighbours better than I did in the city.

Neighbourliness is changing my life.

It makes me want to sing from the roof of the barn. Hallelujah! AHHHHH!!

It has occurred to me very quickly living out here in the sticks:

Neighbourliness isn’t a choice. Neighbourliness is a necessity.

For the last five years or so I’ve struggled to be a homesteader in the city.

Wrestling to put by hundreds of pounds of tomatoes with only two hands, having to buy all our own equipment, working double-time to run the house while pregnant, chasing children, facing a mammoth to-do list come planting and harvest time, and on and on and on.

It’s exhausting.

I’ve realized since living here; this lifestyle isn’t conducive to the modern, isolated individual model of “community”. It just doesn’t work.

the untold truths of a handmade life : on failure

I had a meltdown yesterday.

Full-on, bawling-my-face-off, completely-lost-the-plot meltdown.

It happens.

When I finally pulled myself together, looked around my disaster of a house; the half-made applesauce on the stove, the chicken carcass in the fridge waiting to be made into stock, the empty bread drawer, my mile-long grocery list, the mounds of laundry, my wailing kid – in short – the complete and utter chaos . . .

I couldn’t help but wonder if this is what life is like for other homemakers, homesteaders, full-time parents and the like.

Does everyone else live on the razor’s edge between pure bliss and calamity? Or is it just me?

blackberries + sugar

Making long-boil old-fashioned blackberry preserves. Three ingredients:

Blackberries, Sugar and Time.

It’s long boil, so I have time to think. Stirring and thinking. Thinking and stirring. Sipping tea.

Thinking about those two ingredients and how each one is intimately linked to a very different food system than the other.

I thought about using honey instead of the white death. Had it in my hand at Famous Foods this morning. But I couldn’t do it. 28 dollars.

My house still hasn’t sold and this in-between-uncomfortableness has made my budget like all my pre-pregancy clothes : So tight it borders on vulgar. Let’s not even talk about my jeans. Let’s just say I wear a lot of yoga pants. Thank god I live in Vancouver where wearing yoga pants outside of yoga classes is socially acceptable.

Maybe if I ate less jam . . .

I got a screaming deal on a huge bag of sugar way back at the beginning of canning season. Pretty much the only thing I use it for anymore, thank goodness.

It is part of the problem of local eating, eating better in general. Yes, I can stretch my food budget, but sometimes, there’s something in me that just doesn’t allow me to justify spending nearly $30 on what will end up being four or five jars of jam. That’s absurd.

(I’m pretty sure the answer is going to be keeping bees, but that is a whole other problem altogether.)

Did I mention this is my first go at a long-boil jam? When they say long, they mean looong. 15 minutes my ass.

We know we shouldn’t eat white sugar. And it seems kind of sacrilege to put white sugar with these gorgeous wild blackberries.

These blackberries grew by the roadside in my son’s favourite park of their own accord. They demanded no attention, no tending, no encouragement of self-esteem. They provide hearth and home for countless song birds and furry animals and hold the soil steadfast on the slopes of our neighbourhood ravine.

They ask for nothing in return, and will take over completely if you let them. There are worse things that could happen.

They have more patience than I have . . . gel stage, where are you?

The sugar on the other hand. . . I have no idea where it is from, or how it was grown or even what crop it was derived from. I think most North American sugar is from sugar beets?? Anyone?

Starting to wonder if this mysterious gel stage even exists. I am doing a good job of making a mess of my stove, that’s for sure. This is one of those recipes where if I called home to Gramma she’d just tell me,

Oh, you know, dear. Just cook it till it’s done.

Right.

This push and pull between blackberries and sugar pretty much sums up my entire food-life.

I want to do better, believe most of us can do better, know for certain many of us (corporations and governments included) can and SHOULD do much, much better.

But there are always limits to our love.

Although I live in a world of momentarily limitless blackberries, I do not live in a world of limitless funds.

How do we balance our ideals, our goals, our dreams with our realities? With the red and black of our bottom line? Our access, or in-access, for a plethora of reasons, to food that is good, clean and fair?

Do we do our best? Say, as much as we can as often as we can? Do we say – here I will compromise, there I won’t?

Does it matter?

This stupid book I’m reading right now says that us zany locovore / slow food / organic / natural / bio-dynamic etc. etc. folks are using arbitrary food rules as a means of filling the vacuum left by religion. That all these self-imposed rules and difficulty and challenges and exclusivity are just the manifestation of some innate yearning for structure and order and really mean nothing in and of themselves.

It would help if I read the instructions properly. I totally skipped a step in my test. My sheet-testing skills need some brushing up. I gave up and jarred my jam. Bugger it. It tastes lovely.

Maybe we are a bunch of religious-zealots in denial. I don’t know if I care anymore.

I’m going to do my best to eat by my heart and my conscience and leave it at that. As my mother says,

It’s good enough for the guys I go out with.

(Please don’t ask me why she says that. I have no idea. She’s always said that for good enough is good enough. And now I say it too. So it goes.)

Here’s the recipe for the blackberry preservesI made, Gramma-style.

Homemade Old-Fashioned Blackberry Preserves

• 12 cups blackberries
• 6 cups sugar

1. Mix sugar and blackberries together in the pot you are going to cook them in.
2. Let them sit for about 10 minutes while the berries release their juice.
3. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring often.
4. Cook it till it’s done.
5. Jar.

I’m going to eat mine with yogurt right now . . .

Related articles

• homemade strawberry jam three ways (slowfoodsmama.com)