Getting to know your food chain. The past six months have been an experiment of sorts ... one that has exchanged random shopping at the big box sprawlmart for planned trips with well thought out shopping lists. We've tried to eliminate as many boxed .. ready-made off the self items as possible. Slow at first. Now 90% of our store bought goods are in a somewhat pure unadulterated state. I.E. .. organic, single items ... brought home and fashioned into meals. Shopping in this manner
takes many months of practice. Strategy is involved. Care, love, and thought put into each dinner, lunch and breakfast. Learning to enjoy simple basic food. Practice, practice, practice until new patterns are established. Rediscovering the time and commitment involved in cooking at home. Not eating out. Making a little extra dinner to have for lunch the following day. Having a well stocked pantry and freezer affords us to make just about any meal without a trip to the store. Making do with what is on hand. Re-thinking recipes to fit what is on the pantry shelf or in the freezer. Making use of the produce we froze last fall, herbs we dried, local honey from the nearby farm .. each a treasure to use in the dead of winter.This coming year skills will be fine tuned to become second nature. The garden will be planted with better purpose and use of space. More attention to the number of jars of pesto, salsa, beans, pickles, stewed tomatoes, etc. to tide our family from one harvest to another. Getting up front and personal with our food chain.
Do you have any goals with your food chain?
Photos: Popcorn picked last fall ... from a local u-pick farm ... eliminating the middleman and preserving quality control is a by-product of knowing your food chain.
3 comments:
Picking popcorn, that will never happen here.
I guess we are simpler and less equipped.
That doesn't mean I don't have plans.
I've got a rather large washing room in the basement. Gunnar has put in two double floor to ceiling cabinets there. With just 9+ degrees (Celsius)
It's fine for storage of amongst other larger quantities of vegetables. My cousin has a farm 3 hours drive from here. I can buy potatoes and carrots for winter supply for a third of what I have to pay even in the cheap food chains.
I also store plants from this winter,4 giant azaleas to plant out in the spring.
Gunnar even has set up strings to dry fragile clothes indoors, so that the tumbler will not wear the clothes out, and keep our el payments down.
Gunnar is also chopping wood in spare time. Wood gives such a cosy heating, but is expensive.
Oh, yes, you sure has been of great inspiration.
Now I'll have to pull myself together to get some of our surplus storage sold.
From Felisol
I just finished using the last of my blueberries I froze last year. I'm so sad to see them gone, they were delish on my oatmeal. Like you said, over time, I will learn just how much I need to freeze for the next season. I still have a couple of helpings of frozen green peppers for soups etc., that worked out very well.
I'm also trying to stick with whole foods instead of processed foods and I think we do better both financially and with health that way.
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