Eating from your pantry

I adore fresh, home-cooked food made from fresh products. It's really the best for you – tasty, healthy, nutritious. But sometimes, compromises must be made. A generation or two ago, when fresh vegetables and fruit were still available only seasonally, during the winter people ate mostly fruit and veggies preserved in various ways – canned, salted, pickled, made into jams and jellies. Salted fish and meat were also common ingredients in winter meals.

Our grandmothers were experts in canning. Often, the circumstances required it – if you didn't can and preserve, you would have nothing to last you through the winter. Today, canning is oftentimes a lost art, but people who have large gardens with lots of surplus products are re-learning it. And some foods, like olives for example, are usually only eaten in their preserved/canned form. About a year and a half ago, my husband collected some olives and canned them (I don't remember exactly how he did it, but there was no special equipment involved). We only finished the jar a couple of months ago, and the olives did not spoil.

As a rule of the thumb, fresh produce is usually cheaper than pre-packaged, processed foods, but canned foods and grains and dry beans can often be cheaper than fresh vegetables and fruit. When your grocery budget is low, sometimes you have no choice but to opt for the cheaper parts of the fresh produce aisle, and heavily supplement your diet with ingredients from the pantry, whether they are something you grew/preserved yourself, or store-bought.

Here are some ideas:

Rice and lentils, in its varieties. Quick, easy, cheap, nutritious, readily available. Can be served as a side dish, but for us on weekdays, it can also be dinner, when served with something little on the side like salad or sautéed vegetables.

Tuna salad, made from canned tuna, again in its varieties – with avocado, canned corn, tomatoes, onions, pickles, olives. Served along with some bread, cheese and hummus, it can be a light lunch or dinner as well.

Enrich your soups with dry and canned beans. Ironically, canned beans can sometimes be cheaper than dry. Canned beans have the advantage that you don't have to soak them before use, but I prefer to buy dry beans whenever possible, because they take up less space than cans.

Other things that can be kept for a long time: onions, carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, apples. Those, too, we often buy in bulk and later use up in small portions.

An unexpected bonus of eating seasonally is the excitement of waiting for all those fruit and vegetables to become available (or available at normal prices, in our day!). My mother told me that the first time they ate fresh cucumbers after a long winter, was like a small celebration. This is something we are unfamiliar with, used as we are to anything being there all the time. I think doing without certain foods for a while would make us so much more appreciative of God's bounty when we can eat them again.

PS: anonymous comments are back, for the benefit of my faithful readers who were having some problem with the OpenID option. I added word verification, though. It's annoying, but with the amount of spam I've received lately, I'm afraid there's no choice.

Some more on stockpiling

My husband and I are both recovering from a nasty cold, so I hope you bear with me while my thoughts run a bit incoherent today.

Following my stockpiling post, one reader commented that she would like to stockpile but doesn't have the space. Many people, including myself, have a problem with storage space. We live in a tiny two-bedroom house, and my kitchen is just a small area where we managed to squeeze a refrigerator, a portable gas stove and a toaster oven. I barely have room for the bare essentials in my kitchen, let alone keeping a stockpile. I don't have a pantry either.

Read here about creative solutions for stockpile storage. Personally, we keep our stockpile in a cabinet in Shira's bedroom. The cabinet is soon going to be removed, and we'll have a closet installed in its stead – much more effective, storage space-wise. Then, our stockpile will be moved to the closet. An unorthodox solution, but it will have to do until we have a nice big kitchen with lots of cabinets.

Our stockpile was not created deliberately, it just grew; most often, my husband would see something on sale, and buy several items instead of just one for immediate use. There's often something at a good price that can be stored for a long time – canned vegetables, pasta, rice, non-perishables such as shampoo and toilet paper. I must admit that back then, I felt a little pang in my heart whenever I saw the grocery bill, thinking to myself that here are things we could do without, taking up storage space. Time proved that I was wrong.

I was always of the philosophy that buying something you didn't plan to buy was still spending money, even if the price is very good. It is indeed a fine line between stockpiling wisely and becoming a pack rat. Unhealthy foods, snacks loaded with salt and sugar, are never a good deal even if they happen to be very cheap. And luxury items won't help you stretch your budget, no matter how you look at it.

Yes, it's true that we bought more than we needed at the moment, but back then, we could spare the extra cash. I was very glad we did when time came to cutting back costs as much as we could (even though we always did our best to live frugally).

All over the world, people are struggling with the results of a major recession. People who didn't imagine it would ever come to that, now have to think twice before buying a pack of beans or some canned tuna. I know it's unpleasant to think about such possibilities, but it may happen. Being well stocked up on the essentials makes the tough times pass more easily.

Stockpiling

Up until around six months ago, we used to buy in bulk many foodstuffs that can be stored for a long period of time. That includes pasta, rice, canned foods, dry beans, etc. We accumulated quite a nice stockpile of food that was bought at very good prices.

Building and keeping a stockpile is recommended, but of course, it will only work if you have at least some spare cash each week to buy more than you need at the moment. Right now, we keep our grocery shopping to a minimum, and eat a lot from our stockpile. This really helps to reduce the grocery bill.

When things get better, financially, I hope we can replenish our stockpile again. We'll keep an eye on those non-quickly-perishables at good prices, and buy some for immediate use, and some for stockpiling. Some of that stuff can last for years. Just one caveat: each year before Pesach, we need to get rid of the items that are not kosher for Pesach. Last year, it meant giving away a pile of pasta.

There is really something very comforting about knowing that you have a lot of food in your house, food that can tide your family over in tough times. Having a stockpile may also reduce the frequency of shopping, which saves money and time.

Photo credit

The professional homemaker

Today's more liberal brands of feminism are trying to convince us that they are not anti-family; that "being a wife and mother is an option like any other for today's women", and therefore, as they cheerfully point out, a woman can be a wife and mother, or a doctor, or a scientist, or an engineer – and all of these options are equally valid, and equally worth of protection by those who are concerned about women's rights and liberation.

The problem? Most women will want to get married and have children – even those who have ambitious professionalism drilled into their heads from a young age. The desire to be a wife, mother and homemaker is so overwhelmingly strong that no modern waves can stamp it out of women. What we have been, tragically, sold, is the myth that we can delay marriage and motherhood for as long as we want, and juggle it with any type of career.

Of course, this kind of thinking led to a tragedy for an entire generation of women, who remain single after they realized – too late – that they should have boarded the train earlier. Others are struggling with fertility treatments, clinging onto the slim hope of ever having a child. We have way too many celebrated stories in the press about women who became mothers well past their 40-th birthday, and too few presentations of how often fertility treatments actually fail for older women, statistically speaking.

I'm not saying that marrying late, never marrying or never having children is something that didn't happen in the past. Surely, there was always a small number of older singles. But in the past decades, it has become commonplace, too commonplace – women are told to get busy chasing degrees and careers, to do things that are "worthwhile"… which, coincidentally, are not the things that we are wired to be truly happy and content with.

The result is that we are always in an inner conflict, always anxious as to whether we are truly doing what we are supposed to be doing, wondering whether we are spending enough time with our husbands and children vs. professional "investments". Whether we won't come to regret, in a few years, the choices we made.

I have noticed that the attitude of men and women towards work is drastically different, in the more educated/ambitious circles. Men usually talk about good jobs with good prospects that will enable them to take care of their families. Women talk much more often about doing something "interesting", about fulfillment and personal growth. Some say, "I would love to stay home now that my children are little, but I must think about my future." Future – translated as the years when the children are older, when supposedly being a homemaker is not justified. I'd rephrase and say, "I need to stay home now, because I must think about my future." What do I want to have in my future? Heaps of student debt? A blur of years I struggle through, exhausted? Or happy, well-adjusted children who are used to the comforting presence of their mother at home?

I have heard 30-year-old women debating about whether they should dedicate their next five years to doing a PhD, or to having and raising another child. They fully realize that later, whatever they choose, it might be too late for the other option. Whenever I have the chance, I say, "you will never regret the time you spend mothering your children."

I don't think I can ever refer to myself as a "professional" homemaker, because my desire to have a good family and an orderly, peaceful home is so much more than the wish to have a career. It's simply the deepest desire of my heart.

A song about housework

A blog reader shared a song about housework with me, and it put a smile on my face on a rather gloomy day, when I was just about to head out of the house to do some boring work outside. I decided, in my turn, to share the song with you. Apparently it was written sometime in the 1940's, but I feel it fits very well to these days!

***

"Homework"

I'm so tired of working in an office
And it's making me blue
There is work that don't require an office
That I'm anxious to do

Homework, I want to do homework
Instead of an office, I want to work home

Staying at home and crocheting
And meekly obeying
The guy who comes home

A cozy kitchen to be in there pitchin'
Is the thing I'm longing to do
To be there learning when a steak needs turning
And just what goes into a stew

Homework, I want to do homework
A genius who sits and plans with pots and pans at home
A genius who bakes a pie that keeps a guy at home

[2]
Homework, I want to do homework
Instead of an office, I want to work home

Messing around with French dressing
And slightly impressing
The guy who comes home

I long to settle with a steaming kettle
And a frying pan and a pot
And be the keeper of a carpet sweeper
That's the one ambition I've got

Homework, I want to do homework
A genius who has a way that makes him stay at home
A genius who has what takes that makes or breaks a home

[3]
Homework, I want to do homework
Instead of an office, I want to work home

Patching his trousers and matching
The part that keeps scratching
The guy who comes home

A table wiper who can change a diaper
Is the thing I'd like to be best
And be the master of a mustard plaster
When the cold goes down to his chest

Homework, I want to do homework
A genius who does her part so he don't start to roam
A genius who earns her keep that makes him sleep at home

***

And now, I'm off to do some much needed work right here at home! (PS: I disabled anonymous comments due to receiving a lot of spam, most of which was anonymous. You don't have to have a blog to comment, just sign in as OpenID).

Apple strudel

This was my very first attempt at apple strudel, so I chose a simple recipe from here (link in Hebrew). The result was simply divine, starting from the moment the delicious smell of apple strudel filled the house and continuing with the first taste of a hot slice of strudel, fresh out of the oven.

For the dough:

2 1\2 cups of flour

1 egg

2 tbsp. of vegetable oil

1 cup water + 1 tbsp. of white vinegar

Combine flour, egg and oil. Slowly start pouring water with vinegar into the mixture, just until the dough is nice and workable. Most likely you won't need all the water.

Divide the dough into several balls. I made four, and got four mini strudels. It's possible to divide it in two, and get two big strudels.

Roll out the dough on a floured surface. Dough should be rolled out thinly.

For the filling:

I took seven small apples, which I roughly grated and mixed with some cinnamon and a couple of tablespoons of date spread. If you don't have date spread, jam or honey can work just as well, or you can simply mix the apples with a bit of cinnamon and sugar, and dot with butter before rolling the strudels in. I think adding raisins would have been wonderful, but I didn't have any on hand.

Spread the filling on the sheet of dough, leaving the edges empty. Roll the dough in, and seal the edges.

I brushed my strudels with some oil and sprinkled sugar and cinnamon on top of them before baking.

Bake at medium heat for approx. 40 minutes. In my oven, the strudels didn't brown but they were most definitely ready.

Men, women, work and housework

This arrangement, of me working outside the home (even though it's only two days a week), thus stepping into my husband's shoes for a bit, and my husband stepping into my shoes, does not work well. At all. With our best intentions, and knowing that we are doing what must be done at the moment, it can be kept for a limited amount of time. But in the long run, it doesn't work. Men are meant to work outside the home while women keep the gates and hearths and bear and raise children. This has been the way since the beginning of time, and all attempts of finding an alternative arrangement brought nothing to our society but confusion, dissatisfaction and disruption.

You have been so amazingly supportive. I have piles upon piles of emails I want to answer, and will hopefully answer soon, as time allows. For now, I would like to say thank you again to those who have taken the time to write and express their encouragement.

Some voices suggested that now, I will have to be more sympathetic to wives and mothers who must work outside the home. Well, if you read my previous posts carefully, you will see that I have always been very sympathetic towards women who are forced to work, but truly have their hearts at home. Actually, I believe I wrote at least a few times that truly ambitious women with glorious careers are few and far between. Much more often, women occupy the positions of cashiers, secretaries, kindergarten teachers, saleswomen, and other jobs which are low-paying and not very intellectually challenging. They end up doing these jobs not because they are oppressed, but because they are not very ambitious but are still expected to do "something". Many of those women count the hours until they can go home to their families and children, and would like nothing better than to stay at home full-time – something they cannot do, or think they cannot do, because of true or perceived financial necessity, and because all of us who were educated in the public school system have been indoctrinated that we must bring in a paycheck to be worth something.

There is also social pressure. Not long ago, someone I know admitted to me that one of her daughters-in-law doesn't work outside the home because she is pregnant and has several other children to take care of. She sounded very embarrassed, and apparently, expected me to see this as something very strange and unacceptable. She was obviously very relieved when I didn't. The social pressure to "go out and do something" is high, and I was always aware of it, and I could never feel anything but sympathy for the average woman, whom I see as the victim of ideals promoted by those few who truly have the ambition, motivation, desire and right circumstances to be happy with their lives centered around their work.

The majority of women want to be good wives and mothers. That's our primary calling. And that's natural and good, as the majority of us are or will be married, and the majority of those who marry will have children. Please note that I'm talking about social trends here. I realize that someone can always say, "I have never been married and don't desire to" or "I never had a passion for anything but work." The fact remains that most women will marry and have families, and these families will need good homes and orderly lives, something only a dedicated wife can provide.

Working outside the home does not diminish a woman's desire to have an orderly home and happy, well cared for children. That's precisely the conflict we were landed with ever since we bought into the myths of "women's liberation". Of course it's impossible to have it all and do it all, and stay sane. I have always found it very unfair that women are, essentially, forced to do way too much. Someone invented this myth, which is ridiculous when you think about it, that we can be away from home for an entire day and our home life won't suffer. Personally, after a day at work I have hardly any energy left for my home. The vitality of the best part of my day is drained away from me. Some told me that it's all "a matter of attitude". Of course it is. I can never feel the same way about working outside the home as I do when I work in my home.

Some claim that it could all work - if only men agreed to play their part of the game. Both spouses work the same number of hours outside the home, both do an equal share of the housework and childcare. But practically, most men will still work longer hours, if only because men are naturally more ambitious and more inclined to choose the more challenging and demanding jobs. Men are also less inclined towards domesticity. I'm not saying this as an excuse for men to do nothing around the house when their help is really and truly needed – I fully believe husbands can and should step up to the plate in emergency cases, to help out, to extend kindness to their wives. But guess what? When my husband is at home alone for a day, it's not like he becomes the homemaker. It's not in his nature. He's a great help, but he won't do things like straightening the cushions or ironing. He's not a nester like I am, and he isn't supposed to be. I can moan about it, or I can accept it. I choose to accept it, and work and carefully plan towards the day when each of us fully embraces what we were meant to do.