Just eat together.

When I started this blog, my goal was to post at least once a month, and I've met that goal until recently. My spouse is in the armed forces and, of late, frequently away from home for long stretches, leaving adult energy stretched thin down here South of Sunnybrook.

I've always been a big fan of family dinners. I loved them when I was a kid, and I love them now. I find it harder to have regular family meals when the other adult is gone, but the ritual of dinner, the giving of thanks and sharing with each other, this is what keeps us sane.

I think the idea of family dinner can be intimidating sometimes. But a bucket of fried chicken around the table is "family dinner." Baked potatoes and broccoli is family dinner. I prefer homemade, but it certainly doesn't have to be fancy.

"It is what it is"

And on the night I took the picture above, I'd been working for a day or two at one end of the table, with beans drying at the other end, and the kids had colored there in the afternoon.  As you can see, we just scooped out spaces for our plates and lit the candles (which "makes it special" according to my kids). By the time the fish was ready, I just didn't have the energy to lead a full-on table clearing, so I let it go.

Sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good. On this night, we laughed, and shared, and had a great time surrounded by the detritus of our busy, bountiful lives.

Share time. Offer gratitude. Eat together.

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And just after I posted this, a friend shared this link on Facebook. Quote: "...life on this little blue planet is too precious and fragile to be spent lamenting crusted Raisin Bran in the sink. That what really matters is grace, forgiveness, and understanding. And love. Always, unequivocally and without fail, love."

Sugar Cereal

Sugar cereal and Saturday morning cartoons

I joked recently on Facebook about how Southerners run to the store for milk and bread if snow is forecast, and a friend joked back "You buy groceries? I thought you guys were self-sustaining." 

It got me to thinking about how often living a simpler, more sustainable life can seem daunting in our media-saturated, consumer culture. For me, it's all about making very small changes. I'm not an all-or-nothing person. And, for the record, I have no desire to be self-sustaining, though "community-sustaining" is certainly a goal.

We talk as a family about our goals, and then find ourselves buying more organic, more local. Food is sacred. It literally creates us anew. Some Buddhist practices teach that how food is grown and prepared impacts not just the body, but the soul as well. Food prepared with a bad attitude causes a kind of metaphysical/spiritual damage, just like eating food full of hormones and pesticides can cause physical harm. 

So yes, the goal is to prepare healthy food with love...but it's also important to be honest and objective about where we are now. It's rather like filling a Facebook feed with a bevvy of gardening posts; it can mistakenly give people the impression that one is feeding a family of four from a flowerbed garden. (For the record, probably 10% of our food comes from our own garden + my dad's garden, though hopefully more as time goes on.)

Similarly, when shopping with my children recently, my 7-year-old son asked, "so mommy, is sugar cereal so bad we really should never eat it?" That gave me pause. In the pause, my son pointed out, "Well, we used to eat it once a year, on vacation, but we didn't do that this year. Is once a year okay?"

Pretty sure those honeycrisp apples in the background are not organic either.

"Yes, once a year is certainly fine," I said. "......so let's get the little boxes so we can try a lot of different things." This suggestion was well received, and then gave us the opportunity to read labels, to look at packaging claims (like "Good source of VITAMIN D"), to consider degrees of processing for different foods, and to discuss what choices mean for our bodies and the greater world to which we are connected. I love buying the little boxes, which you can cut open and use as a "bowl" of sorts. I always wanted to try even one of these as a kid, but it was completely verboten, and I coveted those little boxes.

In our world, as it exists today, we cannot avoid chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Even if I only consumed what I grow here myself (assuming I could grow enough), I would get some runoff from my uphill neighbor, or from the bird that eats it elsewhere and poops in my garden, or my wheat is cross-pollinated with GMO wheat, etc. There is no perfect, chemical-free, food-world....but this doesn't mean that my choices don't make a difference!!

Nowadays, I buy only organic strawberries and spinach. I buy organic bananas, unless they just look horrible (only usually about 10 cents/lb more than alternative). I buy organic apples about 80% of the time. (I have tried to begin with foods containing the most pesticides and petrochemicals, and/or the cheaper organic alternatives, and work from there.) And nowadays I buy sugar cereal once a year. We don't have to be all-or-nothing. The journey toward sustainability and moderation, for me, is made up of many, many small steps. 

Walk with me, hold my hand, and we won't run this race in vain!

I also have to share that my kids self-rationed these little boxes to last for several weeks, saving the last two for the Saturday morning after Thanksgiving. They didn't gorge, like I did on sugar cereal when I got to college. I found this to be very interesting, and pretty cool. For them, it's a "sometimes food," just for fun...a tiny bit of Yin that must exist in the Yang.

Bag o' Bacon

Frozen bacon roll, ready for easy dicing.

A little bacon goes a long way. One piece, diced up and sautéed with garlic and onion adds a smoky saltiness to your tomato soup. With garlic, ginger and a bit of soy, it makes bok choy fabulous. Key here being "one piece." Bacon is best in moderation and it's certainly not sold that way.

My sister-in-law mentioned freezing bacon and I thought it was a great idea. I pictured myself freezing already-cooked slices, ready for crumbling into a salad or adding to pizza, pasta, greens, etc. If you're going to fry bacon, you might as well do it all at once, right? Besides, I do save bacon grease in a jar to make cornbread or to add to oil on the rare occasions I fry something.

The problem with frying a whole pound of bacon in our house is that it never makes it to the freezer. Inevitably pieces get snagged right away by the whole family; part goes to the the dinner; the remaining amount is usually deemed "too small to freeze" and used for breakfast burritos and BLTs the next day. This rather defeats the moderation theme, doesn't it?

After bringing up this dilemma with my sister-in-law, she recommended freezing it raw. Yes, it does seem like this would have occurred to me on my own, but it did not. I just rolled each piece like you see above and put them on a cookie sheet in the freezer overnight. The next day, the already-frozen rolls went into a plastic bag to be used 1-2 at a time. 

Unexpected bonus? it is really easy to dice or chop the frozen roll. This also means less hands-on time overall and, most importantly, makes it easy to only take out a single piece instead of trying futilely to resist the savory delight of hot, crispy bacon. 

Stock is Cheap

Oh did you think I was going to dole out investing advice?  Nay, nay, not so but far otherwise.  Take me to my natal shore and the white cliffs of Albion.....oh wait, sorry, I got distracted.

Today's tip is the Stock Bag for the freezer.  You can compost all those end pieces of onions, carrot peelings and leafy celery tops, but it's an even better idea to use them to make your own stock.  You know how sometimes the inside of a garlic bulb is just those teeny-tiny cloves that are impossible to peel?  Cut them in half and throw them in your stock bag. Don't worry about the skin!  How about that one squash that got hidden in the drawer and is fine but a little shriveled?  Stock bag!  And don't forget to go through your fridge and toss in anything that you aren't going to be able to use that week.  Any vegetables will work!  The bonus is that your stock will taste like the season.

When my bag is full, I decide what kind of stock I need.  For vegetable stock, I usually take a look at what's in the bag and round it out with an extra carrot or half an onion (again, resist the urge to peel off the skin!) and a potato.  I add some herbs (if they're not already in the bag) and some peppercorns and let the whole thing come to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until it tastes right.  I do taste throughout and add a little salt.

For chicken stock, I don't use fresh chicken.  That seems incredibly wasteful to me.  Besides, if you use fresh chicken, you have to cook that first and skim the top of the water multiple times before adding the vegetables.  If you roast a chicken and use the carcass to make the stock, you can just dump it and the stock bag into a big pot with water and, again, herbs, peppercorns and bring to a boil.  Add a splash of white vinegar to leach calcium from the bones and let it gently simmer all day.  Taste and add salt as needed. 

When it's done, let it cool, then strain it.  One word of advice: do not put it in the refrigerator with the plan of straining it next day.  You will have to reheat it before straining and it will be cloudy.  And, well, why add all that work?  Often I will strain it in a colander and put it in the fridge and then strain through cheesecloth the next day when separating it to freeze.  That really doesn't add any extra steps for me.

I generally freeze mine in two- and four-cup portions in plastic, but am on the hunt for paper cups that will hold at least 1.5-2 cups.  I plan to freeze those on a cookie sheet, same as I do with the baggies, then put them in a larger container for deep-freeze storage.  Oh, and that Stock Bag itself?  It's a perfect candidate for re-use.  

Update: I now freeze stock in jars since I've built up a good stash. Do not tighten the lids until after the jars are frozen. Works wonderfully!!

So, start your Stock Bag today and plan to make some low-sodium, homemade stock yourself.  It's the perfect touch for making soup or giving rice a boost without extra butter.  And best of all, it's incredibly easy and doesn't take much time.  

And special thanks to my mother-in-law for this tip.  It's not something she does herself, but something her mother used to do and I'm awfully glad she shared it with me!