Have you heard... Life can be quite inconvenient at times...

I am not sure if I have mentioned it on a prior blog post, but my parents grew up out in the country.  For my Mom's extended family, farming and other forms of agriculture were the family business.  At the peak of operations, they had a wood lot and sawmill that produced hardwood lumber, a farm equipment dealership, as well as a full-service dairy that sold bottled milk, cottage cheese, butter, and ice cream.  They even had a fleet of trucks to deliver the products to the doorstep of area homes and businesses.  My Dad's family owned a farm just a short ways down the road.  It was much smaller and not really a business enterprise of any sort.  Nowadays, it might be called a hobby farm.  Although I am sure my Dad and my Uncle would say that it required too much work to consider it merely a hobby.  Knowing on many days they had to wake up well before sunrise to start the tractor by hand...  hitch up the family car...  tow it to the top of the lane so my Grandfather could coast it down the hill into town and bump start it for his drive to work...  Feed and milk the cows...  Then get ready for school...  I wouldn't just call it a hobby either.  This doesn't even consider the work they did after school or during the summer when they hired themselves out to help others in the community tend, harvest, and store their crops.

While I could go on for days about the joys and hardships my parents experienced growing up when and where they did...  I just wanted to delve into it briefly today as a means to understanding how these current times are not quite as severe for me as it may be for many of my fellow Americans.  I believe this is because people who raise plants and animals for food - like my parents and grandparents did - know that the quality of the harvest may be affected by many things outside their control.  They tend to recognize the need to store food in times of plenty so that they may endure those times when it is far from plenty.  My parents and their extended families are certainly guided by that principle.

As a young child, I recall those late summer weekends when our entire family would come together to help with the garden.  Any number of fruits and vegetables were picked, cleaned, and briefly cooked before being canned or frozen.  I enjoyed waiting under a shade tree on the edge of the field to husk the sweet corn that would arrive by the bushel.  Once the corn was all husked, I would hang around the kitchen and watch the rest.   My Great-Grandmother was always there employing her favorite Ronco Deluxe Dial-o-matic slicer to great effect.  Slicing cucumbers for pickles or cutting corn off the cob, she was a food processing machine.  The only aspect that I could not stand involved pickling vegetables.  If you put your nose close to an open bottle of vinegar and breathe deeply while imagining your entire house smelling like that... I am sure you can understand why.  The end goal was to ensure a ready supply of staples on hand like corn, green beans, white potatoes, sweet potatoes, beets, peaches, strawberries, blackberries, apples, and pears.  Back then, the nearest full-service grocery was more than a half hour away.  In the winter, roads often became impassable.  Many members of the family had moved away and no longer had enough space to grow a garden quite like we still had.  So my parents made sure to grow enough to share.  It was hard work, but I am sure all would agree it was well worth it.

Even though we moved away from there more than forty years ago, I still approach my food supply in much the same way.  I am an avid gardener.  Now that my parents are condo owners without a garden of their own, they spend a lot of time in my garden too.  We don't have enough room for sweet corn or potatoes, but we grow our own lettuce, both green and wax beans, tomatoes, and peppers.  We have a large freezer in our basement and several shelves of canned goods plus a couple of side-by-side refrigerator freezers.  We manage to keep them nearly full on an ongoing basis - much to my wife's chagrin.  You may be wondering why anyone would do that when you live 5 - 10 minutes from multiple full-service grocery stores, butchers, and seasonal farm markets?  I bet if I asked my parents that question they would respond "because you never know what can happen."  Up until the last couple of weeks, I would have thought they were being silly.  In my wildest dreams, I don't think I could have conjured up something that would so drastically affect my ready access to food as this current pandemic.  There's a good chance you may go to the store now and the shelves are bare of more than a few essentials.  Feels like considerable risk with potentially less than expected return.

Fortunately for us, it has been only a minor inconvenience to continue feeding ourselves.  We are cooking more meals at home, but I don't see any danger of us running out of things to eat for at least 6 - 8 weeks.  By fortunate happenstance, I ended up with a fridge full of fresh eggs and a freezer full of smoked sausage just before the stay-at-home order was levied.  We might not have exactly everything needed for all our favorite recipes, but we will have enough that we can make do.  That allows us to visit the grocery store much less and rely instead on what is already on hand.  Hopefully, this will give others less well-stocked a better chance at finding what they need at the store.  I continue to share  with friends and neighbors.   I am wondering how the pandemic may be affecting your shopping (and cooking) habits?   Do you feel comfortable riding it out for a bit, since your pantry, refrigerator, and freezer are well stocked?  Or are you feeling a bit of pressure with insufficient supplies on hand?  Perhaps frustrated that a large number of items on your list are unavailable at your favorite store?  Have you already blown past the minor inconvenience stage?    

I didn't get many responses to similar inquiries in my previous post.  Hoping this time I see a few more comments.  Not sure if my dedicated readers have disbanded or if they just don't have time to respond?  Either way, you can count me out of any panic-buying at the grocery store.  Just going to stay home and work in the garden this weekend.  If I get a more robust response rate this time, I will include a favorite recipe in the next post. (not-so-subtle persuasion)

Your Dining Scout and Shadetree Chef,
Michael Hurd - aka Big Mike