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Don't get taken in by buzz words like whole, natural, sustainable or organic. Locally grown food helps our economy and our neighbors. It is good to eat and good for you.
There are some small scale farmers who are producing a good quantity of food without a heavy reliance on petroleum.
Some people make the assumption that you must have petroleum to produce food, which is largely due to how our society has changed in the last 100 years. Both of my grand fathers were farmers, neither of them owned a tractor. They had mules. Our nation's food production had no connection to petroleum. But at that time we also had a higher percentage of people farming.
Modern farming has allowed us to have 1 person produce the food which feeds hundreds of people. Petroleum, advanced chemistry, mechanical power and even electronics have gone into this industry. So today a tiny portion of our population is connected to agriculture.
I have seen debates; people make the assumption that organic sustainable agriculture can not produce enough food to feed our people. In my world, I see that more and more people are taking up gardening, and expanding into farming [providing other people with food]. It is happening.
It isn't just petroleum (oil) that's used in modern agriculture, but natural gas as well.
Nat. gas is the main feedstock for nitrogen fertilizer via the Haber-Bosch process. As well, a lot of grain in this country is finish dried with natural gas. There's probably a lot of other uses too but these that I mention are pretty big.
We don't sit and wring our hands over the fact that Fruit Loops have gone up another $2.00 a box or Thomas' english muffins are now $3.00 a package.
LOL! I love Maine people.
What you wrote is, unfortunately, very true for many other parts of the country. I do see people getting upset over the price of things like Fruit Loops.
Your list of what you grew and kept in the cellar reminds me of how it was growing up. We had a huge vegetable garden, (that we kids had to weed, bleh), and my parents did a lot of canning fruits and storing up.
In our basement there was a room at the bottom of the stairs that looked like it was for storage of equipment, maybe tools or whatever and that's where my parents put all of that stuff. We called it the "fruit room". As in, "GatorMama, go get a jar of peaches from the fruit room. We're having them for dessert tonight."
I hated that when I was a kid. I hated that we had a vegetable garden and a fruit room. I wanted the Del Monte peaches. I wanted to see the Jolly Green Giant, just like all the other kids got.
Now that I'm older, I so, SO wish I would have paid attention to how they did what they did because I plan on doing the same thing. I have to learn it all the hard way though because I was "too good" for homegrown back then. Sigh.
When I was a kid, I thought my parents were boring and stupid. Now I realize how so very smart they were. Sigh...again.
By the way, some have been wondering why some of the younger don't like to cook.
It's not that I don't like to cook because frankly, home cooked meals taste way better than processed food, it's because as FB pointed out, some of us are lazy, (guilty), some of us hate cleaning up the mess, (that was pointed out in a post), and some of us are still learning how to portion.
What I mean by that is I have finally realized that making my own food at night is cheaper and tastes better. What I'm still trying to learn is how to portion it out. When I buy a package of chicken, I don't have to cook the entire thing and put it in the fridge to spoil because I can't eat it all before it goes bad. I need to do what dear old mom did, (again, they were smarter than me), and store some in the freezer.
As I'm reading this thread, I get images in my head of my mom with baggies and a straw. (Not what you think!)
When she came home from the store, she would put most of the food away but the meat stayed out on the counter. She would then open the meat, take portions out, put some of those portions in baggies, get a straw and suck the air out of the bag before sealing it and putting it in the freezer. (I think we have baggies now where I won't need to do the straw thing.)
She shopped once a month for 5 people. There was no, "go to the store and pick up dinner every night", it was once a month. She made a list as the month went on. Something ran out? It went on the list. She had menus and prepared meals in her mind, ahead of time. Every last penny was budgeted. She knew exactly what she was going to get, how much she was going to get and how long it would last.
I'm still learning how to do this. I completely and totally admit to laziness because shopping and dinner always seemed so time consuming for her. What I didn't understand was that it was only one day a month that it was so time consuming. Sure, dinner took time and I'm now starting to understand why we kids had to do chores like set and clear the table and do the dishes. She put in all that time getting the food there, the least we could do was clean up, right?
What I'm still learning is proportions.
I also think some others have touched on something...marketing and convenience and the wide variety available. It sure is easy to come home, pop something in the microwave and just be done with it. What do you have left? A fork to clean? Maybe a glass? You throw the container away once you're done eating, you don't even need a plate.
Marketing makes it sound like you're getting a healthy meal but I think we all know better.
Wide variety...this is what makes it hard for me. I have to change my way of thinking. Instead of going in to it thinking, "But I don't know what I'll be in the mood for on Friday!", I need to think, "This is what you're going to eat, Friday."
I think that's a big part of it. "What am I in the mood for?" And then they go and get it from the store. We are spoiled by the wide variety. I have been spoiled and I didn't realize that until the last six months when I decided to start working on this, seriously.
I now go to the store and buy food to last for a month. (Except veggies, they never last that long, fresh, that is....unless you all know a way? Cause I haven't a clue.) I try to buy enough variety that I can "trick" myself in to accepting that this is what I have available, this is what I can make. In time, I'll learn to do as she did and make my menus ahead of time and get that and have what I said I was going to have.
It should be, "I'm in the mood for pizza" and getting it are a rarity, as it was when I was a kid, and not the norm.
Some of us are getting there.
OH, and also, dinner isn't like it used to be for a lot of people. Used to be you would sit down, as a family, around the table and talk. People don't seem to do that much anymore and dinner is more like a chore than an enjoyable time.
Don't get taken in by buzz words like whole, natural, sustainable or organic. Locally grown food helps our economy and our neighbors. It is good to eat and good for you.
And what many of us grow, and take to Farmers Market IS natural, sustainable, whole and grown with organic principles -- through not the expensive certification -- and not at premium (translation: "natural food store" or "organic section of your local supermarket") prices.
I grow pretty much the same way my grandparents grew in their small market garden in Iowa in the 50s. I don't know WHY Grandpa didn't use DDT and the other stuff that was available then, but he didn't... and he is not around now for me to ask.
What you wrote is, unfortunately, very true for many other parts of the country. I do see people getting upset over the price of things like Fruit Loops.
Your list of what you grew and kept in the cellar reminds me of how it was growing up. We had a huge vegetable garden, (that we kids had to weed, bleh), and my parents did a lot of canning fruits and storing up.
In our basement there was a room at the bottom of the stairs that looked like it was for storage of equipment, maybe tools or whatever and that's where my parents put all of that stuff. We called it the "fruit room". As in, "GatorMama, go get a jar of peaches from the fruit room. We're having them for dessert tonight."
I hated that when I was a kid. I hated that we had a vegetable garden and a fruit room. I wanted the Del Monte peaches. I wanted to see the Jolly Green Giant, just like all the other kids got.
Now that I'm older, I so, SO wish I would have paid attention to how they did what they did because I plan on doing the same thing. I have to learn it all the hard way though because I was "too good" for homegrown back then. Sigh.
When I was a kid, I thought my parents were boring and stupid. Now I realize how so very smart they were. Sigh...again.
Don't fret. canning is pretty easy if you have the proper equipment. Prepping the food for canning is the hard part. Freezing stuff is a snap. Many foods just need blanching before freezing which is easy as well. There a number of excellent books on canning and home preserving. I used one called Putting Foods By.
If you pay attention to what you're doing and use good sanitization methods you'll be fine. Start with making pickles. They're good, easy, and tough to screw up. Then you can move on to preserves, jams, jellies and such. My relatives were canning deer meat, pork, chicken, etc successfully for many years before freezers were available. No one died!! I never got that far into canning because freezing to me is a much better way to preserve most things.
The only thing with freezing is you have to be sure you have a generator to keep your freezers running should you get an extended power outage. In '98 I lost two whole freezers full of veggies and meat when the power was out for 8 days. A year's worth of effort down the drain for want of a cheap generator. Now I have two generators!!
Don't fret. canning is pretty easy if you have the proper equipment. Prepping the food for canning is the hard part. Freezing stuff is a snap. Many foods just need blanching before freezing which is easy as well. There a number of excellent books on canning and home preserving. I used one called Putting Foods By.
If you pay attention to what you're doing and use good sanitization methods you'll be fine. Start with making pickles. They're good, easy, and tough to screw up. Then you can move on to preserves, jams, jellies and such. My relatives were canning deer meat, pork, chicken, etc successfully for many years before freezers were available. No one died!! I never got that far into canning because freezing to me is a much better way to preserve most things.
The only thing with freezing is you have to be sure you have a generator to keep your freezers running should you get an extended power outage. In '98 I lost two whole freezers full of veggies and meat when the power was out for 8 days. A year's worth of effort down the drain for want of a cheap generator. Now I have two generators!!
Thanks for the book recommendation! I will pick it up for sure.
So you CAN freeze fresh veggies? For example, if I go to the store, to the produce section and buy the fresh vegetables, it is possible for me to freeze them? I'm sure I can do beans and peas, but potatoes? What about lettuce? Onions? Garlic? Is that even possible or would that destroy them?
(And yes, I have a generator. Have to here in hurricane country! But it's cheap so when I move to ME, I'll have to look at spending a bit more money. Have also been looking at some solar powered ones...still researching that, though.)
Thanks for the book recommendation! I will pick it up for sure.
So you CAN freeze fresh veggies? For example, if I go to the store, to the produce section and buy the fresh vegetables, it is possible for me to freeze them? I'm sure I can do beans and peas, but potatoes? What about lettuce? Onions? Garlic? Is that even possible or would that destroy them?
(And yes, I have a generator. Have to here in hurricane country! But it's cheap so when I move to ME, I'll have to look at spending a bit more money. Have also been looking at some solar powered ones...still researching that, though.)
In our experience, some things are better dehydrated: beans, peas, onions, garlic, mint, parsley, cilantro, mullein, ... [we do have a some dehydrated celery, but I would not recommend it]
Our chest freezer is outside, on the North side of our house [so it is never in direct sun-light], pretty much in a snow-bank. I doubt if it turns on all winter long. So our expense to operate it is not as much.
We freeze a lot of fiddleheads, they hold very well frozen
Thanks for the book recommendation! I will pick it up for sure.
So you CAN freeze fresh veggies? For example, if I go to the store, to the produce section and buy the fresh vegetables, it is possible for me to freeze them? I'm sure I can do beans and peas, but potatoes? What about lettuce? Onions? Garlic? Is that even possible or would that destroy them?
(And yes, I have a generator. Have to here in hurricane country! But it's cheap so when I move to ME, I'll have to look at spending a bit more money. Have also been looking at some solar powered ones...still researching that, though.)
I would only freeze cooked potatoes. Onions store well and do not need to be frozen, but they can be (chopped). Garlic, again, I have never frozen as many varieties store well otherwise.
Do you eat lettuce cooked? If so, you can freeze it. Vegetables that are frozen do not have a proper texture, when thawed, to eat raw.
There is also the famous "Ball Blue Book" put out by the canning jar company that gives the latest recommendations on how to both can and freeze foods. Be somewhat cautious, as a beginner, about using older versions of any reference; there are valid food safety reasons that have caused recommendations to be changed (I speak as an Extension Master Food Preserver.)
Just to give you an example of how I store some of what I produce, year before last I grew LOTS of brown onions from the "generic" onion sets at the feed store. Nothing special about them that I could tell. I braided the large onions after the tops dried a bit -- with twine braided in for extra strength -- and then hung the braids in my back room and in the kitchen. I was using up the last of the onions from the braids when the next year's crop came in. Yeah, a few of them went bad, some were a bit soft (still ok for cooked dishes) and some started to grow (still ok to use.)
In our experience, some things are better dehydrated: beans, peas, onions, garlic, mint, parsley, cilantro, mullein, ... [we do have a some dehydrated celery, but I would not recommend it]
I almost always dry the LEAVES of the celery, if I am chopping it up in something, like a Waldorf salad, that doesn't want them. That works well for me.
Green beans, peas, onions... dried... in my world are really only good in soups. Cooking them as a typical side dish finds them severely lacking in texture and taste. For that purpose, we freeze. They can also be pressure canned but you will have a texture much more like store bought canned foods.
Herbs are, of course, easy to dry and if you use a lot of them in cooking, you can save a BUNCH!
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Vegetables that are frozen do not have a proper texture, when thawed, to eat raw. 
