I wanted to say that we grew too much produce, hunted too much game, or harvested too many fish. Truly, though, I knew that this was not so. We always have had a concern for where our food came from, and as time passes, we are continually trying to turn away from things that are processed and unrecognizable ingredient-wise, and eat things that we grew or processed ourselves.
Self-sufficiency is so appealing to us.
The caveat of reality comes from what society throws at us. We are bombarded by consumerism advertisements everywhere we go. Commercials on TV tell us to visit this restaurant, buy that product, and tell our friends to do likewise. When we go to the grocery store to purchase staples such as flour or sugar (you know, things that we don't yet produce ourselves), we are sucked in to the shelved products right next to what we originally came to the store for, and before one could blink, the cart is full of cereal, soups, crackers, and other things that look good, but really aren't that good for us.
It's a vicious cycle, really.
So, while we think that we had too much to begin with, we sort of did, but a lot of it was not "real food." Slowly, those sorts of things are dwindling from our stockpiles. We have no frozen pizzas, "quick" dinners, or convenience meals anymore, really. We never really had too many to begin with, but those that we did have are now gone, and that's perfectly O.K. The cravings for these sorts of things have begun to subside, too.
I assuredly thought that at the beginning of our journey, Jay was going to bail on the project within a few days of us running out of ice cream. He didn't. I have made two batches of homemade yogurt now, and I turned some of that into frozen yogurt. We had a bottle of creme de menthe syrup in the cupboard (who knows where that came from), and I added some of it, along with some chopped up Dove chocolates from Christmas into the yogurt mix, and he was satisfied with the mint chocolate "chip" frozen yogurt as a decent substitute for ice cream. Win.
We have to bake bread now, peel potatoes, plan ahead much more when it comes to defrosting meat, and prepping for meals, but it's worth it. We are spending more time together in the kitchen actually doing something of substance, and we feel good putting in the effort that we otherwise may not have. Last night, I chopped a head of cabbage, bagged half, and minced the rest, shredded a carrot, and made a coleslaw dressing from scratch (sour cream, mayo, mustard, sugar, salt, vinegar, and celery salt--which was homemade too). Before our project, I may have just opened a bag of slaw mix, or if I did chop the cabbage, I would have more than likely used a pre-prepared dressing.
Doing it yourself tastes better. Working for your food also makes you appreciate it more.
Back to my original thought for the day-- we are actually seeing a small dent in our food stores. It's small, but it's there. By all projections, I think that we will run out of chicken first when it comes to protein. Beef will follow. Venison, rabbit, and fish will be the last to go. As far as vegetables are concerned, the frozen broccoli will go, followed by the corn, carrots, asparagus, and cabbage. I think we will have home-canned green beans, dry beans, and tomatoes until the cows come home.
And if the cows do come home, I'm going to shoot one and we'll be eating Ribeyes and Porterhouses until summer arrives. Mark my words. I miss steak. We have two beef steaks left, and we're saving them for Valentine's dinner--and no, we aren't sharing.
In other excitement, we are eagerly planning our summer garden. It's unsure where we are going to be come summer, as we are house-hunting (even more so, after my heated exchange over snow shoveling with my batcrap crazy neighbor--another story for another day, I'm sure), but we are still planting our seed starts as normal.
We're both dreaming of spinach, kale, buttercrunch, mesclun blends, arugula and radicchio these days. Our last bit of Romaine is on its last legs, and will be consumed soon.
I have a future bartering bill arranged with a relative for whom I did some photography work. A few winters ago, I took a picture with delayed exposure of Bond Falls in Ontonagon County, MI during the winter time. It was a brutally cold day, but it was a beautiful experience that I was able to capture on film, here:
Milk supplies are nearly out again, too. We haven't tapped in to our almond milk yet, but we're about to, soon. I'm scared.
--SH