Community Sponsored Agriculture

This year our family did something I wish we would have done when we moved to Poughkeepsie the previous year: we joined a CSA. For those unfamiliar with the term, CSA stands for Community Sponsored Agriculture. CSAs vary, but they all have some things in common. Generally, you pay a fee for the season and pick up some fresh local vegetables every week or so. As far as I can gather that seems like the one thing they all have in common. From there they can vary a bit. But this one feature brings a lot of great benefits that are relevant to the mission of this blog. I will start with those then talk a bit about some of the great things I get from my particular CSA The Poughkeepsie Farm Project, which in my opinion is a very good one.

The most obvious advantage of a CSA is that it provides you with produce that is locally grown and therefore also in season, as opposed to something that is not in season and shipped half way across the country, or farther. This reduces your carbon footprint and makes you less dependent on the industrial food system. It also supports an alternative local food source and the people working to grow it.

Of course my reasons for joining a CSA are not entirely altruistic. I get a lot of great things from my membership. The produce I pick up every week is a lot fresher than what I can buy at even the best supermarkets. So it tastes a lot better and lasts longer. I also get exposed to vegetables I have never tasted and in some cases never knew existed. Sometimes these are entirely unfamiliar vegetables, other times they are different varieties of a common vegetable. Still, other times it means eating a part of a plant that simply does not make it to most grocery stores for various reasons (garlic scapes are a good example). Exploring new foods puts you out of your comfort zone and will introduce you to new recipes. This can really help you change things up if you find yourself in a rut cooking the same meals every week.

In the context of this blog CSAs do something else great: they get you used to eating what is local and in season. For many americans this presents a challenge. The typical US supermarket has no seasons and you can get pretty much any fruit or vegetable you want year round. This seems like a good idea at first, but when you actually taste a lot of the produce out of season it simply does not satisfy. For example, I have no desire to eat a tomato outside of tomato season and will simply pick up canned tomatoes for a recipe if I need them out of season. Most supermarket tomatoes are picked while they are still green and ripened using ethylene gas, so they don't taste very good. The greenhouse tomatoes they sell are a little better, but still nowhere near as good as one of the tomatoes that comes out of my garden or CSA between August and early October.

Some research shows that our bodies do better eating fruits and vegetables in their proper season. This might explain why I crave salads more in in the summer and roasted potatoes more in the winter. It also makes sense to get used to eating produce in season now, because shipping some agricultural products long distances might become prohibitively expensive in the future.

I feel very lucky that my particular CSA has some great features. It offers working shares which give you a discount on your membership if you volunteer some of your time. I like this because I get to meet other CSA members who generally have common interests. They give the option of several kinds of jobs to fulfill a work requirement, but I always choose some kind of field work because this allows me to learn more about growing food from the farm staff.

My CSA also lets members pick some of their own vegetables. This saves the staff some work and again puts me out in the field where I can see the source of my food. I often will take my two year old son who loves to help pick (and eat) beans, tomatoes, and berries. This provides a great learning opportunity for him. I also learn a lot. While picking okra this summer, a vegetable I don't have a lot of experience with, an Indian woman and an African-American woman from New Orleans showed me how to avoid picking pods that had become too tough (if the tip bends they are good). In general, the CSA attracts people from many cultures who appreciate good produce.

The opportunity to pick my own vegetable also works out very well because it allows me stock up. One week I might be allowed to pick a pint or a quart of something. But during the peak of the growing season I might be encouraged to take as much of a vegetable as I can carry home. I took advantage of this by picking a shopping bag full of green beans, blanching them, and storing them in the freezer for the winter. This will come in handy because the only drawback of my CSA is that, like the growing season for most crops in my area, it is not year round. Eventually I would like to have season extenders at home that will allow me to grow greens in the winter. But for now I'm back to going to my local grocery store and looking forward to when my CSA starts up again in the spring.

I hope you will look into the CSAs in your area and consider joining. I'm very happy with mine.

A note on my absence:  I have neglected this blog for a while due to Theo's irregular nap schedule, other obligations, and poor time management on my part. I hope to keep posting regularly (at least monthly). I'm also very happy to announce that we are expecting a baby girl around the new year. We plan on having a home birth and I will write a bit about the experience. If you don't want to miss a post please subscribe. Thanks.

Back in September

Sorry I have not posted in a while. I have been busy doing the things I write about here. I plan to have a new post up in the beginning of September and will start posting on a monthly basis instead of a weekly one. I have too much on my plate at the moment. If this changes I will begin writing more regularly again. I also plan to submit a story to the space bat challenge, so keep an eye out for that.

Finally, my brother-in-law who is also a stay-at-home dad writes a great blog. He recently lost his daughter to a stillbirth and he has written a very touching post about it. You should give it a read, but have some tissues handy. 

Allergy Tea Recipe

I like going to herbal remedies first whenever I have any kind of health problem. In my experience they work well, don't cost much, and for the most part carry none of the scary side effects we associate with modern pharmaceutical medicines. So this week I would like to give you my recipe for an effective and great tasting allergy tea that I have used for years to treat my seasonal allergies. I tried over the counter and prescription medications when I was younger, but I really did not like them. One stopped working, another dried me out to the point of extreme discomfort, and another made me incredibly drowsy contrary to the claims made on the package.

For a long time I simply suffered with allergies. Then I came upon a great apothecary in Brooklyn. There I found a tea that worked wonders for my allergies without any side effects. I now drink it everyday to deal with my allergies to pollen, pet dander, and dust (a real problem when you have the windows closed during the cold winter months). I no longer live near the apothecary, but after looking at the ingredient list I have come up with my own version of the tea that works just as well. And since I buy herbs in bulk it costs me even less than I would pay for the tea at the apothecary. There are lots of places to find bulk herbs, but I like to order from Jean's Greens. They have a large selection of organic herbs at great prices and they are just up the river from me.

Allergy Tea

1 Part Nettle Leaf
1 Part Golden Rod
1 Part Ginger Root
1 Part Peppermint
1 Part Sage

Steep 1 Tablespoon of the tea for twenty minutes. Then enjoy. It tastes very good especially with some honey. Depending on the severity of your allergies drink 1-3 cups a day.

Note to nursing mothers: Sage can lower milk production. So nursing mothers should omit this from the recipe.

LESS Toys and TV

Some parents might call me a monster for the topic of this week's blog. Others will likely nod in agreement, or even let out a "well, duh". No matter what you think, it certainly makes me feel like a curmudgeon to suggest that kids don't need a fraction of the toys most of them have. This goes especially for babies and toddlers, but also extends upward in age.

Now this does not mean that my son does not have toys. He has lots of them. Though I feel no shame admitting that I have bought him very few of them. Most came in the form of gifts from friends and family. I bought him a xylophone for his first birthday and I have given him some balls and blocks on other occasions. Like I said, he has a lot more toys than the ones I bought him.

But you know what? He doesn't even want to play with his toys most of the time. I can picture many parents nodding after reading this. It often seems like he wants to play with everything but his toys. He find the "toys" that grown-ups play with much more interesting and a few implements from the kitchen will often occupy him for much longer than any toy he owns. So while I appreciate all the gifts that he has received, I don't feel a need to buy him toys. If someone wants to get him a gift I usually suggest something practical (clothes etc.), or a new book.

Some folks might wonder how I occupy him. Well, unless the weather is very brutal we spend a lot of time outside. He runs around, plays with a ball, inquires into the natural world, and attempts to "help" me in the garden. I let his curiosity dictate what we do most of the time. As long as there are no hazards I let him explore indoors and out.

This saves money and keeps the small home we rent from getting too cluttered with things that don't hold his attention for too long anyway. It also prevents us from spoiling him or overstimulating him. I find the latter a huge problem nowadays. How do we expect a child to focus their attention on one thing when we present them with so many options to divert it? Many parents give little thought to this. They plop their kids down in front of the TV with some toys that flash and sing, then they wonder why their child has a short attention span. But to me ADD seems like the inevitable response to a constant barrage of inane sounds and pictures. For this reason and one I will get to in a second, I also plan to keep Theo away from television as much as possible.

I realize that if I want to continue with the LESS (Less Energy Stimulation and Stuff) approach to toys, that I need to keep the child marketing machine from getting its hooks in my son. Limiting his exposure to commercials should help. Except for a few shows via the internet, my wife and I don't watch much television. Theo does not watch television now and we don't plan on letting him watch much when he gets older. We will probably introduce him to Sesame Street after his second birthday. Though I'm still weighing if and how we will do this. I watched a lot of TV as a kid and I don't think it had a positive influence on me. But I don't have a problem with Sesame Street, especially after a recent study that claims the show helps prepare children for school. In any case, keeping him away from TV should help us in that fight, because the demands for particular products usually come from TV commercials. I know that many of the cartoons I watched as a kid were nothing more than thinly veiled advertisements for the show's line of toys (Transformers, GI Joe, HE-Man, etc.). And I know that advertising to kids has gotten more sophisticated since then.

The services we use to watch TV don't have commercials, so we can keep him away from them at home if, for instance, we decide to let him watch some pre-approved cartoons on weekend mornings while we sleep in. But I know that he will get exposed to advertisements elsewhere. So I imagine that I will need to talk to him about commercials and advertising. He will get exposed to some video content. I can see us watching movies together on weekends, especially in the winter. I have looked forward to showing him Star Wars for the first time since long before he was born.

We will also need to pay attention to the influence other children have on him. But that is a subject for another blog. Ultimately, I know that much of the joy of my childhood did not come from my toys. Far more of it came from the little adventures I had with friends and the active imagination that kept me occupied when I was alone. I certainly don't look back and wish I had more toys, or that I had watched more TV.

Rounding Corners

Our culture has an obsession with cutting corners. Marketing and popular opinion encourage us to do things the quicker and easier way. But this approach often gives poor results whether cooking something in the kitchen or building something in the garage. Cutting corners has become synonymous with shoddy products, yet many of us still fall for the marketing that tells us otherwise. Walk down the center aisles of any supermarket and you will see a plethora of products claiming to make your life easier. Pre-made this and pre-done that. This in a can, that in a bag in a box. Usually this "convenience" comes with a big mark up.

I would like to go against the grain of popular thought and suggest the opposite approach. Instead of cutting corners, we should look to round them. By this I mean that we should look to make things ourselves instead of buying them and we should tend towards using older less energy intensive methods and tools.  It might take a little bit longer, but it costs less and usually gives better results than cutting corners. To help understand what I have in mind I will give an example

I recently started baking my own bread. When I did this instead of buying bread, I rounded a corner. It saves money and makes a better loaf than I would buy at the grocery store. Now I have a lot of experience cooking, but baking is new to me. So I buy packaged yeast. But if I learned how to make a good sourdough starter, I would not need to buy yeast. That would save me more money and make a much more delicious and nutritious loaf than the one I make now (I read good things about the health benefits of eating sourdough). I could round another corner if I milled my own grain instead of buying flour. Although it would require an initial investment in a grain mill, over the long run it would be cheaper to buy grain and mill it myself than to buy flour. Freshly milled grain tastes a lot better and has a lot more nutrients, because it contains the entire grain of wheat. The flour in the supermarket, even the whole wheat flour, has had the germ removed. This allows the flour to store for a long time, but you lose a lot in taste and nutrients. If you look very hard you might find freshly milled flour for sale, but it will cost you a lot more than the flour sold at most grocery stores. I could round another corner by growing my own grain.

Here is another example. I like to garden. This rounds a corner because I produce some of my food right at home. But many opportunities exist within gardening to round corners. For example, I don't have a good space to start seeds at the moment, because my toddler can now reach the spot I used last year. So I buy some plants from a local nursery. However, some seeds grow very well sowed directly into the ground (zucchini, beans, peas, nasturtiums, sunflowers, some lettuces). So I rounded a corner and saved some money by sowing these seeds instead of buying seedlings. If I had a better space to start seedlings I could round another corner and start more plants from seed. I could round yet another corner if I saved my seed instead of buying it. This would require me to learn more about seed saving and to have space suitable for starting seedlings, but I could easily do this given the time and space.

Rounding corners saves money and produces a better end product. I like the phrase because I think it communicates the idea very clearly and simply. At the same time it can be applied very broadly. It also syncs with the principle of LESS (Less Energy Stimulation Stuff). You can round some corners now and get to others as circumstances permit. I had the concept knocking around in my head for a while, but I could not find a good name for it. Doing things the more time consuming way and saving money is a major theme of this blog, so I'm glad I could find a good shorthand for this approach. What corners have you rounded? What corners will you round?

Chewy Granola Bar Recipe

I promised to share my chewy granola bar recipe and here it is. I searched for a long time to find a recipe that did not have too much sugar, but still tasted great. I found it on a site called Honest Cooking. I like this recipe because it is open-ended enough to let you choose a lot of your own ingredients. I have some notes on the ingredients I prefer below the recipe.

Ingredients

2 cups (160 g) oats
½ cup (96 g) sugar
½ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. cinnamon or other spices as desired (cardamom, nutmeg, etc.)
2½ cups additions: dried fruits, seeds, nuts, flax meal, bran cereal, puffed rice cereal, crushed pretzels, chocolate chips ... the combinations are endless!
⅓ cup (60 g) peanut or other nut butter
6 Tbsp. (89 ml) olive oil - canola oil, other oils, and melted butter will work here as well
¼ cup (60 ml) honey, maple syrup, or Agave syrup
1 Tbsp. (15 ml) water

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350F. Line a baking dish with parchment paper, then lightly grease the paper with oil or butter. I use a 9 x 13 sized dish, but slightly smaller or bigger dishes work fine. It will just change the thickness of your bars

Process ⅓ cup (27 g) of the oats in a food processor until finely ground. You want it like flour. I actually use a spice grinder for this. The resulting oat flour helps hold the bars together.

If necessary, chop up dried fruit and nuts. You don't want the pieces too fine or too big.

Stir together all dry ingredients (oats, ground oats, sugar, salt, cinnamon, fruits/nuts/seeds).

Whisk together wet ingredients - oil, honey, peanut butter, and water.

Mix together the wet and dry ingredients, then spread in the pan. Press firmly into the corners and edges so the top is even.

Bake for around 30 minutes, until the top starts to brown. Thicker bars will likely take longer.

Let cool in the pan for at least 20 minutes, then take them out of the pan using the parchment. Let cool completely before cutting.  I like to reuse the other side of the parchment when I make another batch.

Notes on Ingredients

I like to use raw sugar instead of white. I use peanuts, peanut oil, and agave because they are cheaper than most alternatives. But feel free to experiment. For the "2 1/2 cups additions", I use 2 cups of nuts and a 1/2 cup of dark chocolate chips.

The bars stay together very well, but they do crumble a bit. If you want a very solid bar use molasses. I prefer the taste of agave, but molasses tastes good too and the bars hold up better than ones made with agave.

Enjoy!

An Ode to Nasturtiums

Trailing Nasturtiums from 2014

Last year I grew lettuces for the first time. We had just moved into the house we are renting and I had not kept a garden since I moved out of my parents house. The lettuce did better than expected, but I must admit that I did not have the space or the timing to do the kind of succession planting that would have given us a constant supply of salad greens. Luckily another plant in our garden provided an abundance of greens for salads and other purposes. Nasturtiums have become one of my favorite plants and I would like to tell you why you should make a place for them in your garden.

Like many things worth doing, there is more than one good reason to grow nasturtiums. I grew them mainly because they make good companions to other plants in my garden. Nasturtiums attract hover flies which eat aphids, a garden pest that can make swiss cheese out of many of your plants' leaves. So they act as a natural form of pest control.

But I also knew that you could eat the both the leaves and the flowers. I can still remember the first time someone handed me one of their mildly peppery leaves to taste. Some people have compared them to arugula, but I find it much milder. In any case, they go great in a salad and if you include their red/yellow flowers it will look as good as it tastes. The only problem:  at times I had more of them than I knew what to do with. Not a bad problem to have I guess. Still, I found a solution. Whenever you have too much of certain kinds of lettuce and you want to use it before it goes bad, make pesto. When making pesto from nasturtiums you can use the leaves, flowers, and even some of the more tender stems (though I would suggest not to use too many). I will post a nasturtium pesto recipe soon. I have read that the seeds can make a good substitute for capers, but I don't care for capers so I will leave that to others to experiment with.

I found them very easy to grow from seed. No pests ate them. They grow quickly and cover the ground, blocking out weeds and creating a kind of living mulch. All of the nasturtiums I sowed last year thrived and this year's crop look like they will do at least as well.  I have read that if you put them in richer soil you will get more leaves than flowers.

The last reason to grow nasturtiums is because they are simply beautiful plants. Their abundant leaves and flower make them pleasing to human eyes and to the pollinators they attract.

Over Little Heads

So far I have only blogged about home economics. Although I consider this a parenting blog as well, I initially felt a bit reluctant to give parenting advice. Mostly because my son is still very young and I don't have a ton of experience as a father. But also because I realize how passionate people feel about the topic and I don't want to get in the middle of one of the many contentious issues that parents debate these days. Nor do I have any desire to dictate to people how they should raise their kids, because I know I don't care for that attitude from other people. Still, this is a parenting blog and I think I can offer some sound advice that parents might want to give a shot if they have not already. It has worked for me so far and I hope this approach will continue to do so.

Like most parents I believe my child is rather intelligent. I might attribute this to my own fatherly pride if so many people did not make a point of telling me how bright they think he is. They might just tell me this out of politeness, but I have no way of knowing this. I admit that even if he is objectively very bright I might not have played that big a role. Genetics, luck, and factors beyond my control all contribute to a child's development. Regular readers of this blog will know that I have done my best to give him a healthy diet by cooking nutritious meals. But if I have played any part beyond that I attribute it to two things.

First, I pay attention to him as much as possible and try to understand him. You can learn a lot a from books, other parents, and pediatricians. But I think you can only learn so much from others and you should not let yourself follow any parenting advice too rigidly (even mine). Every family is different and you need to do what works best for you and your child. In fact, I think reading too much about parenting can cause you to worry excessively or to doubt your own intuition. We all need guidance, but we all must find our own way.

Second, I communicate with my son without worrying too much about going "over his head". Sure, he might not understand everything I say. But he understands more than I think and he will often surprise me by showing me just how much he comprehends. Kids always want to play with objects you put out of their reach. I think the same goes for ideas. If you present them with an idea they can't quite grasp, they will work to get a hold on it. This encourages them to think and expand their understanding. It also occupies them and makes them more content with LESS (Less Energy Stimulation and Stuff).

This benefits you too. Any parent who spends a lot of time alone with a child knows that it can get boring at times no matter how amazing you find your child. Keeping yourself mentally occupied by explaining things to your child keeps you both engaged with one another. It helps them understand the world more and it allows you to have a part in shaping that understanding. They might even end up teaching you something through their unconventional responses to your explanations.

This has relevance for all parents, but it also touches on a useful idea for those concerned about the slow decline of industrial society. To help explain I turn to one of my favorite passages from Marshall McLuhan's The Medium is The Massage where he points out that, "The 'child' was an invention of the seventeenth century; he did not exist in, say, Shakespeare's day. He had up until that time, been merged in the adult world and there was nothing that could be called childhood in our sense."

This resonates with me as much now as it did when I read it a decade ago. It might sound hard to believe, but I often wished my parents would have given me more responsibilities growing up. Like many people of my generation, I arrived at college having never done my own laundry or cooked more than a few eggs for myself. Sure, I watched my mom cook enough that I had some idea of how to make a decent dinner. But it would have helped both of us if I had started giving her a hand back in grade school. I don't plan to let my toddler use sharp knives anytime soon, but I would like him to have more skills and feel more self-reliant when he reaches college age. Of course I want to give him an enjoyable childhood, but I also want to prepare him for the rest of his life. The road ahead looks much tougher than the one behind.

At the moment this means doing chores with my son and letting him "help". He really enjoys doing the things that daddy does. At the moment this means he does things like carrying the compost bucket to the pile and watering the garden beds. Many parents have told me that once kids become old enough to actually help they no longer want to. I get that. I know the likelihood of getting kids to do chores changes depending on their stage of development. But I want him to at least have some familiarity with things in the adult world and I would rather have him do chores grudgingly and infrequently than not all.

I think part of the rebellion of adolescence comes from the patronizing attitude parents and other authority figures show towards young adults. I think if we integrated young people more into adult life instead of coddling them, we would find it harder to condescend to them. Perhaps they would understand us better too. They might also have an easier time navigating adult life.

But I have gotten ahead of myself. I don't have a teenager yet. Right now I have a 20 month old son who only says one word at a time. Despite his monosyllabic communication, I often give him very lengthy responses. The way I read so much into one word makes me feel a bit like Han Solo talking to Chewbacca. Or to cite a more recent film, like Rocket talking to Groot. I guess like those characters I know my son well enough to understand the different meanings a word can have depending on the context. I hope that continuing to talk with him will help him keep growing as well.

Chop Onion, Boil Water

Whenever we went out to dinner with my grandmother she would often look at the menu or the meal that came out and say something along the lines of, "I can make this at home for half the price and give you a portion twice the size." My father who wanted to treat my grandparents to dinner at a nice restaurant often felt like she did not appreciate the gesture when she would comment on the price of the meal. As a kid I laughed a bit at the situation, but as an adult I have adopted a similar attitude. I might not say it out loud, but I can't eat at a restaurant without thinking about how much cheaper I could make the same meal at home. 

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against restaurants, provided they are not some kind of corporate chain. I worked in restaurants when I was younger and I know many people who still do. I enjoy a meal at a good restaurant when I travel, or want to treat myself.

Although it seems like a very simple act, cooking has a great number of benefits. As my grandma Josie pointed out, it is simply cheaper to cook meals from scratch instead of getting them from a restaurant or buying processed food from the supermarket. The restaurant needs to make money to stay in business, so even if they buy in bulk they will still charge you more than the cost of the ingredients needed to make the meal because they need to pay for all the expenses that go into running a restaurant (wages, rent, utilities, promotions, etc.) and try to make a profit on top of that. When you buy processed food you end up paying for the processing, packaging, marketing, and advertising. Not to mention the huge markup that makes processed food so profitable for the big corporations that sell it.

If you cook the meal yourself you cut out the middleman and only pay what it costs you to buy the ingredients. Sure it will take some time and work on your part. But as I pointed out last week, contrary to popular belief cooking a great meal does not necessarily require a lot of time or effort. You can cook a delicious and nutritious meal in as little as a half hour if you know what you are doing. Like anything it takes some practice, but once you get a feel for the process you will find yourself cooking more and feel unsatisfied by takeout and processed food.

Some people might find this last statement hard to believe. If you usually pay someone else to make your meals, you might not have a lot of confidence in your culinary skills. But if you put in the time needed to learn, you too can make meals that rival what you usually order at a restaurant. My wife has little desire to eat in restaurants, because with few exceptions, she knows she can get a better meal at home. Unless it is a very fancy restaurant (think white table cloths and Michelin stars) or a very exotic cuisine, I can make it bigger, better, and cheaper at home. For instance, a lot of people like to treat themselves to a steak at a fancy steakhouse. But I can cook a grass-fed steak and some excellent sides for a fraction of what a piece of factory farmed meat costs in a nice restaurant. It is not cheap and I consider it a treat, but compared to what some steakhouses charge it is a bargain. This same principle applies to processed food. I used to buy granola bars for a quick snack. Since I started making my own I have not only saved a lot of money, but even the best store bought bars pale in comparison. My wife says I have spoiled her and turns her nose up at packaged granola bars (the recipe will be up in the coming weeks, so stay tuned). 

Cooking at home also gives you the opportunity to eat a lot healthier. For instance, my granola bars have a lot more oats and a lot less sugar than store bought granola bars. In fact they have less sugar than most homemade recipes I have tried. They also don't contain any preservatives or chemicals additives I can't pronounce.

Cooking from scratch puts me in direct contact with the literally raw ingredients of food. This has made me take a greater interest in where my food comes from. If you follow this thread as I have, you might find yourself joining a CSA, shopping at farmer's markets, eating local produce when it is in season, and growing or preserving food at home. All of this makes you less dependent on the industrial food system and more prepared for when it starts to become too expensive or disappear altogether. It also gives less money to giant corporations who sell processed food. 

I find cooking and eating an almost spiritual act. As omnivores, one of the major ways human beings interact with our environment is through metabolizing the things we ingest. All the foods we eat nourish us in different ways, just as these foods require different things to grow. Learning about these processes enriches our understanding of ourselves and our environment. It helps us better understand our interconnection with the rest of the natural world.

I leave you with a homework assignment:  think of an item you usually buy from the supermarket. Find out how to make it yourself, either from a book or from a recipe on the internet. Then make it. I'm thinking along the lines of condiments and fermented foods, but feel free to make whatever excites you.  

If you don't know where to look, or don't feel like sifting through recipes online I suggest The America's Test Kitchen DIY Cookbook. The book has condiments and pantry staples like ketchup, mustard, and siracha. It has dairy like cheeses, yogurt, and creme fraise. It has pickled foods, candies, jams, jellies, preserves, cured meats, smoked fish, crackers, and even recipes for brewing beer. 

Time To Cook

I come from an Italian-American family so food has always been an important part of my life and a major topic of conversation. My mom cooked most nights growing up and we always ate dinner together unless one of us had some kind of after school activity that ran late. We would often get together with extended family for Sunday dinners. Now that I have a family of my own I cook dinner every night (yes, every night), usually making enough for all of us to have the leftovers for lunch the next day. I know a lot of people shy away from cooking dinner because it seems like a lot of work. It takes a little more effort than ordering takeout or heating up processed food, but you can actually make a meal in the same amount of time it would take to grab take out or have it delivered.

Likewise, some processed foods take almost as long to cook as a real home cooked meal. I will give you an example. I don't understand jarred tomato sauce. Chalk it up to my Italian heritage, but it has a distinctive taste that overpowers everything and just makes me think, "this came from a jar." It baffles me more because I can make a quick marinara sauce in the time it takes to boil water and cook the pasta (which you still need to do even if you use jarred sauce). Chop an onion and some garlic, sauté them until soft, then add tomatoes (fresh or canned), season with salt, pepper, and fresh basil if you have it and you are done. The result costs less, tastes better, and is healthier than the processed alternative. And it takes the same amount of time as heating the jarred sauce and cooking the pasta. You can also find time while the sauce and pasta cook to make a salad, or add some kind of green vegetable to the sauce. You can chop some spinach and add it to the sauce at the end, or if you have a little more time you can sauté a vegetable like zucchini after you add the garlic and onions but before you add the tomatoes. 

Some might point out that dried pasta and canned tomatoes are industrial products and we won't always be able to just pick them up at the store. Yes, as the industrial food system breaks down they might become unavailable or prohibitively expensive. At the moment they remain a healthy and cheap option and if someone knows how to cook with them now they can adapt in the future. For instance, you can still use fresh tomatoes when in season. The rest of the year you can make a sauce with tomatoes that have been preserved in some way, either jarred or dried during the growing season. The tomatoes might come from your own garden, a local farm, or small grocery store looking to fill a gap left by the collapse of the industrial food system. Using dried tomatoes will require some tweaking of the recipe, but the principle remains the same. 

You can make fresh pasta to go along with the sauce pretty easily. It certainly takes more work than just boiling dried pasta, but it tastes better in most dishes. You can make your own dried pasta as well. This requires about the same initial effort as making fresh pasta, but you also need the right space to dry it over a few days. The plus side is that you then have something you can store for a while and cook up as quickly as store bought dried pasta. Someone could probably make a good small business in the coming years making dried pasta and selling it locally. In any case, people from many different cultures have eaten noodles for centuries. They made them long before modern food processing and they will probably continue to do so once those methods become untenable. To think that pasta will survive the collapse fills me a bit of joy and hope.

I give this just as an example. I plan to keep coming back to the question of sourcing ingredients from outside of the the industrial food system. The topic fascinates me and gives me a lot of, pardon the phrase, food for thought. For now I would like to give a great resource for people who want to eat a good meal, but don't want it to take too long.

First, a quick word on the kinds of things I like to cook. This will help you understand my recommendation. While I sometimes like to tackle a challenging dish, I generally favor meals that don't take too much prep work to cook. Cooking even a "quick" meal can be tricky enough when I have to keep on an eye on my 19 month old son. I prefer cooking nutritious main dishes that can feed a few people. Specifically, I try to make sure that a meal has a carbohydrate, a green vegetable, and usually some kind of protein. I also don't like waste, so I try to stay away from recipes that require me to buy expensive ingredients that will go bad before I get a chance to use the rest of them in another dish.

With all this in mind, my favorite cookbook at the moment is Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Fast: A Better Way to Cook Great Food. It has over 2,000 recipes from all different kinds of cuisines. Most of the recipes are main dishes and many of them take about a half hour to cook. Some take as little as 15 minutes. A few take 45 minutes or an hour to cook, but still only need fairly simple prep. In addition to the recipes it has tips for cooking more quickly and it provides some basic instruction that the novice chef will find very useful. I have only had this book for a few months, but I have made more recipes from it than any cookbook I own. Bittman also put a lot of thought into giving the recipes a user friendly layout. Every dish I have made from this book is good, some of them are great or excellent. If I could recommend one book to someone that wants to start cooking, but does not think they have the time, this would be it.

Next week I will talk more about the benefits of cooking.

Stay At Home Economics 101

Not long after I started working on the first post for Stay At Homestead Dad I came across a blog that did a great job illustrating the value of work done in the home. The post had gone viral and has appeared all over social media as well as in a few more traditional outlets, so you have likely read Fathers, you can’t afford a Stay-At-Home Mom. When I saw the title it made me upset, because I had planned to make the opposite argument here; that having a parent stay at home can make a lot of financial sense. Then I read the post and realized the author had actually made the same argument I wanted to make, but had simply titled the post poorly.

The piece certainly deserves a read. But I will sum it up by telling you that it consists of a working father calculating how much he would need to spend to get all the services that his stay-at-home wife provides. He certainly highballs his calculations in some areas. For instance, he probably should have calculated the cost of getting take-out instead of the cost of a personal chef. But overall I think he makes an important point:  it costs a lot more to buy a good or service than to do something yourself.

My wife and I made a similar calculation when we decided I would stay-at-home and take care of our son. I don't have the exact numbers anymore and I would not disclose the details of my finances anyway, but we reached a similar conclusion. When we added up all the goods and services we would need to purchase if I had a job, it amounted to a good deal more than the paycheck I would bring home working as a public librarian. It simply did not make sense for me to work outside the home.

The cost of child care alone is huge and would eat up the majority of my pay check. Then comes the extra money we would need to spend on transportation. If we still lived in Brooklyn this would simply amount to the cost of a monthly metro-card. But the public transportation in Poughkeepsie is not great. We currently get by with one car, but if I worked we might need a second car with all the expenses that come along with it (monthly payment, insurance, gas, maintenance). I cook dinner every night (yes, every night), but if I worked outside the house I would probably take at least one night off a week and get takeout. Cooking your own meals is generally a lot cheaper (more on this in a future post). All these things already amount to a good deal more than what I would get from a paycheck. If you add in the savings from growing food in my garden the quantifiable benefits rise even higher. And this only takes into account things you can put a dollar sign on. It does not count things you can't really quantify, like the extra attention my son gets from me that he would not get in day care, or the fact that I cook meals much more delicious and nutritious than anything we would buy at a take-out place, to name just two examples.

I realize this goes against current conventional wisdom. It seems like in most families today both parents work. I won't argue that every couple should make the same choice we did. If both partners have very high salaries and/or a strong sense of job satisfaction then it probably makes sense to keep both jobs. Still, there is a reason why having one partner stay at home used to be the norm. So it makes sense for more families to crunch the numbers and start asking themselves if one partner should stay at home. If more people thought like this they might realize that their second paycheck goes towards buying things they would not need, or could produce at home if one partner stayed at home.

I know that in today's economy not everyone becomes a stay-at-home parent by choice. Many people have lost their job and can't find another one despite their best efforts. So they end up taking care of the kids and the house by default. If you find yourself in this situation, instead of letting it get you down I suggest that you embrace it. Remember that you can contribute a lot to your family's bottom line without having a job.

As the economy shifts away from sectors that usually employ men and towards jobs traditionally held by women, more men find themselves out of work with their wives the sole bread winner. Some men have a hard time handling this psychologically, especially those who consider taking care of the home and kids women's work. At the same time our culture has sold many women on the idea that empowerment means holding down a job with a paycheck, so I think that some women also find the idea of staying at home unappealing.

Like any working arrangement being a stay-at-home parent has pros and cons. Of all the jobs I have had it is the most demanding, but it is also the most fulfilling. The work can be tedious at times, but I don't have a boss making me do pointless busy work because he has me on the clock and wants to get his money worth for the hours he is paying me. If something needs to get done, I do it out of necessity, not because someone tells me. This makes work less like work. When I'm not doing chores I get to spend most of my day playing with an amazingly cute and bright child.  During his nap I sometimes get some house work done, but I usually take that time to do some exercise, read a book, or write this blog. I'm somewhat of an introvert and a homebody, so the job suits me and this should certainly factor into anyone's decision to stay home. Spending so much time with a small child can feel isolating even for an introvert like me. So I try to get out and socialize with other adults regularly. Overall though I really like the job and can say that I do it very well.

Whatever your gender, you should not let cultural expectations stop you from following a path that might work for your family.  Staying at home certainly requires a change of perspective, but with the right attitude it can be very fulfilling work. I plan to talk about the psychological and cultural barriers to making this change down the road. For now I suggest crunching the numbers and asking yourself if it would make sense for you or your partner to stay home. Really think about all the things you would not need if one of you could spend their time doing things at home. It might surprise you. Even if you don't ultimately decide to have one partner stay home, this exercise should help show the real value of domestic labor and might give you some ideas of ways you can maximize your home economy even if both you and your partner work.

Next week we get cooking.

What To Expect When You Are Collapsing

I don't know exactly what the future will look like. But I do know that the world will look very different by the time my son grows up. Like most parents I spend a lot of time trying to make informed choices about raising my child. But I think I have different concerns from the average American and if you have found your way to this blog you probably do too (welcome). My worries don't revolve around the latest article about kids and their social media and their electronic dance music, or whatever story has old men shaking their fists at children these days. Though I certainly have my own thoughts on teaching kids healthy media habits and I don't let my toddler anywhere near a television.

Instead, I have in mind the very volatile ecological, economic, cultural, and political landscape we live in today. Peak oil, climate change, income inequality, high unemployment, legislative gridlock, crumbling infrastructure, and a shaky-legged American empire all present problems we will have to face whether we like it or not. The fact that we have avoided these problems for so long and many people still refuse to even acknowledge their existence will make them even tougher to handle. I used to wonder whether technology could solve our problems (many of which it created itself), or if industrial civilization would slowly fall apart. The older I get the more it seems like the latter. I have noticed how the Futurama predictions of the past never happened and many of the current technological promises I read these days seem cut from the same cloth as the dreams of yesteryear that never came true. I find it unlikely, for example, that we will build literal and figurative pipe dreams like the hyperloop, when we can't even maintain our roads and bridges.

I realize the lifestyle of the average middle class American can only exist because of an abundance of cheap energy made possible by fossil fuels. As these resources become more scarce this lifestyle and much of the world I have grown up with will start to slowly disappear. Anyone paying close attention can see that this has already started to happen. Identifying a problem is one matter, responding to it effectively is another. So in the face of all these problems I found myself asking the old question:  what is to be done? 

As I started to grapple with this question I found a great blog that has helped guide me through making important changes in my life. Many people familiar with peak oil and other problems of our age might already read The Archdruid Report written by John Michael Greer. His work has offered not only a connection to others who can see the cracks in industrial civilization, but also useful ways of coping that I have adapted for my own circumstances. I have applied many of his lessons to my own life and I feel that my experience can help others even further. I still have more changes I want to make, but I feel far enough along that I can offer something to people making a similar transition.

So what kind of changes did I make and why do I think other people would benefit from reading about them? Did I start a farm? No, though we did move from an apartment in Brooklyn to a house in Poughkeepsie with enough room for a decent sized garden. I made a much less dramatic change. I decided to be a stay-at-home dad and start focusing on things I can make and do at home. That might not seem like a big deal, but I guess that is the point. It is something within most people's reach. The home economy can produce a lot of things we have become accustomed to buying. Making or doing things yourself lets you have them for a fraction of the price it would cost you to buy them and the results often beat the pants off what you could purchase. 

Unlike picking up and moving to a farm (not a feasible option for many people for a variety of reasons) you can start doing and making things at home today. Sure it might take a while to realize the full potential of what you can produce at home, but that's fine. You can ease your way into the process one step at a time and soon you will look back to find you have accumulated a number of useful skills and resources. It takes some time to learn some of these skills, but not as much as you might think and once you learn how to bake your own bread, for example, you won't want to pay more more for a store bought loaf that doesn't taste as good. Frankly, our society often sells us the erroneous notion that we can make big changes in an instant. We can make the decision to change rather quickly (though even that process can happen gradually), but putting an idea into action takes some time. Look at this positively, you don't need to change all at once. You can ease your way into it, though the sooner you start the better. Or as John Michael Greer says, "collapse now and avoid the rush."

So what kind of help will you find in this blog? I will certainly share some of my favorite recipes and instructions for useful DIY projects. But those things will serve as an aside to a weekly blog that outlines broader strategies for getting the most out of the home economy and parenting in an age of diminishing fossil fuels. I plan to give concrete advice, but I also hope to inspire you to find solutions that work best for your situation. Posts will often deal with John Michael Greer's useful acronym L.E.S.S. (Less Energy Stimulation and Stuff). When relevant I will suggest books on that week's topic. You certainly don't need to be a parent or a stay-at-home partner of any kind to get something from this blog, but I will often advocate for having one partner stay at home as I find this an option that more people should consider no matter what their gender. I think it makes a lot of economic sense for most people and the next post will deal with this in more depth.

I have not collapsed as far as I would like. Some of my skills are more advanced than others and I still have a lot more projects I want to pursue. I hope this will make the blog more accessible to someone trying to break free of the mainstream. Likewise, my son is only 19 months old, so I can't say I have seen it all as a parent. But, for whatever the proud declarations of a father are worth, I feel like I have done a good job thus far and often get compliments on his intelligence which I attribute to keeping him away from screens, getting him in nature, letting him explore, and trying to foster communication by talking, reading, singing, and listening to him as much as possible.

I hope to bring a unique and useful perspective on these topics. I used to work as a public librarian in one of the rougher neighborhoods in Brooklyn. So I feel I can offer a combination of grit, commonsense, and a knack for evaluating available information and communicating it to people of diverse backgrounds. I also bring an earnest desire to make important changes and a desire to share what I have learned. It should make for an interesting journey and an interesting blog. Thank you for reading.

Suggested Reading:

Green Wizardry by John Michael Greer

This book gives a lot of great information on gardening, cooking, preserving food, passive solar technology, and thinking in whole systems (very useful for waking up from the slumber our culture lulled many folks into). Each chapter includes useful exercises and suggested reading on that chapter's topic. It also introduces the reader to the concept of L.E.S.S. which I plan to discuss in an upcoming post.