Comfort Foods

On a trip to town this morning, I had time to wander around and casually look at the magazines on the racks. To me, magazines are indicative of what we are thinking – collectively – as a nation.

Better Homes & Gardens has no less that three special publications with the title “Comfort Foods” and even more that highlight “comfort foods”, slow cooking & casseroles. But the main theme is “comfort foods”. Same thing for Southern Living, Taste of Home and even those little Bisquick cookbooks on the racks b the checkouts.

Most of us know what comfort foods are. They are the foods we cuddle up with in a nice soft chair, wrapped in our blankies, preferably in from of the fire when we are fending off….yes, that’s the key – fending off. Fending off the flu, fending off exhaustion, fending off being stood up, fending off a spouse producing a pink slip. Comfort foods are the foods we enjoy because our lives have for some reason become miserable, we are sure no one really loves us, so we turn to the “friend” who is there day and night – the fridge.

According to the North American Center for the Study of Obesity, 65% of Americans are overweight or obese, 26% are actually clinically obese. Should current trends continue, 75% of adults in the United States are projected to be overweight and 41% obese by 2015. Approximately nine million children over six years of age are considered obese. And if that’s not bad enough, today I received an email from Royal Canin, stating that even our dogs are over-weight. 20% to 40% of dogs in the general population are obese, and nearly 50% of dogs between 5 and 10 years of age are either overweight or obese.

We are scared, alienated, and uncertain of our futures, of the future of our children, our society, our nation, our world. We desperately seek comfort, and many of us find that comfort in the familiarity of the foods we ate as children. Macaroni and cheese, chicken soup, Hershey’s bars – well, you get the picture.

What if we sought comfort from other sources? From our families? Our friends? Our God? How much stronger would we be as individuals, as families, as communities and as a nation if we sough solace and comfort from one another? Would the percentage of obesity drop? Would people start to learn to get along and look out for each other, instead of relying on the government to care for us? Would families become stronger, communities more safer and pleasant places to live?

Here's my plan...How 'bout we try to love each other, or at least be nice! We can build our pantries at the same time we are re-building our relationships with each other. Because face it, folks, we need the pantry to live, but we need each other, too. You know the phrase, "No man is an island." If you're here on this site, you likely have family of some kind that is important to you. Let them know that today.
Give them a hug. Tell them you love them.

It’s something to think about tonight over our macaroni and cheese, isn’t it?

More on Keeping A Pantry - Survival Mom

In the last post, I talked to you a little about keeping a pantry. Now, y'all know that we live in a very rural area...back in the holler, as we say. But not every one concerned with being prepared lives in the country. In the video below, I'd like to intriduce you to a wonderful suburban mom, Lisa, owner of a blog called "The Survival Mom" (http://thesurvivalmom.com). I think you'll enjoy Lisa's perspective and down-to-earth manner.

Organizing A Long-Term Storage Pantry, Part 1

There is hardly any sense in talking about caring for your family, gardening or having a small farm if you don't seriously plan to keep a pantry. It's not enough to put up a few jars of tomatoes in the autumn. You have to give thought to what you might need to get through several weeks or several months of living off the food you and your family have stored in your pantry and freezer. It's not about TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it), it's about looking to uncertanity of the future. Income can be lost by sickess or injury, natural disasters may come your way - Lord only knows what might happen.

Nobody wants to survive on MREs (meals ready to eat). We need to find ways to prepare to feed ourselves and our families using food and supplies that are already familiar to us. And we need to find ways to accomplish this in a fairly easy, economic manner.

One thing we found that works well for us are the big, plastic buckets that contain kitty litter. These white plastic buckets have handle, a snap on, tight lid and are square or rectangular, which makes for easy storage. Once you have them, you can store all kinds of items. They are great for holding small, easy to carry amounts of rabbit food, grain, dog foods and very handy to store small tools, fence parts, etc that we may otherwise loose around the farm. They also make great watering buckets for taller animals such as goats and big dogs. 

Now we do buy kitty litter, but we'd never be able to get enough buckets to use for storage at the rate we buy the stuff - it's very expensive! HOWEVER - we have friends who save their buckets for us and you can get them all the time FOR FREE at the county recycle center. They are, in fact, so plentiful that you shouldn't even think about getting one that is beat up or dirty. Get nice, clean ones that will stack neatly with their flat, snap on lids.

 We also use them in great quantity for dried goods. Bags of rice, flour, boxes of spaghetti - anything that needs to be stored in a dry place can be stored in these buckets. One bucket holds four 5# bags of flour, two 10# bags of sugar, etc. This not only makes it easy to store these items, but easy to buy for storage, too. It is much less daunting to pick up an extra bag of flour or sugar to add to your stash than to even think about needing 100# of flour for a year. Buy two 10# bags of sugar, put them in your clean bucket, make a label, put it on your inventory list, carry it out to the pantry and you're done. 

There will be many more posts along this line and eventually, I'll compile them into an ebook which I'll make available through this blog. But right now, I just want to stress the urgency

of starting a pantry. It's not as hard as you might think and you'll be glad that you did.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Today is my birthday! You wouldn't believe what my sweet husband did! He managed to round up not only all the kids, but a cake and my favorite ice cream and pull it all together for a surprise party! I am so impressed!

What a wonderful surprise! No other gift could be as precious! I am so blessed! Thank you, Cliff - thank you, Family! Love you all! 

From left to right: Daughter Laura, Daughter-In-Love Christy, Son Will, Me, Daughter Meredith, Grand-daughter Sarah (in the pink boots), Daughter Becca and Grand-Daughter Abrianna