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Letter Re: Becoming a Food Warrior
James:
I appreciate your web site. It suits me right to the ground. I'd like
to be an occasional contributor. Congratulations on your fastidious maintenance
of this meaningful site. Just like farming isn't it.
Guerrilla
food shopping (part one)
I'm no conventional warrior, I couldn't force myself to take a life, but I
am a survivalist. Not to put too fine a point on this: I am a food warrior.
As I write this, one of our battles is escalating food prices, isn't it? What
can we do as individuals to protect ourselves? Plenty! We aren't hostages you
know. Not yet.
I think we all agree that inflation has dug its claws into us. We know from
experience that this ongoing dilemma never reverses itself. What was two dollars
yesterday will be three dollars soon. Looking ahead to the prospects of mega-inflation
of our commodities with flat-lined wages, lay-offs, firings as potential results;
these trends will likely reduce our present life-style options. Let's cover
this in chapters beginning with our second greatest threat: the grocery store:
All other survival issues aside, our grocery dollar has been attacked and bloodied
greatly. Before we can successfully protect our family food stream, we must
understand just what's happening. Many unrelated issues combine to make our
food needs imperiled and, at this same time, our dollar's buying power is shrinking.
This is a War.
It might interest you to know that not that many years ago, food was the responsibility
of the family. Here, in New England, families produced most of their needs
at home. They only bought or traded for a few food basics: flour, salt, some
grain products, spices, cocoa, molasses, baking soda, cream of tartar, some
white sugar, extracts, salt-peter. This short list was purchased by the season,
month, or year depending on how a family's trading goods harvested or how other
amounts of currency came to them.
The general store was small. It offered little choice in any of these necessary
products. A bag of flour was just that: a fifty-weight of pure flour packed
in a colorful sack, which would become a daughter's new dress when empty. Sugar
was weighed into the bags customers brought with them. How absurdly simple
the shopping experience was. (At home the daily routine was infinitely more
complicated.)
Packaging, advertising, transportation, handling and storage were minimal.
Things arrived in large barrels and bags aboard a freight wagon and were handled
by the family that owned the store. Licenses, inspections, salesmen callers,
employees, FICA, Social Security withholdings, health insurance, 401(k)s and
other issues to burden the grocer, hadn't been invented then. The dollar was
backed by a gold standard. Buyers could predict, within cents, what
their future costs would be. They could plan their cash crops according to
their anticipated needs. Everything made sense.
In a hundred years the entire American mentality has changed from near total
family independence to near total dependence on industry, business, and government.
Buddy, that is more scary than anything else happening in this country today.
However, I don't find it hard to understand why this gradual shift occurred
considering the tough, committed life-style my grandmother lived.
Today, most of us aren't equipped to produce all our products, so guerrilla
shopping is our recourse.
The battlefield is our grocery store. Consider now the terrain: Blind row upon
row of six-foot-tall gondolas crammed, presently, with so-called food. Our
mission is to determine what foods have real value. Our trophy for winning
this battle will be life-sustaining human fuel: real food.
In order to win this war we must know what is actually real food. The other
stuff: decoys, useless, non-issue, and costly, empty-food-value-just-packaging.
Today, most shoppers' carts carry little or no food of substance. (Example:
a can of chicken broth, presently $.89. is water, salt, a bullion cube and
a glob of chicken fat. The can takes up valuable storage space where more important
articles could go. Chicken broth is a simple by-product of cooking a chicken.
How tough can that be?)
Going into this battle will require training, equipment, planning and the will
to survive, so before we go on the attack we must ask ourselves important questions:
Am I willing to make the commitment to reduce my grocery bill, or will I continue
to shake my head, complain and continue to support this fufu industry?
What part of my family's needs can I or will I be able to produce?
What can I successfully introduce to my family?
What do I know about food values?
How much of what product do I need, to ensure that my family will be well-fed?
What can I afford to accumulate immediately, against continually rising prices.
How much space can I dedicate to this most important effort?
Where will my food reserves be in one year? Think through: Space, place, amounts.
Have you answered these questions? Good! Put on your "game-face" and let's
attack.
As you survey the landscape, you'll see hundred-foot-long isle of cereals.
Okay, we'll begin with cereal. Consider that the decorator cereals cost more
per-pound than meat! Why would you turn your hard-earned dollar into
puffed oats that have been processed so many times that the food value, if
ever there was, is gone?
As you warily survey this isle of worthless kid-incentives, several small items,
concealed on high shelves, come to your eye. Farina: a solid hot cereal with
good food-value. It requires cooking. Old-fashioned rolled oats: they are better
than the dusty quick oats being that the heavy oats are the premium while the
quick oats are what is left after the premium oats have been selected. Cream
of Wheat, another solid cereal that can be used as hot cereal or cooked, formed,
cooled, sliced and fried for an add-on to other meals. (Grits are a good choice
too, but I've never acquired a taste for them.). Corn meal makes a fine cereal
and can be as useful as the Cream of Wheat as an add-on fried. Add raisins
and other dry fruits to any of these for an enticing, substantial meal. Recipes
and cookbooks are available for any one of these cereals. You'll be amazed
at the versatility of just these four products.
Note: Cereal: flakes come in all kinds. The food-value is
questionable. Pick a generic brand. If your family won't settle for something
different,
camouflage these flakes in the family's favorite-brand box. I've known children
that wouldn't eat anything that didn't come in some kind of familiar package.)
Our trophies from the vast cereal isle: corn meal, old-fashioned oats, farina
and Cream of Wheat will cook up to multiples of their dry weight. They all
store reasonably well. Here are four cereals from the 100-foot row of decorator
cereals, and these all have other uses besides breakfast. Do you see why it
is important to review your grocery habits with a critical eye? With just these
four cereals you've now wisely increased your inventory, increased your savings
and greatly increased your per-pound-nutritional-food-values.
Every isle has its story. Every isle is designed for eye-appeal rather than
solid nutritional choices. Marketers play on convenience, on price, on low-this
and high-that, and popularity to move their product into your kitchen. Don't
buy into the marketing game. Chances are the best products are not at eye-level,
do not have fancy boxes or gimmicks. The food containers that we are looking
for will probably have dust on their tops.
If grocery food is our second biggest threat, then what is the first? : As
a nation, we are so ill-equipped to handle today's events. Few people can really
cook, fewer can garden, and still fewer know even the basics of animal
husbandry, farming, logging, wild-crafting all the wonders that I, as a child,
took for granted. All these amazing things I learned, as a child, from my parents,
and grandparents. These incredible people are gone forever, taking much
of their knowledge and wisdom with them. Boy-oh-boy do we need them today!
I'm much older than most of you reading this. In the four decades since I reached
adulthood, I've kept to the old ways, in spite of the ridicule I've endured
from family and
friends.
Practicing
and
learning the old ways has given me much quiet joy, a feeling of accomplishment
beyond measure, and a great appreciation for my ancestors who made do with
very little while enjoying good, long happy lives. I'm sure they would say
they wanted for nothing.
For a number of years now I've felt guilty about not being able to share my
experience and knowledge. Each time I shared, my listeners wanted me to do
their home-work for them. I wasn't making a dent in the ignorance that would
one day founder this nation.
Side note: Dozens of books are offered to make you an instant expert. These
books are written by authors who read someone else's book, digesting major
points then
spit them back with great color photos. No good. The knowledge you need isn't
available in a condensed "how-to" volume for $20 plus $3.99 shipping.
In fact, these books can be dangerous. I once read a rather well-appointed
field guide to wild edibles. It pictured a fern; they called it an edible fiddlehead.
This furry fern was no more edible than the tires on your car. Please beware
of these knock-offs in fancy formats.
Well, here we are in rocky times with a future in the fog. Now, finally, folks
are showing some interest in becoming independent. Reminds me of college days
when if it weren't for the eleventh hour rule, little would have ever been
done. Unlike academics, this isn't about passing mid-terms. This is about survival
of the human race. Does this frighten you at all? It should. The learning curve
to self-sufficiency is great with many backward steps. And we are, indeed,
into
the eleventh hour.
