A neighbor came over the other day, and we were chatting while I was doing something in the kitchen. In the course of our conversation, I opened the refrigerator to put something inside. The neighbor made a comment about how many homemade things were in our fridge.
I didn't give her comment much thought until this morning. I opened the fridge again and realized ... she was right.
Aside from the usual assortment of condiments, at this particular moment the fridge held the following items:
• Bowls of leftover rice, leftover beef, and leftover gravy that were, well, left over from a meal a few nights prior when we had some friends over for dinner. (We've been eating our way through the leftovers.) The meal was "zesty orange beef" and the recipe can be found here. I threw everything in the slow cooker for extra-tender meat.
• A jar of minced garlic.
• A container of whole garlic. Don uses it for blood-pressure control.
• A quart of strawberry preserves, three-quarters full, waiting for me to make another batch of survival cookies.
• A bowl of peaches for fresh eating, last of the loot from our trees. I puréed the rest.
• Four pounds of fresh mozzarella I made the afternoon before. I'll be grating and freezing it in one-pound bags for pizza.
• A huge hunk o' beef that was defrosting. Don is in the process of making biltong, a sort of South African beef jerky.
• Two gallon jugs of peach purée. I processed the peaches a day or two before and then canned up the purée.
• A half-gallon of sun tea, my beverage of choice.
• Two dozen eggs from a neighbor's hens.
• A bag of flour tortillas.
• Leftover biscuit gravy from breakfast a couple days before.
• Some sliced meatloaf I made a few days ago. Don likes to make meatloaf sandwiches.
• Some tomatoes and a whole bunch of broccoli.
No milk. I store the milk and cream in a small beverage refrigerator in another room.
In short, we have a lot of basic ingredients and no processed food except condiments. And that's a snapshot of our homestead fridge.
My then-teenage son wailed at me once that we had nothing to eat. I said, "Ridiculous, we have plenty of food." He then sniffed, "All we have is INGREDIENTS."
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