Tag Archives: capitalism

Good Food Sometimes Means Doing Hard Things

The Homespun Foodie’s week in review, Nov 30-Dec 6

Winter often drives me indoors more frequently, which in turn means I spend more time in the kitchen. This is an odd December, though. Although I still find myself in the kitchen most days, it is at the comfort of my desk with a pen and paper in front of me, instead of before the stove and dusted with flour.

In other words, cooking has been a chore rather than a delight. An odd December indeed.

It is easy to compromise our goals and our plans, to literally go for broke, when the body and mind rebel against what must be done. It is easy to frame poor decisions as giving oneself grace or as self-care.

Compromising values, giving up on goals, and taking the easy way is not self-care, no matter what your influencer-guru tells you. Hurting your future self is never self-care. To throw away money — and the life energy we spend acquiring it — on food choices that go against our values and drain our wallets is not self-care. 

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Localize Your Feed and Free Your Mind

Less News is good news

The alarm goes off, and I grope for my phone in the dark. As soon as I silence the auditory noise, I begin filling my eyes with visual noise. The daily scroll has begun. I cycle through headlines on the news feed, helpfully curated by algorithms that no human hand controls.

When that becomes too much, I flip over to social media and begin reading the headlines and hot takes regurgitated by a million countless cogs in a machine that is imprisoning us all. By the time I roll out of bed an hour later, my brain is filled with rot I can’t control, and I have lost all faith in not just humanity, but my own future.

This isn’t some dystopian fantasy; this is the reality for millions, if not billions, of people around the world. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be.

The 24-hour news cycle has created a trap that leads to personal paralysis. If everything is so screwed, then why bother? If you still have the energy to bother, to try to effect change, then where to start? For too many of us, where we start and where we end is by banging angrily on a keyboard. Adding to the noise, but not creating anything of substance. Certainly not creating any solutions.

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Eating Through Life’s Seasons

The Homespun Foodie’s week in review, Nov 23–29

Life, much like the wheel of the year, is an ongoing cascade of different seasons. Usually, we cycle through busy seasons and slower ones, but recently, life around here has felt like one busy season after another. True, each one is busy for different reasons and in different ways, but busy nonetheless.

It makes cooking even more challenging when one has mixed feelings about the winter holidays. The dominant culture around me celebrates three main winter holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. Of the three, the only one that raises no misgivings in my heart is New Year’s Eve and day.

I struggle with the colonial roots of Thanksgiving and the Christian appropriation of various solstice/midwinter celebrations that evolved into our modern Christmas. I am sure I am not the only one who finds this challenging.

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Tight Belts, Full Bellies

The Homespun Foodie’s week in review, Nov 16–22

Although it is both physically and figuratively impossible for one to pull oneself up by one’s own bootstraps, it is possible to tighten one’s belt. Whether that is a good thing depends upon the individual’s need, of course. In general, though, it does all of us a bit of good to tighten our belts periodically — whether necessary or not.

When life becomes too easy for humans, we begin doing stupid things — like running monopolies, hanging out on private torture islands, and engaging in senseless cruelty against the underprivileged. I know I don’t want to begin on that path.

For many in the US, the end of November is the theoretical release of said belt, allowing it to stretch to its utmost as we stuff ourselves with good food and cheer (and, for some, a lot of shopping). Of course, this loosening of the belts often continues into December. This is why so many of us wake up on January first feeling desolate, indebted, and afraid. For the fortunate, there are credit card bills to deal with. For the less fortunate, being short on rent or another important bill may be their lot.

Well, let’s say balderdash to that! 

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Living within Your Time and Money Means

The Homespun Foodie’s week in review, Nov 9–15

We are in a lull right now, here at the always cozy Sequoia Cottage. It is a financial lull, as our income continues to hover at its lowest since 2009, and a time lull, as few outside responsibilities are tugging at me.

Having little money but plenty of time is preferred over having little money and little time, of course. With time, we can invest in those actions that make the most of small means. Whether unfortunate or not, our time will soon be in high demand, but there is no guarantee that our income will rise with it.

All is well and all will be well, though, for we are experienced at living large on little — whether that little be time or money!

One way to control working-class folk is to make their survival all-consuming. The workers can’t organize for better pay and improved conditions, for example, if their waking hours are booked full with scrambling for a few meager crusts to make ends meet. Without time, who has the energy to trace their difficulties to the feet of the elite, or to change something about it if they do?

Money-deprived folk with time revolt; money- and time-deprived folk simply struggle to survive.

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I Learned the Secret to Everything In Aunt Nancy’s Basement

(Some assembly required)

Aunt Nancy’s small farm house had a basement. Our cookie cutter suburban tract home had no basement. Maybe this is why I spent so many hours each summer exploring the dark crannies and nooks of this mysterious underground room.

This wasn’t the spooky basement that popular culture had prepared me for. Aunt Nancy’s basement was neat and orderly. A magical place where glittering canning jars with jewel-tone contents were stacked to the ceiling on strong wooden shelves. A place where bunches of onions and braids of garlic were tacked onto the supports for those shelves. Along the bottom, crates of winter squashes, apples, and potatoes lay nestled in protective nests of shredded newspaper and straw.

In one corner a scrap of carpet covered the floor, and atop it sat a few broken down armchairs and an old sagging couch. Stacks of board games and old magazines sat on a shelf. Dubbed “Twister Corner” by my auntie’s family, this was where we all went when funnel clouds threatened. It was also where my cousins and I played when it was too dark or too rainy to go outside.

One set of shelves in Twister Corner held something different, though.

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The Threat of Famine

The Homespun Foodie’s week in review, Nov 2–8

One would have to be a rock, rather than simply living under one, to be living in America and unaware of the threat to food access that 41 million Americans faced last week. As one whose family was somewhat affected, famine has understandably and unfortunately been on my mind.

I have not studied famine in depth, but my lay opinion is that famine comes in a few different types. There are natural famines, caused by disasters like flooding, droughts, and pestilence. There are the famines of war, which occur directly as an attack on the enemy’s food supply or indirectly as there are fewer and fewer people left on the farm to grow the food needed. And finally, there are famines of political control, where food access is prevented by the ruling elite in order to control those they see as beneath them.

The famine that was threatened last week was one primarily of political control, of that I have no doubt. Another example of such a famine would have been the Great Hunger that struck Ireland in the mid 1800s. Most Americans know it as the “Irish Potato Famine,” a horrible misnomer that was designed to relieve the perpetrators of their rightly deserved blame.

You see, the Great Hunger was in part due to a potato blight, a natural famine if you will, but why does no one ask the most obvious questions — why didn’t they eat something else?

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Pumpkins and Spice, Everything Ain’t Nice

Why can’t I love autumn?

I gaze through the square frame of my window. It makes reality into a painting of a magical world beyond my warm kitchen.

The lawn is green again, now that the summer heat is gone and the fall rains have begun again in earnest. Bright yellow pin oak leaves and rich crimson maple leaves dot the emerald lawn like candy sprinkles. The beauty is almost too much to take in at once.

Like a coven of merry witches, the evergreen cones of the giant sequoias sway in the wind as they encircle the yard. They are wise women sent to watch over us and protect us from the worst that the winter gales will bring. Before them stand the skeletal branches of maple, alder, birch, and oak. A few tattered but joyfully vibrant leaves still cling to their outstretched fingers, all the more shocking against the listless gray sky above.

I cannot deny that autumn is a time of immense beauty.

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I Paint My Poverty In Beauty

By doing so, we become rich

I am grateful to love old things. Corners worn smooth through years of love and use. Patches and mending threads give proof of adoration to well-worn garments. Repairs and mending are nothing more nor less than a bandage on a loved one’s knee, a kiss and a promise that all will be well again soon.

Old things, like you and I, are perfect in their imperfection.

All I can do is imagine the dissatisfaction and unhappiness for those that depend on the new and shiny, the unobtainably trendy, to bring them joy. Especially when their income is as paltry as ours. It must be painful to covet clean lines, Pottery Barn dreams, and the plastic haberdashery of the finest modern design.

Loving old things lends us the privilege of genteel poverty. Castoffs from a century ago, sometimes less and sometimes more, feel luxurious compared to particle board knock-offs of modern designs.

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The Shutdown Is About to Get a Lot Worse for 41 Million People

And that includes my family

Last year, between the two of us, my partner and I earned $56,058. To put this in perspective, the median US income is around $80,000, and the median for my city is around $55,000. Granted, a large proportion of our local population are college students and retirees on fixed incomes. Further, our cost of living is higher than the national average, as well.

Our lower income is from a combination of factors. We are both middle aged neurodivergent women. We are both self employed, mostly, and patch together income from multiple sources. My income is primarily seasonal, and hers is very much tied to the vagaries of the national economy and political climate. LLMs (colloquially known as “AI”) have greatly reduced my income from its high of $60,000 a year in 2019. LLMs are now starting to encroach on my partner’s income, which is down from its high of $51,000 in 2023.

This means we are both in a low-earning period, and there may be no relief in sight.

We went on SNAP benefits last year (a.k.a. EBT or food stamps). It was a necessity, as we also partially support our 20 year old son and his girlfriend while they are navigating college. By support, I mean that they live with us and we cover the costs of housing and utilities. 

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