Food – Jenny Wren

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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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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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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Let’s Return to Living, and Eating, With the Seasons

The Homespun Foodie’s week in review, Oct 19–25

Sometimes I wonder what it is like to live outside of the seasons. Flavorless tomatoes in December, short sleeves in January, cherries from half a world away in February.

I imagine that it must be a tedious, bleak sort of existence to be dependent upon climate controlled rooms and transport-hardy foods. Dare I say it? Perhaps it is a shallow, dissatisfying way to live, this life protected from the seasons. Perhaps this is why so many try to find happiness in the shops, instead of closer to home.

Sure, there are the commercial seasons. Pumpkin spice season, shopping season, tax sale season, vacation season, and back-to-school season. The true seasons — autumn, winter, spring, and summer — have been taken from us, like so many things, so that they can be repackaged and sold back to us.

Sold back in a less satisfying and life affirming way. Sold back so that the billionaires can profit off the seasons that were once our birthright as simple animals on this earth.

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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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True Beauty Is In the Small Details

The homespun foodie’s week in review, Oct 12–18

There’s a certain decor style, we all know it. Walk into a medical office, a corporate coffee shop, hell, any modern shop, and you can’t miss this look.

Bland and boring. Walls painted a color I call Millennial beige. It’s not always beige, of course. Regardless of the hue, the color makes one feel bland and beige inside.

On the walls rests a minimal amount of meaningless art. A closeup of coffee beans or a random swirl of colors in different shades of some bland hue. Inoffensive, unimaginative, without life.

What is missing are the details. Those small things that breathe life into our homes and the various spaces we carve out for ourselves. To pick one example of life without beauty, the corporate-owned coffee shop does the bare minimum of decorating, using the most offensively inoffensive design to minimize cost while doing its best not to encourage anyone to linger.

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Without Effort, There Is No Contentment

The homespun foodie’s week in review, Oct 5–11

Nothing in life should come without effort, with the exceptions of sleep and love.

I know that I harp on the same ol’ themes over and over —

There is enough for all of our need, but not all of our greed.
The simple things are the best things.
Waste not, want not, and be fulfilled.
We are not main characters in the tableau of life.
Good food, good people, and hope is what makes the world go around.

These themes may be simple, perhaps even a bit old fashioned, but I shall take them any day over the current world themes of greed, consumption, hate, and destruction. Call me a curmudgeon, but those viral videos of destroying things for “ASMR” or unboxing things to engender envious consumption or behaving badly simply to encourage engagement really upsets me. They aren’t just a symptom of the hatefulness of the billionaire class that has destroyed modern culture, they are also direct cause of it.

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Bankrupting Billionaires In the Kitchen

The homespun foodies week in review, Sept 29 — Oct 4

If greed is written into our animal nature, then sharing is also there in equal measure. Greed tends to rear its horrid head only when there is a bounty. Those with little, both history and my own experience has proven, tend to share the most.

In a world ravaged by greed of a filthy billionaire class, how can we, the meek and meager, prevail?

We defund the billionaires.

To do this, we must opt out of their systems and step out of their bank accounts. The less we spend, the less power they have. Remember, the joy is not in the billions they already possess, but in the challenge of extracting more from the turnips we have allowed ourselves to become. We can’t continue to bankroll them, even if it makes our own lives a bit less comfortable.

Especially because it makes our own lives less comfortable. To relearn the joy of living with useful work to be done and cheerful company to be had could very well be the elixir for contentment that a discontent modern populace is seeking behind every screen and delivery service purchase.

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