Tag Archives: Food

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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Our Food Choices Can Define Our Resilience

A recipe for community and self reliance

By 6 am my feet are always on the ground. Mornings are my siren song, and I begin my day with the birds — sometimes earlier in the winter months. When I was younger, this was a burden. Now, in my middle years, it is a delight.

On this late September morning summer has finally come to a crashing halt. The sound of rain against the window announces the arrival of fall more surely than the yellowing bigleaf maples.

The bronze orbs of ripening Asian pears catch my attention from my neighbors yard. We share 12 acres with our neighbor. In his yard is a small fruit orchard featuring pears, plums, and two apple trees that need a bit more TLC to produce well. An orchard he doesn’t harvest or care for, so he has granted us permission to treat it as our own.

I thank him with apple cakes and plum preserves.

Taking the day in hand, I glance at my phone. There is a message alert from the Buy Nothing app. My request to pick apples has been answered by someone with an apple tree in their yard but no need for the fruit. Their house is on the same street as one of my gardening clients, so stopping to pick a bucket or two won’t detract much time from my day.

In fact, it takes far less time than driving to the grocery store and buying apples. Even less time than earning the money that would otherwise be needed to purchase apples.

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