Appropriate Technologies

 I was helping a friend with a writing project recently.  She was writing this post-apocalypse story.  One of the characters was an engineer before TSH.  For plot advancement, he needed to come up with some very creative and useful thing that none of the other characters would be able to make.  She decided he needed to make a generator using some low-tech mechanical engineering hocus-pocus.  

In fact, her solution was a little more dream than reality, which is what I told her.  I told her that what she was describing wouldn't work.

The thing is, what she was hoping to accomplish wasn't really necessary anyway, and I find, all too frequently, that people in the prepper world, and especially in prepper fiction, fixate on this one technology that everyone things we need the most - electricity.

Which confuses me, because having unlimited access to electricity is new.  My generation is the first in my family to have access to unlimited electricity.   Neither of my parents lived in homes that were electrified for their entire childhoods.  Heck, my grandma didn't even have indoor plumbing until the 1970s.  

John Michael Greer has written extensively about appropriate technologies for a powering down world.  One of his commentaries, that has stuck with me, had to do with windows.  The R-Value (that is, the insulative property of a material) of a window is, essentially, zero.  Basically, regardless, of how fancy, multi-layered, or argon gas-filled your replacement windows are, the insulative properties are not much different than if you had nothing there (the glass keeps out the wind and rain - which is good).  Heavy curtains are actually better than fancy windows.

JMG suggests, instead of spending thousands of dollars on replacement windows that aren't really going to do much more than the single-pane windows that are already there, insulating the ceilings, walls, and floors - at what is likely to be a much lower cost than those fancy vinyl windows, anyway.  Increasing the r-value of the rest of the house will do a lot more in energy savings and a lot more to keep your home a comfortable temperature than the best windows money can buy.

We had a saying in the military - KISS.  Everything is an acronym.  KISS means, "Keep It Simple, Stupid."  Ignoring the pejorative at the end, the idea is that often the most simple solution is the best, and such is more true than not when it comes to the kinds of things we are going to want and need in a powered down future.

I spend a lot of time thinking about what I really need with regard to appliances and household conveniences.

I need heat, because it gets cold, and while I love cold weather, I prefer it if I can be inside my warm house drinking a cup of hot coffee and watching the beautiful snow flakes as they dance through the air on their way to blanket the ground in soft white.  I like having a woodstove, because while it's a lot of work, year round, and a lot of mess, that woodstove provides my heat, but it also allows me to cook.  

I also, very much, appreciate that I don't need electricity for heating or cooking in the winter.

In fact, the only two things for which I really, REALY need and appreciate the electric grid are my clothes washing machine and the freezer.  Hand washing and wringing clothes is painful work.  Yes, I've done it - whole loads of heavy clothes, like jeans, and yes, I have a wringer.  It's no wonder that pioneer women had some massive biceps.  And there's just no substitute for the convenience of having a years' worth of food safely frozen until I'm ready to use it.

Electricity generation is pretty tricky ... or not.  It can be done in a lot of fairly low-tech ways.  Wind and solar are the most talked about when it comes to home uses, but much of our electric grid is actually powered by steam generation.  Even the fancy-smancy Nuclear power plants are really just simple steam engines.  The fancy part is that the process of splitting the atoms makes heat, which heats up the water to make steam, with turns a turbine, which makes the electricity.  Coal powered plants do the same thing - burn coal to create heat to make steam and turn a turbine to create electricity.    It's curious why someone hasn't come up with a way to create a residential-sized steam engine for home-power generation.  Perhaps it would have to be too big and would use too much wood for too little gain (?).  I don't know the answer.

What I do know is that running my freezer uses about .8kWh per day (if I leave it plugged in all of the time, which I do) and running a washing machine uses about 2.25kWh each use, which seems like a lot, but I'll have to believe Google.  If I only needed my freezer and my washing machine, I would have to generate 2 kWh per day, and I'd need to unplug my freezer while I was doing laundry.  

So, when I read the stories and hear the preppers harping on generators, I have to wonder. What is it that they are trying to power that is SO important?  What do they need electricity for, exactly?

In the story, the idea was to use human power to produce electricity.  If you've been a reader of my blog for any length of time, then, you are aware that we had a bicycle generator a few years ago.  I guess I know a little bit about human-produced electricity.  

While it's possible to produce electricity on a bike generator, it requires a lot of energy on the cyclist's part.  A lone cyclist can produce about 100 watts in an hour's time.  If everyone in my house rode the bike generator for one hour per day, we'd have 400 watts of power saved.  If we were able to use 100% of the power that was generated, we still wouldn't even have enough electricity stored after a full day of bike riding to keep our freezer frozen.  

So, I had to ask.  What are they trying to power?  What thing could they gain by having the tiny amount of electricity generated by bicycle power?  Maybe some electric lights.  Maybe a laptop, for entertainment.  

And, then, I actually recommended something else for the engineer to do that would be awesome and give the characters a sense of "normalcy." 

I suggested he rig up a shower using hot water from the woodstove.  

I was thinking about it this morning, when I was enjoying my own shower.  It bothers me in those post-apocalyptic stories in which everyone is always so dirty, and I always wonder why they can't stay somewhat clean.  Heating up water is useful for a lot of different applications, including making it safe to drink, and while you're sterilizing your drinking water, why not heat up a couple more gallons for a nice, hot bath or shower?

I also suggested the shower for a more base and fundamental reason.  There's nothing quite so wonderful in the world as feeling clean, as anyone who has ever been camping ... like, *real* camping, not glamping in an RV or renting an overnight tent plot in a camping resort that includes flush toilets and hot showers.  After a weekend of not showering or having baby-wipe baths, there's nothing quite so wonderful as being full-body under a spray of warm water.  

In so many of the stories that I've read told by people who have survived societal collapse, one of the things they report missing the most are those little things, like sweet-smelling soap and maybe a little bit of lipstick ... or deodorant.  

In the interest of preparedness, do yourself a favor and stock up on toiletries, or learn to make them.

Also in the interest of preparedness, think about the technologies that you most value.  Think about the things you know you could live without, if you had to, and think about those things that really DO make your life nicer, easier, more comfortable, more enjoyable.  Those are the things that you're going to want to be able to keep when the SHTF.  

I will want to generate enough power to keep my freezer - which, according to Google is about .8kWh/day, which would cost me less than $1000 to set-up.    Since I wouldn't *need* to keep the freezer plugged in all day, I could have access to the array for charging phones, laptops, and lightbulbs

And for a showers, I found this nifty little gadget.  It's just a shower pump.  Fill a bucket with hot water, and have a shower anywhere.

What we *need* is actually pretty simple, most of the time.  

There are a lot of folks who are predicting resource scarcity in the very near future and have been for decades.  We really do have nothing to lose by getting ready.

And, in the case of learning to embrace a lower-energy dependent lifestyle, we might actually gain from it. 

For me, for $1000 initial investment, and a willingness to work my biceps, we could eliminate $100/month worth of expenses.  

  

Positive Effects of the Pandemic

I predict that this will be an incredibly unpopular post, because I think people aren't ready or willing to accept that 2020 wasn't a complete shit-show.

The Pandemic, which started here in the United States in March 2020, has wreaked havoc with our social fabric.  

• People have died.  
• Individuals and businesses have been financially devastated. 
• The economy is, arguably, in shambles, and probably won't recover to what it was before anytime soon.
• The philosophical, religious, and political (and, yes, I absolutely do mean to lump them all together, implying that they are intricately linked) divide has widened, perhaps beyond any ability to close the gap. 
• I, personally, have lost friends because of the very deep divide between those of us who want better answers than, "because I said so," and those who want to shame us for seeking more and/or better information.  I am not the only one who has been shamed to silence by people who (probably) mean well, but can't hear anything other than their own fear.  
• Those who were extroverts before the pandemic have suffered from wont of social stimulation.  Those of us who were introverts before the stay-at-home stratagems took affect have thrived in this new world.  

There have been some really bad bits, for sure,  but at least from where I'm sitting, there have also been a lot of positives.

Let's take a look.

More People are Working from Home

I'm sure some of the above-mentioned extroverts will argue that this is *not* a positive outcome.  That's okay.  Argue away, but before you say nay, take a listen. 

I started working from home in 1998.  Back in those days, there weren't many of us, but the demographic was growing by leaps and bounds every year. With the introduction of this amazing technology - the world wide web! - and all of its accouterments, many jobs that previously required actual bodies in office spaces, could suddenly be done remotely.  I researched and wrote a lot about it, and in fact, my original blog (happilyhome.blogspot) was born from a desire to assist other SAH parents in their search for a work-from-home life.

What I found, back in those days, is still true today - maybe even more true - and that is that companies that allow part-time or full-time telecommuting options have a lower overhead (because they don't have to have as much real estate devoted to offices in which their personnel work) and in most cases, their employees have a better work/home life balance and are happier.   Even with that data freely available to anyone who was looking for it, many companies were still stuck in the 19th Century idea that employees needed to be watched, lest they slack off.  

Fast forward twenty-two years, and out of necessity, many companies are sending their employees home.  I read an article recently that was discussing the changing nature of the publishing industry (sorry, I didn't save the link), and the gist of the article was that NYC would be the hub of publishing in name only, as much of the actual work would be performed remotely - often from out-of-state home offices. 

Maine has seen a huge migration of former New Yorkers, who are buying (cheaper) property here and telecommuting to their jobs in the city. 

Supporting a home-based workforce has some incredibly positive side effects: 

Less time off for sickness!  Keeping us healthy was (is) of course the primary motivator in adopting 2020s work-from-home paradigm, but it extends beyond the COVID crisis.  In the long-term, with fewer bodies in big office spaces, there is less opportunity for that winter flu to run through the work force.  As such, with fewer people falling ill, there will be a greater productivity, overall.  Hopefully, for that reason alone - this WAH life will prosper.

Companies save money on real estate.  When I started my home-business twenty-two years ago, my first client was an out-of-state entrepreneur.  He was hoping to take advantage of the dot.com boom, and he was looking for a local person to be the administrative contact for this business idea he had.  He had some rental property in a very desirable area, and his idea was to use one of his rental units as an office space for his administrative assistant to run the business.  I talked him into allowing me to be a contractor rather than an employee and to use the office space and equipment I already had at my home.   The benefit, for him, was that I already had the equipment and the space, and so he didn't need to buy a computer or peripherals, AND that he could, now, rent the apartment.  The money he made off the rental funded his business venture and paid my contractor fee.  

My home is much cleaner.  Which has no benefit for an employer, BUT is incredibly beneficial for my family ... which perhaps indirectly benefits an employer, because everyone is happier.  

No commute is better for the environment.  When I quit my job at the theater in December to return to working full-time from home, I completely eliminated my daily commute.  I always use my credit card for gas purchases at the pump, like most folks.  On our most recent statement, I noted that I have filled up my gas tank twice since mid-December, and the last time I put gasoline in my car was January 5.  The environmental impact from reducing/eliminating the commutes of millions of people has proved incredibly (but not surprisingly) beneficial.  

Working from home saves money.  I won't go into this one too much here/now, but suffice it to say that working from home, and/or having a full-time at home partner, saves a LOT of money in the long term.  The specifics are a book in the works ;).  

Businesses are Supporting a Work-at-home Workforce

I was in Staples the other day, exchanging my CO2 cartridge (because we make our own seltzer with our SodaStream, which also saves us a lot of money), and I saw this pretty cool display.  

The sign on the wall says, "Build Your WFH Haven."  WFH is work from home.  Back in the day we called it telecommuting or work at home.  Telecommuters were people who had an employer who allowed them to work at home.  The WAH designation was for those who had home businesses or were independent contractors.

I have been working from home for decades, and I have had half a dozen different configurations of a home office - everything from a plywood box-turned-desk in the dining room, to an executive computer desk with a hutch bookcase for storage in a dedicated "office" space, which could have qualified for a home-office tax deduction, if we had chosen to take it.  

I could always get great supplies from Staples, but the fact is, they never catered to the work-from-home demographic.  Seeing those displays of ideas for setting up a work-at-home space was just so satisfying.  

When I dissolved my business four years ago, we turned my former office space into a den/guest room with a sofa bed.  Currently, my WFH Haven is a bit more modest, but considering most of what I do is on my laptop, it's enough.  

And I love how portable and streamlined my work space is.  My hope is to get a covered outdoor space so that I can work outside in the summer. 

Staples isn't the only corporation that has turned its sights on the WAH workforce.  There have also been some businesses that have taken a page from Mr. Bigweld (from the animated feature, Robots) - "see a need, fill a need."  While virtual office space probably did exist pre-COVID (I have had my share of Skype interviews and meetings), companies like Google with "Google Meet" and Zoom, have made it possible and fairly easy to have virtual meetings.  

Delivery services, like UPS and FedEx, are making bank.  I see a UPS and/or FedEx truck on my road (I live on a dirt road with six other residences - one that is vacant) every day.   

And then, there are the businesses that have always offered services that we ... or maybe it's just me ... never looked for, because we didn't know we needed it.  Did you know that the USPS offers prepaid, pre-addressed flat rate envelopes?  Well, I didn't!  And I wouldn't have gone looking for that service, if I didn't want to *not* have to go into the post office.  The envelopes are the perfect size for sending a book.  I received my envelopes the other day, put in my book, wrote the recipients' address in the spot provided, and dropped it into a convenient mail box.  I actually wish I had known about the service years ago, when I was sending out a lot more books.  It was so much easier and faster than standing in the line at the post office, and while I like most of the folks behind the counter, sometimes the whole experience has been draining and very unsatisfactory, for me.  And the best part - the postage is "forever" - like the Forever Stamps.  So, if the cost of the bulk rate envelopes goes up before I use the ones I ordered, I get the lower postage price.  Sometimes it's good to stock up ;).

The Entrepreneurial Spirit has flourished

While there are so many very sad stories about businesses that have suffered and shuttered due to the pandemic, I have also seen an equal number of businesses that have adapted in some pretty exciting and amazing ways. 

The whole take-out industry is pretty exciting, for an introvert, like me.  Deus Ex Machina and I used to eat out frequently (a few times per month, at least), and when I say "eat out", what I mean is that we would do take-out.  I like to eat dinner in my pajamas and enjoy a nice glass of my favorite red wine with my meal.  Unfortunately, for us, we don't do fast food, and the kinds of places from which we wanted to order our dinner, usually catered to people who were dining in.  Our take-out food was not as carefully considered as our meal would have been had we stayed in the restaurant.  Things have changed a little, and those restaurants are adapting to a much greater volume of people who want their food to go.  People, like me, who don't want the hassle of having to put on pants to eat dinner,  are the unintended beneficiaries of this new dining paradigm.  

The delivery services, like Uber Eats and Door Dash, are also a nice bonus.  We've owned our house for two decades and before the pandemic we couldn't even pay for delivery - not even Dominos or Papa Johns, which specialize in delivery service, delivered here.  I mean, it's not like we live on the top of Mt. Katahdin, for heck's sake, but for some reason, no one would deliver to our neighborhood.  Being able to have food delivered was a pleasant change. 

No contact, curb side pick-up where one orders on line or over the phone, pays, and then, drives to the store, where they put it in the trunk or the backseat is next best thing to home delivery.  I sincerely hope that it will remain a thing after this is all over.  

I have also seen a whole industry emerge as a result of the pandemic.  Individuals who possess the heretofore underappreciated skill of sewing, are earning a nice income making masks.  I applaud their entrepreneurial spirit - see a need, fill a need.  

I have also seen businesses adapt their entire business model.  

• Hyperlite, which made ultra light backpacking and camping gear pre-COVID, kept their facilities up and running by transitioning into mask making. 
• A local distillery started making hand sanitizer when their tasting rooms were shut down and they couldn't sell their booze.  
• Several wholesale companies that had previously served the restaurant industry started offering their services to individuals - like me.  
• Native Maine now offers home delivery of a variety of grocery items.  I am a very happy customer of theirs.  I can buy 5 lbs of locally roasted ground coffee for about $6/lb.  That's cheaper than what I pay for a regional coffee at the grocery store.  We drink a lot of coffee.  The cost savings is big.
• A local seafood wholesaler is offering weekly "pop-ups" at which we can purchase seafood products at the price restaurants pay.  We have to buy in bulk quantities, but hey, I have no problem with vacuum sealing 35 lbs of haddock on a Friday evening.  That's 35 lbs of awesome Atlantic white fish in my freezer.  

Prepping has become mainstream

Last August I wrote a blog post about having a difficult time getting my chickens scheduled to go the butcher.  In 2020 more people were home more hours than they had ever been, and the thing that many of them decided to do with their extra time was, basically, what we preppers have been doing for years: gardening, raising livestock (like chickens), canning, stocking up on food and supplies, DIY home improvements. 

Seeds every where were suddenly out of stock.  

By mid-April, here in my local area, every place that sold baby chicks had sold out.  

Even Amazon.com was out of canning supplies.  Forget trying to get them locally! 

Grocery shelves were empty of canned goods and non-perishable long storage foods, like pasta, yeast, and flour.

The home improvement stores were deemed "essential businesses" and had lines of people waiting to go into the stores - I was in a few of those lines, more than once.   

As I do every year around this time, I'm placing my chick order and looking at what we might order for seeds.  I think after the shortages last year, a lot of people will be planning earlier, too.

I don't think people are suddenly thinking that we, preppers, have all the answers, and I don't, for a second, think that, for most people, it will become a lifestyle.  I think most people will happily return to their pre-COVID, non-prepping ways once the masks come off and they can go back to on-demand service for whatever their hearts desire.

But I think for enough of us, this pandemic is a small taste of what could happen to change, forever, the world as we know it, and those people will be the ones who find new and exciting ways to ensure their future is comfortable - no matter what that future holds. While we, preppers, may not be completely accepted, at least we're not being ridiculed and dismissed these days.  In fact, we are, at least in this article, being celebrated.  

I also think that the pandemic has created a few SAH moms and dads of people who never imagined that they could or even wanted to stay home full-time.  There was another article that I skimmed and didn't save.  The gist was, basically, to discuss how mothers have been the unwitting victims of this  pandemic with regard to their careers/income potential (i.e. the pandemic has worsened the gender wage gap), because women are the ones losing or leaving their (thankless, low paying) jobs to come home and be with their virtual-schooling children. 

I mean ... as a two decade stay-at-home/work-at-home Mom and an eighteen year homeschool veteran, I'm not seeing the downside to this.  

The idea, for me, is very exciting, because I know, from personal experience, that being home full-time benefits my family and myself in innumerable ways:  financially, professionally, and spiritually.  My hope is that the stigma around having a full-time at home parent/partner will be decreased, because we, as a society, will discover that being home is not a bad thing, after all.

People are getting healthier 

 

The pandemic, especially early on here in Maine, spurred a huge interest in getting outdoors and walking.  I mean, that was really one of the only activities that was permitted outside of one's home, and so, of course, everyone was out there.  People are still getting out and walking more, which is a good thing. 

I would also posit that people are eating better, because more people are cooking at home and are learning how to actually cook using whole foods and not just pre-packaged mixes and processed foods.  I had an old high school friend who posted a video of this woman who was making macaroni salad.  It was the best cooking video I've seen since I watched Julia Child as a youngster.  The woman was just so easy-going about the whole process, and I tell you, at the end, I just really wanted pasta salad. 

My friend was talking about starting a YouTube channel on which she would just cook old timey kinds of meals, and I hope she does.  I would be excited to share her videos, because cooking is not hard or complicated, and preparing wholesome, tasty meals doesn't require a culinary degree.  

  

People had the courage to leave or at least consider leaving dead-end jobs/careers

If 2020 taught us one thing, it's that life is too short and too precious to live it doing activities that rob us of our joy.  

Someone very dear to me lost his job due to the pandemic.  He was out of work for most of the year, which actually ended up being a very good thing for him and his family.  Being home full-time gave him an opportunity to do some soul-searching, and what he discovered during those long months of hanging out with his wife and kids, and going for lots of hikes, and planting a garden in their new home, and just being, was that he did not want to return to the high stress and long hours of his former career.  

He was able to secure a new job at his same pay level with better hours and a lot less headache.  It was a happy ending, but he would never have looked for that particular job, if his old career hadn't been taken from him.

Another friend had worked at a job that she didn't love for more years than she had ever intended.  Her job was discontinued during the pandemic, because her employer had to go virtual, and hers was not a virtual sort of job.  She was employed for some piece work stuff, but mostly, she didn't have a job or an income.  Except, she did.  

For a while, she had been working this part-time side gig, and as luck had it, the side gig turned into a full-time permanent thing.  She was able to leave the job that was paying the bills, but robbing her of her spark, and do work that gave her life value and meaning.

While the news is full of the stories of tragedy and loss, what I'm hearing on the street is that people have discovered passions they didn't know they had, and this pandemic has allowed people to take a long, hard look at where they were, and where they want to go.  

Another loved one is planning a late-life complete career change, and I am so excited to see where it takes him.  

And on a personal level, Deus Ex Machina and I realized that my outside the home job was not enriching our lives in any measurable way. The money I earned wasn't greater than what we could save if I were home full-time.  The pandemic gave me the permission I needed to leave the job and come back home to do what gave my life meaning and purpose.

I didn't rejoice at the end of 2020, and frankly, I don't hold out a lot of hope that 2021 is going to be so significantly more positive than 2020 was - unless we step back and take a look at the things that made 2020 not so terrible, because those will be the same things that make 2021 good. 

Creating a Sewing Pattern

What's better than being able to repair or alter clothes?

I think I've mentioned the fact that I had to take Home Ec. in school, and it was in that class that I learned to sew.  While I credit Home Ec, and Mrs. Abraham with teaching me to sew, the fact is that I started sewing many years before that.  

When I was six, I was a Brownie Girl Scout, and I learned an embroidery technique for embellishing cloth napkins.  I also learned a very valuable lesson when I witnessed one of our scout leaders who had sewed her embroidered napkin to her skirt. 

In the seventh grade, as a Cadette Girl Scout, I learned how to hand sew using several different stiches, including a blind stitch for sewing hems.  My Girl Scout troop elected to make our own uniforms, and our troop leader instructed us in using a pattern and sewing that pattern together by hand to make a wrap-around skirt.  I finished my skirt during the HBO free weekend, sitting in front of the television and binge watching movies I would never see on TV in their unedited form, and which I couldn't afford to go see at the theater.  We were binge watching television before Netflix was a thing.  Just sayin'.

The six years in between learning embroidery and sewing my skirt, I made a lot of doll clothes and pillows.  

So, while my high school Home Ec. class deserves the credit for teaching me to be comfortable with a sewing machine, it wasn't the fuel that sparked my interest in making things using a needle and thread.  That fire was started many years before I was even thinking about high school.

Fast forward a lot of years, and sewing has become a happy past-time, for me - not something that I do for enjoyment, but something I *can* do, and mostly, enjoy.  The part that I enjoy the most is the ability to fill a need.  

Like making masks.  We needed masks.  I disliked the idea of disposable options (not only do I hate the notion of using something that is meant to be thrown away, but I also just hate the way they look), and so I made my own.  Deus Ex Machina has been wearing the cloth masks I made for him since April 2020, when his employer first mandated them.  He received lots of compliments and comments about the fabric choices, and the recycled elastics ;).  

And that's the second bonus, for me.  If I can reuse something to make something new that we need, it's a win-win.

Such was the case with Deus Ex Machina's undergarments.

The story is that he had some tee-shirts that were still perfectly usable, but he was no longer able to wear them.  They were a custom garment, and so we also couldn't donate them.  The choice was to throw them away, or find an other use. 

I found another use.  

A couple of his old tee-shirts became skirts, for me.  I made this skirt using a pattern I had purchased.  

But then, I noticed he had some undergarments that weren't in the best shape, and since I was already sewing, I thought, "I can make those."

Unfortunately, I didn't have a pattern.

So I made one.

Et voila!

Boxer briefs that were the perfect fit and were free!  I even reused the elastic from an old pair of briefs.

It doesn't get much better than that.

How to Create a Sewing Pattern:

1.  Disassemble an article of clothing that is the same size and style that you are hoping to create.

2.  Trace the shape of the individual pieces on to butcher paper.  Note: it's not necessary to use any special paper, but it is helpful if the piece of paper is large enough to hold the entire piece of cloth.  That is, taping sheets of printer paper together would work, but the tape might get in the way.

3.  Label the pieces of the pattern and indicate any special instructions - like how many of that size piece are needed (cut 2), or if the piece can be placed on a fold and cut out.

4.  Sew the pieces together. 

The Economy of Women's Work

Any woman worth her salt hates that phrase, and most of the women I know will hate me for using it. 

Hate might be too strong a word, but the fact is, many of us bristle at the notion that there is "women's work" and "men's work."  The unfortunate reality of our culture and our world is that there are tasks - daily tasks, even; necessary, tasks that, if they don't get done, could actually mean the difference between life and death - that are often undervalued and dubbed "women's work."

Like cooking meals, which is by and large considered women's work.  Unless one is a famous chef who makes fancy food and yells at people on television.  THEN, cooking is okay for a man to do.  

But the daily task of feeding people is usually a job relegated to the Mom. 

I was never going to be a stay-at-home mom. In fact, I went to college, because I never wanted to be dependent on anyone for financial security.

And then, that all changed.  I still don't like being financially dependent, but over the course of the decades that Deus Ex Machina and I have been married, and that I have been a homemaker, I have learned a few things about the economy of having a full-time stay-at-home partner.

My efforts haven't always been appreciated by the greater world, and I can tell lots of stories in which I am featured as a lesser person, and my value as a contributing member of my family is seen as worth much less than my husband, who has a job making money. 

That's the problem with our society, though, this emphasis, the NEED, for everyone to MAKE money.  I could tell lots of stories about times when I was made to feel worth *less* than other women who work and less than my husband, but I won't tell those stories - today.

Today, I want to tell you the story of a pair of pants.

Deus Ex Machina is not a suit and tie kind of guy.  He likes a no-fuss wardrobe made up of good quality clothing, preferably comprised of items that just appeared in his drawer.

He hates shopping almost as much as he hates having to wear fancy clothes.

I have had some negative experiences of buying clothes for other adults, and so, in the early stages of our relationship, I was a little gun-shy about buying pants and shirts for him, but he made it super easy for me.  Being in the military was perfect for him, because he never had to fuss about his clothes.  He had a uniform.  Over the years, since leaving military service, he has embraced the idea of a uniform in his daily work attire.  He likes this one style of pants in a light, earth tone (preferably tan or khaki), and he likes this one style of shirt, in black.  

He has multiple pairs of tan cargo pants and a half dozen black, polo-style shirts.  It's what he wears to work every day, and it makes getting dressed super easy.  Tan pants.  Black polo shirt.  Work boots.  The only decision he has to make about what he's wearing is socks and underwear. 

As a funny aside: We never thought much about his "uniform" look and how other people might see it, until he heard, through the grapevine, that one of his colleagues had expressed some concern about his private life.  The story is that, since he didn't appear to be changing clothes, this person thought he might be having some trouble at home and was sleeping in his car.

That story was almost as good as the one about the colleague who wanted to take up a collection at work to purchase a television for us, because she found out that we didn't have one, and she thought we didn't have a television, because we couldn't afford to buy one.  I mean, why else would we not have a television, right?

People are funny.

Anyway, I was talking about pants.

Deus Ex Machina has a half dozen or so pairs of this exact same style of pants.  Like most things, eventually, they start to show some wear, and a couple of the pairs started fraying around the hem.  

The good news is that we bought them a little long, and also that I have both the skill and the equipment to make repairs to clothes.  That is, I have a sewing machine, and I know how to use it.

We could probably afford to purchase another pair for him, but the fact is that there was nothing wrong with those pants except that the hem was fraying, and so it just makes zero sense to relegate those pants as yardwork pants, and purchase a new pair, when there is nothing wrong with them except the hem.  

But he can't wear them to work like that.

So I fixed them.

 Fixed

There might be some Super Women out there who are good at both - who are able to do as that 1970s perfume commercial jingle says - "I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never ... let you forget you're a man."  

But given our disposable culture and the number of young people who don't have basic home making skills, my guess is that most women who work full-time don't spend their off-work time mending their husband's clothes.  It's not a judgment.  It's just to say that, because we chose this lifestyle and Deus Ex Machina has the luxury of having an at-home wife, he also is afforded the privilege of spending less money on clothes.

He likes spending less money.

And because I repaired his pants, rather than buying a new pair, I saved us $65.  

Having a full-time homemaker was a very conscious decision for us.  We opted to earn less money, than maybe we were both capable of earning, because we wanted to live in Maine, where potential earnings in his career field are less than he could have earned in other parts of the country, and because we wanted to cultivate a certain lifestyle.  We wanted our children to be raised by their parents rather than by under appreciated and poorly paid childcare providers.  We wanted the option of homeschooling.  

Because Deus Ex Machina had me at home to, literally and figuratively, tend the home fires, he was able to grow his career; he was able to travel for work whenever necessary without worrying about who was taking care of the hearth and home; he was able to learn some new skills (like taking flight lessons and guitar lessons) that he might not have been able to pursue, if he had needed to accommodate my work schedule.

And because I am home full-time, we are able to be more economical in our lifestyle choices, which, in reality, gives us far more money in cost savings than I would earn if I had a job, even a job using my teaching degree (especially after subtracting the cost of having said job). 

The added bonus is that, while my on-paper income is a lot less than what my wages would look like - on paper - if I had a full-time job outside of the home, between the income I do earn in wages doing part-time contract work and what I save by doing much of what other people pay to have done for them, I am earning a lot more.

There are some huge benefits to having a full-time at-home partner.  The least of which is that buying new clothes can happen a lot less frequently than, perhaps, in the average two-income family. 

Mother's Helper

Living the Locavore Life

Over a decade ago, I started working toward localizing our diet.  We never achieved 100% local, 100% of the time, but at this point, every meal that we prepare here at home has something local.  For instance, tonight will be chicken tenders (using chicken we raised ourselves) with roasted potatoes (local potatoes) and a salad (not local lettuce, but the dressing is homemade using local ingredients).  Depending on the time of year, the entire meal might be local (sometimes all from our own nanofarm) - a fact we don't even think much about ... until we think about it (like thinking about where tonight's menu items originated).

We started our journey toward an all local diet at the beginning of the locavore movement, and our search for local foods coincided with our local supermarket's answering the call for more local goods to be available to a wider market.  As the years past, we found that most what was available in our local food shed had become available at our local supermarket - all with handy labels that identified the items that were "close to home."  It couldn't have been easier.  

So, between shopping at the supermarket, direct purchases from local farmers, what we grew ourselves, and foraging, we have been able to enjoy many meals where everything was local, without having to really scrounge for local ingredients.  We just bought local food at the supermarket, and that's what we ate.

Unfortunately, the last year has done a lot to change how I shop.  Mostly, I really hate going to the grocery store, and I have been looking for alternatives.  

I've tried a few online shopping sites.  I like Thrive Market**, because their products are mostly organic, but there are so many things that I couldn't buy from them (like fresh produce and dairy), and they don't deal in food that is local to me.  So, transitioning to buying all of my groceries through Thrive wasn't going to happen. 

**If you use this link to go to their site and shop, I will get a referral bonus - just FYI ;).  

There is a local dairy that contracts with a milk delivery guy.  I tried to get on their delivery list, but I was too late.  They didn't have any slots open, and there was no indication of when they would have any availability for delivering to my area.

I kept looking, though, and recently, I discovered a company that carries a lot of Maine-based and regional products.  The company is Native Maine.  I think they used to only serve restaurants and grocery stores, but at some point, recently, they started offering home delivery service - and they will deliver to me ... next day delivery!  

They carry just shy of 200 Maine-based and regional products, including Pineland cheese and Fox Family chips - both of which regularly appear in my kitchen.  I can also get half&half (for our coffee) and milk from them, if I want.

I just placed my first order with them, and from this initial experience it looks like between them and what we can get from local farmers and/or grow on our own property, there are very few things that we have to find elsewhere (mostly snack kinds of foods that my daughters want, pet food, toiletries, and cleaning supplies), which means, perhaps, my trips to the grocery store can be few and far between - a fact which thrills me!  

The best part is that I don't have to compromise my hard won Locavore diet just so that I can avoid having to go shopping, and as an additional bonus, I discovered that Native Maine carries both a local brand of peanut butter and a local brand of coffee.  I ordered extra of both ;).

Has the pandemic changed your shopping habits and/or food choices?    

**Photo credit here

Paying Homage to My Well-Stocked Pantry

There is a common dialogue in my house.  It goes something, like this.

Me:  What do you want for dinner?

Deus Ex Machina:  Yes.

Either that, or he'll say something with pasta. 

I'm okay with pasta, but pasta, for me, is not the quick, easy meal prep that Deus Ex Machina thinks it is.  First off, it takes a lot of dishes to prepare, then, there's the actual prep time involved, because I don't just boil some noodles, dump on a jar of sauce, and call it good. 

I want meatballs with my spaghetti, and for that, I have to make meatballs, which take a lot of time, and I usually cook my meatballs before I add them to my sauce.  So - even more time.  And dishes!

Or I want a baked Mac & Cheese, which means I need to: boil pasta (large saucepan or kettle and a colander), grate cheese (cheese grater), make a cheese sauce (small sauce pan), cube bread (cutting board and knife), brown Italian sausage, and mix everything in a baking pan and bake.  If you're keeping that's two sauce pans, a colander, a skillet, the cheese grater, a cutting board and knife, and a baking dish.  My sink is now full of dirty dishes, and that doesn't even include the plates we eat on or the utensils we eat with. 

I love to cook.  I hate doing dishes.  

The real issue is that on those days when I am asking what other people want for dinner, what I'm saying is, "I'm wiped out today - for whatever reason - and I can't think about what I should make for dinner, because I can't even think about what color socks I should put on my feet, and so I am asking for your help in picking something SUPER EASY and fast that I can whip up in about ten minutes."  Or, I might be asking for take-out.  Either works.

Unfortunately, I don't usually articulate it in that way.  I just ask for ideas, but then, I end up making whatever I want anyway, which is why the conversation has evolved.  I still ask, but recently, the conversation has gone more like:

Me:  What do you want for dinner?

Deus Ex Machina:  Yes.

Me:  Chili it is. 

A friend recently posted some of the lessons she learned in the 2020 Pandemic.  The biggest thing I learned is that I love the life that I had been building, and my ultimate goal was to get back to that way of life - working from home blogging/writing, homesteading/homemaking, tending the home and hearth.  There's a theme here.  For me, life is about making a home.  Those are the things that feed my soul and make me feel necessary.  We all like feeling necessary, don't we?

I also learned that I have an amazing pantry and that I'm a pretty decent cook (in spite of what my son once told me, and which has become a running joke in my family).  Just about any thing I want to eat, I can make - cheaper and tastier than I can get carry out. 

My fresh from scratch version is often better than the prepared version from the grocery store, too.  Like my homemade ramen.  I use store-bought ramen or rice noodles, but everything else, including the seasoning, is from my pantry.  

The broth for this ramen was made from leftover roast chicken.

My daughter loves hummus.  She was coming over for dinner during the holidays, and I thought I would surprise her by making some hummus.  I had everything I needed to make the simple, five ingredient dip:  garbanzo beans, garlic, sesame oil, lemon juice, and salt.  That's it.  It was delicious, and she appreciated that I made it - just for her.

  

That's the benefit of having a well-stocked pantry. 

Food is so integral to our human communal experience.  There are special dishes associated with every major holiday.  When people get together, it's food that we share, along with our company and our stories.  Being able to offer a hearty, tasty meal makes me happy.

Two nights ago, Deus Ex Machina and I had our usual dinner discussion.  I was looking for ideas on that particular evening.  I wanted chili, but we were low on tortilla chips, which we all like in our chili, and so I didn't want to make that.  But I had ground beef in the refrigerator, and so whatever I made, it would have ground meat in it. 

Meatballs and meatloaf are time consuming.

I didn't want pasta.

Anything Tex-Mex was out, because of the above-mentioned tortilla chip shortage.

So, I consulted my google cookbook, and I found a recipe for a Japanese dish called Soboro Donburi (I used this recipe). 

Donburi means "something served over steamed rice as a bowl."  Soboro is a dish with ground meat (and since making the above version with ground beef, I have seen other recipes with the same name that use something other ground meats, like chicken and pork). 

The recipe I used called for five ingredients, and I was SO excited to see that I had all five of them:  ground meat, soy sauce (or Tamari, for us, since we're gluten-free), ginger (of which I have a ton, thanks to my Misfits Market subscription), sugar, and frozen peas.  I was actually worried that I didn't have any peas, but in the back of the freezer, under some frozen blueberries, was a bag.  Huzzah!

Me:  What do you want for dinner?

Deus Ex Machina:  Yes.

Me:  Soboro Donburi it is!

And it was, and it was DELICIOUS!  

Have you ever made something that turned out so good that  you wanted it the next night, too?  That was this dish.  It was so easy and so tasty, I almost made it the next night, too.

I don't like fussy meals with lots of exotic ingredients, but what I'm finding is that what used to feel like exotic ingredients to me are now mainstays in my kitchen - like ginger and garlic and sesame oil.  I have an enviable spice cabinet.  

The pandemic taught me that I like cooking.  That I prefer eating at home.  That there are very few meals I can purchase as take-out that are as ethically sourced (with regard to ingredients) and tasty as what I can make at home - for a lot less money.  

The pandemic also taught me that I can maintain my well-stocked pantry with a lot fewer trips to the grocery store, but also that if I look more deeply into the backs of those cabinets, I will find exactly what I need to make whatever I'm craving.  

If you don't do anything else for yourself, this year, build your pantry. 

Here are some tips:

1.  Sit down with your family and think of ten meals that you frequently prepare or purchase as take-out. 

This isn't a "make a menu" recommendation.  Personally, the weekly menu thing has never worked for me, because invariably on Taco Tuesday, I don't want tacos, or something similar.  Props to those people who can do it.  It's just not me.

2.  Find a recipe for those meals.   

I grew up believing that those terrible, square packs of instant ramen were actually what "ramen" is.  Then, we went to an actual ramen restaurant, and I had "real" ramen.  I liked it so much, I thought, "I need to learn to make that!"  And I did, and it was amazing.  I keep rice noodles in my pantry now, so that when we want something like ramen, I can make it.

3.  Make an ingredient list.  

Way back, before I really learned how to actually cook, I was under the mistaken belief that spice packets - like taco seasoning - contained some fancy and/or mysterious ingredients that I couldn't just purchase.  At some point, I figured it out.  My three youngest daughters grew up with my own way of seasoning taco meat.  Big Little Sister learned to season tacos by the way the taco meat looks when it's properly seasoned using spices in my (and now her own) cabinets.  If you're interested, taco seasoning, for me, is just: chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, sometimes onion powder, and dried cilantro.  I haven't bought taco seasoning packets in, probably, twenty years. 

All of those spices that go into my taco meat can be used for other dishes, as well.

My family LOVES ranch dressing.  Unfortunately, we're almost out, but I'm not due to go to the grocery for another week - if I want to adhere to my bi-monthly shopping trips.  So, I looked for a recipe for ranch dressing, and guess what?  I have all of the ingredients in this recipe, except buttermilk.  Instead, I will use half&half (because we love coffee and we always have half&half or real cream in the refrigerator for our coffee) and some lemon juice, which we also usually have (because I use it in canning and food preservation).  

P.S.  Several of the spices that go in the taco seasoning are also used in the ranch dressing.  Life is grand that way ;).

4.  Look at what you have in your pantry right now and make either a written inventory or a mental list.

5.  Based on those meals that your family most enjoys, make a list of ingredients that you don't have and/or that you are low on. 

6.  List in hand, go to the grocery store.  

7.  Be sure to buy some snack foods.  You know you will want them, and it's better just to buy the chocolate bar at the lower grocery store price than to sneak over to the 7-11 later for that over priced Snickers bar.

Helpful hints:

• When you're building your pantry, you will want to have more than one meal's worth of most things.  Buy two cans of tomatoes, even if you think you'll only use one.  Those cans of tomatoes will be fine in your cabinet for a couple of years, and you will use it, eventually.  Buy extra.
• Multi-purpose items or "ingredients" are better than processed products (see taco seasoning example above).  
• Once you start learning to use the ingredients, you can start learning to produce your own ingredients.  There's nothing quite so satisfying as making a meal with food YOU grew.  
• While all home-cooked, all the time is a noble goal, we all have days when we.just.can't.  Be gentle with yourself on those days, open up the freezer, and grab the tater tots and Freschetta cheese pizza.  It's okay.  No one is judging.