The price of everything is going up. Not only is it going up, sometimes it is missing altogether. Some shelves are bare. Are we going to see the same thing that we saw during the worst of the pandemic? It seems to be happening again. Limits are starting to show up again too. The consumer price index was up 8.5% in March. This index does not include food or energy. What is the point of this number if they don't include the things that we have to have to live? Imagine what the real inflation number looks like.
I haven't been doing "Gather Up Your Fragments" posts lately. I realized this the other day. I did let a bag of fresh sweet peppers go to waste. Shame on me. I was very disappointed. I knew that I needed to put them up and I even checked on them, but I waited too long to process them. The reason that I have not been doing these types of posts is that I haven't had any leftover fragments to gather especially during this construction phase that we are in.
Throughout history we can find the struggle to get and purchase food. Food in a lot of places in this day and age represent the largest portion of ones' income along with the fuel needed to cook the food. Shortages and high costs were not uncommon in the 18th and 19th centuries. People made struggle meals out of what they could buy or scavenge. Even the Bible has examples of famines. Truth be told, until farming and ranching became industrialized food insecurity was commonplace. Now, after a series of devastating events we are witnessing food insecurities and shortages despite having industrialized farming and ranching.
So, how can we stretch what we have and make do with what we have in the pantry. We will have to get creative with very few ingredients, because even the ingredients for depression meals have become expensive. So, we will have to go back further into history and find out what people used to make a struggle meal.
People used basic ingredients like unprocessed grains, garden vegetables, wild game and foraged edibles. If they were able they also raised their own animals like chickens and had a milk cow. They spent a lot of time gathering and saving food for the Wintertime on top of cooking and gathering for their daily needs.
I want to focus on soup and bread in this post. Soup is nutritious and can be made out of scraps. Bread is also nutritious and filling. Put soup and bread together and you have a great inexpensive meal. Broth can easily be made out of leftover fragments saved and gathered from other meals and garden scraps. People did not waste food. They knew that food was important for basic survival.
Definitions:
soup/so͞op/
| Noun: | - A liquid dish, typically made by boiling meat, fish, or vegetables, etc., in stock or water.
- A substance or mixture perceived to resemble soup in appearance or consistency.
|
|
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| Chicken and Dumplings |
bread /bred/
1.
food made of flour, water, and yeast or another leavening agent, mixed together and baked.
 |
| Homemade bagels |
Soup is a delicious, nutritious and affordable meal. It doesn't require a lot of time unless you choose a recipe that has a lot of steps and preps in it. I enjoy cooking a big pot of soup on the stove in the winter. It warms my home and my heart. The aroma of a good pot of soup makes your home a welcoming place to gather for a meal. Anticipation is heightened, as family and friends alike go by the pot to stir the soup to make sure all is well.
Soup is a forgiving way to cook. Every pot made is a master piece in it's own right. Never to be duplicated. Ingredients change, spices change and cooking times may vary, so just feel free to add or subtract depending on what you have on hand.
I like to make "leftover" soup. At the end of the week, I put all the leftover cooked grain, meat and vegetables into a pot of stock, broth, water or milk on the stove to cook. If I do not have enough leftovers to make soup, I freeze the leftovers in anticipation of adding it to a pot of soup one day. If I have salsa leftover, I will add it to chili or taco soup. I combine foods that compliment each other into a soup. If I have chicken and vegetables left over, I will add homemade noodles to make chicken noodle soup. If I only have chicken, I will make chicken and dumplings with it or freeze it for a later day. These are just examples. Let your imagination run wild with creativity.
Soup promotes a life of living within your means. There is very little waste if any when you cook soup with your leftovers. It makes more meals out of the same amount of groceries, which translates to reducing your grocery bill. Since you simmer soup for a long period of time, you can use tougher cheaper cuts of meats in your soup recipes. Using a pressure cooker retains vitamins, reduces the amount of energy needed to cook with and saves time. Using a crock pot is time saving too. Just throw everything in the pot in the morning before you start your work day and when you get home dinner is waiting for you.
You are not limited to cooking soup with leftovers. It takes very little fresh meat, vegetables and grain to make a good pot of soup. This also helps to make your groceries last. Soup is a well rounded healthy meal. You can make a light summer soup out of your garden vegetables or a hearty soup out of your root vegetables in the winter. Use spices sparingly to add depth to your soup.....
Bread is said to be "the staff of life". Jesus tells Satan that "we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God". Bread can take many forms and is found in almost every society. Soup is also eaten in virtually every society. I encourage you to use whole grains if possible. White bread was for rich people only way back when. Little did they know it was not as nutritious as whole grain bread. Now, white bread is the least expensive bread and is mainly consumed by the poor and those who prefer processed foods.
I make white bread, but I make it with eggs and milk to add protein. Potatoes, oats and other things can be added to make a more nutritious loaf. I consider cornbread, muffins, tortillas, pancakes, hoe cakes, and crackers forms of bread. There are more types of bread, but I am most familiar with the kinds that I listed.
This will be a series of posts as we continue to see inflation rise, witness limits and missing products at the grocery store. There are only so many ways we can cut expenses as the power of our dollar shrinks. Most of us do not have unlimited funds to just pay more and more as inflation continues to soar out of control. It's better to do it now rather than later. We have to cut back, change our habits and navigate through our "new normal". Our wages have not gone up enough or at all to cover rising costs, but our living expenses have increased exponentially.
We can do this...
Mrs. Smith
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