LHitBW - Chapter 2 - Part 2

I made my own butter once. Or rather, I attempted to, and it didn't turn out very well. It was a project for an extracurricular course I took in elementary school, one entitled, "Life 200 Years Ago." In that course, we learned to sew, to bake, to air-dry fruit for storage, and yes, to churn butter.

We all used a large yogurt tub, and made a dasher from popsicle sticks. But maybe the milk I used didn't have a high enough cream content or something, because no matter how hard or long I worked at it, all I got was milk that looked like it was starting to go off.

Funny enough, that incident hasn't discouraged me, and I've been interested in trying to make my own butter again for years now. The problem is making a decent churn and dash, and buying cream for it. And knowing, too, that it'll be a very small pat of butter that I end up making, because I can't afford to spend $20 or more on enough cream to make a semi-decent amount of butter when I could just buy that butter for a much lower price.

Sometimes making things by hand end up more expensive than just buying it from the store.

But perhaps some day I'll do it anyway, just to say that I have, and that this time it actually worked.

And just for fun, I'll colour it with the juice from a grated carrot.

LHitBW - Chapter 1 - Part 2

Cracklings were very good to eat, but Laura and Mary could only have a taste. They were too rich for little girls, Ma said.

I've never tried cracklings. I have no real opinion on cracklings. What has always struck me about this passage is the subtle wisdom that Ma shows that a lot of parents these days seem to have forgotten entirely.

First of all, it shows that Ma is in control of the situation, and is a figure of authority. Most children see their parents as an authority, but they also learn quickly how to manipulate them, often with kicking and screaming and tantrums. I can't say that Laura nor Mary never threw tantrums to get what they wanted, mind you, but here, at least, we see the girls as children who will mind their parents.

And we see Ma as a parent who is in control of her children.

She does give them a taste of what they want, as a treat. but she also gives them something of an explanation as to why they can't stuff themselves with that treat all day.

I wish, when I see kids screaming in stores and parents buying them candy just to shut them up, that more parents would benefit from Ma's subtly-presented example.

The second thing that strikes me about this is the wisdom of not feeding your kids rendered fat. It may sound obvious, but really, what's the obesity rate in North America these days? I'm pretty sure that all those people didn't gain weight from eating too many vegetables.

I'm not saying that all overweight people are compulsive overeaters. I'm not saying that overweight people don't eat healthily. I'm saying that part of the root cause of obesity lies in the fact that parents can't say no and thus let their kids eat 2 burgers from McDonald's every day.

I know this because that's exactly what my parents did to me. Not every day, mind, but when we went to McDonalds, which was at least once a week when I was a child, my father would let me get 3 burgers just because I wanted them. No refusal, no talks about how unhealthy it was. Nothing.

I may not have appreciated it then, but I can bet you I'd appreciate it now had my parents not only disciplined me and said no sometimes, but had also had the wisdom to explain to me why they were saying no. Even if it was some foolish little reason that only made sense to child-logic.

I'd probably be better off for it.

(Part 3 coming soon. Got to love multi-post days!)

LHitBW - Chapter 1 - Part 1

I like that this book -- no, this entire series -- starts off with preparation. Smoking venison, salting fish, making sausage, storing vegetables in the attic. It starts off with work, with abundance, and with a feeling of preparedness.

More lives ought to start that way, I think, and continue along just the same lines.

I'm one of those people who lived the paycheque-to-paycheque life, buying too much and yet always seeming to have too little. Food would go to waste because I didn't feel like making anything, I'd buy take-out food, I'd buy things I didn't need, and then wonder why I was broke and didn't seem to be satisfied with life.

I've taken a turnaround. I do more with my life, I waste less, and I don't buy so much of what I don't need. I have my vices, as everyone does, the chief ones being books, certain video games, and craft supplies, but at least I can find use and enjoyment from those. Not like times I'd go out and buy $20 worth of junk food that would be gone in a day and would leave me feeling empty.

I've been giving a lot more thought to long-term food storange lately. I've been unemployed for the better part of six months now, and am learning ways to make the grocery budget stretch a little further, but I've been thinking long and hard about how nice it would be to have enough food stored away so that if this ever happens again, we won't need to worry about groceries at all. Aside from things like milk and wet cat food and toilet paper, the grocery budget could be put towards rent or bills, because we'll be all stocked up and prepared.

So maybe at this time next year, I'll have bags of dehydrated fruit, plenty of flour and beans and sugar and rice and oats in canisters in the cupboard. My roommate would say that things like pasta would be necessities for long-term food storage, but with water and flour, I can make fresh pasta anyway. I already have about a year worth of various kinds of tea stored away. We're looking into getting a chest freezer at some point, to make meat easier to store. Root vegetables, if they can't be dehydrated for some reason, will do well in the coold darkness of the cupboards below the countertop.

There's something to be said for an abundance of the right things.

(Thus ends part 1 of my thoughts on the first chapters. It's impressive when the very first chapter of a children's book has so many things for an adult to think about.)