Shopping once every three months is an eco friendly lifestyle. When I noticed my wallet is not bulging with receipts, I began to count the ways this is minimizing paper, cardboard, plastics,and tin in the environment. 1) Buying in bulk requires only a large paper sack which I empty in to a bucket that I recycle from Walmart or Sam's Bakeries then refill. 2) Home preservation uses canning bottles that can be reused for decades. 3) Cooking at home uses a lot of canned goods that come in tin containers that can easily be recycled. 4) Eating at home uses dinnerware that is washable and decreases the amount of paper plates, cups, and utensils in the garbage from eating out. 5) The most exciting reason is that there are only four receipts for groceries in twelve weeks, not three every week. I'm sure there are many more intrinsic reasons a home based meal plan protects the environment. Chiefly, I would contend that people nurtured at home are more self reliant and responsible, requiring less government intervention in the first place.
My friend is a stay at home Mom. When her elementary school children disclosed this fact to their friends, they received an incredulous look and the question "What does she do all day?" The children replied, "Cook dinner." We chuckle that of all the tasks a mother squeezes into her day the most memorable to the children is dinner. Don't clean clothes count? Even more amusing is the attention that the High School Crowd gives to the menu jotted on the fridge. It is a novelty. "Your Mom really cooks these things? with a vegetable? You have a salad at almost every meal?" Stay at home Mom's who cook are an endangered species. Our society would reap lasting benefits by rekindling the hearths of home.
I felt a little anxiety that we might have to go to the store when I changed the furnace filter. I did not know if we had any replacements. Then I discovered my husband has a three months supply. Husbands are wonderful.
We can't find any more corn starch. I am using flour to thicken gravy, the lemon filling for the jelly roll cake, and the tomato sauce for the pizza we had for dinner tonight.
Breakfast: Apple Pie Pizza with dehydrated apples that I soaked for 10 minutes in warm water and layered with yogurt cream cheese flavored with brown sugar and vanilla, and topped with crumb mixture of flour, sugar, oats, and butter. Yogurt malt to drink.
Lunch: Tacos, (shells that were a little stale - on the shelf too long-meat, lettuce, cheese, home bottled diced tomatoes) refried red beans, yellow cake with lemon topping.
Dinner: This morning I formed the pizza crust and put in the freezer. This evening it thawed for 10 minutes while we assembled the pizza sauce, cheese and fresh basil. (An few months ago, the grocery store had basil plants for sale. It has not died with nothing more than a little water every other day or so. Tonight is the first time I have pinched off a leaf. Fresh basil is delicious. The three year old is the only one who didn't approve. I use old microwave turn tables for pizza stones. They turn out a crispier crust than cookie sheets and save the cost of expensive stones. The cheese pizza was a success.
Yea, it is not midnight!
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