"Waste Not, Want Not"

November is inspiring even in its drab chill. 

It prompts us toward preparedness, almost wherever we live. We may not all have recently harvested a garden, but we are all concerned about "bounty." We're all thankful to see it in our cupboards and freezers, and when we feel its sufficiency in our bones.

Our household has dabbled in self-sufficiency for decades. We know well the plusses and minuses of trying to produce many things for ourselves. We have learned that we are mostly not die-hard; if nobody does it better than a local grower and we can skip THAT grueling work, so be it. We have other grueling work to do, and we are happy to support someone who will "grow our garden" in greater joy than we can muster. 

There are a couple of apple trees out front, that do their due diligence at guilting me into work, though, as well a patch of rhubarb. Being perpetually fruitful, they (in their season) dare my conscience to let them go to waste.

I can't do that. So I bake pies and cobblers and cakes, and freeze slices and chunks until the freezer is taken up with them. I lament I need room for other things, but am I going to weep at bounty?

No, I'm going to store fresh what I can, preserve some in jars, and give pails away. Years past I also added into this solution other things we planted annually, popular things that most gardeners are inclined to grow and so must we, too. 

The trouble with keeping up with the Jones's garden is that except for a few universal classics, it is not in keeping with what a "Ramos" garden would most naturally look like. ln some ways we are as American as the apple pies I bake, but we are also creatures of the cultural foods we were both raised with, and so....

Beans and rice it is! They make the best sense for us for storing "bounty" and are SO easy to transfer from the bags on the grocery store shelves into the pretty jars in the pantry I love. 

Even after giving food away, wasting some we still don't eat is a very first-world condition.

Which brings me to a "slew of blue" (vintage canning jars) I once chanced upon.

It was at a landfill, when such a place still resembled more of its old-school namesake, the "dump." 

This one was near Wheeler, in the 90's. In those days I drove our blue Jeep pick-up into the place, backed up and unloaded our household trash. There were no bins to separate items, just one big pile to add this, that and everything to, the sort of pile soon-to-be nevermore.

One afternoon as I was doing this, another woman in another pickup truck backed up next me, dropped the gate and hopped into its bed to start shoving her "trash" onto the rubbish heap. 

My jaw dropped. She was ridding herself of dozens of vintage blue canning jars, quarts and pints and even half-gallons galore. Some still held sealed foods; she was casting away her Mama's hard work in preserving bounty!

Waste of food aside, I coveted those pretty blue jars. For a brief moment my innate shyness held and I almost drove off. But desire overtook. I soon piped up: "As long as you are throwing those away, would you mind if I took a few?"

"Have at it," she said, and paused to let me help myself. I took about a dozen and a half, feeling strangely greedy at that. Later I wished (many times) I had been greedier! I've used those jars unceasingly and knowing that so many more were literally relegated to a rubbish pile still boggles my mind.

For several seasons I did what those native to Wisconsin did. I preserved a garden in those jars and others. I tried my hand at the pickles they pickled and also made jams from the wild fruits on our place. I filled shelves and cupboards with the pleasing sight of bounty, and almost wept to begin using their beauty, and to usher in the dwindling of "plenty."

But something strange happened on the way to extracting the literal fulfillment of the jars. As we gradually emptied them, I realized I was preparing meals around them, when we so often more craved the foods of our upbringing.

These had never come in sealed blue jars, or cans of any sort, really. They mostly came to our mother's kitchen in bags, and in fresh forms from the neighborhood supermarkets. They were always nourishing and delicious, signifiers of home and comfort.

It was really up to me how I wanted to proceed. I had loved learning to preserve bounty, and this was inspired by what the locals did. So much of what inspired THEM was a desire to hold faithful to the comforting food traditions they were raised with. Their descriptions of foods unfamiliar to me were intriguing, so that sometimes I tried versions of their favorites. 

Like my own mother, I did like to change it up in the kitchen, but also felt more a creature of my upbringing, and culture. Aren't we all?

So it ended up that less was plenty in things I didn't want to plan meals around. Instead I took beans and rice and flours and filled the blue jars with them, and a simple few other things we consume consistently.

They don't grow old stored that way, and they don't grow old in inspiration for a good home-cooked meal. Throw in the fresh stuff and there we have it: our own traditions carried on.

I love how in America we can all do this! We can keep and share and try so many traditions, and in the course of this "taste" for ourselves at least a portion of almost anyone's experience. 

One of my big blue jars is now reserved as a vessel to affirm "blessings." Onto a small piece of paper I jot down good things that have come to us, over the course of a year. I have read that to do this is especially important in trying times, because when a person feels distressed by continual challenge, it is encouraging to realize every day offers good things, too. At the end of a year, one can empty the jar to be reminded how true this is.

This November has driven home to me the beauty of the artistic image of "Grace," by Eric Enstrom. You may be familiar with this picture, of an old man bowing over his simple meal in thankfulness. His expression of gratitude is vivid with earnestness, and it is over bread and soup, that's it. No buffet of endless "sides" and "mains," bread and soup it is, and such a feast at that.

The image also reminds me of how ages ago in the family restaurant in California, my uncle Dick would stand in the kitchen and put what he liked on a flour tortilla, roll it up and eat it. Once he did this with a chile relleno, a cheese-stuffed Anaheim pepper, battered and quick-fried. (A "peppered" cheese curd, if you will). My mom had never done that, so I thought it a bit strange and when my "look" kind of said so, he said (with gusto) "It's GOOD!!"

It IS good! I take it up a notch with adding beans and smothering it all in a green sauce and more melty  cheese, and I think of him every time I do this. He would have approved and I like to think he might have even put it on the menu. 

But the best thing I took away from that little exchange is how "leveling" it was, how people and families in their homes everywhere just want something filling and tasty good and that (in the best of circumstances) this is really how so much of the world lives.  Satisfied and grateful at nourishment, in good shelter, peace and love--a summation of BLISS to fulfill our deepest senses. 

So, even if our pantry is stocked with much more than the makings of bread and soup, I am enamored with the driven point that "more" of "less" can be plenty.

Because "bounty" is in the eye of the beholder, and its arrival is perceived, one heart and one mindset at a time.