Grateful for gifts from the gods of community

My daughter has a jones for freeze-dried peaches. She likes fresh ones, but she’ll eat the dried ones by the fistful. So much so that I’ve had to limit her consumption — that much fiber, minus the liquid, has had some significant consequences.

Plus, they are expensive! We get them from Whole Foods and they are made by Just Tomatoes and cost $16.50 for 5 oz!

This, along with a whole host of other things that you don’t need to know about, prompted me to decide that I wanted a food dehydrator.

For many people, this is no big deal. But most people don’t live in Somerville, where my 800 sq. foot apartment is considered the norm and my kitchen, at about 10 X 10, is considered positively palatial. I have made a religion out of keeping my kitchen kit relatively limited. (For a foodie. I’ll admit that I’ve got way way more shit than the average non-food-centric person.)

And, like one of my food gods, Alton Brown, I firmly believe that there should only be one unitasker in my kitchen. (A fire extinguisher. You have one in your kitchen, right?) A dehydrator is a big, unwieldy, and expensive unitasker.

For that reason, while I wanted one, I decided that I didn’t want to pay for it. At least, not full price. ($64.98 at Amazon.)

So I put a call out on the SomMom’s list — if anyone has one of these and wants the space back, I’ll take it off their hands. And I got an email back. A nice man in Cambridge was willing to part with his. He didn’t want cash — though he’s amenable to baked goods.

(Gotta drop those cookies off.)

And just like that, with the magic of the internet and community, this nice man had several cubic feet of his kitchen back and I had a dehydrator for the price of a T ride to Central Square. We saved money, junk in the landfill, and all the packaging/transport/waste that came with those peaches that May is so addicted to.

This is only tangentially related to food — though you’ll see posts about my food drying kick soon — but it is about community and to me, community and food are deeply connected.

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Thoughtful cooking, thoughtful cooking gear

Some time ago, I don’t know when, I had one of those gradually dawning epiphanies. I was working hard in the kitchen to make everything from scratch, trying to make sure I cooked and ate with intention instead of just mindlessly consuming mass-produced crap. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t surrounded by mass-produced crap. And, after some math, I realized that cheap mass-produced crap is bloody expensive!

For example: At any given moment, I have a dozen or so wooden spoons. They are $2 for 3 at the local supermarket and made from cheap-o pine. And I have no idea where that pine came from. I have no idea whether the excess wood is used responsibly or just discarded into a landfill. I regularly snap the handle of my wooden spoons or get the bowl chewed up by the food processor or, occasionally, set them on fire. I consider them, essentially, disposable.

So, every year, I buy another set or two during the year and get another set in my stocking for Christmas. So that’s, conservatively, $4 a year for the 10 years of my marriage. Holy shit, realized one day! I have spent $40 on wooden spoons?! With no end in sight! By the time May is in college, I will have spent another $60! And that’s assuming that May doesn’t start breaking, burning, and beating them up when she starts cooking.

So I started looking at what a good hardwood spoon would cost. About $15 or $20 for a giant super-sized one, as it turns out. It’s a bit more expensive on Etsy.com, but with a little Google magic, I found DJ Remington, a female woodcarver who makes some nice stuff. I ordered a giant super-sized cherrywood spoon and it’s lovely to the touch. What’s more, it meets my primary criteria for any cooking utensil: I could probably kill a burglar with it.

In my Etsy searching, I also found a hand-carved apple wood spoon from Heron Cove Wood Carving. It’s a regular spoon, not a cooking spoon, but it was too lovely not to buy. The bowl is deep and there’s a little knot right in the center. I use it to eat breakfast every morning.

So I’ve begun my quest for thoughtfully made cooking equipment. It’s more expensive in the short run but I bet that I’ll have that cherry wood spoon for the rest of my life, so in the end, it will be cheaper. (Once again proving the inate correctness of the Sam Vimes Boot Theory of Economics.)

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An ode to Mason Jars

One of the best and most unexpected blessings in my life, since I started canning and other crazy-ass locavore pursuits, is the presence of Mason jars in my house.

I don’t know how I got along before I had them.

I use them for every damned thing. Or, at least, lots of things. Herewith, a short list:

1. Storing bulk grains from the Harvest Coop


From Elena's Pantry on Flickr under Creative Commons.

2. Making chive-flower vinegar
3. Drinking glasses when all the regular glasses are dirty
4. Mixing food dye, vinegar, and water and throwing a silk scarf (available cheap from Dharma Trading Co.) into the mix and then setting the whole thing in the sun for a lovely mottled dye
5. Mixing up a nicely emulsified vinaigrette and then storing leftovers in the fridge afterwards
6. Demonstrating the principals of evaporation and condensation for my four-year-old
7. Tiny terrariums
8. Sprouting sprouts (which is kinda like a terrarium….)
9. Storing the seeds for the sprouts before you sprout them
10. Keeping strange bugs briefly for identification
11. Mixing up cinnamon and sugar and keeping it on the table
12. Vase for wildflowers


From hello-julie on Flickr under Creative Commons

13. Keeping buttons and beads for my daughter’s various projects
14. Storing quarters for laundry
15. A bell jar over tender seedlings in late spring (OK, I’ve never actually done this, but the guy who has the plot next to mine in the community garden did this and it was so cool!)
16. Mixing up and storing the good-quality watercolor paint from the artist
17. Storing scented bath salts, homemade laundry detergent, etc.
18. Transporting veggie scraps from my kitchen to the community garden compost pile
19. Freezing smaller portions of a big batch of stock or soup
20. Keeping cider syrup
21. Storing my homemade ketchup, mustard, mayo, and relish
22. Dispensing things like smoked salt, herb mixes, powdered sugar, etc. (Replace the solid lid with a shaker one.)
23. Making sun-tea


From Kate Monkey on Flickr under Creative Commons

24. Mixing up the pre-measured dry ingredients in cakes and cookies and things and keeping them on the shelf so that when you want, say, oatmeal cookies, all you need to do is cream the sugar and butter, add the eggs, and then dump in the dry stuff. Saves so much time!
25. Warming up milk for May’s breakfast (pour the milk in the jar, put the jar in a pot of simmering water. Much more gentle than direct heat and you never scorch it.)
26. Fermenting sauerkraut
27. Ad hoc holders for votive candles
28. Container for keeping tall skinny things like asparagus, herbs, and scallions standing upright with all the end bits in the water on the door of the fridge
29. Water jar for cleaning paintbrush in between colors
30. And, of course, canning and pickling

Any other thoughts?

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