Who Taught You How to Dress?

I take my job of Health Maintenance Officer pretty seriously.   Providing my family with probiotics is always important, as is providing delicious vegetable sustenance.   To add to that, my husband has been on antibiotics continuously for going on two months now, so I don't need "a little kraut" - I need a lot.   (I'm feeling prebiotic refrigerated potato + probiotic kraut in a potato salad, any other ideas are welcome).

We eat an enormous amount of sauerkraut anyway.   And I give it away - the dill/garlic is particularly popular.   (Cabbage may be the cheapest form of community builder there is - well, maybe after lemons).

So, here's how I make my kraut and a general timeline.  I've been at it for about 2 hours today so far, there's another hourish to go today, I expect, and then another hourish in a couple of weeks.

FIRST:  I get all my supplies together, and I clean them.   My kraut is not canned, and I do want the bugs, but I do not want nastiness.   Of course everything is put away clean.   I wash it again anyway.   I then pour boiling water over everything and leave it to air-dry.   (This is called 'scalding').  By the time I've done this, cleaned up the kitchen, gotten all my ducks in rows, I've eaten up at least 45 minutes of prep.  (I have a very small kitchen, so there's a lot of steps involved in this).

SECOND:  I make a gallon of brine.   1/2c salt to 1 gallon boiling water.  (You want to use distilled water or boil it or leave it overnight to evaporate the chlorine.  My water is very heavily chlorinated, and I didn't do this overnight, so I did it while I was scalding everything else - the water will be cool enough to use by the time it's time for brine-insurance.)  I used to make a teeny tiny quart of brine and really push my cabbages to juice up, but I get better results (and less stress) from having a gallon on hand.  In theory, if you used fresh juicy cabbage, you wouldn't need brine.   Grocery store cabbage always has needed at least some.  

THIRD:  I get my cabbages out and start shredding into Very Large Containers.   (When I work with each cabbage, I peel off a couple of leaves, aiming to have a nice pile of cabbage-leaves to choose from as seals).  About two cabbages will fit in a giant tupperware bowl.  Sometimes three, if they're small or fluffy.   (I had several small, fluffy cabbages this time - I have a feeling my 9 cabbages will not make quite two gallons of kraut, although 9 cabbages = 2 gal last time I did this).   This takes as long as it takes.  

Probably another 45 minutes to an hour of shredding for 9 cabbages.  I used a food processor.   You don't have to, but I do.  Reasons: 

1. I have a bad shoulder and hand-cutting 9 cabbages is a LOT.  
2. Knife-cut cabbage takes a lot longer to ferment.
3. Time.

FOURTH:  I add 1 tbsp of non-idodized salt to each cabbage, after shredding.   Then I cut up my dill and garlic ("enough" - I am aiming to be that grandma who drives you nuts by not having measurements for anything with her recipes) and add those to the Very Large Containers.  

FIFTH:  I hand-mix all the ingredients together in the Very Large Containers.  They're well-salted, so now I will wait a bit.

SIXTH:  Massage energetically and/or bash with a wooden mallet to break the cell walls and really get the juice out of the cabbage.   Leaving the shreds in salt will make the salt do much of the work.  That's a win in my book!  

SEVENTH:  When it looks nice and juicy (reduced by about half in fluffiness), shove into the crocks, making sure to not leave any air pockets.  Use wooden mallet and fist to really bash it in there.  (I can shove 4-5 cabbages in one gallon-sized crock.  Shove.  Shove hard).   Leave some space (it will grow a bit).   Then add your cabbage leaves to prevent most of the little bits of shredded veg from floating, put your weights in, and top off with brine if needed or wanted.  (A good inch of brine over the top of the weights is a happy thing).  

EIGHTH:  I put the lids on the crocks, find a good spot for them to hang out for a couple of weeks (usually on my dining table, which is not optimum, but it's what I've got), and then pour water in the seals to seal them up (but let bubbles out).

NINTH:  Go away.  Keep an eye on the seals, make sure the water doesn't evaporate (aka you will be adding water).   

TENTH:  Check 'em in a week or two, when you feel in your heart that it should be ready (because it stopped bubbling and your house no longer smells like sauerkraut).   When it's good, it's good.

ELEVENTH:  Clean and scald your jars, and move the kraut into the jars.   Refrigerate and distribute.  Discard the cabbage-leaf sealers.   Clean and scald out your crocks.   Eat yummy kraut.

As previously mentioned, I don't think whatever happens is going to look like anything that happened before.   I think we'll be looking at entirely new crazy.

In any case, I want to be prepared.  But how?  

Skills.  Flexibility.  Knowledge.   And some hoarding of things... but very selectively.   

If anything, America in 2023 is suffering a glut of "stuff".  We have stuff coming out of our *ears*.   We don't just need 'stuff", we need to think through what we actually use, what we'd use if things got tough, and what comes from places far far away.   

You must also consider STORAGE.   I live in a small suburban home.  Our "storage" is a garage.  My "pantry" is variously stashed free-standing closets.  I couldn't keep a year's worth of food if I wanted to.  (Oh, how satisfying it would be, to fill a pantry with home-canned goodness... but such is not for me, not this year).  

So, let's talk categories:

Clothes:   I do not think you will lack for clothes.  Now, you might lack for clothes without holes in them... because most of the clothes on the market are made as cheaply as possible.  

• Sewing Skill:  But if you can sew anything, there are enough old tablecloths and duvet covers for you to keep your bits covered.   What might you need for a wardrobe, if that end of the supply chain busts?   Needles.  Pins.  Good scissors.   Elastic - does everyone remember how we all wanted to sew masks at the beginning of the pandemic and there wasn't enough elastic?  Thread.  There are actually probably enough sewing machines to go around, if we dig grandma's machine out of the attic.  Tailoring supplies, if you know what to do with them.    
• Laundering skill:  How good are you at keeping things in good shape?  Probably better than I am, but I'm better than someone who grew up in the last 20 years.  
• Hoard?  Socks.  Good thick denim pants.  (Good luck with finding those in the first place).  Shoes - hard wearing, comfortable shoes.  

Food:  America is a food-producer.  Again, I don't think we're going to go hungry... exactly.   We might have weird food shortages - very probably randomly and piecemeal.   Like the egg thing.  Say thank you to God that your veggie capital just got rain.  We were just about to cut production, we were so low on water.  Now we have some fields underwater, but this is a much better problem to have.  

• Cooking skill:  But food is likely to become more expensive.  So, do you know how to cook?  And further, do you know how to cook good food that will feed a pile of people?  Guess what, the number of people who actually know what to do with the beans and rice and pasta in their stockpiles (assuming they have any) is a lot smaller than you think.  Lots of folks made sourdough pets during the pandemic - and this is a good prep! - but there are far more people who don't know what to do with a bag of flour. 
• Personal:  I am going to push myself to learn how to make more cheap food, and do it more ways so that I am as flexible and resourceful as possible.   Beans, yes.  Cornbread - also yes.  I should learn to make a decent tortilla or other flatbread... something with basically flour-water-salt-technique.  It's easy to be a good cook with great ingredients, it's harder to feed folks a diverse and healthy diet when you don't have much on offer.
• Hoard?:  YMMV!  I will plan to keep the basics in stock, and well-stocked.   Otherwise, spices are important.  Cocoa powder?  Coffee?  Tea?  What's imported that you can't live without?  That.  Hoard that.  Probably in your deep freeze, so it stays fresh.  Again, who wouldn't like to have freezers full of fresh meat, hooked up to generators "just in case"?  But I don't, and I'm not going to pretend that I do.

Tools:  I'd hoard these, if anything.  But space & flexibility > stash size.  Can you sharpen and/or maintain the tools that you have?  Do you know how?

Seeds:  If you can grow food where you are, hoard the seeds you'll actually use.  My buying corn seed was a little silly.   It DID grow.  About 2 feet tall.  Poor corns.   If you have a good place to plant a fruit-bearing tree, now is a good time.  Well, five years ago was a good time, but now is better than never.  Fruit bearing vines, likewise.  

Books:  I like big books and I cannot lie... and my how-to stash is pretty impressive.  History, religious books, how-to-study guides... if there's one scent that's on the wind it's that of "thought control".  Moar books.

Community Relationships:  Hey, random left turn!  But guess what's really important in an emergency?  Not worrying about your neighbor shooting you.  That's important.   If you could, you know, maybe work together with neighbors, wouldn't that be cool?  

Other Maintenance Things:  Are your cars overdue (or almost due) for service or tires?  Keeping that up just makes sense.  This falls under "maintaining tools" but I was honestly thinking about shovels at that point anyway, so maybe you were too?

Anyway.  I figure the more you know how to do, and the more ways you know how to do that thing, the better off you are.  If I can get to the point where water, flour, a couple of cans of beans, a bit of oil and a little salt means my family eats dinner?  I win no matter what goes down.   The stuff between your ears can be carried anywhere.

Thanksgiving gave me occasion to think about feasts, fasts & normalcy.   It wasn't much of a feast this year, as I'm armchair-quarterbacking and my mom is waiting on a knee replacement.   I am not allowed to stand for long (cooking = standing) and she shouldn't.   My son did well in his learning, my husband and daughter stood up and helped... but my memory is filled with proper feasting, and this was a simple family dinner.   That is fine, the last few years have been full of simple things standing in for big celebrations.   Sometimes the absence of the thing that one is supposed to be observing makes the observation sharper.   And time to sit and think is invariably valuable.    When celebration time comes 'round again, I will be ready.  Celebrations are owed...  

I am heartily tired of sitting and thinking these things through - but it is well enough, it's a spaghetti monster of confusion.   Our culture doesn't lend itself to clarity of thought when it comes to consumption.   Modernity is utterly broken when it comes to food.  We're all at sixes and sevens.   So let us talk of feasts, fasts and normalcy.

Feasts

Feasts are our special days.   You're supposed to eat special things on feast days.   Eat your fill, and then some.   Whenever I hear someone advising moderation on a feast day, I want to throw a bun at their head.  That's not the purpose of feast days - and in a properly ordered life, overindulgence on a feast doesn't affect your health*.   It's not the feast that's out of proportion - it's your normal life.  

Feasts aren't supposed to be every day, or even every week.   They aren't supposed to be the same.   It is right and proper that feasts should have different centerpieces.   They should be different, not just from normal life, but from one another.   What we do now is find reasons to feast all too often, and then the act of feasting stops being special.    It's also what sets you up for dietary failure - if every day is cake and champagne, the cake stops being so sweet, the champagne no longer tickles your nose, and your insulin sensitivity gets wrecked.   The only thing happy is your tongue.. and your grocer/baker/sommelier.   

A feast is a celebration.   Feast days should be celebrated not merely at the dinner table, but in other ways.   We are to set apart feast days.   In this way, modernity has most profoundly deserted the feast day.   Our melange of cultures, while beautiful in its own right, has left us without an understanding of "how to celebrate".   Shall I do it this way or this other?   Sometimes we end up sitting the whole thing out.   And then the feast day becomes simply a meal. 

One of the nicest ways to celebrate is by bringing people together who do not ordinarily see one another.   It is this interaction that helps create a celebration.   If you are a guest at a feast, you are helping create the festive atmosphere - act accordingly!   Feast days are meant to be celebrated in community.   Food-sharing is one of the primal bits of glue that holds society together.   Potlucks aren't "less-than" - they're community builders!  And this is where the melange of cultures becomes its most beautiful - as we move through other celebrations as guests, we gain appreciation for different reasons to celebrate and different ways of celebration.   Just clue the guests in on what's expected, please.   

But each type of feast is proper in its own right - not every festival is a potluck.  Sometimes one hosts a special night to honor someone or some event.   We need patterns and differentiation between feasts, just as we do between feasts, fasts and normalcy.    Birthdays and Christmas may be, in my family, only a few weeks apart - but one doesn't celebrate them the same way!  Nor should you.   

Humans need feasts to be human.   We need a time to come together over the table and break bread, to laugh, to share drink, to dance.   Feasts are the bright lights in our gustatory lives.  We feast not for our bodies, but for our hearts.

Fasts

Fasts are not the opposite of feasts as one might think, because like a feast, a fast should be a special occasion.  Fasting is a time set apart for the work of self-discipline and contemplation.   Properly, it is a reset of one's priorities, placing the will over the body.   Most religions have a tradtion of fasting, either cyclically or as needed.    This is because a soul left at the whims of the body is a childish, weakened thing, fit for no spiritual work whatsoever. 

Unfortunately, although fasting is a part of all traditional religions, modern practice has left fasting behind.  Full days of fasting became abstention from a particular food group, then that abstention became less and less, until we can feel virtue for giving up a minor luxury.   It is not what is abstained from that gives the spiritual discipline worth, it is the reordering of will over body, spirit over flesh.   Every culture that fasts exempts children, pregnant/lactating women, and the infirm from some if not all fasting.  This is because their bodies must be stewarded, and that discipline of being left out is in itself a discipline.  (I'm not at all enjoying my enforced rest - I would much rather have been on my feet all of yesterday cooking a feast, and my appetite in this time of healing is preposterous, even as my clothing fits just as it did).   So, it is not "what" but "that it is a challenge", when one contemplates the metaphysical benefits of the fast.

But the body, like the soul, benefits from a fast.   Ketosis (which can be entered into simply by not eating at all) benefits the digestion, the immune system, the mind.   Many people find themselves able to enter into much deeper concentration and hold higher levels of energy on a fast.   I expect that as we continue to investigate scientifically, we'll find more bodily benefits from food restriction.   After the period of adjustment, the body responds to being put in its proper place with gratitude.   

A fast can be a time to set one's mind in order, it can be a time to get right with God (in repentance, in petition), it can be a time to reset one's bodily cravings so that they are in right order.   But a fast is not forever.   We must eat, and a never-ending fast would lose its meaning.   Feasts, fasts and normalcy are all part of life.   

Normalcy

And thus to "how then shall we live"?  Take heart, my friends.  I am not going to give you yet another prescriptive.   I have gleaned some wisdom over 50 years, which I shall share - but how shall I speak to your life when my floor is unswept?   (In other words, I'm not a slim maiden with perfect blood sugar, and I'm not going to pretend to be someone I'm not or speak ex cathedra).

First, what is normalcy?  It is that state that is neither fast nor feast.   The dieters want to make the fasts "normal" and the gluttons want to make "everyday special".   Neither is the way forward.  I've been on extremely restrictive diets, both long term and short.   The result?  Well, the long-term restrictive diet was helpful while I was on it.. but otherwise, one greedily returns to all that one foreswore.   Normalcy is not meant to be void of gustatory pleasure.   Neither is it supposed to be cake and roast beast for breakfast.

These are the things that I have learned, whether or not I practice it as I ought:

• Processed food that your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize is almost invariably something you should avoid eating.   If you like it, add it to your festive spread.   This includes GMOs, meat from animals in CAFO feeding lots, boxed items with ingredients with too many syllables and intentionally indigestible items.   You may eat items that someone else's great-grandmother ate, especially if she was from another culture.   It's all about "pre-1930".  
• Less sugar = More Better.   I like sugar.  Sugar is not our friend and great-great-great grandma didn't eat very much of it.   We all know it.  The list of "this isn't awesome" is very, very long.   Figure out how "less sugar" can integrate in your diet while not turning your normalcy into a fast.   I have recommendations - read on.
• More veggies = More Better.   For a few months of that long-term diet, I was asked to eat a really insane amount of vegetables.  It was about 10 servings or more a day.   PILES of vegetables.  Enough vegetables that the first week was physically uncomfortable.  I have never felt better in my life (after my stomach figured out what to do with all that roughage).   I had so much energy.  I felt insanely healthy.   Research suggests that we really can't eat too much fiber.   I looove veggies and I don't eat as many of them as I did back then - veggie mountains aren't "quick and easy".   Eating like that takes work.   Work I am looking forward to as I return to health next year.   
• Ancestral diets are worth looking into.   PROPER ancestral diets, before we started exchanging foods quite so much.  (Medieval is a good aim).   This is not as a fast, not even as a total prescriptive, it just gives you a starting point.   We have blended our lives to the point that I hear all about the evils of dairy, when my ancestors ate it at virtually every meal.   Oh, I've done Whole 30, and while wheat isn't exactly a bosom buddy, my family insists I never go off of whole-fat milk products ever again.  The point is that while most of the world doesn't have the gene to digest dairy products, I do.  So, I'm feeding me (and my family, who share my genes) on normal days, and therefore knowing what my folk ate back in the day is useful.   There are plenty of folk whose digestion is well suited to a diet heavy on grains, fruits and very light indeed on meat and animal fat.   Let's support one another rather than squabbling.
• Fermented foods and use of herbs and spices is much more important than we think, and reintegrating as much of both as possible is only to our benefit.   More mushrooms would also benefit us tremendously.   These highly flavorful elements make a poor diet for abstention - how restricted do you feel when savoring pesto and chimmichurri sauce?  Normal diets, full of nutrition, aren't meant to be fasts.

I am preparing, lounging on my couch, to move forward and find a new normal.   An invalid's extremely odd diet isn't business as usual, and when I tried to eat "normally" it didn't work out well.   So where do I start with my "new normal"?   That normal won't be a restrictive diet.   Before I challenge myself to retake ground lost to circumstance, I need to establish a baseline.   A "normal" I can live with, a "normal" I can return to.   It's not good for me to move between restriction and "everyday is special".   Too many of us can sing that song, and our metabolisms are much the worse.  We lost the concept of "feasts, fasts and normalcy" and fell on our faces.   It's time to pick ourselves up.

I need a healthy diet with a bit of fun.   Perhaps I might cut the sugar out of most of my diet and leave myself a bit of jam with afternoon tea?   Weekdays have one sort of breakfast, weekends quite another.   How many veggies can I squeeze in?   What kind of rituals can I set up to honor the pattern of my life, my energy needs, and what I know to be healthiest for my body?   It's worth my while to contemplate - I only get one body for this lifetime.

After I find "normal" again, I can return to fasting and relearn that discipline and enjoy the fruits of the peace it brings.  Only after I find "normal" again, and search out that which exceeds it, will feasts be restored to their meaning.   I've learned quite a lot from the years that have gone by, and as much from the celebrations that missed the mark as the ones that were nearly perfect.   For now, for this season of feasting, I will eat a bite and a sup and I will wait......... but you don't have to. 

So to you I ask, what is your concept of feasts, fasts and normalcy?   How can you bring all three to their fullest flower in your life?

*I'm not talking about people with diabetes or special diets.  They must, regrettably, monitor themselves at all times.   I'm talking about the "everybodys".