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What's in Your Pantry?, by Cathy H.
I wish I could remember the exact moment I became a “prepper”, although I would much rather use the term “aware”. I’m sure everyone has that “A-ha” moment that sets them on the path to enlightenment, and that brings me to the subject of the day. I would like to re-introduce canned food to all of those food snobs out there, because I once was one. Yes, it’s true – for me it was always “freshly caught”, “freshly killed”, “never frozen”, “minimally processed” and most especially “organic”.
As a child of the 1950s I was the unwilling guinea pig of early food engineering. It was that heady time of instant coffee, minute rice, canned biscuits, and TV dinners. Forget all those home cooked meals that my grandmother used to cook. No more long hours slaving over a hot stove to put something nutritious on the table. This is sad to me because my Mom was actually a great cook – she was just a victim of misleading television advertising as many people still are today. If people were more interested in how their food is processed, and what actually goes into it, there might be some healthier folks walking about!
As a young adult during the 1970s I became a part of the early natural food movement in my own small way. My husband and I were fortunate to have a few acres in the far suburbs of a major metro area. We had a large vegetable garden and chickens, and I learned the arts of canning and freezing from his mother. You see she was from an earlier generation than my Mom. She was a product of the Depression and knew that you could not always count on being able to get food from the local grocery store. Having access to those fresh eggs and fresh vegetables inspired me in my own “slow food” movement. I came from a long line of excellent cooks, and I began to develop my cooking style to include everything from Southern-fried to haute cuisine. I even found the time to make homemade baby food when my children came along.
Flash forward to the present. As we all know life is not static. First husband dies, family sells property, kids grow up, Mom marries again and boy does she luck out. New husband is an outdoor guy and an electrical engineer to boot. We decided to purchase some acreage for our bug out location several years ago. We are fortunate to be in a position to travel once or twice a month to our “farm” to practice living off the grid. We have a big metal building with no electricity or running water – just creek water, solar panels and LEDs, a generator and propane camp stove, which brings me in a roundabout way to “Cooking from Cans”. You see, I’m one of those people who don’t care to eat “just anything” and my challenge was to see how creative I could actually be with those cans!
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