Tag Archives: recipes

Scrap the Pizzas!

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Do you know, it almost feels weird to be writing about normalcy again, after the long occupation?

A pleasant sort of weird.

Today’s crisis involves 120 bagels, a vat of tomato soup, and a whole lot of plastic.

It has always struck me as ironic that the Save the Earth and Feed the People groups can’t find cheap ways of working together. I have a thousand two-ounce plastic cups which I will be filling with cheese today (well, a couple hundred of them) and then lidding with yet more plastic.

Now the good thing about all that plastic is any lidded container is a treasure to the homeless people lucky enough to get motel vouchers so they can stay in a 10×10 with heat and tv and–best of all–a microwave and fridge so we can give them some heat-and-serve food. They will reuse the little plastic cup until it falls apart – or someone shrinks it in the microwave. :] Things happen.

We (my friends Amelia, Michele, and I) were all set to do bagel pizzas on Sunday. We had all the fixings for veggies and cheese, and Amelia very kindly was bringing summer sausages to slice up and add for meat options.

Enter snowmageddon, and our fun fellowship of cheerful women slapping pizzas together has turned to Wendy shoving frozen bagels still in plastic wrap out the door with little cups of cheese for make-it-yourself faux grilled cheese sandwiches (call them bagels au gratin?) and a large styrofoam cup of tomato soup. Yes, stryofoam. If you don’t like us using it, buy us some stuff that’s biodegradable but still warms your hands if you’re not one of the lucky ones and you’re camping up behind…. never mind where. The police will go rip it up if they know, sadly. God bless everyone involved in those decisions and I don’t fault the officers for doing what they’re ordered to do. I fault the ones who ordered it. Thanks.

So here I am, alone in my kitchen, surrounded by plastic and feeling desperate to shove these meals out the door before the snow flies. And thanking God that the people whose names and stories I have come to know are safe inside motel rooms.

Some of them might get in trouble, because if they have two beds and only use one, they will share. They may “rent” out the other bed. They may have friends and relations. They may just know someone from the food bank. If they get caught, everyone gets in trouble.

Sigh. Gotta go stuff little plastic cups with cheese now. Have a great day and stay warm, wherever you are!

The Differences Come Home

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OK, sorry about that blog post lapse. In two words: jet lag. It takes me longer to get over it. Yesterday was my first 9-6 sleep since returning. Slowly back to US time.

But maybe not back to some other US norms. One of the things you can’t help but notice, staying with friends in Ireland and Scotland, is the lack of plastic. Even my friend who lives life in the fast lane doesn’t have an overrun of plastic bags and containers in her kitchen. She merely saves her ice cream tubs for occasional leftovers.

There are fewer leftovers, because Brits invented portion control. Everything is sized to eat once. Brits don’t make nine-day stews, vats of crock pot suppers, or spaghetti for 60 and freeze it. It’s a day-by-day cooking plan. Part of the mindfulness that permeates the culture, perhaps? Why would you need so much all at once?

The kitchen is the first place you’re going to see how differently Brits and Americans live: you don’t need plastic leftover containers because you’re controlling your servings. You don’t need a huge fridge because, same. You don’t need a vast array of kitchen gadgets, because you’re doing a one-time prep of servings for four, so it’s not hard to chop, grind, dice, or juice. And you tend to have pleasant conversations with friends and family while you’re doing it. Meal prep isn’t “get this done so we can get to the next thing.” It IS the thing.

This is pleasant. Even on stressed days, when the chores are divided, it’s a nice thing to sit with someone in the kitchen, pulverizing what you plan to eat while sipping a glass of wine and talking stress factors. It works.

Not that they don’t have shortcut foods, simple shortcuts, etc. Bisto in every meat and veggie flavor is a staple of the well-stocked Scottish kitchen, certainly. It’s a little like bullion. I brought some home with me.

So I’m back in the States, sipping tea in my kitchen, marinating beef in Bisto, and eyeing things I’m getting rid of in order to simplify. This may have crept past the kitchen, because there’s a bunch of Scottish paraphernalia from other spaces that we won’t bother carrying back to the home country. If you want to see what’s on offer, check Jack’s Facebook offerings online. We put them on a bunch of local yardsale websites, although not marketplace. I don’t think any of it is plastic. I put that in the recycling.