Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Three Good Things

I try and make a "three good things" list whenever I'm facing something particularly sucky. It's like Three Deep Cleansing Breaths for my brain. And it occurred to me, reading Steph's comment about baking, that there are at least three good things about the economic crisis.

  1. Families will redefine their priorities.
  2. As a result, families will probably be spending more time together.
  3. Chances are they will learn to do things like bake, and sew and garden and build birdhouses.

I actually heard this described on the news as "insourcing" -- doing things for yourself you previously paid people to do for you. That can only be good, right? It sounds Pollyanna-ish in the face of this devastation to say that anything good will come of it, but I believe that a shift in values can only be an improvement for this country. And learning to take care of ourselves, from sewing a button on to growing and cooking food, doesn't just provide financial benefits. It's good for the ego, too.

And by the way, hats off to the few moms and dads out there who do still bake from scratch.

2 comments:

Kathy from NJ said...

I bake from scratch. My Mom used to make thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of cookies at Christmas and she sold them. She had maybe 30+ varieties and they all tasted at least as good as they looked, and they were a work or art. I make maybe 10 different ones - her grandchildrens' favorites - and give them as Christmas gifts. I am also making a lot of her specialties for her memorial service to be held in May. I have 12 loaves of date/nut bread in the freezer and lots of cookie dough to bake the week before the service. She also made the best pies but I've never been able to duplicate her pie crust.

Anonymous said...

Well, I'd like to think the economic melt-down will have benefits, but did the Depression? What was learned from that? Since it is my belief that this is an engineering feat very like the Crash of '29, I fully expect we will - those of us who manage to avoid senility - refer to it as the Crash of Ot-Nine. If you can get your hands on the line for the market failure of '29, I've heard rumors that this year's downward spiral bears an awful similarity to that red line.
Now for some good news.... Those of us who never gave up on eating natural foods and that included baking our own bread and making jellies and other things we learned at the feet of various smart women - we are not disturbed by continuing to do these things. We still make time to get organic ingredients, we still make time to let the yeast do the work, and we still enjoy that wonderful smell of home-baked bread.
And to Kathy from NJ, your mom probably used LARD in the pie crust, not crisco or similar poor substitute. That really does make a difference.