Archive for Thursday, October 22, 2009

Keep it Coming!

Our Bounty for Uncle PhilipI don’t know about the rest of you but I just realized we already have a hefty amount of free advice and wonderful stories at this site–and not from me.  You are leaving such thoughtful and helpful comments.  A friend–OK, it was Mike Ross, the guy who helped shape my site this past few weeks, commented that there’s so much good stuff here.  I said, yeah, yeah, just thinking he was being a surfing-for-frugality neophyte BUT THEN I  READ ALL OF YOUR COMMENTS!  I hope the rest of you take the time to read them too.  I like so many of these helpful tidbits but am especially psyched about clf’s advice and information on canning without all the extra boiling.   And then there was the post correcting me about fougasse and explaining how to make it properly (still haven’t broken out the cracklings but looking forward to it).

All I’m trying to say here is: let’s keep the information and ideas flowing.  This is a good thing.  A great thing, even.  Thank you.

It turns out there are thousands of you checking in on a regular basis so my guess is there’s still a great need to share stories about coping with less.  Equally pertinent, despite the fabulous, newfound wealth of the very banks that helped get many of us into our current mess, we’re still in a recession.  Friends and neighbors are losing jobs.   Most of our elected officials are not getting the big picture: We need to change.  Live more consciously.  We need to make sure this past year’s flirtation with frugality wasn’t merely a fad.  It’s time to refocus our energy–spend less time reaching for the Almighty Plastic and more time reaching for tiny, long-forgotten crab apples so we can make our own food.  So we can spend more time with our families.  So we can feel good.  Whole.

Well, I’m not too sure what just got into me but I do want to brag in closing.  My Uncle Philip just had his 70th birthday and we decided to give him a few of the things we’d been making at home.  These are items and foods that we worked long and hard to produce but had so much fun in the doing–way more fun than I’ve ever had buying something.  The picture accompanying this entry is of his birthday basket which is holding homemade jelly, applesauce, mead, bread, leeks, eggs, turnips, squash and sweat.

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