A Good Ol' Time

Howdy!

I'm in the process of making buns.  As they need some time to rise, I've got a bit of spare time.  And by spare time, I mean time that should probably be used to do important things, but rather I'm on the interweb. It really is like a web, you know.  You get into it and you get stuck.  Fortunately I haven't gotten eaten by a spider yet.

You might say I'm a bit old school.  You might say it's old school to use the phrase "old school".  At any rate, lately I've been wondering when our society went into the prepackaged-everything-done-for-you-because-you-don't-have-time-to-do-anything mode.  It's not so long ago when everything took a bit longer to get done, when food was eaten in season because there was too much expense to ship it everywhere, when most of the gadgets in the kitchen were arm powered.

So I'm experimenting now.  I love being a housewife and the small opportunities it affords.  Sure, you don't get the same income with only one person being paid, but it's not like I'm idle.  I help out with the church in many little ways, I work on some projects that will (they will, I promise) eventually get done, and I'm spending time getting to know my kitchen.

I've always loved baking and cooking, though I must admit, I've never liked the dishes part.  If there was room for a dishwasher, there'd be one!  (We've even thrown around the idea of putting a dishwasher in the laundry, but that just doesn't seem feasible.  Or useful, really, when it comes down to it.)  So if I force myself to get the dishes done everyday, they aren't so bad.  And then it doesn't seem so bad that I keep making more of them!

We've got a stockpile of cookbooks and I'm drawn to them whenever we enter a bookseller.  I love learning about how foods work together and trying new things to not get into a food rut.  The new plan is to actually USE a recipe at least once a week instead of looking at the pictures and changing half of the ingredients.

This week I made some prawn scampi from one of Jamie Oliver's books. And it was very nearly recipe accurate!  Adrian shelled and deveined the prawns for me and I got to work on the other side of it.  It was fun.  We've also had homemade chicken pizza this week, sausages and rice (which the leftovers became nasi goreng the next day) and on Sunday I cheated and made store bought ravioli.  I wanted ravioli (or perhaps baby did) and there was no time to make it from scratch. We have learned a good lesson.  Make time.  Adrian's pasta is always fantastic.  (We do eat vegetables too, I promise.  All of those meals had good veg content.)

This morning I decided that tomato soup and fresh buns was a fantastic plan.  I just didn't realize how long these buns where going to take.  They sure do take their time rising!  An hour here, an hour there and, before you know it, you've had pesto pasta for lunch and soup has been moved to dinner.  Sure I could've run to the store and bought some buns, but this way I know there aren't any preservatives or funky chemicals that are called only by numbers and could be anything.

A friend lent us "Feeding the Bump" which is a recipe guide for pregnant ladies.  Some delicious stuff in there.  Some pretty yucky looking stuff too.  All the baby books and paraphernalia that one has the opportunity to read in these nine months are pretty fear mongering.  Suddenly you look at your pantry with fear and distaste.  You read every label that passes your eyes (except for on the chocolate packets, because sometimes you just don't want to know) and wonder why hand lotion and shampoo have colouring agents in them.  Does it matter what colour they are?  You wonder why half the food products in the store came from across the globe.  Surely there are peas in Australia as well as China? Fishes live here and not just Norway?

Anyway, the fear mongering needles at you (is it odd that only two things mongered are fish and fear?) and you decide to reevaluate all that goes on in the modern house.  No I've not turned into a hippie.  My feet are just three steps more firmly planted in the past and looking to old answers to "new" problems.

Now I should go put these buns in the oven.  They'll be delicious with the tomato/chickpea and rosemary seasoned soup.  (And then we took a picture when they were done!  Yum!)