A Fruitful Home

Creativity begins at home.

Lately I've been reading a book called Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture. The author, Shannon Hayes, provides compelling arguments and case studies that present homemaking as a subversive, liberating, beautiful way to oppose much of what ails the industrial (or post-industrial) world.

Many of Hayes's arguments are similar to those put forward by Doris Janzen Longacre in Living More With Less, a life-shaping book I blogged about last summer (read that entry here). Unlike Longacre, Hayes does not write from a theological perspective, and at times her arguments seem to suffer from a kind of domestic-feminist utopianism.  Nevertheless, I am enjoying Radical Homemakers, and I find many of its ideas inspiring.

For example, Hayes argues throughout the book that we should think of our homes primarily as centers of production rather than as units of consumption. She articulates something I have stumbled around in many of my meditations on home: that home is a place where we have resources and make the things we need in community with others (here is one version of that meditation). She indicts economic rubrics that measure the wealth of a home in terms of how much it can or does buy per year, rather than its more complex resources, such as time and relationships.

One of the exciting things about this season of life is that I know I am laying down the habits and ideals that will guide the rest of my adult life. I pray for a robust vision of how that life can flourish.  Thus, I have been thinking and praying about ways my home can be a center of production and not merely a unit of consumption.

Furthermore, I hope that anything I produce in my home would have both material and spiritual value.

What does my home currently produce? 

bread/shared meals 

clothing/ security and comfort

yarn/warmth and hope

letters/friendship and wisdom 

naps/rest and havenhood 

Almost all of my dreams for the future involve deepening the ways in which my home is productive, bearing fruit in many ways.  One day, I hope my home will cultivate

vegetables

chickens

children 

music

fairy tales  

friendships

hospitality to international students

mentorship 

communal prayer 

In Texas I had friends with similar visions, and we worked together to produce all kinds of things in our homes: gardens, hummus, looms, sing-a-longs, Thanksgiving dinners, and much more. Here, too, I have friends who demonstrate what it means to tend a fruitful home. For example, each month my friend and fellow professor Steve hosts, along with his wife Grace, a "fun day" for students and faculty.  This past Saturday was typical: we enjoyed a long and rich breakfast of homemade waffles (with real maple syrup!), fresh fruit, tea, and coffee. We talked, laughed, held children on our laps, told stories. One student mentioned that he would like to memorize some Old English poetry and recite it at a local art walk. Conversation soon turned to the Anglo-Saxon lyres that were used to accompany such poetry, and within minutes everyone was gathered around Steve's work bench, plotting musical instruments and receiving an impromptu lesson in woodworking.

I pray that my home will be such a place --not that I can offer lessons in lyre-making or spoon-carving, but that my home will be a place where ideas take shape in wood or wool, a place where we loath wastefulness because we made, picked, cooked with our own hands.

I pray that my home will be a place where people can be free from systems they do not trust--systems that measure success in dollars, systems that exploit labor for the sake of profit, systems that mass-produce mediocrity, systems that encourage obsolescence and gluttony.

This prayer begins with the 600-square feet I physically inhabit, but it does not end here. I want all my homes--Apartment 218, the University of Mobile, Alabama, my church, my friendships, my family--to be fruitful and free. I can't help but smile to think of it. I'm still so young, with so many ideas, and so much wealth to plant and invest in lasting things, things that will grow.

"But we urge you, brothers, to [love one another] more and more, and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one."
(1 Thessalonians 4:10-12 ESV)

Do you agree that the home should be considered a site for production rather than a unit of consumption? What are some things you produce in your home? What would you like to begin producing? 

Christmas Giveaway!

I have been far more cheerful since writing my last entry on Advent as a season of waiting, thanks in large part to all the kind words I received from my friends and readers. Cozy sentiment can obscure the fundamental strangeness of Advent and Incarnation, and the fact that circumstances are challenging the "mood" I expect from Christmas is medicinal. Waiting in hope should be one of the ways Christians bear witness to the Gospel, and I am determined to be defiant once again: I will be merry, I will shout "tidings of comfort and joy" even if  I don't always feel that comfort myself.

Today's entry is a very little (but very happy) way of indulging that defiance. To one reader, I will give away a copy of A Foxfire Christmas: Appalachian Memories and Traditions. This little book is dear to me for several reasons. First, although a Texan and a Midwesterner by birth and upbringing, yearly trips to North Carolina instilled in me an early love of Appalachia. Attending college in East Tennessee deepened this love, and when I am weary or tired, the retreat I imagine is usually a cabin hidden somewhere in the Smoky Mountains.

The Foxfire series began as an effort to preserve the folkways of Appalachia, and to bring students into contact with the resources and stories of the past. According to the series website

"Foxfire" is the name that an English class picked, in 1966, for a student-produced magazine they chose to create, containing stories and interviews gathered from elders in their rural Southern Appalachian community. [...]

 "Foxfire" is the name of a series of books which are anthology collections of material from The Foxfire Magazine. The students' portrayal of the previously-dismissed culture of Southern Appalachia as a proud, self-sufficient people with simple beliefs, pure joy in living, and rock-solid faith shattered most of the world-at-large's misconceptions about these "hillbillies.

I have two Foxfire books, and they delight me. Not only do I love "hearing" the voices of the men and women interviewed for the project, I take a comfort in knowing that in the event of some apocalyptic, survivalist kind of emergency, I have a book on my shelf with instructions for building a spinning wheel and butchering a hog. A Foxfire Christmas selects the best Christmas stories, recipes, and ideas from the Foxfire series and compiles them into a little compendium of traditions and tales. In it you can find plans for a pine-wood race car and cloth doll; recipes for gingerbread, dumplings, and popcorn balls;  and recollections about traditions of Christmas past. Because so many Appalachian families celebrated Christmas in spite of extreme poverty, many of these traditions provide simple and beautiful alternatives to big Christmas productions and high-cost gifts.

Home is a place we create and sustain traditions, and Christmas is one of the best times for renewing our holy-day (holiday) habits. If you would like to be entered to win a copy of A Foxfire Christmas, leave a comment below that answers this question: What are some Christmas traditions that help you experience the joy of Christmas? Are there any new traditions you would like to start with your friends and family this year?

Be sure to leave an email address so I can contact you if you are the winner. Contest ends on Wednesday, December 7 at 11 PM.

More with Less Giveaway!

This could be you!
(Cat, mask, and pleasant living room not included.)

I have truly enjoyed the responses my recent posts on learning to live "more with less" (read them here, here, and here) have inspired.  I an anticipate more entries on this theme in the coming months, and in the meantime, I would love to put a copy of Living More with Less into your hands. Few things are more delightful than receiving a book in the mail, and I'm eager to share that happiness with you. I have an extra copy of the original edition, and I would love to express my gratitude to all my faithful readers by offering this compelling book as a giveaway.  

Here's how to enter the Living More with Less drawing:

1) Look through my blog archives (I'm nearing my one-year anniversary!) and pick your favorite entry.  Post a link to this entry on facebook, tumblr, Google Connect, etc.

2) Come back to this page and leave submit your entry through the comments section (below). Tell me your first name, the name of the entry you posted and where you posted it, and an email address where I can reach you if you turn out the be the winner. 

Enter by 11:59 PM on Wednesday, September 14. I will announce the winner on Thursday.  

More with Less in the Kitchen

As a college senior,
I seem a little startled to have pulled
this Cornish hen from the oven. I actually
had to call the 1-800 number on the hen's
wrapper to find out how to cook it. 

For most of my childhood, I was banned from the kitchen. Determined to create "original" food, I refused to follow recipes, and while my seven-year-old self was quite happy with my "Alien Cake"  (a pinkish-gray combination of Kix cereal, peanut butter, strawberry NesQuik) and similar concoctions, my mother deemed these experiments wasteful. She told me I was not allowed to cook until I was willing to submit to a recipe, so for the next several years I stayed away from the kitchen.  My premature desire to invent foods eventually faded, but even in college cooking was something of a novelty for me.  I was always so pleased and proud of myself when I cooked anything that I would make my roommate take a picture as proof of my success.

Gazing with loving pride
at a fruit-and-yogurt Bundt cake

Knowing my sketchy culinary background, you might appreciate how ironic it is that after my last post  I received many requests for ideas about planning meals to correspond with my grocery-shopping values.
My marvelous friend Kt, among others, asked for some ideas regarding what to do with all the wise, thoughtful food we buy once it is in the kitchen.

As I reflect on the ways I plan my meals, I realize that I usually make my cooking choices based on the following values. Ideally, a meal will fulfill at least four of these criteria:

Meals should be nutritious 

Meals should build on my staples

Meals should follow the seasons 

Meals should be convenient

Meals should teach me

Meals should be nutritious

I still have much to learn about nutrition, but I do try to create meals provide good sources of protein, usually in the form of a grain plus a legume or dairy product. Less often, the protein comes from eggs or meat. Then I add vegetables. I tend to use broccoli, bell peppers, tomatoes, and leafy greens quite a lot.

Meals should build on my staples

One advantage to using More with Less as my core cookbook is that I have many good recipes for the basic staple goods the cookbook recommends. This means that I can plan a meal by checking my cupboard, picking one of my staples, and going from there. If I'm in the mood for rice, I might pair it with a green vegetable curry. If I want something less time-intensive, I'll simply cook the rice with red beans, butter and salt for a tasty and simple meal. If I have a loaf of bread in the kitchen, I can make a light lunch by drizzling the bread with olive oil, topping it with salad greens and parmesan, and then toasting it in the oven.  If I am cooking for others, I know how to turn stale bread into a basic souflée. Lentils can be baked with honey and a bit of bacon in the dutch oven, or turned into a soup.  Having at least four or five meals based on each of your staple dry goods ensures that you have an array of options when it comes time to plan a meal.

As a corollary to this value, I also try to cook meals that use up what I already have in the kitchen. I consider it a victory if I can prepare a meal without any last-minute trips to the grocery store.  Yesterday, for example, I decided to make a rice and lentil dish called kichiri. The recipe called for potatoes and cauliflower, but since I didn't have either, I used canned chickpeas instead of potatoes and the last of the salad greens instead of cauliflower.

Meals should follow the seasons 

Following the seasons can be a challenge, especially if you live in a place where fresh food is only available during the summer.  However, with a little research you can find out what foods are growing in your area, and many grocery stores and farmers' markets will suggest recipes for in-season foods (click here for a really cool "peak-season" food map, with recipes and tips for each food listed).  I love the sense of rhythm and reward that comes with eating in season. Enjoying high-summer tomatoes, autumn squash, and winter greens helps me pay attention to all the beautiful changes that come with each season. 

As an added resource, the publishers of More with Less have released a book about seasonal cooking, Simply in Season. Sadly it is not yet part of my library.

Meals should be convenient

While I do love to cook, I don't love it enough to spend hours each day in the kitchen.  I tend to prefer straight-forward, unfussy meals, and I have little patience for dishes that collapse, explode, or scorch if I try to step away from the stove. Certainly, I have tended pots of buttery risotto, made pâte à choux from scratch, lured boiling vats of caramel into submission, and topped pies with homemade whipped cream, but I only cook like that for special occasions.  Everyday meals should require one or two pots and minimal preparation. Thus, I cook many of my favorite meals in my life-saving Crock Pot (this blog features a whole year's worth of slow-cooker recipes). In the winter I make several soups each week, and I like to freeze portion-sized containers of soup for easy meals at the office or on busy days.

Meals should teach me

Ever a student, I enjoy learning as I cook. Sometimes this means learning about the places where "Groundnut Stew" or kichiri are "daily bread." Good little Baptist girl that I am, I have always enjoyed learning about different cultures and countries through food.

At other times, I will plan meals that teach me a new skill. For example, I love soup, and so I often will try a new soup recipe if I think it will teach me a new secret for making good broth.  In the same way, because baking bread has become an important part of my homemaking, I often plan meals around a new kind of bread I wish to learn how to make.

The meal I cooked last night gives a good idea of how these principles can come together. Peaches were in season and on sale at the grocery store, and I bought some because I've wanted to learn how to make fruit chutneys for a long time.  However, since chutney doesn't really work as a main dish, I used my Extending the Table cookbook to find an Indian entree that called for ingredients I already had. Kichiri is a kind of stew using rice and lentils, and I have plenty of both. Add flat bread to go with the chutney, and my meal was complete!

These values will evolve as my home and circumstances continue to change, but for now they provide me with a flexible structure for planning, cooking, and learning.

What values or criteria do you use for meal-planning? What are some "musts" for the meals you make?

More with Less at the Grocery Store

My grocery store looks nothing like this, but I wish it did.

Before spring wildflowers, autumn pecans, dinners with friends, the Brazos River, Homestead Heritage, Baylor--even before Calvary Baptist Church--the grocery store made central Texas feel like home.

Learning to shop for groceries was one of the happier adjustments I had to make to "real" adult life. Especially during my first year after college, when I often felt caught in a world too big for me, the grocery store was a place I felt competent and creative.  Even at my lowest points, when I hardly had the spirit to cook the lovely meals I planned while pacing the aisles of the HEB, I would survey my shopping cart with a smile, thinking that the groceries inside would give onlookers the impression of a wise, coherent, healthy life. Food became an emblem for the life I wanted my scattered, trembling new adulthood to become.

I no longer need the grocery store to be a haven from anxiety, but I do still enjoy shopping for food. In fact, I find that grocery shopping is one of the best places to begin experiencing the joys of "living more with less." In my last post I discussed a book on this subject and spoke in rather general terms about how this book has challenged and inspired me. Today's post is a more practical look at some of these ideas.

After several years of learning what I will and will not eat, how to cook various dishes, and the kinds of demands different foods take on global resources (soil, water, animal feed, fuel for transportation, etc.), I have developed a flexible but coherent set of principles for my spending and consumption. 

Staples

Like the woman in this picture, I too enjoy wearing
a satin robe to the grocery store.

Staples are goods I always keep in the kitchen. These are the items that are most frequently required in the recipes I use, many of which come from the More with Less Cookbook. I keep most of these things in large glass canisters or jars; I have learned from experience that if ingredients are out of sight, I simply forget I have them.

whole-wheat pasta
lentils
split peas
brown rice

oats

barley

dried beans (any varieties)
flour (all-purpose, whole-wheat, bread)


salt
sugar (regular and brown)
yeast
dried milk (for cooking, not drinking)
honey
tea

olive oil
eggs
butter

Produce

I am usually generous with my produce budget, although for the past year and a half I have been trying to buy fresh produce only when it is in-season and, if possible, local. The "local" part is difficult in supermarkets, but at the very least, I can usually find produce from within Texas. I also usually keep some cans of diced tomatoes and a few bags of frozen broccoli on hand.

Luxury Goods

These are items I buy sparingly; usually I will only purchase one or two of these items on my every-other-week grocery trips.

meat
cheese
nuts
cream
yogurt
dried fruit
pre-made foods, including breakfast cereals, bread, instant foods, canned soups, etc.
fancy condiments like maple syrup ,jams, jellies, Nutella
snack foods, such crackers, pretzels, or candy
juice

A small feast to celebrate a friend's visit:
tea with cream, scones with dried cranberries and lemon curd.

As you see, most things one could buy at the grocery store fall into the "luxury" category on my list. While some have accused me of unnecessary deprivation, this system has enriched the way I understand and enjoy food.  First, having a set cupboard of staples means that I know how to cook a wide range of meals using those ingredients as my foundation.  Thus, I can cook a meal on short notice without fretting.  Carefully designating staple-goods also keeps my grocery bill small.  Lentils and dried beans are beautifully cheap.

The luxury goods, meanwhile, have become elements of occasional celebration, rather than consistent guilt.  Candied ginger, nuts, and dried fruits seem lavish and exotic, so when I buy them in preparation for Christmas I affirm the rich delight of that season. Because I buy meat so rarely, purchasing an Easter ham last year felt like slaughtering the fatted calf. In financial terms, it was a real sacrifice to spend so much money, but I consecrated the expense as a gift to the people who shared it with me.

It would be disingenuous to say that I always follow these practices perfectly, but they provide a helpful structure for my food purchases. Buying and eating less, I have experienced gratitude and abundance in surprising ways.

These habits also provide a foundation for building even better practices at the grocery store. Small disciplines have taught me to desire even better ways to "do justice, learn from the world community, nurture people, cherish the natural order, and nonconform freely" with my grocery budget. I want to become a better gardener, eventually producing most of the vegetables my household consumes. I want to learn more about preserving food (I dream of root cellars!), about the kinds of farming I should and should not support, and about the markets I can help create with my money and advocacy. I want to be a wise, generous, and grateful steward of the abundant food available to me.  

What principles or habits do you use to make choices about food? How do you order and organize trips to the grocery store? 

Hardcore Home Ec: Living More with Less

Did you take home economics in school? I did, in eighth grade, and it is one of the only classes I have ever completed without learning a single thing. Most of the class was devoted to "cooking," but on the day we made pasta, we made spaghetti while our teacher heated a can of sauce.  Perhaps learning to boil water was a new skill for some of my classmates, but I've always been something of an overachiever. In addition to our culinary instruction (pasta was followed by a rousing lesson on using refrigerated cookie dough), we watched a number of videos informing us that no, we should not do drugs, and yes, we should take our vitamins.
My teacher (bless her heart) meant well, but there's no denying that the class was lame. It took years for me to learn that home economics could change the world. I began to pay more attention to my amazing mother, and her stubborn, creative stewardship, built on practices which guard the poor and bear witness to the gospel. I thought about the ways my father's garden enabled freedom and generosity.  I met men and women who opened their homes to pregnant teenagers, men down on their luck, or elderly relatives. I began to hear and wonder about "intentional communities."
Although I may find big systems and complex programs intellectually satisfying, when it comes to heart and hands I am a grassroots kind of girl. I want my home to be a place where every choice, expenditure, and moment is of lasting value.  Literally,  "economy" (from the Greek οἰκονομία) means "household law," or "management of a household," and when I remember that meaning, I realize that the ways we manage our home can have ramifications in much larger markets and societies. 
For this reason, I was delighted to find a new resource this summer: Living More with Less by Doris Janzen Longacre  I was already familiar with Longacre's first book, the More with Less Cookbook. The Mennonite Central Committee commissioned the book in the 1970s, asking Mennonites from around the world to suggest practices that would reduce consumption of scarce energy and food resources. The cookbook is full of delicious, simple recipes that provide nutritious meals for very little money. Thanks to this book I have learned to cook for fifteen without worry, and I have convinced my skeptical mother that lentils can be scrumptious. (Edit: My mother just called to say I only succeeded in convincing her that lentils are "acceptable." I think she's just being contrary. They were delicious).
Living More with Less was published after the cookbook, and it extends the premise to all areas of home management -- money, transportation, clothing, recreation, celebrations, housing, homekeeping, and more. As with the cookbook, Longacre compiles ideas from Mennonites around the world, and she prefaces these ideas with her commentary on five ideas that are central to living more with less:

Do justice.

Learn from the world community.

Nurture people.

Cherish the natural order.

Nonconform freely. 

Longacre, who earned degrees in both home economics and theology, establishes each of these principles on biblical grounds, and her tone can be both rousing and stern. She speaks powerfully, for example, on the need for our home economies to receive support and discipline from the church. "Finding a nice church with warm handshakes and well--planned programs is not enough," she insists. "Friendships developed in many churches will provide tennis partners and dinner invitations [...] but are less ready to caution you about buying too big a car" (85).  Elsewhere she writes, "How-to books on pop psychology do not generally look fondly upon feelings of guilt or raising those feelings in anyone else. But what if you are guilty?" (41).  For Longacre, home economics is a matter of conviction and vision.
I was fortunate to grow up in a home where all of Longacre's principles found some expression, but now that I am an adult, I find Longacre's book to be both inspiring and humbling. I like to think of myself as a thrifty, nurturing nonconformist, but I spend more time than I care to admit thinking about the next thing I want to buy, or trying to find room in my closet for yet another cute dress. It is painful but important to realize how often my habits fall short of my ideals. I might be a quick study with pasta, but I'm not such a wunderkind when it comes to culling my possessions or making wise purchases.
 For all her sternness, however, Longacre doesn't want anyone to dwell in guilt. Rather, her books call for repentance and action; they are about living more, after all. As I continue to learn how to establish a wise home economy, I'm pondering the paradox of more-with-less. More attention to my work, fewer visits to facebook. More prayer, less online shopping. More sleep, fewer resume-boosting activities. More shared meals, fewer snacks. More savoring a cup of tea, less gulping through mug after mug. More creative visions for the future, fewer escapist daydreams.
I'm still thinking about practical ways this paradox should shape the ways I use my time, energy, and resources, especially as I share a household with Grant and Jenn. Who knew that home ec could become a spiritual discipline?


What are your thoughts on "home economics"? What do you think of Longacre's five principles for living more with less? Can you think of some examples of the more-with-less paradox?