From Cheese Sandwiches to 52 Pints of Pickles

Posted by on March 19, 2013

This post first appeared on goshencommons.org on Feb. 2, 2013

As a teenager, I had decided that I was never going to do traditional household work such as cooking. I was going to be a professional woman and live solely on cheese sandwiches and ice cream.

Though Pete still does most of the cooking in our house, I do sometimes cook. And I certainly do engage in food preservation: canning, freezing and storing produce in our basement.oakley_0202b

So what changed?

What changed is that I started growing my own food.

Even though I didn’t want to cook, I still had this desire to plant things – edible things. So I planted. And edible things grew. And then I needed to do something with the produce that I had grown. I wanted to cook with it. And, before I knew it, I was making more than cheese sandwiches.oakley_0202a

Even more than cooking the bounty from my garden, I wanted to store it so that I would have my homegrown produce over the winter months. Looking back over my preserving tallies from 2009 and 2010, I think I may have gotten a little carried away. Fifty-two pints of sweet pickles and 45 half-pints of red hot sauce seems a little excessive. We’re still eating those pickles and that hot sauce from 2009 and 2010 (and likely will for years to come).

I wonder if others have experienced this change in attitude toward cooking (and canning) after growing one’s own food.

(I still do like cheese sandwiches.)

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