Overwhelmed.

I think this must be just of taste of what it must feel like to grow your own food for real. I'm totally overwhelmed right now with food that needs to be preserved.

This past weekend I've put up about 5 quarts of hot garlic dill pickles, a dozen half-pints of cherry jam, 15 half-pints of grape jelly, and froze about 10 pounds of pitted cherries. And made a couple of chile ristras. But I still have about 5 pounds of cucumbers, 3 gallons of concord grapes, 30 lbs. of cherries, a quart of tomatillos and a counter full of tomatoes to deal with. Eeeekk!

But, really, I have nothing to complain about. Clearly I enjoy the self-imposed duty that is home food preservation in 21st century America. But I can't even imagine what it must be like to truly depend on employing my own methods of food preservation for survival. You see, I picked up a copy of Hungry Planet: What the world eats by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio at the library this past week. I've heard awesome things about this book, but am just now sitting down to really read it. It is utterly fascinating to look at what people across the world eat in a week. And what their kitchens look like, how much money they spend on food, what methods of food preparation and preservation they use, etc. It's a bit amusing to see that my family's diet looks more like that of a "less developed nation" than a typical American's. I'm pretty sure that's a good thing...

Ha! Between starting this blog post and finishing it I found someone to take and use my remaining fruit! Hooray! I feel much better now.