Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [29]
I trudged back to a garden grown weedy through days of neglect, and I remembered Nate’s warning.
Indeed, one tentative step forward took my pride several steps back.
Six
The Missing Refrigerator
It was Mary who pointed out a second technological shortcoming of our household. I got the message indirectly.
My work among the Minimites frequently took me away from the house, often in late afternoon when I journeyed to our off-site produce patches. Mary was content to stay home whenever I “traveled away.”
Obviously at these times there was no one home but Mary to do the household tasks, including making the meals.
When it came to cooking, we had roughly equal experience. Mary had grown up in a large household with an elaborate division of tasks. Of the several duties that were considered Mary’s, cooking was not included. Later in life, as a Boston accountant who often worked through dinner, she ate out most of the time. And she had become used to having her evening meals late.
For my part, as a graduate student I had subsisted largely on macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, and canned green beans. I knew one recipe by heart, a complicated Chinese dish that was usually too much trouble to make.
As beginning homesteaders, most of the edible fare we had to work with consisted of vegetables. On our rare supply trips to town, we amassed stockpiles of canned meats, of which the grocery store provided three palatable choices: spam, chicken and dumplings, and enchiladas.
One time I got home around six p.m. after a vigorous day in the pumpkin field. I looked at the kitchen counter and saw no meal in progress. Mary was still sewing, oblivious of the time. This was not the first occasion when I had come home to an empty table, hungry. I felt a headache coming on. I cleared my throat, but Mary didn’t notice. Before I knew it, I murmured, “It doesn’t have to be a fancy meal. Just something before eight p.m. so I don’t get a hypoglycemic attack.”
Mary looked up at me from her sewing. She appeared to be coming out of a pleasant reverie.
I went on. “If we eat too late, I just lie in bed like a beached whale waiting for the food in my stomach to digest”—the pitch of my voice was higher now—“and then I don’t get any sleep. And then the next morning I’m worthless.” By the time I got to worthless, I realized I was shouting.
There was a strained silence. At last Mary replied, in a thin voice, “We’re out of bread so I can’t make sandwiches. And I haven’t thought of anything else yet.”
“Don’t you see me dying here? Don’t you have any pity? Can’t you open a cookbook?”
“It usually calls for ingredients we don’t have. If we could keep leftovers cool, then we wouldn’t have to make three meals a day from scratch.”
“What are you implying? That we get a refrigerator?”
I suddenly got a sinking feeling. Mary’s point was well taken: our inability to cool leftovers doubled the cooking load. But this defect drew us into a dilemma with no clear resolution.
The method of food preservation we had used so far was the one the Millers had taught us: canning. Canning surely had much to be said for it. It was more than a means of keeping food. It was an activity in which we worked together as husband and wife, and therefore it preserved not only the fruit of our labors but also, in some palpable way, the memory of our discussions and the reconciliation of our differences (which, come to think of it, until now had been relatively minor). The root cellar was more than a food-storage facility; it was also a kind of domestic shrine, beautiful in itself, with mauves, navies, chartreuses, maroons, canaries, violets, and siennas, all dimly glowing like stained glass.
Besides all that, the in-home storehouse was eminently convenient—a veritable grocery store a few steps from the kitchen.
But canning was no way to keep leftovers fresh for a day or two. Our neighbors had similar problems with short-term food preservation, and this was why some Amish communities had adopted propane refrigerators. By using propane, they still