food - Living - other

Fanatic’s Proposal Week 1

January 9, 2009 - By 

As I noted last week, I’m taking up Bob del Grosso’s challenge — the Fanatic’s Proposal this year. I’m going to see how little food I can buy, how much of that food I can buy locally, and how much I can live out of my own garden, pantry, and freezers. So here’s the roundup of what I bought and ate this first week of the project.

Bought:

  • 6 Tangerines
  • 1 bunch scallions
  • 1 gallon farm milk

Cooked/Ate:

  • breakfast: toast with melted cheese, or breakfast of champions
  • last week’s ham and bean, and escarole-potato soup (lunches)
  • turnip greens from the freezer on pasta
  • baked potato with marinated feta and olives
  • pork chops with morel pan sauce (2 dinners)
  • 2 loaves sourdough bread (cooked, didn’t eat both loaves yet!)
  • leftover Xmas beef moussakka
  • braised ham slab with herbs, wine, onion, carrot

This week is payday, so I’ve got a little list for the grocery store, and I think this weekend I need to re-organize my freezers — the upstairs freezer (the one on the fridge) is sort of just jammed full of random things. But it’s been fun this week looking at what I already have in the house. I have a lot of food in the house — as anyone who reads this blog knows, I like putting food by and there were a lot of leftovers from the Christmas extravaganza — so now, it’s winter, time to eat what I’ve squirrelled away. It’s always easy to get in a rut, especially with mid-week dinners — part of what I like about this challenge is that it gives one a reason to rethink something as mundane as dinner, and a reason to think more creatively about it than one might otherwise.

I'm a writer and editor based in Livingston, Montana. I moved to Livingston from the San Francisco Bay area in 2002 in search of affordable housing and a small community with a vibrant arts community. I found both. LivingSmall details my experience buying and renovating a house, building a garden, becoming a part of this community. It also chronicles my efforts to rebuild my life after the sudden death of my younger brother, and closest companion, Patrick in a car wreck.

3 Comments on “Fanatic’s Proposal Week 1”

  1. Heh, I just played that game. The “I’m about to move and I don’t want to move all this food so let’s eat it all” game. 😀

    (Just moved a mile. :D)

  2. You’ve inspired me to try the same exercise. Whilst I don’t have lots of food stored from earlier hunting, fishing, gardening ventures, I do have a couple of cupboards stuffed full of dried goods and tins, most of which I brought back from France…. and I’m planning on planting some vegetables in the small garden of this rented house as soon as the weather warms. If only there were elk and trout available too!

Comments are closed.