Whenever I see the words, “pantry staples,” I immediately hear that line–the only one I can remember–from Saturday Night Live alumna Julia Sweeney’s one-woman show God said, Ha!, from the late 1980s or thereabouts. Sweeney’s midwestern mother comes to visit and pokes around in her New York City kitchen cabinets, then asks, “Where’re yer mixes, hon?” And Sweeney realizes how much living in New York has changed her–she no longer buys box mixes for anything because all her standards are higher.
Likewise, I’ve been thinking lately that it might be a good idea to redefine pantry staples as something more useful and better-suited to a heart-healthy, inexpensive and vegetabalia-filled diet than the usual stale set of dried-out spices, indestructible and tasteless boxes of mac ‘n’ cheese and Hamburger Helper, bouillon cubes and Ritz crackers.
For people whose cooking experience and time are limited, or who grew up in the Pop-tart generation (what I’m calling most of my contemporaries from the ’70s and ’80s schoolyards), well, we’re all in our 50s and 60s now and our doctors are always telling us to lose weight, eat more vegetables, get more fiber, cut back on takeout, etc. etc. And it’s now looking like we may get that extra incentive.
Food blog readers are a little more likely to shop like they mean it, but in practice, a lot of the otherwise bright and well-educated people I know are still either stuck in the where-are-your-mixes mindset or else buy unnecessarily expensive designer ingredients that aren’t flexible for day-to-day cooking–which in fact they don’t really do. Actually, none of them seem to cook much at all anymore.
The mixes crowd relies on drive-thrus for refueling on the way to the kids’ soccer practices. No veg. The foodies’ pantries contain 29 or so designer vinegars, but their actual dietary staples are Amy’s™ frozen vegetarian (but high-sodium) prepared meals and/or takeout containers from the Whole Foods deli counter, supplemented with wheatgrass-and-spirulina juice drinks, smart waters, kale chips, a snack baggie of dried goji berries, and those microwaveable frozen brown rice bowls-for-one that cost more than a two-pound bag of actual brown rice. Not much fresh veg there either.
To say this isn’t how we mean to eat is an understatement. But getting from our current conventions to a better daily diet is going to take some rethinking.
Or, of course, a crisis like the one we’ve got now.
If you’ve been out panic-shopping for toilet paper this week anywhere in the US (and apparently in a lot of other countries as well) and come to a stunned halt at the sight of a completely empty aisle in the supermarket or big-box store, you’re hardly alone.
For the past week, panic has hit the US full-blast and people are trying to think ahead a little in case things don’t actually get better by next week. Last week I was still thinking “climate change” and how to reduce the amount of plastic we go through weekly and check the bargain bins as part of my weekly shopping to reduce food waste. The last few weeks have been full of good citrus finds–mandarins, grapefruit, a bag of cara cara oranges at a dollar apiece–a small, cheering upside to counter all the many, many downsides of the news.
And now this–my daughter just came home for spring break, her college is going online-only for the rest of the semester, she’s worked very hard for several months only to have everything suddenly upended, and she might be home with us more than for the expected week depending on how things continue. I might want her here rather than in upstate New York, just in case she’s got a better chance of getting food, supplies, and medical treatment. Even though the first day home was the usual vacation stake-out-the-exact-middle-of-the-couch-and-watch-movies.
So. Now it’s “what’s the best thing to stock up on if we needed to get through a couple of weeks without much available at the stores?” You can’t do a ton at once unless you have a big budget and a big storage area–an extra freezer?–but you can probably figure that most of us could make smarter choices if we have to.
I’m not sure the mother-daughter team just ahead of me at Trader Joe’s was doing that on Friday, even though they had corralled two extremely full shopping carts for the task (and mistakenly hijacked someone else’s cart for rebagging before they realized it wasn’t their stuff). A lot of frozen stuff, a lot of canned stuff, a lot of bottles of wine and several of something harder.
Maybe that’s a good way to cope, if you can drink? Priorities!
Me? about 5 pounds of frozen fish, two big cartons of plain yogurt, two cartons of eggs, 3 pounds of cheese, some for freezing for later, some spinach and a pound of almonds and two pounds of sunflower seeds. And tofu. And three big cans of unsalted tomatoes. Three pounds of carrots. Two pounds of whole-wheat spaghetti. And–mostly for encouragement–a big 17-oz bar of TJ’s 72% chocolate. Feel like it might be important, somehow. And it’s just hard enough to break up that we won’t scarf it. As I say, priorities.
I have dried lentils and chickpeas and rice; I already have a ton of cheap, hardy veg in the fridge, a big Kroger/Ralph’s bargain can of coffee that’s not bad if you grind it finer, and milk and so on. And two bags of flour and one new bag of sugar. And two big cans of pumpkin. And spices and teabags and oil and wine. If we really have to, I suppose we could probably get through a couple of weeks if we’re careful. Now if I only felt safer.
Probably doesn’t help that it’s raining a lot and that I just did our taxes. And that our local NPR station has ditched its half-yearly fundraising campaign to the web so they can bring us uninterrupted wall-to-wall coverage of COVID-19 and All the Resident’s Follies (and follicles) at a 24/7 kind of level. All, and I do mean all, day long. All weekend long. I may ask them to return the donations I already gave them if they don’t give it a rest–or at least give me a rest.
I could only take a few minutes at a time while I was out running chores, and I barked horribly at my husband tonight to please, please spare me for at least 10 minutes and stop reading all the “latest” updates aloud from his smartphone while I was making dinner.
I could already recite every major news point myself without a TelePromptEr–unlike certain puffed-up White House windbags. So. Nothing new there.
I have officially hit my limit. At least for tonight.
I have shopped. I have cleaned. I have cooked. I have washed sheets and towels. I have called my sister and calmed my daughter and switched temporarily to cloth napkins in case we need to reserve the paper we have. I have skulked around the backlot of Target before they opened this morning to witness a line of at least 80 people hoping to snag the limited daily resupply of TP. The Stones couldn’t hope to do better this week–probably because their concerts are cancelled too.
So maybe it’s time to redefine pantry staples as reliable foods you keep on hand and use regularly to help you achieve a balanced real-food, DASH-style diet at home without a major production and daily shopping for specialty ingredients. To my mind, this means starting with the building blocks of the major food groups: lean and relatively unprocessed proteins, nonstarchy vegetables, starchy vegetables and whole grains, beans and legumes, fruits and either low-fat dairy or calcium-containing nondairy equivalents.
Trying to set up your kitchen to follow a DASH-style diet without going broke Whole Foods-style is a major shift for a lot of people–especially the call for eating more vegetables, which is the number one thing that seems to have gone missing. Everybody I know–including some dedicated vegetarians who don’t even blink at the prices for tiny packets of prepared seitan and tempeh meat substitutes–is used to protesting that buying fresh vegetables and cooking them every night would be too expensive and too much trouble.
But in fact, even at the major chain supermarkets, regular bulk vegetables are, pound for pound, cheaper than almost anything that comes in a box or jar or can, and they pack a lot more nutritional value without all the detriments of salt, fats, corn syrup, starch thickeners, artificial flavors and colors, preservatives and other unpronounceable additives.
And frankly, fresh veg and most ordinary fruit is still not out of stock at most supermarkets. It’s easy to find, reasonably easy to wash, cut up and microwave or steam or throw into a frying pan or stockpot or slow-cooker. It’s nutritious. It’s filling. It’s low-calorie and versatile. And it’s a good way to stretch the meat, the eggs, the beans and rice that have been snatched up ahead of it. And we have the time and the need for variety.
Be safe, be well, wash hands and do pick up some bulk veg and fruit if you’re shopping for food–and pick up one or two items to contribute to your local food pantry if you can. Check in on your neighbors and family.
Finally–if you have even a little time and room to try gardening, even in washed-out yogurt containers, it’s surprisingly satisfying to grow herbs and a few vegetables here and there. Save and plant a few seeds from things like peppers or beans or tomatoes or squash from the supermarket when you cook, and try peeling and potting the little shoots from the inner root stumps of bok choy and onions too. It’s a much better kind of thing to propagate than what we’re seeing in the headlines.
Filed under: Food Politics, frugality, history, shopping, Vegetabalia | Tagged: cooking, food, healthy diet, shopping | Comments Off on Rethinking “pantry staples”
Slow Food Fast 