WHAT'S IN YOUR PANTRY?

I've been thinking a lot about pantries lately. I know! Weird, huh?

We always used to tease my mom for having so much food in her pantry - especially when we were teenagers, since by that time, she had pretty much given up cooking. I guess it was a hold-over from the depression era, a security blanket of sorts. She used to tell us that the Mormons all kept about a year's worth of food in their pantries, so that if there was ever a disaster, they'd be the ones most likely to survive. I thought it was a bunch of hooey, until a friend of mine bought a house from a Mormon family, and I saw the size of her new pantry!

No one in my immediate family ever grew their own food, nor did any of my grandparents, so the idea of having pantry shelves lined with jewel-colored mason jars was very foreign and exotic to me. Over the years I have had several friends who gifted me with jars of their own preserves, but I could never bring myself to break the seal - I just loved gazing upon them way too much! I kept them out on the counter, or on a windowsill, where I could enjoy the stained-glass effect of sun shining through their rich colors, which of course, only hastened their demise.

Now, thanks to all of the blogs I read about dealing with peak oil and climate change, the subject of pantries is cropping up again. These people are not survivalists. They are not out there stockpiling weapons. They just have enough common sense to realize that it's better to be as self-sufficient as possible. We cannot rely on a system that ships food and other necessities from the far corners of the earth, because that system is not sustainable. We've already seen how easily a glitch in the system can occur, each time there is any kind of natural disaster. Lets talk about hurricanes, since I spent many years on the Gulf Coast, and have some familiarity with those. Oh, I know, if you are forced to evacuate your home, a fat lot of good it does you to have a well-stocked pantry. But what if you were amongst the thousands in the peripheral areas, who were without power for weeks, and all of the restaurants and grocery stores were locked up tight? If you didn't have anything left in your pantry, and your babies were crying, wouldn't you be tempted to break a few windows?

I am not a person who flies off the handle, or goes into a panic at the drop of a hat, but I did watch that TV series Jericho, and I saw what happened when the system broke down completely. The only thing that really mattered was being able to feed one's family and keep them safe. Now I am seeing what is happening with this swine flu scare, and it's got me thinking that there may come a time when it's better to just stay snug in my own little home for a while, and not be running into town every day, to mix and mingle with the masses. I'm thinking, maybe the time has come to have a well-stocked pantry. Like Mom's.

P.S. Don't forget to leave a comment, if you wish to be included in Sunday morning's give-away!

P.P.S. Many thanks to blogs.timesunion.com for the first image above, and to treehugger.com for the other two.