(I just have a few moments here. Still blogging on the bedside table. Steve’s yelling at me to go to sleep. Thanks to everyone for commenting and joining the discussion. Wahoo. Party blog.)
We’re getting used to the new way of life here. I’ve already thrown my five year old into soccer camp. After a rough first day with tight cleats, city boy has risen to the occasion and is kicking some suburban ass. Go Jonah!
The sanitation system was designed by Kafka with rules for grass clippings, cardboard, cans, and other vegetative matter. There seems to be some sort of distinction between household trash and household garbage. And each day has its own type of trash. For example, the local mucky-mucks have declared that Friday is Vegetative Waste day (bundled at curb) for East Zone residents (that’s us, I think).
I also haven’t quite figured out the whole supermarket thing yet. I’m used to shopping for food daily on the way back from the playground. Now, we’re supposed to buy a crap load of stuff once a week. It’s too much work to strap up the kids in car seats and shop for one or two items a day. But what if you forget a vital ingredient? What if you are incapable of planning a week’s menu?
Yesterday, I made chicken fajitas, but didn’t have any lemons or limes to marinate the meat. So, I used green Gaterade. My Gaterade chicken worked quite nicely, thank you very much. Though I have taken a lot of crap from Steve about it who said I’m going to start finding interesting uses for Spam and Velveeta.
Apt. 11d 
I have a friend who is convinced that the creation of suburbia was the single greatest cataclysm in this history of humankind, and his complaint has nothing to do with all the usual highbrow liberal stereotypes. No, for him, it’s all about food. Giving the masses of humanity a space of their own, but not sufficient space for them to supply for themselves (i.e., farms and open land with game the country), meant that food sources had to become centrally distributed across great distances. Hence the weekly trips to the supermarket, rather than walking daily to wherever food was locally available. With these weekly trips come the sort of food that can survive centralized distribution and long waits in freezers–lots of preservatives, low-quality meat, etc., etc. Industrial farming, declining health, ecological disaster follows.
Speaking as one who goes food shopping every Saturday morning at our regional Wal-Mart superstore, this doesn’t do much for me, obviously.
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30 minute meals has a nice set of back up plans. Plus the required canned goods you need to get by. You have more space now put it to use with dried ingridients that can be quickly reconstituted in a pinch (tomatoes, mushrooms, etc.) Plus, get used to the idea of calling the spouse with the job and saying “can you pick this up on the way home? If you want to eat dinner tonight do it.” I have to do that sometimes. And I love the gatorade thing, can’t wait to try it. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that.
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The epitome of grocery decadence is Peapod*. You order your groceries online, pick a delivery date and time (2 hour window) and they bring the groceries right into your kitchen. This is the best. My youngest was an utter pill to shop with. This saved both of our lives. He’s 11 now. I have no excuse any more because he’s old enough to leave alone whilst I shop. I’m totally spoiled.
*Not offered everywhere
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Well…it’s all a ‘Little House on the Prairie’, isn’t it. Making due with what you have.
I’ll tell you a secret. Learn to make a list. I worked very hard on this skill last winter when I was frequenting the grocery store, too frequently.
You’ll master this in no time :o)
But in the meantime, you get the creative cooking award! Gatorade Chicken! Funny!
Donna
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Heh, being a suburban brat now living in NY, I miss the weekly shopping. If I had kids I’d be inclined to get a deep freeze for meat and frozen veggies and store several months’ at a time. But that is definitely my Little House on the Prairie fantasy I think.
Once you get in the habit it isn’t hard–you’ll buy pretty much the same staples each week, after all, with variations. You’ll always need pasta, bread, butter, milk, etc. And you can stock up when there are sales. My mom was the queen of this; some weeks we’d have 10 cans of something in the pantry because it was on sale.
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And for some reason Costco sells really good fruits and vegetables that keep for a week and still taste good. Plus develop a good organizing system for canned and dry goods so that you don’t accidentally find yourself with 15 jars of artichoke hearts stored in 10 different places… Not that I am speaking from experience or anything.
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Forget about the liberal environmentalists, there are a *lot* of logistical problems with suburbia. It’s simply not laid out in a way that’s convenient for people.
Check out “Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream,” by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck for a better discussion (and a strong argument for mixed-use zoning).
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Living the Burbs
Getting an angle on suburbia?An interesting discussion over in 11D on suburbia. In a comment to the post, Fling93 draws on Suburban Nation to conclude that suburbia is “simply not laid out in a way that’s convenient for people.”
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My husband always says we’re threee meals away from anarchy, because we don’t know how to grow or hunt our own food. That seems like one of the true crimes of suburbia – the removal of local plant & animal habitats that might feed us in a pinch, and the subsequent loss of knowledge of animal and plant husbandry.
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I’m quite used to not shopping daily, having been raised in suburbia. My SO and I try to stay stocked up on all the non-perishable ingredients we use so that we can cook just about anything with little planning ahead of time. The only thing we don’t stay stocked up on is produce, which we buy weekly or bi-weekly and then plan our meals around (“We have broccoli? OK, let’s make …”).
Staying stocked up like this may lead to us to waste a bit more (since we buy things without a clear plan of what we’re going to use them for), but keeps us from going out to eat just because we don’t have anything on hand, so we figure it saves money.
One thing you can do to get good fresh vegetables and fruits without farmland near is to look for a local produce market. I found one here about a year ago; it’s a small, friendly place, and it has great produce year-round, most of it locally grown.
Oh yes, in case you find yourself out of green gatorade, something like orange juice, wine vinegar, or cider vinegar might substitute just as well (similar acidity; heck, white vinegar would probably work too).
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Suburban Nation
It was actually sometime last year that I read Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck. I was just browsing through City Lights, and it caught my eye, so I leafe…
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