Yesterday was one of those rainy days; cold, wet, windy. After watching the kids at respective Sunday morning sports lessons (horse-riding and rugby) we tumbled home feeling decidedly soggy. I lit the fire and revelled in that pioneer-woman feeling that there were only larder ingredients in the house, very little fresh food. Pretty much a hunk of cheese in our fridge and that was it. So that required innovation. I am all for larders; store cupboards of goodness. My house has one attached to our kitchen, a little darkened room with slate shelves.
p.s. I love this...can't for the life of me recall where I got the image...
When there was the swine flu pandemic, my reaction (along with bordering-on-the-obsessive handwashing) was to buy up stores for our larder in case we needed to go into some sort of self-inflicted quarantine. I know, I know, not exactly normal behaviour; I blame the media hype. I took this concept pretty far and filled the shelves with powered milk and lentils, oats and rice. Anyone who knows me knows that powered milk would only feature in my life if we were approaching World War III...
To have a fully stocked larder did equate to a feeling of frontier-land fulfillment for me. Although as time passed and the pandemic got downgraded by the World Health people, I learned something about my quarantine planning. A) even with what felt like a mountain of dried food, it didn't last that long. B) unless you make it taste of something, the kids flatly refused to eat the vast majority of pulses and oats. There's only so much bean stew a five year old will tolerate. Lesson learned: next time I do quarantine shopping, get more and go crazy on the spices, flavours, seasonings that make bland food tolerable. Of course if push came to shove and they had to eat it, they would, but there was definitely reluctance.
So summer days well and truly over. Even the possibility of an Indian summer slips away as October takes hold. Larder stocked, firewood ordered, ready for what the colder months bring. I suspect it will entail lots of Sunday afternoons on the sofa, snuggled up...planning my larder menu.
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