Kitchen Shelves

Kitchen shelves … ready for cooking.

This is an ordinary set of kitchen shelves.  But today it brought back memories.

Long long ago in a land far far away I moved into a house of 13 people.

It was called Friends’ Co-op, after the Society of Friends though not affiliated with the group.   The question sometimes came up and we clarified that the house was named back in the sixties and had nothing to do with the popular TV show of the same name.  This was the late 1990s.  People still watched sitcoms, though in our house we did not have TV.  This was a decade before people had internet at home, much less the multitude of gadgets and channels common today.

And so in those long ago far away times, when Madison was Madison and Wisconsin was a leading progressive state, in our house of 13 people, we cooked and ate together and had meetings where we reached decisions by consensus.   We bought our food from the local food co-op, ordered bread from the local bakery co-op and some of us even earned and spent local currency, Madison Hours.  Spelunker and apple farmer Mark Sparks would come over whenever he had a good harvest of apples and we would buy a box from him.  Once he took us to see a cave as well.

But why did these kitchen shelves remind me of those days?  Not because you must be living in a cave to have missed out on the innovations of the food industry.  Because the shelves in this kitchen had ingredients for just about anything!  What a sense of relief I experienced living in the co-op with 13 people who also believed in sustainable community living, as reflected in such a simple thing as having an abundance of ingredients.  Nevermore did I need to fear trying a new recipe, with ingredients that I might not use again soon.  Rice, whole wheat flour, oats, lentils, garbanzos and the like we bought in 25 pound bags and stored in huge containers, just like at the co-op grocery.

Shelves stocked with raw material are common in India but less so in the US.  I travel to many homes and often see pantries full of shiny packages and individually wrapped snacks – usually it is attributed to the busy schedules permitting little time for intricate shopping or cooking.

Here too is a family of four, with two office-going adults and two young children.  Their shelves are filled with ingredients and no processed food.  The kids in the family eagerly reach for fruits and scoop up handfuls of nuts, raisins, sunflower or pumpkin seeds.  Supplemented by a steady supply of fruits and vegetables, good food is always there.  For whatever they want to make, the ingredients are available.

Walnuts and Raisins!

On weekdays the parents cook breakfast, and eat with their children, creating an unrushed atmosphere in the morning before going to their offices and taking the kids to school and grandma’s respectively.

Well-stocked shelves help to make these practices easier.

One Saturday morning the 4-year-old member of the family woke up asking for granola.   As her mother passed her the ingredients she mixed it up, gave it to her mother for baking, and ate it for breakfast.   Another day she came home in the afternoon and asked for walnuts and raisins.  Soon after, she and my daughter erupted in song, “walnuts and raisins,” accompanied by a dance that gave rise to peals of laughter.

Making for more good memories.