Friday, January 6, 2012

Are we odd?

Is my family odd, or just a remnant of times gone by?  Here are some of the things we did yesterday:

fed the horses and chickens, as well as the dog and cats

stoked the wood burner to keep the house warm and hot water for showering

cut up a whole chicken (that had been raised here), then made barbecue sauce from scratch to marinate the chicken in before grilling it for dinner (yes, it's January, but it was a warm day--upper 30's!)

saved the chicken back and the ribs (made boneless breasts when I cut it up) for making soup in a few days

DH and DS2 worked on repairing DS2's car so he can drive it back to college this weekend (replacing gaskets on intake manifold)

baked bread for the next week: 4 loaves

dinner was bbq chicken, butternut squash (from my stash in the basement, grown in 2011), green beans, and buttered bread

took pumpkin puree out of the freezer to thaw to make chocolate chip pumpkin bread out of (DS2's request as 'snack food' for the 500 mile drive back to school)

To me, all this sounds pretty natural. Just another day in the life. Then I got to thinking, how many people

--know how to cut up a whole chicken?
--raise their own chickens for meat?
--make bbq sauce instead of buying it in a bottle from the store?
--would save the 'meatless' pieces of chicken to boil down for soup?
--have to manually do something to ensure their home has heat every day?
--repair their own vehicles?
--bake bread instead of buying it at the store?
--cook dinner instead of heating in the microwave some ready-to-eat pre-made thing from the store ?
--would ever grill anything in a month other than May, June, July, August or early September?
--grow their own veggies and store them for the winter eating season?
--all sit down to eat as a family, every night?
--know you can make bread out of pumpkin?  Let alone have ever eaten it, and consider it delicious?

I can't imagine not having this knowledge, these skills, doing these things.  Yet, once upon a time, when I was still in high school and living in my parents' home, we ate out so often that the local McDonalds would start compiling our order as soon as we walked in the door, we didn't even have to tell the person at the register what we wanted (cheese burger, pickles only; filet of fish, no cheese, Big Mac. . . )  I'm guessing more people today are like my childhood family than my adulthood one.

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