The Canadian media is blaming Canadian’s lack of cooking skills for why they can’t appropriately adjust to food insecurity (not the monopoly of grocery stores by the super-villains we have as grocers). It is not 1950 anymore and we don’t have all day to bake everything from scratch. Omg. I can’t even.
@LALegault
There are strategies around "cooking everything from scratch" but the strategy requires an additional chest freezer: cook once one large batch then freeze it in individual servings if you have just you to feed. Freeze it in the number of servings you need to serve a certain number of people.
Repeat for other batches of other dishes for variety. Cooking just on the weekend while producing a whole week of meals until the next weekend is a good start.
It is. But the point here is the price of food in Canada is bananas because of corporate greed, we had a semi-public inquiry, grocers were brought before a Parliamentary committee and promised to do better then they jacked prices because they can and 1 in 5 Canadians are using food banks and are now told it is because we can’t cook well enough. People are busy and working a ton just to keep a roof over their heads. Big food batches are not the issue.
@LALegault
I can relate. Food prices are crazy high even here in the States--they're like that pretty much everywhere--I've started growing my own groceries again.
I used to do that years ago and had to get 2 chest freezers to hold it all and still have some to give away to the neighbors. I quit because the climate got too hostile to growing even with the irrigation lines I installed. Nobody's got it easy, anywhere.
I've still utilized both freezers for the purpose of buying stuff when a price on something falls to what used to pass as regular price, buy a bulk of it and freeze it for the year...like the turkeys for Thanksgiving. Bought 6 that were over 20lbs only to find they all had excess water weight added (Butterball).
Beef is still astronomical, even the ground type.
Pork is high but not as bad as beef, and chicken has come down off its bird flu scarcity tho it's still not what it used to be.
Anyway, that's how I'm managing. I've got a winter garden patch but only for cold-tolerant veggies and there are 3 tomato vines that are still hanging in there from summer...but that's a veggie that's extra picky about conditions for producing. They're not gonna produce under current conditions.
Those are all super good tips, thank you.
I am a big grower of veg too. In fact today I am dehusking and freezing the last two picked batches of tomatillos for salsas throughout the winter :)
@LALegault
Aha! Good on ya! I have yet to grow tomatillos and Ima gonna put that on the list of seeds to get this spring...although I'm a seed saver, and I've got enough seeds year to year to go without buying much by way of new seed, and still have extra to donate to the local seed library.
@LALegault
Ya, I've got quite the inventory of several varieties of heirloom tomato seeds. Love love love to swap seeds! ...which is why the only reason I'm still on Facebook is my seed swap group, the Marvelous Monarch Seed Swap Network.
@ClaraListensprechen4
Put Tomatillos in a sunny corner and let them do all the work! Easiest grow with minimal work and maximum yield. Kind of like ground cherries.
I am a huge seed saver too. I organized seedy Saturdays in the past here where we all get together and swap ‘em if you got ‘em.
I ended up with basil from Armenia and tomatoes from post wwII France and family seeds like heirlooms, it is great fun!