The Goods Are Odd

A dear friend wrote to me the following e-mail:

I’d love your insight into our current scenario:

A peek into our kitchen would render a million spices and nothing to put them into, frozen chicken, strawberries and TJ’s frozen pasta dinners. Fridge with soymilk, condiments, an ancient bag of carrots and some miso. Cupboards of pasta, some soup, ramen and crackers.

The dinner bell rings and we balk and head out to dinner or opt for a quick fast food meal (painful).

WHEN DOES THE COLLEGE LIFESTYLE END??

I run into a wall I think because 1) I’m tired before and after work (who isn’t-moan) 2) IM THE ONLY COOK 3) We max ourselves out so quickly with eating out too often that it is RIDICULOUS that we balk at the grocery store 4) tendency ESPECIALLY to eat out for lunch daily/coffee/snacks..dios mio, right?

I’m curious what you feel like are the ABSOLUTE necessary at all time fresh ingredients to have on hand, what you like for quick breakfasts and convenient lunches.

I’m all for the planning of dinners and hope to utilize our local farmer’s market more along with aspirations of a garden of my own as soon as we’re out of this apartment (expect weekly HELP! calls on that one I’m convinced I have a black thumb).

I decided to address these questions here since I think her situation is largely universal and perfectly speaks to the idea of living mind to mouth.

To me her situation brings up some big issues about the state of our domestic life. I want to take this post to address the larger context we are in as workers (particularly women workers) trying to live well. In another post I will address the actual budgeting and pantry/menu lessons I have been trying to have in our own kitchen/life that may be helpful in hers (or yours! so stay tuned).

My friend’s situation speaks well to the difficulties facing modern Americans’ domestic life. These difficulties seem attributable to 1) that women’s transition into the workplace did not mean that skill sets necessary for “home economics” became shared across the household, they are often either still in the hands of the full-time working woman/mother or lost generally. 2) Even if these skills were had by all in the household, most Americans are no longer in a situation where one partner can work less than full time.

That womens’ role in the world has moved beyond the domestic realm is crucial for equality and to address “the problem that has no name“.

Domestic work as the entirety of ones life and responsibility became menial and even depressing with the societal assumption that you are essentially unable to contribute anything but domestic skills. So there is no question, the fact that America’s domestic life isn’t being upheld solely by women at home is a positive development for valuing women beyond the home and for women who want other options.

The issue though is that needs on the domestic front have not gone away, and managing the domestic realm in a thoughtful and efficient way has HUGE impact on the world. So how is this being taken care of? When and by whom?

Technological developments- electrical appliances, chemicals, disposable products, pre-made food etc- in their attempt to free us from domestic responsibilities has instead required us to work harder than ever to buy these products of convenience which create more waste and still don’t fully meet the need. And as people grow up in this context, our communities are more and more dependent on these things and are losing the skills to function without them.

Skills aside, when do Americans have time to buy healthy food and cook meals with their household? Steven Greenhouse in “The Big Squeeze” provides this sobering analysis of how much we work and how little it gets us:

Since 1979 hourly earnings for 80 percent of American workers (those in private sector, nonsupervisory jobs) have risen by just 1 percent after inflation…worker productivity, meanwhile, has climbed 60 percent. If wages has kept pace with productivity,the average full-time worker would be earning $58,000 a year; $36,000 was the average in 2007. The nation’s economic pie is growing, but corporations by and large have not given their workers a bigger piece… Millions of households have not slipped further behind only because Americans are working far harder than before…Viewed another way, the American worker’s financial squeeze has translated into a time squeeze…The typical American worker toils 1,804 hours a year, 135 hours more per year than the typical British workers, 240 hours more than the average French worker, and 370 hours (or nine full-time weeks) more than the average German worker.

(Suffice to say Greenhouse’s book is highly recommended, the ways in which America’s economic growth has been largely a “spectator sport” for most families are sort of endless, I’m in the middle of the book currently, it is more than timely)

(The end of this movie where they make all the family/life friendly policies like flex hours and job shares and they paint the office the put in plants seriously moved me to tears. But here’s something, who even just works 9 to 5 anymore?)

I think that this context is extremely important when addressing others’ questions about how to eat well. Trying to identify how to eat well on a tight budget with no time does seem to make healthy eating a rarefied experience.

But it can be done, and I think since I cannot personally address the national economic situation or make business to provide workers more time for life and decent pay (except on Nov. 4th!), which may address my friend’s first point, I will see what I can say about the others.

Next Posts on this:

Out of the Kitchen and into the Rat Race (and then into the kitchen again?): Eating well should be a shared task and working should only be paying for the things are really worth it- what are the trade-offs of time spent eating poorly but quickly, setting these priorities and responsibilities as a household.

Go Ask Alice: A shopping list and a budget from my own attempt at Living Mind to Mouth.