I’m Sorry, I Don’t Have An Appliance For That: Reality in our Kitchen

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Note: Just a few more days to get my grain-free cookbook, along with four other cookbooks, for 80% off the original prices.

The shift we have made over the past couple of years away from the more citified way of living has been part of a larger decision to live more sustainably. In short, being good stewards meant we had to reevaluate much of the way we did things and start from scratch.

And nowhere have I felt the squeeze of that shift from then to now than when I’m in the kitchen. (Well, there’s the laundry room too, also known as a bucket outside my front door, but that’s another story for another day.)

I’ve always been a reader of cookbooks and food blogs. They give me ideas, inspiration, and information for feeding my family. More recently, though, I’m more likely to want to pick up that book, rip every page from its binding, light the whole pile on fire, let the chickens poop all over it and then use it for compost.

It’s not you, it’s me.

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A Typical Day In My Kitchen

Right now, Stewart is in deep need of nourishment. So we are trying to be careful about what we feed him. We’ve always had that overarching philosophy with us and the children, but right now it seems even more acute. Three meals a day from scratch with a host of foods that I cannot use – like most grains, eggs, and pasteurized or processed anything – are the parameters I can work within.

It’s my job and I enjoy feeding my family, but it’s also challenging and time-consuming.

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In the morning, a high-protein breakfast is made, and washed up after. By the time that gets taken care of I usually start a pot of bean and vegetable soup with a bit of meat in it for lunch. By the time lunch is over it is nap time for Annabelle, my only quiet daylight hours to work, so I quickly get any food put away and abandon the dishes for the laptop. Two hours later, she’s up and kicking, and I’m starting on dinner – usually meat and veggies – followed by dishes, and before you know it the sun is starting to set. Somewhere in there is laundry, some reading and math, gardens and chickens, and the general chaos that is life with Annabelle small children.

A Story of Two Different Worlds

And then I sit down to a food blog or a cookbook full of pretty pictures and inspiring stories of how not to spend your whole day in the kitchen while feeding your family in the most nourishing of ways.

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Yes, I know I could just take some meat from my freezer, cook it up with some vegetables stashed in my giant refrigerator, add bone broth from stock I made two weeks ago on a once-a-month cooking day, and then put them all together in my crock pot and let it simmer all day (while I blow our solar power system to smithereens), top it with the fermented vegetables from the back of my refrigerator, and then take the leftovers and freeze those for an easy weeknight meal.

But the only freezer space I have, I borrow from a nice neighbor. My refrigerator, if it’s working, might be smaller than a cabinet full of cutesie tea cups. That marathon once-a-month cooking session is what every day looks like around here. And, if we’re having bone broth, someone’s axing, gutting, and boiling a rooster and then we’re soaking our blood-stained aprons in a hardware store bucket at the end of the day.

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I’m sorry, but I don’t live in a Williams-Sonoma fantasy world full of pretty pictures and clean counter-tops. My kitchen holds approximately 1.5 people (1, if you’re pregnant), is usually swimming in dirty dishes, has egg shells and real live pieces of dirt on the floor, and my 4 feet of counter-top is full of stinky meat and lard jars that are weeks days overdue for a good scrubbing… if I can just have some water heating when I get there. Oh, and there is always, always, someone who needs to eat right now so why didn’t you start dinner 30 minutes ago before I started my meltdown, mom?

(Because you didn’t actually eat your lunch on account of some unknown particularity which I will starve out of you, buster. And, I love you.)

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Sometimes all of that gets frustrating, if I’m being honest, but mostly that’s just real life on our homestead and I wouldn’t trade it for all the crock pots in the world. Someday we might get that solar cooker up and running, have a more permanent kitchen setup, and I might get better at this off-grid kitchen thing. But I’ve learned to have no expectations of “when it gets easier” because we don’t know when or if that will be.

Oh, and to keep things in perspective, here’s a 1901 journal entry:

“The day & night before school started in 1901, I worked one hundred buttonholes and sewed on one hundred buttons, trying to finish up the children’s school clothes. I was still sewing at dawn. I milked the cows and fixed breakfast. I worked all morning about the house and cooked dinner. Then that afternoon I gave birth to my tenth child.”

Just like that, she gave birth to her tenth child. I may not live in Martha Stewart land, but believe me, I’m no bad mama jama like that lady.

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8 Comments

  1. Shannon, I can so empathize with you! I’ve gotten used to my off-grid tiny kitchen, but I still get a laugh when I see people’s reactions as I tell them that I don’t have a microwave and that I have to splurge on power to use a blender (unless the sun is shining of course). A crock pot? Ha! It’s called simmer it over the stove forever. lol It can be frustrating, but it the benefits are (usually) worth it 🙂

  2. Oh sister, I know your pain, and I’m not even pregnant! I’ve been trying for a week to get my dishes done. I know, if I’d just run a sink of hot water when I begin my kitchen work. . . My grandchildren just looked at the fifth picture, the one after the bananas, and asked, “Is that your kitchen?”

  3. Bananas keep longer if you separate them BTW. Can you do pressure canning on your stove? If so then can some bone broth so you have it on hand. You do a great deal with what you have! I have bone broth bubbling away in my crockpot and I couldn’t imagine life without it. You are a better woman than me!

  4. We are missionaries and we do not really want to have a whole bunch of stuff to take with us from place to place. We have sold or given away everything we had 2 or 3 times in the last 10 years. So I feel your pain. thats my life…Oh we have a small fridge and even smaller freezer. I have a some things stored on the floor under my table as we no longer have small children. I have 3 cooking pots, 2 baking pans and 2 frying pans…thats about it. I could not even afford the meat to make bone broth with so that settles that….I do not have the super kitchen, but I do pretty well…..

  5. oh no need to apologize :-)…. life is life. My kitchen is small and I always have things piled here and there. the life of a real foodie!! and I don’t have any children.
    as long as you and your family are happy, who is to judge your kitchen?? I can guarantee some of the peoples w/ the nicest and biggest kitchens are the unhappiest of peoples.

  6. BLESS YOU for this post! I have just found your blog and am so grateful. You are living the life that I hope for our family, Lord willing. I have always said over the years life is hard no matter who or where you are, we just get different kinds of hard. People with house cleaners and private chefs that live in 12 000 square foot houses are still unhappy. I hope this year brings you joy in your 1.5 person kitchen surrounded by your dirty dishes and grabbing cranky toddlers 🙂

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