No Grocery Stores or Restaurants for a Year

Sherri Lynn wrote:For example, we are almost to the end of the store bought noodles and I was thinking, "What am I going to use with all the spaghetti sauce that I put up?"  So a friend is teaching me how to make lasagne with zuchini instead of noodles and we are planning to plant some spaghetti squash.  

Zucchini lasagna sounds fine but won't get you (or at least me) as satisfied. Making noodles yourself is quite easy. There are various threads here on Permies on pasta making, basically there is pasta out of flour and water, flour and eggs, and flour and sourdough (and eggs).
I made the latter the other day and even the kids liked them. I used this recipe:
https://www.farmhouseonboone.com/homemade-sourdough-pasta

For something quicker you could try out gnocchi or German Spätzle. Tons of inspirations in this thread:
https://permies.com/t/155650/kitchen/Sp-tzle-gnocchi-dumplings-share

This is an interesting read because in my part of the world there is no way you could be even halfway self-sufficient. My whole plot is as big as most of your North American driveways (excepting cities like NYC obviously) so I am happy with what I can add to my diet.

Also historically there was not really a need to be self-sufficient as you always had neighbours (for bartering, which is great as people are commenting) and settlements close by. Regarding not getting goods from outside as in the quote:

Jay Angler wrote: However, as you also pointed out in a bit of "an aside" sort of way, is that this is exactly how people used to eat as little as 200 years ago in many parts of the world, and still do in many parts of the world, so the "social aspect" didn't exist - you could eat with your neighbors because they also ate from the land around them.

...not sure if I understand correctly, but 200 years ago a lot of goods where traded in from far away places, be it fruits, spices, wine, oil, cattle etc.
In our county we have the "Oxen trail" where herders from the Hungarian plains drove huge cattle herds up to the Munich slaughterhouses.

Even in antique times goods like wheat were shipped from Egypt to Rome, olive oil and wine were exported to the Northern countries, Garum sauce from Andalusia was brought into Roman territories off the coast, dried fish was shipped into many regions of the world.

I find this very fascinating because people often think of our ancestors as sitting in dimly lit huts without much exchange with the rest of the world when global commerce was established millennia ago (in fact Munich would not have been founded if not for a conflict on Salt taxes - the white gold of former times).
Sorry for the off-topic but History is so interesting!

Anita Martin wrote:

...not sure if I understand correctly, but 200 years ago a lot of goods where traded in from far away places, be it fruits, spices, wine, oil, cattle etc.
In our county we have the "Oxen trail" where herders from the Hungarian plains drove huge cattle herds up to the Munich slaughterhouses.

I was judging by a history of parts of England (near Wales) I read last year. It was implied that those who were at the bottom of the economic ladder pretty much had to eat what they could grow for themselves. Those a bit higher up, would have spices or special imported foods for special occasions, but not everyday.

Here in Canada, populated areas had greater access sooner to foreign foods, but we have a lot of land and not so many people, so "going to town" for most country folk wasn't an everyday situation! My maternal grandmother's family were on a farm far enough outside of city access, that my Great Aunt delivered her younger sister a week after being taught how to do so at school! And now we argue about having sex ed at school! I get that it's very different in Europe with its much higher population, and yes, I'm aware that the Romans did some substantial importing of basic foods as they'd destroyed their own soil from over-working it. Clearly that approach wasn't sustainable! Here, there was more trading happening in the Indigenous Nations than most of our history highlights. However, it would still would have been special, high-value foods that went much of a distance, rather than ones' daily diet.

I hate to bring anything that sounds media-y into a thread about being awesome and doing for yourself, BUT this journey and challenge would make an awesome YouTube series of vids. At least to me, I’d watch it.

I got hungry reading through the thread so that a good sign you’ve got the food you need, lol. And I was reminded (to my chagrin) that I didn’t plant chamomile this year. When the wind hits that it is a pretty awesome smell.

I would love to get to the ‘what is shopping?’ stage myself, I think I’ll set a goal for this….right now I’m still too ‘how do you (fill in the blank)?’ about a few too many off grid things to be quite ready but that’s the kind of goal I like. An earthy, reality based goal that gives the right kind of pride. That’s really the ‘American Dream’ IMO, Being  able to do, yourself, whatever you really want to do.

Jay Angler wrote:
I was judging by a history of parts of England (near Wales) I read last year. It was implied that those who were at the bottom of the economic ladder pretty much had to eat what they could grow for themselves. Those a bit higher up, would have spices or special imported foods for special occasions, but not everyday.

You are absolutely right on this. It made a huge difference in this region as well how much of your goods were brought from far away regions (salt for most of the people). Wealthy people in the renaissance time even had their own shipping service for southern fruits like figs that were transported over the Alps from the South. As always it was a question of money and prestige.

Jay Angler wrote:
Here in Canada, populated areas had greater access sooner to foreign foods, but we have a lot of land and not so many people, so "going to town" for most country folk wasn't an everyday situation! My maternal grandmother's family were on a farm far enough outside of city access, that my Great Aunt delivered her younger sister a week after being taught how to do so at school! And now we argue about having sex ed at school! I get that it's very different in Europe with its much higher population, and yes, I'm aware that the Romans did some substantial importing of basic foods as they'd destroyed their own soil from over-working it. Clearly that approach wasn't sustainable! Here, there was more trading happening in the Indigenous Nations than most of our history highlights. However, it would still would have been special, high-value foods that went much of a distance, rather than ones' daily diet.

As Central Europe was densely populated for large times there were (weekly or bi-weekly) markets everywhere so getting groceries was not an issue unless you lived in an isolated mountain location (think Heidi-style).
As to soil degradation by the Romans, do you have a source for this? I know that the Roman empire had a lot of mouths to feed and a centralized administration so it was part of their strategy to have territories from which they could import goods as wheat (Spain was another bread-basket for the Empire). The Italian countryside today is very diverse and productive and lots of different crops are grown so I cannot imagine that soil degradation happened in the heartland of the Roman Empire.

Back to topic, having as much of your basic needs as possible covered sounds like a good plan. I would always include honey bees but I wonder if you don't have to feed them in autumn? I know there are approaches where you take only a little honey from your hives and let them overwinter on their own honey but then you would need lots of hives and lots of flowers or you have to reduce your consumption of sweet dishes considerably.
Honey was very prized in former times and so people used molasses and concentrated plum or apple jam for sweetening (or other fruit, if available).

Anita:

We currently have two working honey hives and have planted a large field of sorghum for sweetener.  Now this is our first time of actually counting on sweeteners we cannot buy at the grocery store, so I hope everything works out well.  Also, I am going to have to figure out preserving fruits and pickles without sugar.  Wish me luck!

More food entries:

Last night's dinner:  hamburger patties with gravy made with garlic scapes and water instead of milk (really good), rice (still have some left), and fresh picked and steamed broccoli.  Today's breakfast:  Sweet potato pancakes.  Yum!

Five days into month two.  Man I was glad when the broccoli came in.  Asparagus was getting old (believe it or not).  We have now run out of cooking oil, but we still have plenty of lard from our last pig harvest and our current two pigs are growing up a storm.  I am worried about not being able to make mayonnaise mostly.  I am learning more about foraging.  For example a friend told me thistle stems taste a lot like celery, but you have to peel off the fibrous outer covering.  I tried that, but I am obviously not peeling off enough outer covering.  Will have to work on that.

The last few days we processed 37 Cornish Cross chickens.  My husband decided we needed to clean out the freezer of last year's chicken crop so we don't mix them.  I contacted my daughter to ask if she wanted some leg quarters and chicken wings and was surprised when she turned us down.  However, my husband came up with a brilliant idea.  His grandmother used to use up all the prior year's stuff by making a big pot of soup.  So we ended up with 17 quarts and 1 pint of soup for those days when we are too tired to cook.  Go Granny!!

By the way, after the meat got cooked a little, I took it out, deboned and cut it up and put it back in.

One thing I like about having less is that you better use what you do have and I am more creative.  In our year of not buying groceries, we had a few things from the grocery store lurking in the back of the cabinet.  One day I was hunting for something sweet to eat and ran across a box of Swiss Miss cocoa.  We must have bought it one time when we were going camping.  I did not look at the expiration date, but wasn't worried as it was a dried good.  While I didn't want any hot cocoa, I was thinking I could use this to make chocolate pudding.  So I put 3 pouches of cocoa mix, 2 cups of water, 1/4 cup of flour, 1/3 cup of sugar and 1 heaping tablespoon of cocoa powder in a kettle and cooked it until thickened.  Then I pour some into a cup with three (small) egg yolks and put it back in to cook for 2 minutes more.  This made four servings of pudding.  Yum!

The other thing I found was a small box of potato flakes.  On another day I put 1 1/3 cups of water in a kettle and added some salt and a pinch of cayenne pepper.  After it came to a boil, I turned it off and added a teaspoon of lard and a cup of potato flakes.  Mix.  Then I added about 3/4 c. of flour, and a very large egg.  Mix.  Fry in a frying pan with some melted lard in 1/3 cup portions.  Patting it down when you first put it in, then pushing down with the spatula when you turn it.  Served these potato pancakes with a little maple syrup.  Yum!

Surprised at those two items made without the milk they usually require.

We are a month and a half into no grocery stores.  Yesterday I picked 5 1/2 gallons of cucumbers and was exploring new recipes to utilize them.  For lunch I made some cucumber salsa and wanted some corn chips to dip them with.  I happened to have some Masa Harina in the cabinet, so I proceeded to make some corn tortillas, then fry some chips.  This is pretty time consuming.  Those stacks of 100 corn tortillas at the grocery store are worth every penny.

Sherri Lynn wrote:

This is pretty time consuming.  

This is why I read so many stories about all the food being dumped in a kettle over the fire and served up as 'mush' - anything  left over was left in the pot and added to for the next meal. " Pease porridge in the pot 9 days old " https://www.durhamfoods.co.uk/history-of-pease-pudding/  was a thing!

Jay:  I am definitely not planning to do that (mush).  I am a creative person who loves variety.  I am just weeding out which things seem to be worth it, and which ones don't.  I am only posting a few meals that I have a strong reaction to.  Most meals are working out fabulously and feels like we are eating gourmet meals.  I am finding ways to do double duty on things, but it is a strong learning curve.  First time I have done this though, so I do expect a lot of that.

For example, I made some blackberry syrup for my grandson (2 years old) that was having some problems with loose stools.  I knew he would love the blackberry syrup to flavor his water and not realize he was actually taking a medicine.  The berries that I strained out of the syrup ended up on our breakfast plate with some battered and fried squash.  This was not a meal we were used to, but it was amazingly good.  Trying to get outside the box of what routine does to us.  It really is a great learning experience.

Sherri Lynn wrote:[snip]It may be the little things that sneak up on us.  You know like peanut butter, coffee or baking soda.

I can understand why such little things would be a concern because that's what would get me too. Just out of curiosity, does your commitment prohibit bartering for the little things? It sounds like you produce a nice diversity of things on your property. Assuming there is surplus of some things, and those surplus items may be things that neighbors actually want, could you trade your surplus for their grocery items?

Michael, bartering and trading is how we manage to be satisfied when producing our own food. Certain things grow really good and in abundance, so I can use them to acquire items I cannot produce myself for one reason or another. This is exactly how I can have fish, cow’s milk, many fruits, beef, and other items grace our table. For example, last year I harvested over 300 pipinola (a.k.a.  chayote) and only used a couple dozen for ourselves. The rest we used for trading. Same with our very generous harvests of pumpkins, lemons, green beans, snow peas, Asian greens, oranges, grapefruits, eggs, pork, etc.

Although we no longer live off our efforts 100%, we could easily revert back to that. We would need to adjust our diet a bit because we do like eating things that don’t grow readily here, like melons, grapes, and apples.

Now that food prices are going up, it’s nice to know I’m not chained to supermarket prices.  It’s a real nice feeling of freedom.