On the long drive to Ohio this week, I made sure I packed a bag of my current favorite activity: crocheting. I finished a homemade washcloth and started a couple of soft toys. Doesn’t that make me sound old?
These day, I wonder if I’m turning into my great-grandmother. I do have my real teeth, but I am discovering that many old ways of doing things have relevance to my very modern life.
Oh, I like technology more than the next person and I like Target even better. But I’m learning, very slowly, that some things are worth doing myself. Simple lessons such as saving money, reusing what I have, and learning a new skill still have a vital importance in our everyday lives.
Like I said earlier, crocheting is my newest obsession. My grandmother taught me some simple stitches when I was a child, but it wasn’t until a couple of months ago that I realized it made the perfect away-from-the-laptop evening hobby. I practiced while watching a favorite classic movie, The Apartment, and soon I finished my first washcloth. It was a crooked little thing, but it cleaned Nate’s peanut buttery face better than the store-bought ones I owned. I started working on more every evening and was surprised at how relaxing it was watching the stitches and the colors come together to make something useful, beautiful.
I am not a very good nor very experienced cook. But last year, I discovered a simple thing that has revolutionized several of my favorite recipes: homemade chicken stock. It is a simple thing, really, that just requires a bunch of chicken bones, vegetable scraps, and water, all of which I throw in my biggest pot. After it simmers for 12 hours, I put the liquid in several jars and freeze them. The stock, made from what would have been thrown away, makes soups taste richer and roast chicken and vegetables taste heavenly.
I don’t use stock or sew because it’s necessarily frugal or green (although it often is), but because it works. It works to do something with my hands in the evenings instead of relying on computer for entertainment. It works to create tasty stock out of onion ends and potato peels. That’s the best things about the old things: usually they simply work.
I read recently that it’s become hip to can homemade sauces and jellies. As people become concerned with an industrial food supply, there is more interest in preserving slow, whole foods. Working with our hands and saving for the future is never a new concept, but as our jobs become more intellectual and technological, it’s a blessed thing to connect with the food we eat and the people who taught us to cook it. The old arts that were never old in the first place makes us more human, more grateful.
Our grandmothers would be proud.