please don't think i'm being provocative - i would genuinely be interested to learn:
how do you think you would manage if suddenly your fridges all stopped working? say for one year?
i'm guessing that it would involve a major change in life style.
could you handle it, if you had to?
It would be a minor change in our lifestyle - we'd get by just fine. In fact, we'd probably eat healthier.
We currently have a chest freezer which we use to store fruits, stocks, and some veggies when they're not in season. So we would not have frozen fruits to eat during the winter. OK, then we'll dry them. Not a problem. Stocks we always make at the time of butchery - but I suppose we couldn't store them for very long without a refrigeration. That would have to change. The veggies we store are mostly added to stir-fries and casseroles, so I don't think that would be a big deal.
The vast majority of our food is provided by the CSA* and farmer's market. We supplement with dry goods (nuts, pasta, tofu, condiments) from a traditional grocery-type store.
Here's a list of things we normally have on hand all week long (we shop once a week) that would not last:
Half & Half (also known as light cream)
Butter
Creme Fraiche (assuming it's summer)
Wow - I really thought that list was going to be longer, but I realized that those are the only things we would have to find another way to manage. We rarely keep meat in the house, but when we do it's either cooked / cured right away or it's for the dog.
One very important thing to note: We live in NYC, and there is a very robust farmer's market program here. It operates year round, and the one that we go to has everything we need. Yes, January - March is a little bland, but we both love Cabbage & Kale, so it's not really an issue
*
CSA = Community Supported Agriculture. A group of people arrange with a group of farms to provide an amount of food every week or month. People pay up front, farm gets money at the start of the season lessening risk, and then they send off the food as it ripens. It's a wonderful form of economic exchange. We've been doing this for about 6 years now, and we *always* feel that we're getting the better end of the deal. Even with the hurricane damage last august we still got hundreds of pounds of fresh organic / low spray food.
, but I really haven't seen any others)
