HomeCrazzyHome

If I had a dime for every time I heard my Nanny say this, well I could buy some toilet paper on eBay.

But this old Protestant adage has never been more real to me. These days NOTHING goes to waste in our @HomeCrazzyHome.

What do I mean?

Well, @PanKwake always pours a prodigious amount of ketchup on her plate for three hotdogs. I am talking a quarter to half a cup. She just dips the hot dogs in it. So her plate is covered in unused ketchup.

Now, my Nanny might have guilted me into submission with that ‘waste not, want not,’ but as a mother of a young person with PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance), I know better. That will only increase @PanKwake’s anxiety and result in negative behaviors and deterioration of her mental health, something we have worked long and hard to ensure. Not worth it, even in this crisis, which is hardly hard enough on her.

So, the only viable alternative is to use her leftovers up. I made this lovely polish sausage and pasta meal using it. The sausage itself had been appallingly poor quality with skin so thick that you could barely chew it. It was only Nanny’s words that kept me from throwing the other two kilos of it out of the freezer. Now, I am glad that I did not. But I did have to take the skin off and throw it away.

But it goes beyond just that. Tuesdays are bin night here. Alan and I pack up our garbage and recycling, and take it out for collection the next morning. Now, I am a hoarder, though I prefer the term collector. I keep shit. Always with big plans for what I will do with it. Crafting projects mostly.

Alan is the voice of reason. He is forever telling me, we don’t any more glass jars. Except he and we are discovering that we do, or did. A couple of weeks ago as I was scampering to top up our preparations for a possible four-month quarantine, I discovered that what he assured me was an impressive collection of glass jars was, in fact, inadequate for the rice and beans that I had bought.

Until this week, our Tuesday evening conversation had gone something like this:

Alan: *seeing me take something out of the recycling* What do you need that for?

Me: *Long explanation.*

Him: And when do you plan to do this? No, we have XYZ of those saved already. Put it back.

Our @HomeCrazzyHome rule had been:

When in doubt, throw it out!

Not this week. Not once did he say anything as I scavenged items, mostly tin cans, from our recycling bags. I’m going to need those for my garden, to build stands for pots or for seedlings. Heck, I am saving all our vegetable peels, eggshells, and tea bags separate from my cooked food waste that must still go into our food waste bin for collection and recycling.

Our new rule (at least for now, and I am pushing for longer) is:

When in doubt, keep it!

After all, you can always throw it away later.

Of course, not everything can be salvaged. I burnt some cookies so badly that they are not edible. When I told @PanKwake this, she said:

Wow, if I won’t eat, well that’s to be expected. If Alan won’t it, that’s a bit meh. But if you won’t eat it, WTF!

But these things happen. Nothing you can do about it.

But as we move forward as a society, we need to become more aware of just how much we throw away. The environment, mass extinctions and global warming, are the elephants looming in the background of this crisis. And they make it look like a flea in comparison. We need to recognize that our need for convenience and our disposal world cannot continue. It is my hope that this crisis will teach us that. Or I hope so anyway.

Goddess bless,
From our @HomeCrazzyHome to yours

Prepper Polish Pasta

Cook whatever pasta you have on hand. In a frying pan, saute leftover polish sausage, onion, pepper if you have it. Then add a can of tomatoes, @PanKwake’s leftover ketchup, a dash of BBQ sauce (perfect for using up those little tubs that come with your pizza delivery), Cajun or other spices. Simmer for a few minutes, then add cooked pasta, stir, and serve.