Financial crisis blogging

Was it only six months ago that there wasn’t a hint of a disaster?  There must have been many someones who knew things were gone irreparably wrong, but no one much stood up and admitted it in public.  The fallout has been way too rapid and deep for it not to have begun a very long time ago.

They say stores are closing on Main Street and in the malls.  That’s not the result of a few months of fiscal conservatism.  They say that cars aren’t selling and that there are tens of thousands stacked up and unsold in any market you care to name.  I don’t think that started in September, either.

World leaders are throwing trillions at failing companies so that the entire system– you know, the one where your money is–  won’t fail.  So far no one seems to believe they’ve done the trick.  Stock markets just fall farther with every new lashing with the money whip.  The markets are run by stockbrokers, some of the very people who got us into this mess.  No wonder they aren’t confident.  They know where the rest of the bodies are buried.

So who has anything positive to offer?  Well, a lot of bloggers have.  I started looking at this when I saw on the Italian news a piece on an ancient Italian woman who is writing up recipes that kept her family going in the Great Depression.  Apparently the one we are in is the Not So Great Depression.

In the 1920s and 30s a lot of Italians had very little to live on even without a world depression.  The system in the countryside was a sort of sharecropping, which meant that when the weather went wrong and there wasn’t much of a crop people died.  As simple as that.  Some of the world is still like that, but it’s hard for me to realize that Italy was that poor not that long ago.  City people with jobs just has to make the money stretch further than normal.  This woman is telling us how, but I haven’t been able to find her yet.  I’ll keep trying, however.  Sometimes my problems with searching for Italian sites is that the two languages flow through the brain together and what comes out is neither one nor the other.

In my search I did find some bloggers who are tackling the question of how to spend less money on food.  Mind you, I don’t think one starts with cutting food funds, but those who are jobless or fear that’s on the horizon have plenty of reason to include economizing in the kitchen along with all the other economizing one can do.

Suite 101.com offers a roundup article on Cooking for Less. In it is mentioned “Depression Cooking with Clara” which is all video and so I can’t see it.  It sounds like fun.

There’s a fun article about depression eating in Toronto which includes some recipes along with some fun facts about Toronto in the 1930s.  I love Toronto, and if I were willing to be 100 years old now I would wish I had seen her in the Thirties.  No deal, though.

Another agglomeration page has a clickable collection of cheap recipes that have brought back the old days to some people.  I know from my mother, though, that meat didn’t get eaten that often in those days.  There are many types of recipes though, so click through.  I was particularly taken with one called “Macaroni Papoose.”  I still can’t figure out the name.

I also ran into some sites that propose special foods for treating depression.  We all may need that later on, but for now I am quite cheered that digging in and going back to basic ingredients seems to be the main push.  If I had to read another site, as I did last year, on how to shop the ready made food aisles of Walmart and save money by feeding your innocent kids things that would kill a Guinea Pig, I might go insane

I believe the right approach is the one that works in any western country.  Eat less meat and fish.  Cook from scratch.  Use spices and herbs to make basic foods mind-bogglingly exciting. Don’t buy too much, cook too much or throw food away.  Think efficiently.  A food may be cheap but if you have to cook two portions of it two hours, it isn’t cheap anymore.  Read M F K Fisher for pure pleasure and loads of information on keeping body and soul together with a minimum of fuel expenditure.  “How to Cook a Wolf” was written about war times, when to waste fuel or any resource was disgraceful.  It still is, we just don’t realize it as thoroughly now.

I’m going to try to keep track of costs when I food blog from now on.  I’m dieting, so I’ll try to come up with low carbohydrate foods that are also cheap.  Just because it never worked before, doesn’t mean it can’t now!  I’ll start with making La Bomba for Saturday night’s guests.  She’s been waiting for 3-1/2 years to be needed.  Let now be her hour.

What’s your way of coping with budgeting?  Food or fuel or anywise– I need the info as much as anyone.  Gimme!