I’m home now and more comfortable.  But I think there’s a quite a road ahead of me.  I haven’t eaten anything since Thursday and have no desire to.  The current thinking is that I have sludgy gall bladder … yes, that’s as gross as it sounds.

If you think of it, though, pray for my room mate.  She was hit riding her bicycle on Friday.  The woman who hit her stayed with her long enough to call 9-1-1 and then left the scene.  Roommate broke her ankle and must keep weight off it for a month.  This is complicated by her left arm being so torn up she could see her bone through the laceration.  She was also discharged today and seems to have a good support system here.  But do say a prayer or two for her when you think of it.

I am happy to be home and in my own digs again.  That helps more than anything else.  Thank you all for your wonderful well-wishes.  Lighthusband kept printing them out and bringing them to me at the hospital.

Yes, Erin, they did give me Dilaudid and sent me home with some as well.  That is some great stuff and causes some very realistic dreams!  On the other hand, it’s likely to be a while before I’m able to do any wonderful writing or thinking here.  Oh well …

LightHusband got a surprise today. He had an appointment that wasn’t nearly as long as it was supposed to be. Instead of driving home from Baltimore at 5 in the afternoon, he was able to leave at 2. So he stopped in the new Whole Foods store and we **finally** celebrated the end of the great pantry challenge. We had steak and baked potatoes and grilled vegetables and salad. We’re about to have pie for dessert. He splurged and brought me some new beer. It’s my new favorite … Smuttynose IPA. Yum … and it’s brewed right next door to home in New Hampshire.

… in which we subliminally toss the whole thing out the window.

Breakfast – LightHusband was up and out before the rest of us awoke, but there was a telltale bowl on the table. LightChildren had cereal … I think. I believe I may have forgotten to eat a proper breakfast but did toast a remaining English muffin around 11 and had some strawberry rhubarb jam on it.

Lunch – you guessed it.

Dinner – was supposed to be fried rice. But when we pulled our 3 frozen chicken breasts from the freezer … they had been gone too long. Remember I said I’ve been faint of heart? It was the FlamingLamb twins birthday, so we went out to dinner to celebrate. We have not bought any food to add to our pantry. But we may be out of the competition. I’ll leave that one up to the judges.

Today is the big retreat day. I’m making bean soup, curried rice salad and corn bread for lunch. I’m making some changes to the bean soup recipe because we do not have tomato-vegetable soup. So I’m using chili sauce and chicken broth with additional herbs and spices. Since I’ve never made this before I have no expectations.

Dinner will be frozen lasagna with homemade bread. I’m also making bread pudding with hard sauce. Afternoon snack will be scones and coffee.

I love bread machines.

Tomorrow I may just collapse.

Update:  at breakfast this morning … LightHusband, “Last of the juice!”  LightBoy, “One step closer to FAST FOOD!!!!”

… in which I feel faint of heart.

Breakfast – cereal again. We’re running quite low. LightGirl confided in me that she does not particularly care for instant oatmeal (that we have 2 or 3 boxes of). She really prefers my homemade version. Too …. Bad.

Lunch – more frozen garbage from hell Schwans. I had a Design Team meeting in the evening which means my dinner is taken care of and the rest of the family can have leftover Beef Soup before hockey practice. LightGirl ate the. last. containerofapplesauce which I was lusting after to put on a piece of gingerbread. I’m still bitter about this. I will not reveal how petty I am to my daughter. But she will pay for her gluttony. Or something. She will have to eat instant oatmeal.

Dinner – Design Team meeting at which was served a SALAD from which emanated beams of light and a chorus of angels and cheese fondue (also very very good) into which we dunked bread AND apples. I was especially fond of the apples. LightHusband and Children had leftover Beef Soup and loved it again. It is good. LightBoy thinks I got the recipe from “colonial days.” I told him I made it up. I soared in his eyes. In about a year I’m going to bump my arse with him … but it’s nice right now.

I would quit now. Except I’m pretty sure we haven’t learned what we need to learn yet. We’re not done. I don’t know how I’ll know. But I will know when we’re done. Or. We will run out of food. Or. We will get scurvy or something horrible.

That’s all I have for today.

… in which we provide photographic evidence of the horror.

LightHusband got a bee in his bonnet this morning and emptied our freezers (3 … one small chest freezer and two frig-freezers) on to our washer and dryer.  The inventory system was not working.  The LightChildren are now compliant with the challenge. They will not, however, provide an inventory for said challenge. Ungrateful wretches. Once all of the frozen food was on the washer/dryer, he photographed it (while I hid my head in the sand). He then reorganized it all in the 3 freezers. Here are the photos of our frozen food, the pantry and our refrigerator.

Note: not all boxes and bags are full. For instance, there’s a huge bag of frozen chicken breasts in there that only had two breasts in it. I do realize, however, that this does nothing but incriminate me.

Believe it or not, our frig is beginning to look a little empty.  Okay, not empty … but at least we are using stuff instead of just piling leftovers in that never get eaten.  Now they get eaten.

The top shelf is almost all condiments (because LightHusband is having a love affair with condiments and hey, at least I know where he is at night). The big red tub is dog food.  Yes, there are 3 jars of maraschino cherries.  A failed holiday cooking attempt. Stop laughing … you know you have those too.

Next week I’m starting a 12 step program for hoarders.  Do I have any fellow members?

… in which I finally achieve one goal and begin to get creative.

Breakfast – homemade oatmeal with dried cranberries substituted for raisins (since I threw our nasty old dried up fuzzy crumbly raisins away in the pantry purge a few weeks before the Pantry Challenge). LightChildren declared cranberries far more excellent than raisins. I wouldn’t know … I hate oatmeal. I’ll make it, but I won’t eat it.

Lunch – LightChildren had a buffet of various frozen, then baked convenience foods (clam strips, cod nuggets) and some leftover mac & cheese, so did LightHusband. BlazingEwe and FlamingLambs were here and her children shared said frozen feast. BlazingEwe and I (on the other hand) prepared a tasty lunch of cream of tomato soup and grilled cheddar cheese with apple sandwiches. YUM.

Dinner – scones. Coffee with my friend went long. We had lots and lots to catch up on. So we just kept eating scones and grinning at each other because we were being naughty (not eating a proper dinner as our mothers taught us). I did get hungry later on and have a chicken pot pie from the freezer.

Tonight’s dinner is already half-way done … I began a beef and barley soup from some roast beef bones in my frig. I think it’s time to break out the bread machine as well. Our bread is finally gone.

I did realize that we do have some things to serve our guests on Saturday. There is an enormous lasagna in the freezer that will do well for dinner. I can make bread. I can make other yummy things throughout the day. The only thing that will be lacking is a salad.

I ought to have some erudite bit to say here.

All of this is really driving home to me how difficult it is to keep up with fresh fruit and vegetables.  If one is truly impoverished, even by our standards here in the US, having a balanced diet is nearly impossible.  Yet that is what is necessary to achieve balance as a human being.  It is the cornerstone for nearly every pursuit in life.  I am allowing this to happen in our lives because I know that it is short term.  But what about those for whom fruit and vegetables are not ordinary, but luxuries?  Or sufficient protein?

I have a foggy distant memory from my childhood of a number beyond which this planet could not sustain life.  I don’t remember what the number was.  I just remember it as a population number that was estimated we (as in the global we) had the power to attain in my lifetime.  I have a memory too, that there was much debate at the time over the number and the powers of progressive, industrial farming to overcome the number.  Or the powers of family planning methods to remove our collective feet from the gas pedal.  I remember that younger friends of my parents talked about this and made plans to have two or fewer children.  Once in a while now, as I engage in experiences like this pantry challenge, I wonder about our estimates of how many people our planet can sustain.  How do we measure that?  What does it mean to sustain life?  How do we measure a life?  I’m not entertaining any horrible notions of genocide.  But I wonder at times about our measures of life.  I think that there are some things that defy measurement.  Perhaps my question would better be:  Can we measure a life?  What does it take to sustain that life well?

… or how I tortured the LightChildren and won the day 😉

Here’s how our first day of the Pantry Challenge 2007 went It was an average day … breakfast was regular (cereal all around … LightHusband decided to try Ezekiel 4:9 cereal last week. His review: “gravel with milk”). Lunch was a variety of frozen things that we’ve gathered over the past couple of weeks. Dinner … wow. Dinner was a buffet of appetizers … spinach-artichoke bowls, chicken nuggets, cream cheese jalapeno peppers, and french fries. BOO-YAH! Healthy living here we come.

Day 2 –

LightHusband and Children eat cereal for breakfast. LightHusband realizes that we can make bread because we have yeast in the cupboard and chortles with glee. Why o why can I not get him to understand that this is NOT about winning it’s about being creative.

I forgot to eat breakfast. This is not unusual. Then I remembered that I’m meeting a friend to workout at lunchtime. So I grab 2 eggs and toast at 11:30.

LightChildren ate lunch while I was working out. Not sure what they did. LightHusband was at a business meeting. Does this count?

As of this writing LightChildren have been given the mission to inventory our pantry and freezers. They are resistant to this. In fact, they are doing this only because their only other choice was to clean their rooms. Heaven forfend. They’re going to clean their rooms when they’re done.

Dinner tonight will be based upon the inventory.

More later …

She picked up her coffee and looked around her bakery and smiled. She said, “If something is too cheap that means someone is paying the cost somewhere. Maybe it is the environment or maybe it is someone else down the line.”

Great minds think alike … this is my theory as well. I was enthralled by the article in which it was stated. Lead there by the inimitable, Brother Maynard, the article is actually the transcript of a Canadian radio show. But this bakery may just be incentive to travel to Winnipeg sometime soon.

I took Sabbath today in an odd way. I did not rest and yet I feel refreshed in many parts of my spirit that I have not felt in years.

I worshipped with my father. We discussed weather forecasting and the fact that my old wive’s tales are correct a greater percentage of the time than the media professionals. We got warm in the sun on the edge of the lake and wondered about the state of a rope which had soaked itself for the summer and how long it would take to dry out sufficiently to be tied off and melted.

LightHusband and I did laundry at our traditional laundrymat. Usually we do laundry during the week up here. This year we did it on a Sunday. What a treat. There was laundry comedy and laundry philosophy. A lady came in who announced to us that she had some new jokes for us this week. Here is one:

What do Winnie the Pooh and John the Baptist have in common? (answer at the end)

She had some other jokes, but they were a little off-color. She wore a very large brimmed floppy hat. She said she told jokes because she hated doing laundry so much that this made it fun. I thought that was a very good coping strategy.

Another man came in with about 8 small laundry baskets full of laundry. He clearly had a complicated system. I wondered about his system. He asked, of no one in particular, “Why is it that today all the dryers are full, but the washers are empty? How did that happen?” Laundry mat philosophy at it’s finest.

Oh, you want the answer: They both have the middle name “the” … we cracked up!

Sign seen on a local church: Spiritual Progressivism. It made me wish I’d gone to that service.

We went grocery shopping while the clothes dried in the full dryers at a small local grocery store where the checkout clerk was fast and helpful, and she smiled at us while she checked our groceries (even tho she was a “sullen” teenager). And I made a blueberry pie when I came home.

In all, a good Sabbath rest. The clothes are clean, the larder is full and the week is ready to begin.