Unleavened Bread

My challenge, to go one week without spending a cent, has been less about cutting back on spending and more about making do with less because it's good for the soul, because we've become accustomed to too much excess. I remember, back in the day, when I was living in the jungle and I vowed that I would not return to American consumerism. Despite my best intentions, it happened.

Recently, I've begun to feel as if my stuff owns me and that's not how I want to live. I don't want to be a slave to my mortgage or the quest to maintain a certain lifestyle. I found myself dreaming of walking off into the woods and finding a cabin somewhere far away from the world of consumerism where I would grow my own food, haul water from a creek, and live a very basic lifestyle in nature. Of course, it's a very impractical dream but that doesn't stop me from dreaming it. After all, I have lived that lifestyle overseas to varying degrees.

The practical side of me kicked in and I started thinking that I can simplify my life without running away. Living a week without spending a cent, without turning the heat above 65 degrees, has just been a starting place.

I'm making my way back to a simpler life. I want to be able to use my excess to GIVE and not to accumulate. I guess I'm not much for the American dream of having MORE and MORE and MORE each generation. It seems to me that the abundance we've experienced as a nation throughout the 80's until now has led to a shallow obsession with possessions, material wealth, and financial success. We've stopped being a people of depth.

I know that's not true of everyone. There are many exceptions. And some Americans are living in abject poverty without ever having known what it is to have plenty. I don't mean to dismiss the suffering that exists, I simply seek to address the issue of our abundance and lack of gratitude, our departure from simplicity and move toward excessive consumerism.

Baking unleavened bread with my daughter has been a blast. We've experimented with this and that recipe, trying to come up with tasty meals from the dregs of our cupboards. You know those items that sit on our back shelves and never get used? I have canned yams, pumpkin, and garbanzo beans. I have a big 'ol bag of dried kidney beans and a jar of raw honey. It's stuff I shuffle to the back of the cupboards whenever I bring new groceries in after my weekly shopping trip.

It's been a great experiment and it's not over yet. Before I forget, does anybody have a good kidney bean or canned yam recipe? If so, I sure could use it! ;)


Copyright Just Kate, 2010

Enjoy this blog? Receive alerts when new blogs are posted! Just click on the "Follow" button to the right. You can also check out my other blog at: http://justkate2009.blogspot.com/

Putting Life Into Perspective: Living One Week Without Spending a Cent

There's so much talk about the current bad economy and it's certainly true that times are tough in comparison to what we've become accustomed to in recent decades, and yet I look at the pictures from Haiti and think how wonderfully blessed we are, and I want to reach right into the picture and bring those people into my home, feed them, love them, give them shelter and hope. There are ways I can do that figuratively and tangibly and that's good, but it's not enough. I need to use the compassion that I feel to put my own life into perspective and find new balance.

Last night, my husband and I watched a 2008 movie called "Defiance" about a band of Jews who survived for years in the forest of Eastern Europe, evading the Nazis. The story is true. Professionals and intellectuals and working men and women - people accustomed to prosperity - left life as they knew it behind and scraped out a meager existence in the forest where they struggled to survive and many died.

So, what does the current situation in Haiti have to do with the story of those defiant Jews? They are stories of human suffering and endurance. They remind me of how blessed I am, of how little true suffering I have known. Both help me put my own life in perspective.

Before we went to bed, hubby and I made a pact. We agreed that we will not spend a cent this week, beyond the gas he needs to get to work and back, and it's not like I've got the kitchen cupboards stocked. Today would normally be my grocery shopping day.

By the end of the week our cupboards will be bare. I look forward to exercising the ingenuity I will need to feed my family without the fresh fruits, vegetables, and meat that I typically pick up every few days over the course of the week. I get to look forward to it because it's a CHOICE and not a necessity, so the exercise won't be real in that sense, but it will serve as a good reminder of the things we take for granted in life.

I'll write about it as we go along, let you know what we're eating and what I discover in the process of living a week without spending, and I challenge you to try it too. Instead of joining in the talk about how tough times are, let's count our blessings and do a little something to remind ourselves of how blessed we really are.

©JustKate,2010