{"id":1500,"date":"2010-12-28T23:28:50","date_gmt":"2010-12-29T04:28:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/?p=1500"},"modified":"2020-04-04T13:36:22","modified_gmt":"2020-04-04T17:36:22","slug":"preservation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/2010\/12\/28\/preservation\/","title":{"rendered":"Preservation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>There have been a few studies measuring <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gross_national_happiness\">happiness<\/a> in various activities. The best ones pester the subjects to report their instantaneous happiness at random times throughout the study. \u201cWhat are you doing right now, and how happy are you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If I were to participate in one of those studies, I suspect that it would find that some of the happiest times in my life are when I\u2019m cooking or preserving food. We participate in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.capeannfreshcatch.org\/\">Cape Ann Fresh Catch<\/a> community supported fishery, as well as two different CSAs. The afternoon that I bring home that box of veggies, or the ocean fresh fish, usually turn into a peaceful ritual of cleaning, packing, boiling, freezing, and so on. Similarly, people who have been over to my house know that I love the puttering around in the kitchen, trying to find a meal hidden in the ingredients that we happen to have at hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I used to do a lot more boiling-water-bath canning, but it\u2019s something of a pain to get the water bath up to temperature. Since I\u2019ve discovered freezing, and installed a chest freezer in the basement, I don\u2019t do so much of it anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I also used to go for huge batches \u2013 imagining somehow that I was stocking up for winter. In my situation, stocking up for winter would require almost full time work in the summer and fall. It\u2019s not a good use of my time. In addition, it basically guarantees that a lot of the food will go un-eaten. If you were measuring my happiness \u2013 it hits a local low when I realize that something that I preserved has been allowed to go bad by sitting on the shelf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So now with most recipes I just make a few pints at a time, and I open them at the drop of a hat. Food is for eating. It\u2019s the same with the wine. Wine is for drinking, doubly so with the homemade stuff. The question that comes to mind when I find myself worrying about the supply of my pickles, relishes, or whatever is \u201cwhat are you saving it for?\u201d What better place than here? What better place than now?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There have been a few studies measuring happiness in various activities. The best ones pester the subjects to report their instantaneous happiness at random times throughout the study. \u201cWhat are you doing right now, and how happy are you?\u201d If I were to participate in&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hobbies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1500"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1501,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1500\/revisions\/1501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}