The Best Sauce

If my kitchen smells a bit peculiar at the moment, it's only because I embracing a notion to be productive. The oven is packed with a peach-blueberry crisp, chocolate chip muffins and a pumpkin pie while the stove top entertains my largest stockpot simmering the makings for chicken broth (for pressure canning experiments) and a bit of roasted veggie pasta sauce. The aroma around here isn't bad, just strange.

Some of these will find their ways to friends' houses and others are meant for us here at home, but what almost all have in common is that they would not have been possible today had I not canned, frozen or otherwise stored the key ingredients months ago. I haven't been able to do any food shopping for almost three weeks and not for the first time am I thankful for spending the time I do stocking our pantry. Remind me of this, will you, when come late summer I complain about drowning in apples or tomatoes or whatever is vexing me at that moment?

The fruit crisp is our dinner party offering. I rashly promised to bring dessert without actually thinking about what I might produce. With the day upon me, I peered into cupboard and freezer until - a ha! - inspiration struck in the form of two bags of frozen blueberries to pair with a pint of canned peaches. A quick crumble on top and off we go. I love fruit crisps hot, warm or cold, with cream or without and will take almost any opportunity to share my devotion. If peach is good and blueberry is better, surely together they'll be fantastic, right? Let us hope.

The roasted veggie sauce is saving tomorrow's lunch. I've got some wagon wheel pasta on hand - my favorite for brown bagging because they don't have to be cut, twirled or slurped - but no commercial sauce. No problem. I pulled a pint of the roasted veggie sauce off the shelf, poured in a half a cup of leftover merlot and just like that, there's tomorrow's lunch.

These are just two examples of the sheer convenience of having a stock of homemade convenience foods. On other recent days I've opened salsa for snacks, pickles to brighten a plain meal, and diced tomatoes for dirty rice. Blackberry jam filled thumbprint cookies made to cheer a friend, while tomolives graced more than one martini glass. In nearly three weeks of what I had thought of as sub-optimal food procurement I've been astonished again and again by how little we actually needed and missed.

Even while I extol the virtues of home canning, though, I have to confess that it's true that similar benefits could be had with careful shopping for commercial goods. Still, I think we can't overlook the empowerment that taking more charge of one's food brings. I know the origin of every ingredient in every jar I opened, hugged the people that stood beside me filling them, pint after pint after pint.

This week the pantry associated with the local medical clinic put out a call for assistance, looking to fill their rapidly dwindling stocks. With three weeks of near-zero food-related expenditures thanks to decisions we made six or seven months ago, my family's mandate is abundantly clear.

What an extraordinary privilege.