One thing that this process has done for me is give me a newfound respect for what many (maybe most) homemakers did back in the 40s and 50s. The amount of time that I've spent in the past week prepping food and cooking food and washing dishes has surprised me, and I was expecting to have to do a lot of work.
Now I know that there are a lot of people out there who still do a lot of this. But with the prevalence of convenience foods of all kinds, I think that cooking three meals a day from scratch is more the exception than the rule. Pouring out a bowl of cereal doesn't take much time or thought, and neither does building a sandwich from lunchmeat out of a package. I'm not trying to put these things down: everyone does whatever they think is best for themselves and/or family members, and if heating up a frozen meal is acceptable and all there's time for, it's not up to me to say that's good or bad. I'm just saying that I now have a greater sense of the amount of time and effort that went into the process of cooking meals, day after day, before convenience foods became so popular.
I went to the market last night to pick up some more supplies (spinach and applesauce will be the next new menu items). As usual, there were several sample tables with chips and salsa, and cheese, and various other goodies to try to tempt you into buying the products. I have to admit, seeing them was pretty frustrating. I'd usually stab a little cheese cube with a toothpick, or try whatever salsa they had out, just to see if I liked it -- and occasionally the marketing trick would work, and I'd buy the product. But now I can't try the samples, or buy the products, or even think about any other similar products. Unless they start setting out bowls of pureed vegetables with no added ingredients, samples are a thing of the past, at least for the time being. It was a little disheartening.
But I know it's worth it if I can get my gut back on track, which is the direction things seem to be heading.
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