Last Meal for a Critic

Cool review here. I’ve never eaten at French Laundry, of which the restaurant reviewed is an East-Coast spinoff, but I’ve wanted to for a long time. Probably should try to do so before the economy really tanks, hmm?

Why do I categorize this in our “By Ourselves, For Ourselves” SHTF category? Because one of the most critical things in an extended SHTF situation is going to be the ability to make your stored food taste good.  That’s why most of our canned stuff consists of staples like beans, meats, veggies, not prepared things like soups or the like. Easier to play around with recipes when you have basics to work with.

I’m reminded of a scene from a classic TEOTWAWKI novel (I thought it was George Stewart’s Earth Abides, but it was actually Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague, which might well be considered a sequel to Earth Abides, even though London wrote his bleak-as-The Road tale decades before Stewart wrote his).

As you say, I talked. I talked all the time, and for this food was given me—much food, fine food, beautiful food, food that I have not tasted in sixty years and shall never taste again. I sometimes think the most wonderful achievement of our tremendous civilization was food—its inconceivable abundance, its infinite variety, its marvellous delicacy. O my grandsons, life was life in those days, when we had such wonderful things to eat.

Learn to cook well. Do it now; in harder times you’ll be too busy to learn. And make sure to try making tasty dishes with your stored stuff from time to time. I’m still a tyro at cooking, but I found that I can make a pretty nice pasta sauce from a can of stewed tomatoes, a can of tomato sauce, a small can of tomato paste, two cans of roast beef (including the gravy), two cans of mushrooms, and some spices.