How I Am Getting Through This: Home Preservation

04/02/20

by Dylan Heath

Right now, a string of mushrooms hangs from my partner’s window. We placed them there. We pierced the larger shitakes with needle and thread and sewed bags of cheesecloth for the more fragile mushrooms. Neither of us has dried anything before, but we both have memories from our childhood homes. My mom dried herbs and flowers she found around the yard. She hung them on a wooden wrack tied to the ceiling above the stairs coming into the house. My partner remembers catching fish in Baltimore. Her mother would hook string around their heads and hang them between the posts of their back porch. She dried them to rehydrate for later dinners.

I am calmed by food preservation. It’s like opening a savings account but using something real. These mushrooms, preserved right, are a down payment for some delicious soup later on. Pickled vegetables will be richer salads in my future. I can have vinegar and sourdough starters, koji and kefir, miso and kombucha. All little projects going on in my kitchen. All investments in good food. All fighting stress and anxiety from my day.

This can sound selfish to some. Having a well-stocked larder might smack of the worst of libertarianism, someone hoarding food, muttering something like “I got mine.” But I think of it socially. I want to share with those closest to me. If I’ve got food, so do those around me.

I’ve started trading ferments: giving away the extra sourdough starter, swapping vinegar mothers for kefir grains. I’m spreading around my own microbiome. It’s the beginning of a fermentation group. Like-minded people getting together to exchange batches and recipes and pickles. Or sometimes just drinks and stories. Contact me if you’re interested in joining us.

I dream of a full pantry. With everything happening, I’d like to be less reliant on jobs. I am getting too old to be living hand to mouth. I keep thinking about a small garden, herbs and peppers and various vegetables. (I have some indigo seeds, too, which I think are super cool) Some chickens would be nice. Maybe some bees, if I could figure out how to do that. And a pantry full of last year’s conserved vegetables, preserved meats and dairy, eggs suspended in fat, dried herbs hanging from a rack. My larder is for me, of course, but it is also for my friends and family and neighbors and strangers; it is for anyone in need, really.

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Dylan is a cook in Chicago. He has worked in places such as Cafe Marie-Jeanne and Cellar Door Provisions. Before that, he wasted his time and money going to Journalism school at Roosevelt University. His piece on the Big Star Food Line appeared last week in the Quarantine Times.