And the friend's cupboard was bare

I am forcing myself to do a little more socializing at work and after work.  If I had my way I'd just stay home and never talk to anyone but that doesn't always make for a good working relationship.  But, I learned a lesson that I will socialize at THEIR homes way before I allow anyone else to come to mine.  Or at least before I let anyone else come inside my house. 

In the eight months of being at the new job (I guess it's not so new anymore) I have had two coworkers inside my home.  One came because she wanted to see my chickens and she ended up staying for lunch.  The other came because she brought her kids to Girl's birthday party.  Three others have been outside because one day we used my house as the carpool place when we had to all head down south. 

The one that came for lunch unfortunately knows about our home store.  Boy went in there to get something and he left the door open.  The coworker walked into that room and saw the shelf of canning jars, then peeked into the room and saw the shelves of food.  I just nonchalantly said that I don't have time to go to the grocery store so I shop in bulk and have a couple weeks of food on hand.  Now that coworker is a Mormon.  Once I asked her about her food storage and she said that they have been told that they don't have to store more than a couple weeks worth of food.  No more having to store for a year.  I made some comments about how I could never imagine storing that much food...

The other person who came over didn't even go inside since the party was in the backyard.  She didn't see the home store but it impressed the first coworker enough to make a comment one day at the office, asking if she had seen my pantry.  The other person said no.  She said it was really impressive.  I had to respond somehow so I said that I can food and she saw my canning jars.  I also said that I shop only every couple of weeks and I had just shopped.  No big deal, especially if you saw how much food was served at Girl's party.  It would be easy to imagine that my shelves had been full and in one swoop of a weekend it could easily get emptied out.  I just tried to downplay the food storage.

A while ago I wrote in the blog about how one of the coworkers said he and his wife shop once a week and by the end of the week the cupboard is pretty bare.  They do have a small garden and during the summer they grow quite a few vegetables, but still, the pantry is bare by the weekend.

This week a coworker threw a birthday party for another coworker.  The birthday "boy" is over 4 score, and still works part-time.  It was a pot luck.  I brought bread.  Of course I made it myself.  I threw the dough together the night before a put it into the fridge.  I took it out in the morning but put it into the fridge at work.  At the end of the day I took it out.  Once to the party I pulled the dough into individual roll pieces, kneaded each piece a bit, then put them into the baking pan.  The dough was still cold so I put the pan into a plastic bag and put it on top of the kid's slide to warm up a bit.  After about 15 minutes it was ready to throw into the oven.  I sprinkled the rolls with garlic, rosemary, lemon seasoning.  Why?  Because we were having tri-tip and that combination just sounded good. 

I went into the kitchen to put the pan into the oven.  The pantry door was open.  There wasn't even enough food to last two days.  I opened the fridge to take out some cold water and there was even less food in there.  And this was a Monday night!  I didn't see enough food in that house to make it through the week. 

A coworkers wife asked about the rolls.  You really made them?  A strange look came over my face.  I just couldn't imagine buying rolls at the store.  What did I put in them?  Flour, salt, yeast, water, vinegar to sour it, but then I made it too sour so I added some sugar, and some garlic/rosemary/lemon seasoning.  You mean you just put the ingredients in you didn't measure?  I guess another stupid look overcame me.  Why would I measure the ingredients for bread?  You just throw whatever you want into the bowl and you taste the dough to see if you like it.  It's not hard to make bread or rolls.

While the coworkers are all really nice people to hang around with, I can see that not one of them is a prepper or has even thought about it.  Of these five people I've mentioned only one hunts and another one gardens.  One has camped.  I've only brought up the idea of preparedness with the one who said they don't have to store food anymore.  I will bring the topic up with some of the others but for now, I'm still just observing.