guest article

GUEST ARTICLE

A FEW DOOMER THOUGHTS ON PANTRIES,PLUS A BOOK REPORT
So I've been thinking about food storage, and you know if you have a decent pantry with stored food, YOU are the odd duck. I don't understand that. Didn't our ancestors store food to get through winter? Why is that so weird now? Is it possible that architects designed pantries right out of houses as there is often a grocery store nearby? And we just forgot to store food as there's no specific place for it in our ranch houses and apartments?So here's the book: The Pantry, Its History and Modern Uses, by Catherine Seiberling Pond.

I wanted to dislike this, as it discusses robins egg blue paint, displaying one's fancy dishes, and using food storage areas to highlight your antique linen collection. Useless frippery! But with closer reading, this was genuinely interesting. Definitions are given for wet and dry larders, butt'ries, storerooms, cellars, cool rooms, etc. Examples of early American, farmhouse, Victorian, great estate, twentieth century, and modern pantries are shown. There's some discussion about how the pantry and kitchen have evolved, with kitchens getting smaller and housewives urged to be more efficient.Here are a few choice quotes: "One reason that the pantry declined so rapidly after the Second World War was that not only had the size of American housing shrunk significantly but that wartime rationing and concerns about hoarding made extended food storage unthinkable."

"Any mention of stocking the pantry was frowned upon during the war, smacking as it did of hoarding..." This is followed by discussion of having an emergency shelf in case of atomic attack. NOW we're dooming!And, from the chapter The Modern Pantry, "A funny thing happened on the way to the millennium, we began to cook more, bake more, buy more, and stockpile more. We not only enjoy power shopping at large wholesale grocery stores, but we like to have something on hand for a rainy day or a possible catastrophe. Having ample supplies at the ready is a secure assurance of the progressing pace of the modern world -- and having a full pantry is about provision for ourselves and our loved ones, about staving off the world at large while we maintain a semblance of order and security in our own kitchens."This isn't just a pretty coffee table kind of a book. If you look past the damned cute exterior, the interior is thought provoking, and will have you considering how form follows function at your house. It is definitely worth a trip to the library.