What You Can Do Without

As you can probably imagine, a family of six requires a lot of food to function. It requires more when three of the six are growing boys who eat like hogs. So when my fridge started acting up last weekend, I thought we had solved it. But by early in the week, it was apparent that the reprieve was temporary.

What we have now is a cabinet of two doors that keeps things mildly cool.

We are now a family of six living out of a cooler.

You can pare your life down to very little, when you have to.

Eggs don't have to be refrigerated. Neither does butter. So some cheese, some milk, some lunch meat, sausage for breakfast, almond milk for mom and a couple other things and you're set. You buy everything else daily and try to buy only enough not to have leftovers. After all, you can't save it.

That's a weird wrinkle for a big family. Leftovers are not just the norm, they are a staple. Leftovers are lunch for mom, leftovers are the building blocks of future meals. Leftovers are the stuff Restaurant Night supper is made of. It's an economy that we can't use now, because we can't save anything.

It's not a hardship, really. Or maybe it's a suburban hardship. But we have a big cooler for food and a smaller cooler for ice for drinks. It's a bit like camping out, in your own house. It's an adventure, and weird and inconvenient.

The new fridge will be here later this next week.

Until then, may I interest you in a cheese sandwich?
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