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A Digest of Urban
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How to Turn “Less” into Everything You Need
Imagine a simple dinner made from a potato that has just been
dug out of the earth. You have fresh butter and fresh sour cream, made over the
last week. You don’t have much in the way of exotic spices, just a bit of
locally smoked paprika, some sea salt, and some black pepper. You don’t have
fancy air fryers, 947 different cooking vessels, or gadgets to cut it into
fancy shapes.
You have your potato, some olive oil, some tin foil, and your
oven.
You bake your fist-sized potato after slathering it in fragrant,
dark-gold olive oil (plus a couple of extra ones for future meals.) You cut it
open, slather it with the fresh, yellow butter, and season it with your salt,
pepper, and paprika. Add a dollop of sour cream, then sit down at your table.
You’ve spent about 50 cents total on this, or perhaps you grew every single
bite yourself.
The potato is tender, flaky, and earthy, delicately flavored
with butter, filling your tastebuds. The skin is crisp. The sour cream topping
is a cool, delicious contrast. The flavors imparted by the simple seasonings
are delicate, yet rich at the same time.
This is what happens when you say, “I had a delicious, fresh
potato loaded with delicious things” instead of “I only had a potato for
dinner.”
Lessons from living differently
As many of you know, I’ve taken off to spend some time in
Europe, and things are a lot different here. I’m here for a few months, on a
temporary basis, to do some writing. But while I’ve been here, I think that
there are some lessons we can take away from this that may help us prepare for
the economic crisis that looms over us.
As most of you know,
Greece suffered its own economic collapse in 2009 that worsened over the course
of the next five years or so. (I wrote
about it here.) It was a terrible time here, but gradually, the country
recovered to some degree. However, people still don’t really make enough money
to survive easily in the economy, taxes are exorbitant, and the infrastructure
has become badly degraded. Because of the economic crisis, things are less
“advanced” here than they are in the US. There’s less dependence on technology,
a fact that is in unison welcome (less surveillance) and frustrating (you can’t
do everything online here.)
But there are some things that we can use to help us through
hard times. No, I’m not saying that Greece is “better” than the US – I’ll
always be an American, no matter how far I might wander. I’m just saying that
people are people, no matter where in the world you are. And the way others
have adapted can sometimes help us find our way.
People here have less than people in the United States, but many
of them have turned “less” into everything they need to be healthy, happy, and
content.
Local economies
First of all, you see lots of local economies. I am in Athens, a
large city. When I say “local” I am referring to my neighborhood. Each
neighborhood seems to be built around various circles with a small park in the
center and businesses surrounding it. Just up the road from me, I can find all
sorts of specialty stores: a fruit stand, a vegetable stand, a butcher shop, a
dairy store, a bakery (for bread and savory goods), a pastry shop (for
desserts), and a store that focuses on dried goods like beans, pasta, rice, and
seasonings.
The people running the shops are quite proud of the origins of
the food they sell. One man tells me of the farm his uncle owns, where his
vegetables are grown. “My uncle grows things; differently, he touches each
plant himself,” he confides. Each vendor wants you to know why their product is
so much better than anything else that you’ll find. There’s a certain pride in
this, and everything you purchase is of the utmost quality. After a few weeks
of returning to the same shops and seeing the same people, you begin to build a
relationship and a rapport. A bevy of shopkeepers enthusiastically cheer on my
attempts at learning their language, correcting me, and having me say the word
back properly.
But it’s not only that.
Every week there’s also something called a laiki, where farmers
from the outlying areas come into town and pop up their orange tents selling
their current harvest. These happen all over the city, and each neighborhood
has a different day on which their laiki occurs. I’ve gotten delightful fresh
goods here, and it’s absolutely incredible food. The price is mind-blowing. I
handed a two-Euro coin (about $2.12 USD) to a man standing behind a mountain of
fresh potatoes the other day and ended up with almost more than I could carry
home. I got olive oil decanted into a container that looks like a plastic water
bottle. I have honey from a farm that grows thyme. If it grows from the earth
and is in season, you can find it there.
People here tend to pay cash because the taxes are so
extortionate. They build relationships. They scoff at the chain grocery stores
and their pale offerings in comparison to the rich, fresh goodness you can get
on your street.
Perhaps this is something we could all look for. Maybe we could
find farmers and vendors who take pride in their offerings because they’ve seen
it through from start to finish. Perhaps we could go back to the basics, the
things that don’t come from packages, and buying from people, not corporations.
Thrift as a way of life
Ever since the collapse (and perhaps before, I never visited
previously) thrift is a way of life. Here, you don’t always have hot water. You
have to turn your water heater on about 20 minutes before you need it. This
saves on electricity because you’re only heating up the water for 20 minutes a
day. If you’re careful, enough water will remain in the tank for you to wash
your dishes and have at least warmish water for handwashing during the rest of
the day.
Nobody has dryers and every street you walk down has laundry on
lines flying like flags from apartment balconies. There’s no HOA nonsense here.
Every balcony is loaded with laundry, tomato plants, and herbs. Rooftops have
solar panels and water tanks. Electricity is used in the smallest amounts
possible at all times.
Part of this is that the price here has skyrocketed. Now, it’s
all relative. I was pleasantly surprised when my first electric bill was just
43 Euros ($46.50 USD), but if I only made 800-1000 a month, the typical wage
for a Greek, that would be pretty devastating.
If you were to leave your water heater on all day or your heat
or air conditioner on while you stepped out, locals would look at you as though
you’d completely lost your mind.
Small pleasures
One of the major guilty pleasures here is having coffee. Greeks
will sit outdoors at one of the many cafes here and sip coffee as a social
event, a break from their workday, or on a date. Instead of dropping $10 on
dinner or lunch, or $30 on drinks at a bar, the social outing here is a $2
latte. And what’s more, coffee is to be savored, sitting in one place. You
don’t get up and walk around with your coffee. You certainly don’t drive
through to get it. You sit in a chair, at a table, like a civilized person.
It’s an entire ceremony.
A beautiful day might be spent on a park bench, watching your
children at a playground or reading a book. There’s a park nearby loaded with
orange trees. You can smell the faint whiff of citrus in the air, and benches
are everywhere, placed to take in the views.
Walking is not just transportation – it’s a joy. You walk
wherever you can because a) traffic is a nightmare, and b) parking is a
nightmare. But it’s not a grudging thing – there are lovely shop windows to
peruse, beautiful balconies dripping with flowers and vegetables, plump stray
cats hissing at you from low branches like the guardians of the trees, and the
glorious sights of ancient Athens. Due to this, most people are fit and healthy
and truly love being outdoors and walking to their destinations.
Simplicity
Then there’s the simplicity. The meal I described above is quite
basic but the freshness of the ingredients made it delicious. I have no kitchen
gadgets, few spices, and just one skillet and one baking sheet. It’s a far cry
from my well-equipped kitchen back in North Carolina. But the meals I make here
is savory and decadent because every single component is as fresh as possible.
Another common meal here
is fascia gigantes which
translates to “giant beans.” You can find these on nearly every menu of a
restaurant boasting home-cooked food from Yiayia (Grandma) and it’s a frequent main dish in
home kitchens. These are simply large white butterbeans cooked in tomato sauce.
The sauce contains chunky tomatoes, good olive oil, garlic, onion, celery, and
carrots and it’s seasoned with oregano, thyme, bay leaf, and the tiniest dash
of cinnamon. It cooks all day long until the beans are tender and it’s served
with fresh, crusty bread dipped in more olive oil or slathered in fresh butter.
(Here’s a
recipe that’s
pretty close to what I’ve had.)
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Meals at home are generally very simple but there’s tons of
attention to detail and the best possible ingredients.
Life here isn’t a neverending binge-watch of Netflix or
television. People sit outside and enjoy the weather. They talk to their
neighbors. They go for coffee (as mentioned above) and the many parks and
greenspaces are a testament to their love of nature. I love to sit in a park
and read a book with the spring sunshine sparkling through the olive trees
above me.
I rarely see people arguing about politics or yelling about
anything other than the (stupid) way another person is driving, and it’s all
forgotten within seconds, with no hard feelings. People watch the birds feeding
in their gardens, and nearly everyone feeds the stray cats and offers them
water on the hot days of summer.
No place is perfect, but our
attitudes are everything.
Now, this may sound like an ode to Athens, and I suppose it is
in a way. But the things I see here don’t have to be unique to a different part
of the world. We could all focus on the simple perfection of that ideal dark
red strawberry or the tenderness of the beans in our soup, or the fresh smell
of the plants surrounding us as we wander through a place of nature, trying to
identify the different fragrances and apply them to the proper flora.
We can focus on what we do have instead of what we don’t have.
We can stop and look at the world around us and savor it. We can connect with
other people and find things in common and a reason to laugh together.
I’m not naive. I know that we have deep problems and rifts that
seem impossible to bridge in the United States. But if we start in our own
neighborhoods to build those bridges and find some common ground, perhaps that
could spread. Maybe we can make our own little corners of the world better just
by appreciating them. It could take effort because we’re used to having so much
more, but a conscious attempt to try, to take in every delicious, luxurious,
decadent detail of a piece of fresh bread dripping with butter will make that
bread the feast of kings.
As we scale back our lifestyles to manage this economic chaos
we’re facing, we can take a few notes from the way others have done so. We can
learn from them, and we can embrace the things that we’re left with. Who knows?
It could turn out that your life actually becomes better once you get off the
frantic hamster wheel.
Having less doesn’t have to be a bad thing. With the right appreciation
and attention to detail, less can magically become everything that you need.
Reprinted
with permission from The Organic Prepper.
SIDEBAR
Sell unwanted items. As you're cleaning, you're bound to come across items you no
longer need or want. Consider selling them online or having a yard sale. This
way, you can make some extra cash and declutter your home simultaneously. Try
these sites for
selling your stuff. Donate what doesn't sell.
Make your own cleaning solutions. Instead of buying
expensive cleaning products, mix up your own cleaners using vinegar, baking
soda and other ingredients you probably already have on hand. These products are
often cheaper and can be just as effective. Start with these inexpensive
cleaner recipes.
13 Scary Things That
Happen When An Economy Collapses
In modern days, economic collapse is one of the most likely
disasters that people all over the world must contend with. Even in an economic
stronghold such as the United States, the possibility of economic collapse
looms large.
In fact, many experts believe that the current economic downturn
is just the beginning and that the severity of the covid depression is yet to
be seen. And considering that the fundamental problems behind this economy
still haven't been fixed, they are probably right.
Aside from the financial consequences, though, there are plenty
of other scary things that follow in the wake of an economic collapse. Below,
we’ll cover some of these frightening possibilities in order to highlight why
it is so important to be prepared...
13 Scary Things That Happen When An Economy Collapses
You may also like...
9 Reasons The Second Great Depression Will Be Way Worse
I have two generators for an emergency. I have one
gasoline and one propane. How much gasoline and propane should I store at my
house?
-From Erik
V.
Answer: I
recommend having 30 days’ worth of propane and gas to run your generators.
Yet, I wouldn’t
plan on running your entire house for 30 days but just your basic necessities
to reduce the amount of fuel you need to store.
You can
store both gas and propane in a shed in your backyard, just make sure you add
the fuel stabilizer to the gas and only use premium gas.
Consider
purchasing a solar Generator and/or a multi-fuel system which can operate from
propane or gasoline.
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Why do you need an
emergency radio?
·
. Just
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Radios: Having a couple small, portable radios
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a TacRight Emergency Radio:
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government, individual freedom!
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