Living Without

The Plain Reader tells a story of a city person moving to a more rural home in an Amish community. On moving day, the Amish neighbors show up to help the new family unload their truck and carry the boxes into the house. One Amish man, after carrying a number of boxes containing small electric appliances, approached the newcomer and told him that if any of those appliances should break down, call him and he would come right over. The city person, already impressed with the helpfulness and community spirit of his new neighbors, was amazed that an Amish person would also know how to repair a coffee maker or a food processor. He expressed his wonder that his neighbor could fix such things. No, said the Amish man, I have no idea how to repair them, but I can show you how to live without them.

The Luddites knew how to weave fabric without the use of the new powered looms of the early Industrial Revolution. Unlike the Amish, they also knew something about how those new looms operated, and many Luddite weavers could use the powered looms to produce a quality product. But like the Amish neighbor, they knew how to live and survive and even thrive without them. My question for us is: Can we? Do we know how to live and thrive without some of the gadgets we have grown so dependent on? Are we willing to take a look at what we have and what we really need in the way of the “modern conveniences” of our present age?

I am fortunate that I have a heredity of “plain” living, being descended from Hutterites, an Anabaptist community related to the Amish and Mennonites.* Being raised by grandparents who were both of Hutterite descent, I grew up in a household that asked Luddite-like questions, though I'm pretty sure we had no idea who the Luddites were. As a young child I spent a lot of time with my grandmother who was very good at knowing what one could live without. Once, when grocery shopping with Grandma, I asked if we could buy a cake mix. I was attracted by the luscious photos on the boxes and thought they must taste as wonderful as they looked. Grandma told me cake mixes were only for rich people, and besides, didn't she bake some kind of dessert from scratch every day? Fitted sheets were also for rich people, so I learned to make a bed with flat sheets and hospital corners. I watched soap operas with Grandma on days I was home from school and I would often suggest we might want to try some product that was being advertised during the commercials. Grandma would then look at me as though she doubted I had any common sense at all. She would go on to explain, again, that commercials were made by people who would lie to you just to get you to buy something you didn't need in the first place. Her negative attitude toward the earnest efforts of Madison Avenue had its desired effect on me. Cynical child that I had become, I now watched commercials looking for the subtle lies those crafty advertisers were using to get me to buy things I did not want need.

Thanks to Grandma, I eventually grew into an adult relatively immune to the wiles of advertising. I learned I could live without many things. I learned to ask the questions: Do I really need this? Will it really make my life better/easier/more fulfilling? And do I have room for it? Years later, thanks to Anthony Bourdain's edict in his book Kitchen Confidential, I learned I could have a fully functioning kitchen with only one high quality knife.** This revelation confirmed my already growing suspicion that so many kitchen “necessities” might not be necessary at all.

When I was first married, my baking utensil collection consisted of a hand cranked rotary egg beater and a wooden spoon. I choose to forego the large stand mixer, even the hand held mixer, though I did acquire one many years later. I prepared cookie dough and cake batter with a wooden spoon, and if I needed to beat egg whites or whip cream, I took out the rotary egg beater. When my children were young and one of them would eat only carbs, I spent a year baking all of our own bread It was the heyday of the bread machine, but I made bread with only a covered mixing bowl, a wooden spoon and two bread pans. Added bonus – I found the kneading process extremely cathartic. I would have missed all that stress relief of pounding dough onto a floured counter if I had given into a bread machine.

Today, I do own a hand-held electric mixer I use to make cakes as well as whipping egg whites and cream. I have a food processor which I rarely use. After asking all the appropriate Luddite-like questions, I did see my way to purchasing an immersion blender last year which really can do amazing things and has made me consider giving away my food processor. We also own a coffee maker which is my husband's go to for morning coffee and making large amounts of coffee when we have company. I prefer a low tech plastic Melitta brewing cone and paper filter for the best pour-over for one person. My two most used, go-to kitchen “gadgets”, however, are still a good sturdy wooden spoon and a hand cranked rotary grater, the kind that looks like a Klingon warship.

I'm sure there are other things around the house that we have let in over the years that are not absolutely necessary to having a meaningful, productive life – electric tooth brushes, milk frothers, blenders, electric pencil sharpeners, probably other items that have come and gone as they have outlived their dubious usefulness. But I like to think that if the existing conveniences we still have were to break down, we wouldn't need an Amish neighbor to show us how to live without them. Hopefully, we are on our way to figuring it out for ourselves.

*My other blog - https://habanrus.blogspot.com – is all about my Hutterite heredity.

**He says a cook only needs one good chef's knife. He does acknowledge that most people do not have the skills to use a chef's knife as a paring knife so he would allow the home cook one paring knife. And if you insist on a third knife, let it be one for slicing bread. But no knife sets, please!