“While you’re up,” I said to my husband, “could you get me a cup of coffee?”
This was a joke, of course, because he was not actually up. In fact, he was sitting in a rocking chair with a large rabbit on his lap. But I had a smallish dog on my lap, plus I was knitting, and helping the boy with his homework.
“While you’re in the kitchen,” my husband called to our daughter, “could you get your mother a cup of coffee, and a big glass of water for me?”
That was also a joke because even though the daughter is almost old enough to drink coffee, neither of our children is capable of pouring or carrying a cup of coffee without splashing most of it onto the floor.
Despite the wildly humorous banter that goes on in our house, we are big on doubling up on tasks. It’s efficient. We bake on cold nights when the wood stove is running, and I grocery shop on my way to or from work. We do errands on our trips back and forth to the girl’s ballet school.
“Since you’re going to town,” one of us will say to the other, “could you return the library books and pick up some coffee and drop off some potatoes for Esther?”
Sometimes it can get ridiculous. Because I work almost 40 miles from home, it is often assumed that I can stop dozens of places on my commute. “I’m already getting gas, and we’re out of juice, so I if I also stop at the Agway I’ll never get home,” I’ll say. “But you’re going right through Ballston Spa,” my husband will say.
And I do go right through Ballston Spa. And Burnt Hills. So I might as well stop at the orchard and pick up a bushel of cider apples for sauce and for the animals, and an extra box for my friend the baker, because why should she have to drive for pie apples if I’m out anyway?
Doubling works if you can share errands with neighbors, or merge a few trips into one. And with gas prices edging higher again, it might be time to look for more opportunities to carpool or errand-pool.
Since our wood stove is both a heater and a cook stove, doubling is easy. As long as the oven is hot, we might as well bake bread. And as long as we’re baking bread, we might as well roast some potatoes for the next day. And boil beans on the stove top, and maybe start a pot of soup stock too.
The pet pig is a special beneficiary of this methodology, since she often gets a lovely stew of slow-cooked apple and potato peels, simmered in water and those quarter-glasses of milk the kids leave from breakfast, with some stale bread and Indian corn thrown in. This mixture sits on the back of the stove, slowly cooking into a sort of pig pudding.
“What smells so good?” the kids ask. “Oh, that’s just the pig’s breakfast,” we say. It’s only fair — the pig hates winter, but loves her stews. And the wood stove is going anyway . . .
That stove is pretty much the center of our home life in the winter. We’re always cooking double batches of everything, making two dinners, and tomorrow’s lunch, at the same time. When we’re done with the oven, the door stays open to pour more heat into the house.
There are a few other places in the house where doubling up makes sense. As long as the bathroom is all steamed up from a bath, we might as well wash the mirror. As long we’re wiping up the coffee the kids spilled, we might as well just wash the floor.
I know someone who takes her bread dough with her in the car when she’s running errands that will keep her away from home too long. “It rises great in the car,” she told me about her trips, with a bowl of dough, to the library or market. “I can punch it down in the car, cover it up again and let it rise again, and it’s ready to be shaped when I get home.”
This is not something I’ve tried, or would even recommend. Because the vision of sliding bread dough hitting the floor, or rising dough overflowing onto the passenger seat is more than I can handle. But it works for her.
What works for you?
Margaret Hartley is the Gazette’s Sunday and features editor. Greenpoint appears in the Gazette’s print edition Sundays on the Environment page.
Have a question or a topic you’d like addressed on Greenpoint? Email greenpoint@dailygazette.net.
