Reply #6: When I was growing up our family lived without a fridge for a year. [View All]

We also had a vegetarian Thanksgiving once, but that completely freaked out my dad's parents, so we never did it again. My parents are not much concerned about how other people do things, they follow their own path.

When I was single I never had a stable living situation, and even ended up living in my car or on peoples' sofas a few times. Whenever I had a place I could call my own, a room in a house maybe, or a shack in a yard, even if there was a fridge I wouldn't keep anything there. And in some of the places, some not so nice situations, housemates would steal food in the fridge and then shrug it off through intimidation. (Hmmmm, looking back again, my life a single young man sorta sucked...)

Anyways, it doesn't take a refrigerator to eat. You can do almost anything with canned or dry food and fresh fruits and vegetables. The only real trick is judging how hungry you are (or your family is) because if there are any leftovers you'll have to compost them or feed them to the dogs. If you undershoot a bit on your estimates, you simply make up the difference with snacks, preferably something good for you, but in our family the most common make-up food was toasted sourdough bread & butter.

I used to make sourdough bread, and also buttermilk out of the inexpensive dry milk you could get in any bad neighborhood, but my wife doesn't like either of those things.