I bake all of our family’s bread. Sunday night I dug a ziploc bag of rough chopped bread out of the freezer to make the bread crumbs for our dinner of salmon cakes.I love that I have a couple of bags of odds and ends of bread in my freezer. I don’t throw out the heels or the odd stale pieces of bread. They are too valuable; too much of myself has gone into making them to just toss them aside. I made that bread, and I am determined to use it all.If I bought bread, cheap at the store, I’d feel little compulsion to use every last scrap. If you buy bread, you may as well buy bread crumbs, right? Because at that point, what matters is convenience, not quality; a purchase, not thrift.
The more work we have invested in something, the more time, art, and skill, the more likely we are to care for it and use it responsibly. Baking my bread, eating it all, even the scraps, is one step toward the wise use of our resources that is encouraged by the provident living principles of thrift and self reliance. And it is one step toward being a better steward of the earth.