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Just Add Water

There are certain phrases that make one immediately want to scoff, even if there is no real reason to do so.  "Just add water" has always seemed to me to have a decided whiff of incompetence about it - products made for the lazy and generally clueless.  I know that this is not fair - after all, I grew up with Campbell's Soups, which are the epitome of such low-effort fare.  I cannot summon any real sense of superiority about the convenience-factor of semi-prepared foods, as long as the ingredients are wholesome and do not contain spookily named chemicals or substances suspected of causing increased levels of obesity, diabetes or cancer in lab animals.  That is an entirely different story. This is not about my apparently partitionable sense of righteousness;  I am more interested in the profound impact that those three little words have on cookery in general.

British Columbia has an abundance of fresh water.  Fresh, clean, tasty water. In fact, the town where I went to highschool has some of the best tasting water in the world.  Water is something that we residents tend to ignore or take for granted, on the whole, wasting gallons every morning in our showers, and watering our lawns and gardens throughout the summer with only the merest twinge of doubt as to whether a lush green expanse is worth the wastage. Generally, the answer seems to be a shrug, in these parts, which translates a decided "yes" when you look at actual usage.  We like our heavy use of water, and unlike countries or regions where water is metered and paid for by the drop, we feel free to turn the taps as often as we like to make use of high-quality potable water for everything from drinking to laundry to flushing our toilets.  That is, until an almost unprecedented Boil Water Advisory came down last November, when we mighty wasters of water (who are still able to use regular tap water for showering and dishwashing, it should be noted) are reduced to storming the supermarkets in a panic, unable to think of how we will get by without our effortless fresh water.  Suddenly, the conveniences we have long taken for granted are snatched away, and, among other issues, many of us end up staring at the kitchen shelves, wondering how on earth to feed our families, with minimal use of (expensive, unwieldy, quickly depleted stocks of) bottled water.

It reminded me of camping, a little.  Camping is, in fact, the one experience where most of us in this luxurious waterland have actually had to do with water rationing.  (For those of us of a more, shall we say, rural background, we remember summers where the well ran dry and water was fetched in large barrels from the provincial campsite spigot, but that was long ago.)  Notwithstanding the minor dramas of my childhood, though, like most people born here I have luxuriated in available water for most of my life.  Camping was the time when, with plenty of head-scratching, plotting and scheming, one had to make do with a campfire heat-source and  inconvenient, if not finite, access to fresh water.

Waterless cookery is naturally somewhat limited.  Every former Girl Guide or Boy Scout is familiar with the old expedient of wrapping a potato, apple, or more complicated mixture of foods in foil, and tossing into the edge of the fire pit or banked hot coals.  Happily, as we are not operating on true camping restrictions, I can still depend on my gas stove and oven - not to mention the microwave, fridge, and food processor.  It is still a slight cause for consternation, however, when I sit down to figure out what to make for dinner, and the things that leap to mind first all call for plenty of water.

Pasta, for example, is right out of the question.  There are a couple of side-dish pastas that I make which depend on an evaporation/absorption method, much like rice, and therefore takes significantly less water (with no waste), but ideally I don't want to be eating that for days on end until the water restriction is lifted.  Likewise, most stovetop vegetable cooking involves a certain amount of water, although you can get away with less if you choose to steam using a pot with a tight-fitting lid, or stackable, perforated trays.  Roasting is a far better choice for water economy, and, fortunately, it was approaching winter when the restriction hit, when heating up the house by using the oven is not only acceptable, but a desirable side-effect.  Additionally, the vegetables that are in season right now are ones that generally take quite well to the dry heat of roasting or baking, and many of my favourite root vegetables roast up beautifully beside a chicken or leg of lamb, for example, combining the virtues of water conservation with the power-smart use of a single heat source to cook the entire meal.  This is not strictly necessary, since we are not actually camping, but efficient use of resources is still something to be pleased about.

There are certain things that we simply must use water for, or do without.  There is the water for washing vegetables, and that ought not be avoided unless the vegetables are from your own garden, or are to be peeled and thoroughly cooked.  There is bound to be at least a little water used (and, in this context, lost) right there. 

More importantly, each person needs a certain amount of water per day, whether it is acquired as such (i.e. a simple glass of water) or as a component of something else (fruit or vegetable juice, meat or vegetable stock, certain fruits and vegetables with high water content, sports drinks, etc.). Most supermarket varieties of dairy milk, for example, consist of more than 85% water, and is the primary source of all water for young mammals.  These are what I think of as "stealth sources" of water and it is surprising how many of them you might already have on hand.  Unlike coffee and tea, which are diuretics contributing more to dehydration than hydration, these stealth sources of water can do the trick - meeting an individual's daily water requirements, even without pure or potable water available.  Something else to consider, when the shop shelves have been denuded of bottled water, is that most of the stealth sources can be used as cooking mediums, replacing all or part of the water usually required.

The advisory was lifted after eleven days, and most people have returned to their full-on water-using ways.  During the advisory, there was no measurable increase in dangerous bacteria reported to the public - the water was simply full of suspended dirt, giving it an unpleasant appearance and odor, and, excepting for the immuno-comprimised, posed no serious health danger to people.  We were merely inconvenienced for a week and a half. I do not advocate that we act as though we do not have this wonderful resource available to us, that we restrict ourselves to bare minimum usage.  It's not necessary, and it's not desirable.  I do hope, however, that a few more people in this region come to appreciate the quality and quantity of water that we do have, and maybe waste a little less.

January 2007