Bread and computers

I have been thinking about some things that were a treats or luxury to my parents generation that are taken for granted now, like baby wipes and computers.  There are so many things now that make my life easier and help me save time; microwaves, Easy Mac, email, onsies, Wikepedia, Wal Mart, disposable diapers, cell phones, vacuums, Google Maps, Magic Erasers, really the list could go on and on. Yet even with all these helpful, time savings devices I am still always busy and barely able to keep up with things.

I have also been thinking about things that my parents had that my generation and my children’s generation would consider treats now. Homemade bread topped with home made blackberry jam. Being able to let kids wander around the neighborhood with out worrying about them. No lines to go through security at an airport. Chicken soup with homemade noodles. Being able to put a significant amount of gas in your car with the change found in your pocket. Receiving a hand written letter in your mailbox. These are things that some of my generation and eve more of my children’s generation have never experienced.

The tricky thing about all the wonderful time savings inventions and technology is if they are not used wisely they can suck up our time and make life less enjoyable. Smucker’s will never taste as good as home made blackberry-peach jam made from berries you picked yourself. It is much faster to research and write a paper on a computer, but countless hours can be wasted on the internet. Watching Diego won’t ever be as fun as building a blanket fort or playing hide and go seek in the dark. It is all about balance. There has to be a way to use technology to make life easier without being consumed by it.

To help find this balance I started making my own bread last month. It is the perfect balance of technology and simplicity. I use my fancy new Bosch to knead the bread in just a few minutes, instead of having to crank a bread bucket for what seemed like forever as a kid. But I use my great grandpa’s recipe that has only 6 ingredients in it. My family has been using this recipe for over 100 years. I shape the loaves myself and about once a week my kids get to smell the aroma of fresh bread wafting through the house. They eat peanut sandwiches on slightly uneven slices of bread, and every once in a while we can have scones for dinner.

My great grandpa Wight who used this whole wheat recipe his whole life.

Hopefully my kids will learn that the best food isn’t bought in stores, and the best memories aren’t made from playing a computer game. I know it will take some work but I want my house to be more unplugged, for me and my kids. I want to take advantage of technology and use it to enrich my life and simplify it. So here is to more puppet shows and less Netflix re-runs. More red light green light and less video games. More books and less flash games.

How do you balance technology in your life?