# The country boot > Pack the parcel from home in a physical Tetris: two demijohns, fifteen jars of zacuscă, a sack of potatoes, a bucket of pickles and a frozen cockerel. Then see what the ritual says about short food chains and the informal subsistence economy. **In brief.** The parcel from home is a short supply chain: food grown by the family, for the family, with labour at both ends and unpaid transport. There is no public national statistic that isolates the home parcel inside the urban food basket. Official statistics offer two nearby reference points with clear limits: average food consumption per person regardless of origin (INS, indicator BUF110I), and food’s share of total household consumption expenditure, 27.6% in Romania in 2020 (Eurostat). ## The game The game is a deterministic packing puzzle with the same order every time, on an 8-by-5 grid. In the interactive version, pieces move with the arrow keys or the buttons, rotate with R and settle with Space or Enter. Rules: every piece needs support underneath, from the floor or from other luggage. The sack of potatoes and the bucket of pickles are heavy and smash any jars or demijohns beneath them. The bag with the frozen cockerel is light and slips into the gap left over. The full load, in game order: 1. The sack of potatoes (about 20 kg) — heavy 2. Bundle A — 5 jars of aubergine zacuscă in newspaper (№1–№5) — glass 3. The bucket of pickles — heavy 4. Demijohn 1 of red wine — glass 5. Demijohn 2 of red wine — glass 6. Bundle B — 5 jars of mushroom zacuscă in newspaper (№1–№5) — glass 7. Bundle C — 5 jars of bean zacuscă in newspaper (№1–№5) — glass 8. The bag with the frozen cockerel — light The game ends with the boot shut undamaged, or with a list of broken items. Game scores are not an economic measure. ## What just happened in the boot The food travels like this: a rural household grows or preserves it, an urban household receives it and sends back money, weekend labour or care for those who stayed behind. The chain is short, from family to family, and its links are gifts and reciprocal work rather than invoices. Zacuscă is made in autumn, pickles alongside it, potatoes lifted once a year, and the cockerel reaches the freezer whenever there is one to spare. For the city, the parcel means money saved at the market. For the village, it means work that never appears on a receipt. The drive itself — fuel, hours at the wheel, backs bent over loading — belongs in the basket too, though nobody puts it on a bill. ## How much of the basket comes from home There is no public national statistic that isolates the “parcel from home” inside the urban food basket. The Household Budget Survey counts own production, stocks, home preserves and gifts received together as “own resources”. Two verified reference points help frame the question, with different denominators: - INS, BUF110I: average monthly food consumption per person regardless of origin or place of consumption. That is why it cannot isolate the parcel. - Eurostat, Romania, 2020: food and non-alcoholic beverages represented 27.6% of total household consumption expenditure. The denominator is total consumption, not an urban food basket and not the parcel. The European Household Budget Survey method excludes own-account production given away from own consumption at both the producer’s and receiver’s end. The transfer reaches the plate, but it has no distinct national line. ## Method and limits Data produced by the National Institute of Statistics through the Household Budget Survey and by Eurostat through household-consumption statistics. Period quoted: 2020 for the European reference; BUF110I is the definition published in the TEMPO interface. Sources accessed 8 September 2026. The INS TEMPO page did not load from the working network on the access date; its published definition is preserved with the official link. Primary sources: - INS, TEMPO BUF110I — average monthly food consumption per person: - Eurostat, structure of household consumption expenditure, 2020: - Eurostat, HBS methodological manual 2026: - FAO, family farming in Romania: - EU, short food supply chains: Photograph: 1980 Dacia 1300 by TrainSimFan, CC BY-SA 4.0 licence, via Wikimedia Commons (). Text: Marius Comper (). Romanian edition: .