Weezl's phase 1- recipe testing and frugalisation- come one, come all!

FrankieM

weezl I agree with ceridwen that you don't sound huffy or defensive. You were asked a question and you've answered it and I think very well.
i agree that it would be very easy to let your original £100 budget keep creeping up and really where would it end??

I do think having meals that people recognise and a bit more meat makes it all the more attainable for the 'man/woman on the street' and so I'm liking the new, kinda revised, meal plan.

You certainly haven't put me off

weezl74

Hiya Frankie

While you're on, I think it's this weekend you're thinking of doing the roast? and then monday for the chicken and sweetcorn pie?

The asda sp chickens weigh 1.8-1.9 kgs so if you're feeding 6 (hope I remembered that right ) if your chicken is around 2.85 kgs we've got a fair comparison. (does it say on the pack or is it in the freezer?!)

Stuffing wise I'm very happy for you to cobble something together: breadcrumbs, herbs, onion, garlic, orange zest, buttery spread.... anything else you'd like to use? Bit of grated bramley apple is probably spareable from the chutney amount...

I was thinking of 250g potatoes per person, and 80g each of carrots, green beans, and peas you could also roast a small/medium onion for each person.

If these portions seem risky, perhaps make a little more and just serve that amount up and wait for protests?!

Weezl xxx

SusanC_2

weezl74 wrote: »

I saw that on your blog but haven't checked it out yet. What's her stance?

Simplified summary:
- Big business has forced less healthy foods (eg. hydrogenated fats) into the accepted healthy diet replacing more traditional foods which are better nutritionally.
- Whole foods are better.
- Sugar is bad (because it has been refined removing all the vitamins) but more natural less refined alternatives (e.g. honey, date syrup, rapadura) are okay in moderation.
- Naturally saturated fats are good (e.g. butter, coconut oil...), unatural hydrogenated fats are bad.
- Pasteurisation and homogenisation of milk does funny things to it.
- Cultured products are good for you (e.g. kefir, yoghurt, buttermilk, lacto-fermantation).
- The less processed a food is the better.
- Grains/legumes should be soaked to counter the effects of phytic acid on absorption of nutrients.
- Animal products are important as they are more nutrient dense than plant products (and it is important to use all parts e.g. by making stock from bones etc.).
- Organic food is better in terms of nutrition/health.
- It's best to make things yourself to avoid all the "funny" stuff they put in pre-made things.
I might have forgotten the odd thing but that's the rough gist of it.

ceridwen wrote: »

Thinks...maybes I should have a memory refresh with "Nourishing Traditions" too....I have the book....(just recall having slight problems with the fact that it came over rather meat-centred...difficult for a veggie like me...)...If I remember aright...I think I made a decision at that point to get "raw" milk - but have not been able to find any in this country (though I regularly used to have it abroad before now)..:(

The large quantities of meat bit is probably the main thing that we don't do - we still eat less meat than the average person seems to but I have changed the kind of meat we have and make more stocks than I used to. I think I'd have to make a 100 mile round trip if I wanted raw milk so I've settled for M&S who do non-standardised, non-homogenised organic whole milk.

weezl74 wrote: »

I've been thinking a bit about susan's development of lesley's thoughts about making the rope attractive enough that Bob and shirley want to use it.

I realise I have a lot of resistance to this and I've been asking myself why. I think Lesley asked me why as well and I haven't really answered yet!

I'll try now.

• for me the plan already represents compromise rather than extremism (yep reader! That's how extreme I am! Even my compromises are extreme ) I know a normal family can do this for cheaper. If Bob and shirley lived on 50p a day we'd save them a further £438 in a year as a family. When I discovered we could meet the calcium requirement by fortifying with calcium citrate (PS I've checked, and interestingly we can do this with battery chicken eggshells Ceridwen, all eggshell is made of calcium, like human teeth and bones, it's just that arguably a FR chicken may have a stronger shell due to better nutrition. It would be the difference between using 99 FR eggshells or 100 battery farmed chicken eggshells though, ie barely noticeable) and that it would save us £9 in the month, everything in me wanted to get shirley to do it. But I did compromise

• my belief that debt and financial struggle is a silent killer. I can't get away from this chain smoking Bob and Shirley. I am hugely impacted by that statistic. 75-100 cigarettes daily! I know I go on about that. But it really fuels me. For me none of the other discussions we have carry that much clout, excepting that we must provide enough protein and energy that no-one starves, or vitamins and minerals that they damage their bodies long term. Above that, all else is luxury.

• my belief that the attitude we are up against is wrong and a product of a greedy economy which filters down unhealthily. And therefore I HATE that we have to bow down to it.

...

• Finally: I really struggle if to make the rope attractive enough, we have to reduce it's effectivity proportionally. For me adding to the budget represents this. I feel that every £5 we add to the budget is a weakening of our rope's ability to pull shirley out of her hole. I want to offer her a strong sturdy rope. I struggle to offer her a flimsy bit of string just cos she doesn't like the way the rope hangs in her hole!

I agree with what you are saying (and deliberately put extreme in inverted commas) and I certainly don't think you should weaken "the" rope - I just wondered whether a more attractive "practice" rope might help some people to feel able to use or to believe in the feasibility of "the" rope who wouldn't otherwise. Personally I don't think I would find it too extreme but I think perhaps some of the people who have got themselves into the hole may in which case a bit of training/practice before using the actual rope might help them to climb it. Does that make sense?

I also didn't think you sounded huffy or defensive.

FrankieM

weezl My chicken says 1.500kg which is smaller than your sp one! It's a Tesco one bought on a 3 for £10 offer but now I'm not sure whether to buy a bigger one?

aless02

weezl, nothing more to say other than you're my hero!! :T :T

:rotfl:

weezl74

SusanC wrote: »

Personally I don't think I would find it too extreme but I think perhaps some of the people who have got themselves into the hole may in which case a bit of training/practice before using the actual rope might help them to climb it. Does that make sense?

I also didn't think you sounded huffy or defensive.

Thanks!

I think you know me well enough by now to be allowed to say I'm extreme even without the speech marks susan! Also geeky and a few other choice adjectives . I knew where you were coming from.

I also think that as someone who has clearly picked a non-standard food strategy for her own family you are in a good place to comment, because you DH and Alice will have encountered a lot of the reactions Bob and Shirley will face. And so I very much valued your post.:A

As much as I feared it might happen, I can't think of a single post which I feel has been written with any intent to put off or contradict this challenge, which I find amazing. Forum life can harbour trolls, flaming and all sorts and we are questioning some things that people hold very dearly, so I really expected us to have to be prepared to give a very robust defence!

Guys I'm at a bit of a fork in the road and would appreciate a couple of nudges to get me off in the right direction.

As you know I made a clear decision to go for the most 'normal' uk family first. meat-eating Bob and shirley who don't mind the odd battery-farmed egg.

Phase 2 was to reduce/remove the meat in order to also remove the battery eggs.

The polls on old style and on DT have revealed FR eggs as more of a priority than meat though, and with over 350 participants (some have posted but not clicked, so I have included those views too) with over half of the people saying FR eggs are a non-negotiable.

I am still a bit unsure where fresh milk comes into this and our poll constructing tools are a bit limited on here, and people will probably not join in with a new poll now if they've already answered one.

So as you've all seen, I've been working on egg-free recipes at the same time.

By pushing 2 meal planners forward simultaneously I'm obviously diluting the time energy I/we have for the first planner.

I'd appreciate advice about the order to tackle this in.

I know I ask for this type of help quite a lot and I'm sorry I think it's partly to do with the enormity of factors I'm having to think about, but also embarrassingly the fact that while heavily pregnant I do seem to lose my ability to do things in the most logical order!

With thanks and lots of love from Weezl x

FrankieM

weezl Can you not do a 'normal' UK family, so meat eaters (sorry veggies, i obviously think your normal!) but still work towards egg free recipes?

FrankieM

Looking on Mysupermarket, the SP chicken weighs 1kg. That's for fresh chicken, I can't see a frozen one. Is that right?
If so that's less then the weight you quoted weezl but it means that my 1.5kg chicken for 6 would indeed work....What do you think???

MrsBartolozzi

FrankieM wrote: »

Looking on Mysupermarket, the SP chicken weighs 1kg. That's for fresh chicken, I can't see a frozen one. Is that right?
If so that's less then the weight you quoted weezl but it means that my 1.5kg chicken for 6 would indeed work....What do you think???

Looking on the Asda.com website the SP whole chicken is priced at £1.79 per kilo. How much had you budgeted for the chicken Weezl? IIRC they were around £2.50 when I was in a few weeks ago, which would be around 1.5kg. Is this the kind of size you were looking at?

aless02

FWIW, I can rarely find a chicken under £2 in ASDA unless you just get extremely lucky. They usually run around £2.30-2.50 and up...

Weezl, PERSONALLY I think people aren't just "getting" the egg issue, so I'd be inclined to ignore the poll results. Like you've posted in the past, when faced with hummus sandwiches & porridge every single day, I'll bet that 90% of the FR-only voters would buy battery eggs in order to have a more "normal" diet. While I hate hate hate battery eggs myself (I used to work for DEFRA... ), I can totally understand the very valid point of something's got to give - either the house gets reposessed or some chickens have a bad time!

Okay, a bit drastic, but you see the point. ALSO, I really think the whole FR egg debate is totally pointless given battery will be illegal in 2 years' time. One can hope that the resulting minor backlash will reduce the price of FR eggs to a manageable level for B&S (well, I'm ambivalent about the moral aspects of that, but that's a debate for another day). If you want your plans & recipes to be long-lasting, ignore the eggs!!

So my vote is for the some-meat-with-battery-eggs-as-"normal"-as-possible-with-powdered-milk menu .

(FWIW, my DH who IS British, voted for powdered milk in favor of some meat)