Does anyone here have a totally non processed food lifestyle?

Zazen999

izzwizz wrote: »

Just put the cream in the food processor and process at full speed until it forms a firm ball. The ball is basically unsalted butter (if you add salt it will keep longer, but you can use it as is for a couple of days). The liquid that's left in the bowl is buttermilk. You can use it in baking, or add it to your tea like skimmed milk.

You can also do this in a jam jar [the thicker the cream the better] but which ever method you use you need to wash the butter that is left to get ALL the buttermilk out otherwise it goes rancid too fast.

I just keep adding clean cold water and shake it and tip it out until it comes out 99% clear. Then tip out, shape and pop into the fridge.

I also make my own garlic butter; but crushing a [home grown] clove or two of garlic and putting it into the jam jar before the cream. Then this is kept frozen and just taken out when we need garlic bread; home made of course

And of course, I make jams, jellies, chutneys, preserves and dry and freeze all the veg that we grow if we can't eat it immediately. However, this IS processing as you add sugar or vinegar as a preservative and we've been doing this for centuries in one way or other.....

We eat very little 'processed' food - the main culprit is quorn and veggie mince when we can remember to buy it.

ceridwen

SallyForth wrote: »

I think it would be unrealistic to most people, apart from that fact you would end up spending most of your day preparing food, you would need more specialised equipment, storage, preparation room, ingredients, which could be expensive.

It all seems so simple, but if you grow your own, you do need some basic stuff to get started. If you want to make sauces and preserves, you will need equipment and ingredients which will needs storing when not in use, and the end product will need storing. It won't be a problem for some, but some kitchens are hopelessly inadequate.

That is so true - having bought the equipment I need to bottle food/make own soft cheeses (when I can find the time....)/dry my own food/etc - it does indeed take up extra space and with mine being that too small British kitchen it's certainly taking a bit of ingenuity to work out how to stash these things away:( and I've had to resort to working out a shortlist of more conventional type kitchen equipment to keep there and the rest goes in the loft (as spares in case of breakages) and am using several bits of cupboard space elsewhere in the house. It's not easy to find that room - as smaller British houses just arent designed for this. Thank goodness mine isnt even smaller - or just a flat - as I just wouldnt know how to overcome the extra storage difficulties that would raise:cool:

ceridwen

sb44 wrote: »

I don't think I could do it myself but I was meaning eating as if in the 50's when everything we (well, not me as I wasn't around then ) ate was in it's basic raw state.

However, I don't think many ate pasta or rice as it wasn't available to a lot of the general public so it would be more to do with eating home grown, market bought, local butchers killed stock etc.

I was just wondring how much healthier we would be if we had the time to cook everything from scratch but still bought milk and freshly made bread.

I guess you need to study those World War 2 cookbooks if you are thinking of the 1950s sort of era.

Actually - I can recall some pretty unhealthy foods being around in that era even. Re "freshly made bread" - have you seen the price of it?:eek::eek::eek:. To get "proper" freshly-made bread costs a lot more than anything one can buy in a supermarket. I would imagine that all supermarket or standard bakery bread would be made by that dreaded Chorleywood process. I had heard of it and found a blow-by-blow description in one of my most recent book purchases - quite enough to put me off for life. The "improvers" it includes are likely to include soya flour for one (as in soya beans are always genetic*lly modified these days I understand - unless they are specifically organic and organic ones might be contaminated by the others...) and so the list of what is wrong with the Chorleywood process went on through quite a variety of points as I remember.

Time to go thinking of that - gotta get a loaf of my homemade bread going....

geordie_joe

ceridwen wrote: »

The "improvers" it includes are likely to include soya flour for one (as in soya beans are always genetic*lly modified these days I understand

In that it will state this on the label. A quote from the Food Standards Agency

In the EU, if a food contains or consists of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), or contains ingredients produced from GMOs, this must be indicated on the label. For GM products sold 'loose', information must be displayed immediately next to the food to indicate that it is GM.

On 18 April 2004, new rules for GM labelling came into force in all EU Member States. These cover all GM food and animal feed, regardless of the presence of any GM material in the final product.

ceridwen

Right - I'm back. My bread is now sitting there rising:D

So - at the thought of people putting up with shopbought bread - I'll share my 5 Minute Bread recipe (as thats all it takes me to make it). I've been doing this recipe for years - and never had a failure yet with it:D. Its a no-knead recipe:D:

700 gr wholemeal bread flour
7 grams of easy-blend dried yeast (equates to 1.5 heaped teaspoons - so 1 heaped and 1 level does it)
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 teaspoon of honey or molasses (you could use sugar instead - tho' I never have)
1 teaspoon salt
600ml warm water


- Mix flour and yeast in a large bowl.
- Put 300ml just-boiled water in a Pyrex measuring jug. Add the teaspoon of honey or molasses and stir to dissolve it.
- Add the oil and salt to the hot water as well.
- Top the water up to the 600ml mark.
- Pour that 600ml of water into the flour/yeast mixture and mix together with a fork.
- When its pretty much mixed-up - tip out onto lightly-floured work surface and lightly flour your hands too.
- Knead the dough together just enough to form it into a ball (takes about 2 minutes).
- Put the dough ball into a large size breadbaking tin.
- Cover with damp teatowel and leave to rise till double in size (about 40 minutes).
- Put into oven at 200C for 40 minutes
(its ready when lightly brown and the loaf can be tapped on the base and will sound very slightly hollow).
- Tip out of tin and leave on wire rack from grill pan of oven to cool.

TIP; I have found one added refinement that makes it even quicker/easier recently. I bought a couple of large silicon breadbaking "tins" from Lakeland and use one of them now instead of my rigid ones (put onto a baking sheet in the oven - rather than straight on the shelf!). With that - I have no problem at all getting the loaf out of the tin when baked - just tip carefully upside down, with the other hand on the top of the loaf and it comes straight out every time.

Easy-peasy....which suits me..

ceridwen

geordie_joe wrote: »

In that it will state this on the label. A quote from the Food Standards Agency

The only supermarket bread I've bought for a while is the unsliced loaves - which "look" like proper bread - and I've never noticed a label on them giving ingredients at all....

As I understand the law - they don't have to mention the tiny little amounts of things like that in bread anyway by law - so we think we are just getting flour/yeast/salt/sugar/water in the bread - but it ain't necessarily so.

Home-made bread is WAY nicer too. So - with a recipe like my 5 Minute Bread (which I reckon could probably be adapted to white flour instead of wholemeal AND sunflower oil instead of olive oil if people wanted to) then I would say it's so easy to make one's own that anyone could do it.

Just make sure you've got:
- one large lightweight mixing bowl (I like stainless steel ones personally) (but one could even use a cleaned-out washing-up bowl)

- 1 Pyrex measuring jug (large enough size to register 600ml of water)

- 1 large rigid breadbaking tin (OR a good-quality silicon one - and a baking sheet to rest it on in the oven).

Couldnae be much easier:rotfl:

geordie_joe

ceridwen wrote: »

As I understand the law - they don't have to mention the tiny little amounts of things like that in bread anyway by law - so we think we are just getting flour/yeast/salt/sugar/water in the bread - but it ain't necessarily so.

Not quite true. As you will see from the quote from the FSA, any intentional use of GM must be labelled. They don't have to label small amounts that are accidentally present in food.

You said the GM was the soya beans in the improver, the improver is not accidently present, it is intentionally used. Therefore it must be on the label, or next to the product if the product does not have a label.

Any intentional use of GM ingredients at any level must be labelled. But there is no need to label small amounts of approved GM ingredients (below 0.9% for approved GM varieties) that are accidentally present in a food.

thriftlady_2

Well if you mean doing without anything that has been processed then no I wouldn't want to manage without flour, butter, cheese, bacon, ham, coffee, wine,salt, honey or chocolate to name a few.

If you mean eating meals made only from ingredients you have bought or produced yourself then yes that's easy. It's what I do all the time.

I buy flour, yeast (dried yeast, so that's been processed) and salt, add water and make bread. You don't need a sweetener btw, there's enough natural sugar in the flour.

I buy milk and yogurt to make more yogurt. I wouldn't bother buying cream to make butter. The amount of butter you'd obtain from a pint of cream will not be that much so it will work out expensive unless you have a cow.

I buy meat, fish, fruit, vegetables, grains, cheese, milk and cook meals with them. Simple, just buy ingredients and cook with them;)

tessie_bear

thrift lady....do u not need sugar in bread then ? could you leave out the salt ? thank you

ceridwen

tessie_bear wrote: »

thrift lady....do u not need sugar in bread then ? could you leave out the salt ? thank you

Correct me if I'm wrong - but I think the salt is necessary to help the yeast do its work of making the bread rise??

Its my understanding that sugar (or in my case honey or molasses) isn't strictly necessary - ie that one can make bread just from the "holy trinity" of flour, yeast and salt.