Preparedness for when

GreyQueen

Yestereve, between hanging out on the web, I was turning a large amount of small sweet peppers and tomatoes into a big pot of pasta-thing. Four small onions from last year's allotment harvest, plus the small sweet peppers and tomatoes each representing part of two £1 hauls of fruit and veg from the Magic Greengrocer this week. A little oil to fry them off, some dried basil and black pepper, plus a 37p tube of tommie puree.

As I've finished the hm bread rolls from the organic windmiller flour, I moved onto the sliced wholemeal shop bread (6p a loaf) and had a slice of that with my pasta-thing, couldn't be arrissed to cook pasta. Had grated cheddar (bought on an offer, plus utilising a £3 off £20 shop, which meant I got 1.5 pkts of cheddar free).

For breakfast today, I had porridge (tosspots basics oats at 75p a kilo, made with water and some sultanas). I'm about to make a sandwich for my lunchbreak up on the allotments, with the last slice of corned beef and some more of the 6p wholemeal loaf. As I did yesterday, I will handpick some red or white chard and incorporate it into the sandwich when I'm ready to eat. The chard is tiny atm, coming up here and there as weeds among other things.

This evening, I will have some of the pasta thing, heated up in the bain marie part of my stacking stainless steel pan. I intend to have some runner beans in the steamer section - from the freezer, hg from 2014. I will cook a big pot of basics pasta (read the ingredients and nutritional data on it and a premium brand side-by-side). I will bring the pasta water to the boil, add the pasta, then turn the burner off and leave it with the lid on for 10 mins. It will cook perfectly. I shall do enough pasta for 2 more meals.

I have two huge cooking apples from the Magic Greengrocer yesterday, each of which has a small bruise, about the size of a 10p piece. He put the biggest one on the scale and if it was unblemished, it would've sold for £1.20. I normally bake these with some dried fruit inside, but this one is a monster, and too big for me to eat at once, so I will chop and stew it and have two desserts from it. I will have a rummage in the freezer in hopes there may be a few more 2014 blackcurrants left in the depths - in which case I'll add some to the stewed fruit before serving. I'll also see if I can finesse one of my pyrexes into the veggie steamer whilst cooking to see if I can stew the fruit at the same time.

Monday's breakfast will need to be a bit more robust, and I am planning on an omelette; two eggs plus chopped up green sprouts from the sprouting onions which I am keeping as a cut-and-come-again veg in my flat. They are hg onions from last year which have sprouted (even shop-bought onions are doing this, I notice, at this time of year). I'll have it with a spoonful of beetroot relish from the recipe MrsLW posted last year, and perhaps some cucumber.

Will be packing up a peanutbutter and wholemeal sandwich for lunch.

Looking at that lot, I don't consider that I am eating rubbish, although I am eating cheaply.

ETA thriftwizard, it wasn't that, I wish I'd left one of them now and taken my wildflower book up to ID it properly. I'll get it next time.

thriftwizard

I think we eat quite well, & cheaply too. I buy most of our meat from the market butcher, who keeps his own herd of beef cattle on the edge of the Forest, and who supplies many of the big hotels & gourmet spas down by the sea. So we get to eat venison, pheasant & guinea fowl on a regular basis, as cheaply as supermarket beef & chicken. If I need to top up, I'll go to the local butchers rather than the supermarket. I think I'm spending about £140 per week to feed 7 adults plus three indolent moggies and 7 hardworking (in their own opinion) chickens. This includes pack-ups for 2, but the boys have been know to sneak out & buy themselves ready-made pizzas or other "treats". As long as they're spending their own money, not family money, & clear up after themselves, I'm not objecting. However, I'm currently tracking expenditure for a month to check it hasn't slid too far from my target figure whilst I've been busy with my mother, other family traumas & my small business.

But it's the greengrocery stalls that save me the most; our market runs for three days, and towards the end of the last one (today, as it happens) the stock will be reduced right down so they can go home & relax. It's the same stuff I'd have bought on the Friday, kept outdoors under shade, but half the price, which was probably cheaper than the supermarkets to start with. I buy most of what I need on the Friday & take pot-luck with whatever's left on Sunday, which will keep our resident veggie in clover for the rest of the week.

We keep chickens, so hardly ever have to buy eggs (they're fed mainly on scraps & weeds, so the cost of actually keeping them is negligible) and grow a lot of fruit & herbs in our small-ish urban garden; most years, I won't buy any cooking apples from October to the next March. I'm an inveterate forager & preserver, both in rural & urban settings, so we have shelves full of jam, chutney & pickles at any given time, and several mysterious brews bubbling away in the kitchen.

What this takes, that most people understandably struggle with, is time. The costs of full-time employment aren't limited to commuting, working wardrobe & lunches; they should include what you no longer have time to do for yourself as well. When the kids were small, we worked out that I'd have to be earning more than £50K to make it worthwhile for me to return to computing, which wasn't possible round here.

I know we're very lucky in where we live, and that it makes it all possible. But it was a swings & roundabouts choice, back then. If we'd chosen to stay somewhere where I could pick up a job easily again, we wouldn't have all this on our doorstep. Luck has also been with us in that we haven't hit any major bits of bad luck like a handicapped child or a sudden bereavement. Given that luck, though, it is possible to eat both cheaply and well.

moneyistooshorttomention

Time is very much a factor too in eating.

I now have time personally - and make my own bread for instance (much cheaper than I could buy equivalent bread) and am starting to get my garden sorted out for growing what food I can. Its not just down to me how long it takes before my garden is "ready" and will take a LOT more money being spent on it before its "finished", but it will soon be "paying its way" much better than it is at present.

So - this week's garden contributions have only been sorrel, chard and globe artichoke and the rest of my fruit/veg is still having to be bought at present.

So that food expenditure (half of which is coming from my steadily-decreasing savings) is, in the main, pretty "basic" foods (I'll count out three items I bought this week from it - coconut milk, dates and cocoa powder).

Today's food, for instance =

breakfast = porridge (made with milk) and with some stewed rhubarb (sweetened with date syrup), followed by home-made wholemeal toast with homemade bread spread and a cup of coffee (real - because I don't like instant).

lunch = I'll be making sorrel/carrot/lentil soup and having with homemade bread and some cheddar cheese

dinner = a "hippie bowl" mixture of millet/kale chips/home-made hummus (yogurt - not tahini-based)/tuna (canned - to economise)/fermented cucumber/tomatoes and a couple of bits of fruit.

I'd say the bit of my food budget that is coming from savings is that real coffee and the fact that most of my food is organic - and its my choice to carry on eating that way even whilst waiting for rest of pension to turn up. That being down to the rest of my family have absolutely APPALLING health - so I think its worth buying the best diet I can - even though I cant afford it and I do know there would be A Problem if I didn't have those savings to fall back on till my income is back to normal.

[Deleted User]

If you look at the 'WOLF AT THE DOOR' site they predict a 90% die back in population about 100 years after peak oil happens and then subsistance existence for the remaining 10% of the population. If you look back into social history concerning food pre the industrial revoloution I think you'll find that most of the peasantry survived mainly on vegetables/grains/pulses (usually field peas) with the odd bit of cheese and meat in very good times, which didn't happen too frequently. Bread if you'd managed to grow/glean enough wheat and ale were staples but by necessity home made and the ale in particular was a necessity as the water was unfit to drink in the main. Life would have been very hard and starkly uncomfortable.

GQ we have lots of ALKANET growing in the area at the moment, it has the most vivid blue flowers I've ever seen on a wild flower.

greenbee

If it alkanet be wary when dealing with it - some people react to it as if they've been burned.

Frugalsod

thriftwizard wrote: »

But it's the greengrocery stalls that save me the most; our market runs for three days, and towards the end of the last one (today, as it happens) the stock will be reduced right down so they can go home & relax. It's the same stuff I'd have bought on the Friday, kept outdoors under shade, but half the price, which was probably cheaper than the supermarkets to start with. I buy most of what I need on the Friday & take pot-luck with whatever's left on Sunday, which will keep our resident veggie in clover for the rest of the week.

Markets are probably the best for making savings though there are none close for me to benefit. If you have one close make use of it for the core of all meals and then use the supermarkets for anything you need. By buying from the market stalls you get seasonal food at the best prices. Also shopping regularly can almost eliminate food waste which will help tight budgets.


There is a farmers market reasonably close which I get taken to every month, but it is expensive. Even so I do regularly get some cooking chorizo at £23 a kilo. It is so expensive I am seriously looking into the idea of making it myself. I have a sausage making attachment for my food mixer, so should try.

[Deleted User]

Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall has a recipe for an 'almost chorizo' made with minced pork it's in the RIVER COTTAGE EVERYDAY book and is called Tupperware Mexican Chorizo. It's not the dried preserved sausage as it's made with fresh meat but I've made it and the taste is very similar. Hope that helps save a bit of cash, Lyn xxx.

Frugalsod

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall has a recipe for an 'almost chorizo' made with minced pork it's in the RIVER COTTAGE EVERYDAY book and is called Tupperware Mexican Chorizo. It's not the dried preserved sausage as it's made with fresh meat but I've made it and the taste is very similar. Hope that helps save a bit of cash, Lyn xxx.

Thanks I will try that.

nuatha

Frugalsod wrote: »

Markets are probably the best for making savings though there are none close for me to benefit. If you have one close make use of it for the core of all meals and then use the supermarkets for anything you need. By buying from the market stalls you get seasonal food at the best prices. Also shopping regularly can almost eliminate food waste which will help tight budgets.

It may be unique to the town I live in, but there are several traditional fruitiers who are cheaper than the market stalls overall, and generally better quality. One stocks locally grown organics and local soft fruit and root veg in the relevant seasons. The village I grew up in, the fruitier grew a lot of the produce he sold, even to the extent of cutting salads to order from the grounds of his shop.

There is a farmers market reasonably close which I get taken to every month, but it is expensive. Even so I do regularly get some cooking chorizo at £23 a kilo. It is so expensive I am seriously looking into the idea of making it myself. I have a sausage making attachment for my food mixer, so should try.

I'll second MrsLW's book recommendation. You may well find this site useful, only connection is that of a satisfied customer.

thriftwizard

Ooh, Alkanet - that could actually be my stray plant too! Now I'm completely confused - I know Alkanet's a dye plant, but there seem to be several different plants with the same name - mine doesn't look like either of the dye varieties, but is very much like the green alkanet!