Eating well for less (Feel Free To Shoot Me Down)

Open_Eyes

I’m no chef but I have been told I can be creative with food and so far nobody has died or complained. Long story short, I generally cook as I find it relaxing, and currently have 8 persons in residence with diets from meat and fish eaters’ right down to vegan. I have needed to get to grips with the vegan thing and I hate waste so here goes my second attempt.

Today’s Vegan Lunch (Soup) for 8: Cost under £0.80p

• Stalks & leaves from 2 cauliflowers
• Outside leaves from 1 cabbage
• Stalk from 1 broccoli
• 1 Leek
• 6 tired spring onions
• 3 medium sized potatoes
• 2.5 litres of filtered water (that’s all I am allowed to cook with because of fluoride blah)
• 1/3 Level TBS of sea salt
• ½ Level TSB white pepper

Method:

• Wash everything thoroughly in filtered water
• Chop everything coarsely, place the lot in a pan and blend. Simmer for 30 minutes blend and serve with toasted wholemeal croutons, or not depending if you are vegan or vegetarian.

Before anyone asks my children are super fit and work in an International Industry that requires peak fitness hence my interest in the diet. Prior to this we always ate well but this is a whole new regime for me. Going for vegan bread tomorrow which is a first and the other parts of the vegetables above will be the main constituents of the evening meal but will be mainly vegetarian as I like cheese.

I had a big thumbs up for this but I think I over did the salt.

grahamc2003

Looks Ok to me, although I'd probably make a similar vegie soup with chicken stock. Without that, I'd add celery which adds quite a striong flavour imv, as do parsley stalks.

Is that 80p per person, or 80p for the lot? Add in the cost of cooking it, then it must come to more than 80p in total I expect, especially if electric. Also, unless your filter is activated alumina type, which home ones generally aren't, then I'm afraid you're not getting rid of any fluoride, so you might as well save the cost element of the filtration (and the hassle!). Imv, home water filters just put you at risk of contaminating the wholesome tap water rather than improving it, unless you really can't stand the flavour of yours.

Have you tried white pepper freshly ground from a mill? A massive improvement on ready ground pepper (and a totally different fuity flavour from black peppercorns).

Ectophile

I'm definitely no chef, but...

That looks quite a lot of salt to me. That said, since I was diagnosed with high blood pressure, I haven't added salt to anything I cook.

There isn't a lot of protein there, which is something that veggies can miss out on. A few soaked dried beans/peas/lentils/etc would add to the protein.

Open_Eyes

The water filter is a Berkey water filter and meant to be quite good but I know nothing about them as my son purchased it. The cost for the soup was £0.80 total but I hadn’t factored in 30mins of power so it comes out about 12p a head.

You were right about the salt so I have halved it for next time but removed the salt by putting in 2 large peeled potatoes which rescued it.

Today’s effort with vegan bread:

Harder to put a price on this as I used part of the cauliflower yesterday and we grow our own onions. £2.00 fully inclusive isn’t far off the mark for the soup only and what I didn’t mention yesterday is the preparation time is only 10 minutes. Not as frugal as yesterday but still good for 8 people.

• 1 x Cauliflower head
• 1 x White cabbage
• 2 x Large Spanish onions
• 3 medium sized potatoes
• 2.5 litres of filtered water
• 1 Level TSB of sea salt
• 1/2 Level TSB white pepper
• 1 x vegan stock cube

Paul_Varjak

My Berkey Water Filter was delivered two days ago - it is fantastic!

I tested it by putting sugar-free blackcurrant squash through the filter. What came out was pure water! No colour and tasted just like pure water - amazing!

Open_Eyes

Paul_Varjak wrote: »

My Berkey Water Filter was delivered two days ago - it is fantastic!

I tested it by putting sugar-free blackcurrant squash through the filter. What came out was pure water! No colour and tasted just like pure water - amazing!

I haven’t gone to the extremes of deliberately adding stuff but I know what you mean about the taste difference. Ours is a reasonable size, I would estimate around 20 litres, and gets filled twice a day as the children wont even allow me to give the dogs tap water. In fact the only contact allowed with tap water is by shower or a bath.

I don’t pretend to understand the regime, which goes far deeper, but suffice it to say the household is almost chemical free and we are now producing our own bio fuel made from used cooing oil. Legal car fuel for about 60p a litre.

We have just had a super silenced 10kva generator delivered and technically we should be off the power grid within 2 months and selling power back once we have finished with the solar panels and UPS system.

Don’t even ask about the hydroponics as that is seriously interesting and quite a huge subject but I am looking forward to the end product which isn’t even grown in soil.

Funky_Bold_Ribena

You'd get a better taste of soup by, instead of chopping and bunging it all in together, slowly fry your onions and leeks in oil, as slow as you can, until they are braised brown, then adding the veg and letting them braise for a while, then adding water and stock and then seasoning. Parsley and celery are great for adding flavour, I add the celery after the onions and the parsley when the water goes in.

aeb_2

Hello and welcome. This could be an interesting thread. I'm not vegetarian but heading that way. Time seems to stop me, slam in the lamb (or chicken) is just too quick and easy. And I can never remember to put the peas and beans to soak.......
I do soup like yours and add herbs to vary the flavour, depending on what I have in fresh if possible.
My children are still little but certainly take an interest in all things renewable.

Funky_Bold_Ribena

You can soak your peas and beans at the weekend, soak and boil a job lot, then split it into separate portions and freeze.

Paul_Varjak

grahamc2003 wrote: »

unless your filter is activated alumina type, which home ones generally aren't, then I'm afraid you're not getting rid of any fluoride, so you might as well save the cost element of the filtration (and the hassle!). Imv, home water filters just put you at risk of contaminating the wholesome tap water rather than improving it, unless you really can't stand the flavour of yours.

Berkey make a few types of filter. Their standard filter does not filter fluoride but they do have fluoride filters too.

Paul_Varjak

Open_Eyes wrote: »

we are now producing our own bio fuel made from used cooing oil. Legal car fuel for about 60p a litre.

I am sure lots of people make this from used chip shop oil but then fail to pay any duty. I guess you probably have to pay for chip shop oil these days and I think the reduced duty payable on Bio-diesel may well have ended now, so I am surprised it works out to just 60p/litre.

You have to filter the cooking oil - not in your Berkey I guess? And making Bio-diesel uses some dangerous chemicals - methanol which is invariably fatal if swallowed and also a fire risk. Similarly KOH (or NaOH) is very toxic and can cause serious burns, by skin contact alone and has an explosion risk. My neighbour got some quite serious burns cleaning out his drains with NaOH.