THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

mardatha

If that was the case TW then you'd eat it on toast and enjoy it and be fine! lol. GQ I love that link thanks. Sorry not been posting but I am reading, just a bit tired.

GreyQueen

mardatha wrote: »

If that was the case TW then you'd eat it on toast and enjoy it and be fine! lol. GQ I love that link thanks. Sorry not been posting but I am reading, just a bit tired.

My pleasure, hun. I thought it was too good not to share.

I've been a AWOL from the net due to spending some of most evenings on my allotment. All the blackcurrants now nestled in the freezer and the triffids (I mean the varied cucurbits) growing well, especially having enjoyed the 1 inch + rain we had in just over 24 hrs.

Having recently been diagnosed with celiac disease, I'm giving any and all packaged items the bent eye as I hunt for wheat-containing items. The pasta is long gone and won't be re-stocked. Unless we're facing starvation conditons and I was faced with a choice of starving or of allowing my immune system to attack my small intestine at will under the influence of the gluten.

Interesting to read about gluten. It's actually indigestible, even at a molecular level, we just cannae handle it.

ivyleaf

GreyQueen And isn't it astonishing how many items contain gluten/wheat when one really wouldn't expect them to :eek:

greenbee

ivyleaf wrote: »

GreyQueen And isn't it astonishing how many items contain gluten/wheat when one really wouldn't expect them to :eek:

Kale should be fine

elona

GQ

Could you have instinctively being trying to do what was best for your body even before this diagnosis? I remember you were low carbing and cutting down on processed stuff.

I have decided to try to eat more sensibly as I could do with losing weight and reducing stress on my knees etc.

I remembered the saying that there is no such thing as bad weather, just unsuitable clothes so decided to look out sensible shoes in my wardrobe and found a half price good quality, smart raincoat in the sales. Realised my rain jacket did not have a hood and I was more likely to go out for a walk if I did not have to faff around with a brolly all the time.

A hooded jacket that should have been £79 but was on sale for £19 is now in the post. :j

After a bit of research I thought it was silly to pay over £2 a time for a certain "light" spray and that also had additives etc. and have found a spray dispenser that I can fill myself with olive oil.

Gave myself a good talking to and concluded that "even if it is a bargain" not to buy something unless I can make a very good case for it being used and saving me time, effort and improving health.

GreyQueen

You're right, elona, I like bread etc but had reluctantly and painfully come to the conclusion that it wasn't liking me.

greenbee, kale isn't proper food. I eat chard and even fat hen off my allotment but I have to draw the line somewhere and k a l e is about where it's drawn

Seriously, I can only think a diet of whole, unprocessed foods can only be a good thing in both the short and longer term.

elona

GQ

I felt the same about the green stuff - shh! A while ago I got a veg box and stir fried k**e with chopped onion, herbs, a little apple and some veg stock and dds adored it.

Instead of crisps, biscuits and junk tonight I have some strawberries and natural yoghurt in an attempt to break the junk food cycle.

thriftwizard

Hahaha! I've just picked the first helpings of my Red Russian k a l e, grown in my friend's kitchen garden, which we had yesterday as the basis of a stir-fry and tonight lightly steamed then tossed in garlic butter, and the girls were asking why I didn't pick more when I popped up there to chuck a few more plants in the ground! She has a voracious slug problem up there, and I can't very well pop up there (a bit over a mile, the last bit down an unmade-up and unlit potholed trackway, quite far from civilisation) at night to pick them off to give to either her chickens or ours next morning. Kale is one of the few plants they're not too fond of, so one of the staples of my "plan" (such as it is) to make her garden productive but easy to manage. We're digging spuds already, to thin the plants out a bit, and picking chard & courgettes too.

And on the new allotment we've planted Red Russian, Cavollo Nero and curly kale too... somehow I doubt that any of you will be turning up on the doorstep for Sunday lunch if TS should HTF!

Interestingly, our 'lottie is one of the bigger ones; it's triangular, being in a corner of an odd-shaped ex-field (probably to do with ancient settlement patterns, including a Roman camp, and a river-crossing) at 111m sq, the "standard" plot being 100m sq, and I reckon it's half the size or less than my friend's kitchen garden. Which is part of a smallholding (a tiny one by agricultural reckoning) and seems a pretty normal sized kitchen garden to me. Is it my imagination, or are "standard" allotments getting smaller, along with gardens?

GreyQueen

Our allotments are advertised in square meters not square feet, and the price is per square meter. The 'average' full-size plot is reckoned to be 250 sq m but, bearing in mind that allotments are typically laid out on random scappy bits of land which was unwanted for other purposes, a significant number of plots on any site will be around the egdes and all sorts of funny shapes and sizes. Some of them are even 400 m sq (I shared one of those with its tenant when on the waiting list for my own plot, it's a lot of work). My own plot is 300 sq m but there is almost a meter lost up one side due to the grass path, plus the bit under the shed and the adjacent 'patio' area which is slabs and has the same footprint as my 6 x 8 ft shed.

Many local authorities are sub-dividing big plots when they come free to offer smaller plots. This was to manage an excess of demand and also to manage the observed failure of many new plot-holders to get to grips with a full-size plot, with an option on another half if wanted and the plot-holder is demonstrating good cultivation over what they already have.

A fellow-plotholder and I were shaking our heads in bemusement over what several newbies have done in the past 2-3 months; gone at overgrown plots gangbusters with strimmers and then rotovated. Then vanished. The rotovated soil has grown every weed known to humankind, presently knee deep and spouting fast. Plus the horsetail infestation will have been incentivised, much in the way that chucking petrol on a fire incentivises flames. Pure madness.

Meanwhile, in my part of the forest, I am struggling to hold the line to prevent Other People's Brambles climbing into my courgette bed, and their haymeadows and dock plantations from seeding all over my cultivated soil.

Ne'mind, the waterbutts have been topped up in the deluge, the runner beans are taller than me and flowering, even if I did need to sow 4 x what I required to get enough past the snails to plant out.

If I catch a snail when gardening, I park it on the birdtable, to see if it can move fast enough to escape a passing velociraptor. Ain't had a winner of that race thus far.......... :rotfl:

thriftwizard

A bird table at the 'lottie - genius, thank you, GQ! Him Indoors is already entranced with the place, having spent half his first session up there watching a red kite (still rare here; probably too close to the city) and various buntings and warblers. A bird table would be an added lure...

Our brand-new plots have been ploughed & rotavated, and I'm going to have problems with brambles, being on the edge by a very brambly hedge, couch grass, nettles and thistles; I'm pulling out bramble roots as thick as my wrist. I adore blackberries but it's in the "rules" that we have to keep the plots weed-free (fair enough!) without chemical aids. To be fair, that's what I'd choose to do anyway, but my definition of a weed is anything I can't feed to my chickens, so dandelions, for example, don't count as weeds at all! And I'd like to use proper landscape fabric to lay mulches and "rest" the soil between crops, but that's on the banned list too, alas.

Nettles I will discourage by cutting them for a mulch and compost tea; several waterbutts from the Household Recycling Centre having already found their way up there, and thistles aren't too bad if you zap them as soon as they show their heads, but couch grass roots are undoubtedly the work of the dev!l.

I can't help thinking that some of the rules the Committee have come up with are very - socially exclusive? No landscape fabric, no plastic/polycarb constructions, no grass paths, no dogs, no children; a single mum isn't going to have the time or other resources to get down there & hoe daily to keep the weeds under control, but she's probably the person who needs an allotment most. No wonder the "crew" seems to consist mainly of retired gentlemen or couples (no single ladies) who all have showcase gardens at home open to the public for charity and don't want to sully the perfection with fruit & vegetables! The other big new site, on the less exclusive side of town, will also be run by them, as is the little site up our street; there's one small site next to the cemetery, which has to be kept tidy for obvious reasons, and the other one is up at the local stately home, several miles north, almost inaccessible without a car as there are no sheds allowed, so nowhere to keep your tools. We're very much the terrible teens of our site, with elderly gentlemen falling over themselves to tell us how to do it.

So - not a good game for the disadvantaged, then. Funny old world...