The Prepping Thread - A Newer Beginning ;)

missychrissy

Elaine241 - re dry goods - I always have red lentils, yellow split peas, marrow fat peas, barley and soup mix or broth mix bags. I buy red lentils and split peas in 3 kg bags on Amazon, £9.99 for split peas and £10.99 for lentils. I use red lentils in lots of things eg cottage pie, spag bol, casseroles and curries to thicken and add an extra layer of nutrition.  I make lots of soups with pulses. After I have stripped a chicken carcass I put the carcass in slow cooker with a packet of soup mix and whatever fresh veg I have. I do the same with a leftover lamb leg bone or beef bone.  Recently I used a ham joint (3.49 in Tesco) in the slow cooker with 500 g of split peas and chopped onion - I had lots of ham and pease pudding for sandwiches or soup if watered down. I often do a ham joint with marrow fat peas - can make pie with the ham or use just as soup. I like barley in Scotch broth type recipes when cooking a leftover lamb bone. 

I could go on and on about the possibilities of pulses but they are cheap, tasty and nutritious.

Si_Clist

elaine241 said:

Today I collected the two lambs I took to slaughter the other week (still feeling guilty!). They were neatly cut up, bagged and weighed about 50kg between them which is a lot of lamb that I can now feed my family. British lamb is so expensive in the shops that I never buy it unless it is reduced; which is ridiculous when we actually produce the stuff.

Some questions for you if I may 'cos I've always wondered.  First off, if you get roughly 25kg of usable meat from one lamb, what sort of age and live weight are they slaughtered at?  What do they do with the skins nowadays?   Is there still a market for them?

Now wondering if there's anyone left who still makes lambs' tail pie.  I remember having a go on that once and thinking it was disgusting

GreyQueen

Mothernerd, not sure if what you meant by 'green mesh' has huge holes in it or fine ones, but the product called scaffold netting is often in green. I bought a roll of it last year from Scaffolding Direct and had it delivered - their website makes it clear that they know they are selling to gardeners and allotmenteers as well as builders. HTH.

PS a 25 m roll is only about the diameter of a tea plate, so easy enough to handle.

MingVase

missychrissy it's great to have somebody in here who know how to cook in the old way, I love this. Have you any more hints or recipes? I'm going to seriously cut down on meat . I used to do all these things long ago when we were very hard up, but have now got lazy and forgotten so much .

silvasava

In the past I've used pea mesh to protect my fruit bushes but after a thrush got tangled up in it I decided not to bother - she didnt eat that much.  I now use clematis mesh,very useful as I can poke rods through it and use it to support my beans, lay it over ground to stop the neighbourhood cats using it as a toilet. DH aquired a large piece of the fine green mesh used for industrial applications and its made a lovely roof over the timbers on our patio,it filters the sun nicely and I'm sure hasplenty of other uses........;)
I rarely use pulses so I'm off to see how what and how for future cooking, thank you MissChrissy.

needmoney

I don't eat a lot of meat anyway but since the start of lockdown when food shopping became sketchy I've almost become vegetarian. I'm also finding some of the things I used to love ready made things, custard tarts etc I've now gone off possibly from  cooking healthier'

Like @MingVase said I had become lazy but not getting out and about being lured by the easy option being forced to use what's here has cut down on rubbish (not all still eating some biscuits with coffee  )

I have some soup left from yesterday and pulses  would be good to add but I've only got quinoa and couscous so I don't know if they'd be any good in soups as I'm not used to using pulses except for occasionally tinned lentils.

elaine241

Si_Clist said:

elaine241 said:

Today I collected the two lambs I took to slaughter the other week (still feeling guilty!). They were neatly cut up, bagged and weighed about 50kg between them which is a lot of lamb that I can now feed my family. British lamb is so expensive in the shops that I never buy it unless it is reduced; which is ridiculous when we actually produce the stuff.

Some questions for you if I may 'cos I've always wondered.  First off, if you get roughly 25kg of usable meat from one lamb, what sort of age and live weight are they slaughtered at?  What do they do with the skins nowadays?   Is there still a market for them?

Now wondering if there's anyone left who still makes lambs' tail pie.  I remember having a go on that once and thinking it was disgusting

The lambs were left over from last year so were not new season. They were about 14 months old and had "shot their teeth" which means they had grown some of  their adult teeth and are for some reason worth slightly less at market. I think they were between 45-50 kilos live weight and as a rule of thumb you aim for half that butchered dead weight. Haven't got a clue what they do with the skins but I know there is a market for them somewhere as any dead stock we take to the hunt kennels is skinned. For what its worth the wool price is on the floor and we don't bother taking the fleeces every year, we just sew them up in huge wool sacks and leave them in a shed. We don't get back the tail, most tails are ringed when the lambs are very young and drop off.( along with their balls if male!!) This is done to prevent fly strike if they get mucky around the back end.
Our new season lambs are growing like weeds and we have to judge when to take them to market. It depends on what the supermarket buyers are looking for, light lambs or heavier, sometimes the light lambs actually make more per kilo than the heavier ones!!

elaine241

elaine I'm going to do an inventory of spices next. We have a local zero waste shop which has only been open a few months but have set up to take home delivery orders since April. It's a shop I want to stay open and support. I'm doing a lot more cooking now and would like to build up my spices and try different combinations and curry blends

Pre Covid I used to go to Cardiff, City road with a friend about twice a year. There are loads of different ethnic supermarkets and they have spices and blends in much bigger bags for a fraction of the cost. I would stock up loads of spices, coriander and cumin mix, kashmiri mix, plenty of different grains, cous cous, basmati rice, garam flour etc . There were several fabric shops which we would also visit as my friend is an avid quilter. We would make a day of it as there are some very interesting restaurants/takeaways where you are never sure what you have ordered! To top it all there was a Muslim charity shop which had the most beautiful saris, scarves etc that we also bought as they again were a fraction of the price of haberdashery and fabric. Hopefully we will go there again in the future but my friend is shielding so no time soon :-(

littlegreenparrot

needmoney said:

I don't eat a lot of meat anyway but since the start of lockdown when food shopping became sketchy I've almost become vegetarian. I'm also finding some of the things I used to love ready made things, custard tarts etc I've now gone off possibly from  cooking healthier'

Like @MingVase said I had become lazy but not getting out and about being lured by the easy option being forced to use what's here has cut down on rubbish (not all still eating some biscuits with coffee  )

I have some soup left from yesterday and pulses  would be good to add but I've only got quinoa and couscous so I don't know if they'd be any good in soups as I'm not used to using pulses except for occasionally tinned lentils.

I've had quinoa in soup and it works well. If you've already made the soup I would probably cook it first and then just stir some in to the re-heated soup. 
I chuck a couple of handfuls of red lentils into a lot of soups, and also like pearl barley - a little goes a long way and it thickens it up lovely. 

elaine241

missychrissy said:

Elaine241 - re dry goods - I always have red lentils, yellow split peas, marrow fat peas, barley and soup mix or broth mix bags. I buy red lentils and split peas in 3 kg bags on Amazon, £9.99 for split peas and £10.99 for lentils. I use red lentils in lots of things eg cottage pie, spag bol, casseroles and curries to thicken and add an extra layer of nutrition.  I make lots of soups with pulses. After I have stripped a chicken carcass I put the carcass in slow cooker with a packet of soup mix and whatever fresh veg I have. I do the same with a leftover lamb leg bone or beef bone.  Recently I used a ham joint (3.49 in Tesco) in the slow cooker with 500 g of split peas and chopped onion - I had lots of ham and pease pudding for sandwiches or soup if watered down. I often do a ham joint with marrow fat peas - can make pie with the ham or use just as soup. I like barley in Scotch broth type recipes when cooking a leftover lamb bone. 

I could go on and on about the possibilities of pulses but they are cheap, tasty and nutritious.

I have inventoried and I have loads more than I thought! Many, many types of beans ,yellow split peas,dried peas, lentils red , green and yellow (chana daal from the indian shop), couscous, quinoa, giant couscous, soup mixes, popcorn, whole sorghum, amaranthe, bulgar wheat, chick peas to name a few!! Plenty of different types of rice including pasta masquerading as rice! Flours include the usual culprits  plus garam and potato(?!!) Trouble is I go to the ethnic supermarkets and buy anything that looks interesting or new to me, I then look for recipes to try them in. I am not a fan of sorghum so I wont be buying it again and it may get fed to the hens.
With chicken carcasses I tend to freeze them until I have about half a dozen, then make a big batch of stock which I reduce down to a concentrate.
Where I used to work the butchers used to sell the ham hocks very cheaply and I used to buy one or two and boil them for ham with parsley sauce, then add peas to the liquid for soup. I always soaked them before cooking as they could be too salty.
I will be adding Borlotti beans to my stash as I am growing about 12 plants to see how they get on in our growing conditions. At the moment they look very happy and are producing lovely pale purple flowers.