The Prepping Thread - A Newer Beginning ;)

Toonie

And then at the same time you have this

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/20/uk-food-waste-dont-know-what-to-cook

"Almost £1.2bn worth of fruit, veg and bread is binned in the UK every year, with one in five consumers stating the reason they waste so much is they “don’t know what to cook”."

"Sainsbury’s said the average UK household threw away 142 carrots, onions, tomatoes, courgettes, potatoes and loaves of bread a year."

LadOnTheHill

I've been watching a chap on YouTube called Atomic Shrimp recently. He does a variety of videos, but one that I find very interesting is that he'll sometimes set himself a challenge of eating for two days on £2. He'll vary the amounts and the limits - sometimes he can forage, or use stuff from the store cupboard, or ask for sugar at Mcdonalds or something - but he has to get quite creative with what he has and can use. It's really made me think about what I can and can't cook, and how to combine ingredients or use them differently to create a different thing.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GbTn7vYBkeo

In one of his videos, he made seitan. I'd heard of it, but never actually knew what it was. You take ordinary flour, mix it with water to make a dough, then wash all of the starch out of it. It leaves you with the gluten which you can shape and form and cook to give yourself a different form of protein. It doesn't look the most appetising, but it's a cheap form of protein that can be flavoured to your own taste and added to spag bol or whatever. He later tried to use the starch that was left behind to cook with, but it wasn't that successful.

I personally would never have thought about making a meat substitute from flour. I'm far from being a gourmet cook, and it's interesting to see different ways of using things to get the most out of them, with less waste.

EmrysWyllt

As a nation we are told we throw away too much food. Perhaps we are accustomed to having too much choice and easy availability?  M*rrisons recent attempts to reduce milk waste was met with a very mixed reaction. 

Perhaps we need to re-educate ourselves and schools should start to educate in the ways of using up our food, including that which is past its BB date. We are criticised for throwing this away but not encouraged or shown how to avoid this. 

Si_Clist

EmrysWyllt said:

... Perhaps we are accustomed to having too much choice and easy availability?  

Nail on head.  I haven't been in Morrison's for two years now, but last time I was in there I noted that if you were in need of cat litter, you had a choice of seven types.

And come to think of it, it was on that visit that I was fascinated to hear a woman giving the checkout captain a hard time because they didn't stock the coconut yoghurt she wanted.

Ref all these videos and whatnot in which folk knock up a hearty meal for four for 18p or whatever, I can't help wondering if their weekly budget somehow manages to include a smartphone contract, SKY subscription, magazines and other essentials of life as it is lived today.

And lest anyone decide to get into "it's alright for you" mode over what I've said, please note that for the first 5-6 months of our married life we were constantly skint.  By that I mean skint:  we lived for weeks on own-label mushroom soup augmented with brown rice and suetless dumplings, in a flat heated by a one-bar electric fire.  If we could afford to switch it on ...  

[Deleted User]

We are fully prepared for things to get very tight. Thankfully, having been following the Frugaldom path for a long while now, i know we will be able to cope.

Our annual budget for everything excluding mortgage and council tax is £3,800. We have a food budget of £100 PCM. 

A lot of people are going to have to learn to compromise  for the first time ever. We eat an awful lot of egg based dishes - we have 20 chickens. We don’t always fancy an egg based meal but food is food and we always have an abundance of eggs. 

I would really love to run a car again, but we can’t afford it so we don’t. We walk and cycle a lot, which yes is lovely but also pants at times in bad weather with young children in tow. We just get on with it. 

The price hikes are very tough, but with a fresh attitude and a can-do mindset we will weather this. 

houseinafield

Automic Shrimp also has some interesting videos where he opens tins of food that you don't expect to find in tins, like bread! He also opens tins well past their sell by date. I've never paid much attention to sell by dates on tins or anything else really. I use the good old fashioned sniff and tentatively taste test learned from my mum. 

I'm also worrying more and more about inflation even though I think we all saw it coming. We're living on a reduced pension and savings until my pension kicks in in two years. Thankyou LadOnTheHill for the link to the twitter thread, it's a subject I've been ranting about for some time - although based on prices since last year, which are bad enough, rather than as far back as she went. Shrinkflation (which almost feels like theft to me) is another bugbear. We get the majority of our shopping with Tesco delivery and every time one of our 'favourites' is no longer available' we're asked to try 'this' instead. The same product at the same, or slightly increased price in a smaller jar/tin/whatever.
I wonder how families will cope, that are unable to cook or don't know how to stretch meals. My sister was telling me about someone she used to know some years ago, who having only £5 left until the following day and nothing much in the fridge, got takeaway for the family. My dad, on the other hand, was a great one for ' there's a lot you can do with a sack of spuds and half a dozen eggs! 

I can't see where we can cut back further so the looming rise in energy costs is a concern and council tax is ridiculously high - thanks in part to paying for a Police and Crime Commissioner. Another subject that can and does set me off on a bit of a rant!! 
I'm still managing to get logs at a reasonable price so the woodburner has become our sole source of heating and that doesn't get lit until the afternoon, we just wrap up in warm layers until then. This year is the first year that I'm using it for some limited cooking and I keep a kettle on it too. 

We're pretty comfortable really, mostly because I'm extremely careful and mindful that we're in this for the long haul. Prices never return to what they were, do they and so I'm still stocking up where I can. My new favourite is tinned potatoes, they seem to make an appearance in much of what I cook and make everything go further. There's only the two of us now and we're rattling around in a house that's too big for us but the move we intend to make isn't on the cards until next year.

RAS

I also saw the Atomic Shrimp session. The recipes are interesting but do require quite a lot of cooking knowledge. Glad he's passing it on though.

I re-read a few of the cookery books that I used when I was young and skint; electric on slot meters, burning wood waste from the local joinery and what Jocasta Innes called Planned Eating, designed to reduce cooking.

What struck me was that we were reasonably energy rich then. You could make decent meals from some less popular chunk of meat cooked slow and long, or cook your soaked beans and bake potatoes. For many households now the amount of energy needed represents the choice between cooking or heating.

And of course cookery was replaced by food technology at school. Although a good many families pre-war lived on bread and spreads, hot milky tea, with a bit of a fry up or chips. Rations came with recipes and cookery teaching, which may not have produced inspired cooks but did encourage people to learn the basics.

I do remember one period when my erratic agency working, combined with rules about signing on, meant I had 11p and had to walk 6 miles for my "in hand" interview. I was re-imbursed the bus fare even though they knew I'd walked. 

At home I had some flour, a little marg, a bit of pasta and two slices of bread, so I planned to borrow a ha'penny to buy a pint of  milk and make a white sauce to go with the pasta to cover the two days until I got the cheque. With the bus fare, I was able to get some bacon off-cuts, the milk, and a few other bits, so ate well instead. The guy even through in the butt end of a salami because it was close to closing and going in the bin.

Wraithlady

Ah, yes, living on a university grant - where I learned a/ to cook and b/ the wonders of market stalls and ethnic grocery stores. Don't miss living off tinned soup, rice and lentils though.

The ethos of  generosity still exists in our little corner shop - I have been given veg for free which was past its best (but still perfectly ok with a bit of trimming) and got 5 easy-peelers for £1 the other week (it was supposed to be 3 for £1). 

Karmacat

LadOnTheHill said:

I've been watching a chap on YouTube called Atomic Shrimp recently. 

In one of his videos, he made seitan. I'd heard of it, but never actually knew what it was. You take ordinary flour, mix it with water to make a dough, then wash all of the starch out of it. It leaves you with the gluten which you can shape and form and cook to give yourself a different form of protein. It doesn't look the most appetising, but it's a cheap form of protein that can be flavoured to your own taste and added to spag bol or whatever. He later tried to use the starch that was left behind to cook with, but it wasn't that successful.

I personally would never have thought about making a meat substitute from flour. I'm far from being a gourmet cook, and it's interesting to see different ways of using things to get the most out of them, with less waste.

Wow!  I used to eat seitan occasionally when I lived in London back in the day, there was a globally resourced health food store near Old Street tube (I think its still going).  It was really, really expensive, but the sauce it was sold in made it taste fantastic.  OTOH, I also ate a lot of bread and cereals, all of it wheat-based, which probably added up to my wheat intolerance today.  And for today - bear in mind that the gluten is what contains the protein in wheat, so it's very nutritious.  Sigh ... 

MrsCD

My email from Tes℅ today had some family pudding recipes, just 8/10 were made in the oven! The other recipes had so many ingredients I wonder if anyone would ever try them. Surely they could show people how to cook basic meals with only a few cheap items!
Sorry for the rant....