plans

September 20, 2013 ~ Gillie ~ 8 Comments

I have not fallen off the edge of the planet (despite the prayers of many no doubt) I have been preserving and catching up with all those little jobs that have the ability to turn into thwacking great monsters if I don’t keep on top of them.

I am on top of them. So life, if only momentarily, is returning to what passes for normal in our house of fun. This is the time of year that feels like new year for me. In the days when I wore knee length socks and a navy blue tunic it was the time of new pencils and a squeaky new pencil case and Helix Oxford Maths set in it’s distinctive blue and silver tin.

Form teachers handed out pristine new exercise books and we carefully copied out our timetable. Over the years this process has evolved but I still buy new pencils and it is now that I start our timetable for the next 12 months.

Planning is everything, if you are decluttering, downsizing and aiming towards a life of less then you need a plan. And there is little I love more than a plan. Not surprisingly you will need some basic equipment. I prefer pen and paper, but if online and digital rocks your boat then far be it from me to question your choice. Just choose something you are comfortable, you like and most importantly will use. A plan can be pretty but it can be pretty useless if you never consult it!

If you are thinking of changing you lifestyle first you need to know what you what to change, how you are going to change it and how that will impact on your day to day life. There are big plans and there are little plans. To ease you in gently we will start with a little plan.

Let’s start with the grocery shopping. This is how we did it.

What do we want to change?

Reduce or eliminate supermarket purchases
Produce as much ourselves
Purchase as much as possible from local producers
Purchase as much of what remains from local suppliers

How are we going to change it?

Increase fruit and vegetable production
Increase poultry numbers
Bake own bread etc.
Use locally grown co-operative vegetable box scheme
Use farmers’ market
Purchase direct from farm(s)
Use local greengrocer/butcher/fishmonger
Make own cleaning products
Consider alternative purchasing options for dry goods, tins and general household goods.

How will that impact on our day to day life?

Cannot do all shopping in one place
Increased work in the garden
Need to plan ahead both the shopping and the way it is purchased
Freezer must be cleared to ensure that whole butchered animals can be easily stored and accessed.
Bulk purchasing of some products (esp vinegar and bicarb for cleaning) required.

What will we do to fit the above into our day to day life?

First, in terms of food shopping PLAN AHEAD.
Usually on a Sunday I check the fridge, pantry and freezer to see what I already have in stock that I can use.
Then I check the diary and see what is going on during the week, I do not want to be cooking a complicated dish on a day when I am ought all day and we have multiple pick ups in the evening.
Then the fun starts. I choose up to three or four recipe books and start to plan menus for the week ahead. That way we don’t get stuck in a rut with the same old recipes and can experiment and try out new things.
As you chose a recipe allocate it to a day , write down the page and the recipe book and check what, if any ingredients you need to buy and write them down on your list.
When you are happy with the menu plan tackle the shopping list.
Break it down by store. I am quite lucky in that I pass the butcher every day and with a bit of a diversion and a child looking out for traffic wardens I can nip into the greengrocer too. If the greengrocer list is long then I save that for a day when I have to go into town and park the car. Bear that kind of thing in mind when you are deciding what to eat on what day. Don’t make Monday’s meal one that cannot be done without a shopping trip unless you know you can go shopping on Monday!
We also have a blackboard in the kitchen, whenever anything runs out the last person to use it is supposed to write it on the board. It’s not foolproof but it’s not bad! Add anything on the blackboard onto the appropriate shop section of your list.
Non food items and dry and tinned goods are a bit of an issue. Personally if I can’t buy local then I prefer to buy ethically. This means, that for the most part I don’t use supermarkets except Waitrose (which is a partnership) and the Co-op. The other supplier I use is Suma, a wholefood co-op and a couple of online stores. This is my choice and does mean that I tend to buy in bulk and only once every month or so.

I am not perfect, I run out just like everyone else and I have to make emergency shops. I try to make those at places like the Co-op or locally owned shops, but I have been known to go to Tesco! Don’t beat yourself up. We have to start somewhere.

I haven’t addressed packaging because for the most part if you buy local you tend not to get that much packaging. Any veg I buy I can buy loose or pack in my own bags (mushrooms, soft fruit and veg etc.). Our local veg box scheme the wonderful Abundant Earth gives each member 4 hessian bags which are used in rotation for the veg. Any soft veg are put in paper bags which are reused until they are composted. The fishmonger wraps up in paper and is just coming to terms with the fact that I don’t need a plastic bag around my fish. The baker only uses paper or my own bags. Whole animals direct from the farm do come in plastic. They are butchered and given to us in a large box. But by far the biggest problem is that which is bought mail order. Everything comes in plastic, understandably nobody wants to send 5 litres of vinegar through the mail in a glass jar but why did my soapnuts come in a plastic bag? Albeit a plastic bag inside a very nice cotton drawstring bag. Long gone are the days when you could get your jars refilled at the grocers because there are no grocers left, because everyone goes to supermarkets or Costco or WholeFoods. Which brings me back to why I don’t shop in supermarkets…..

Here in Durham we have The Durham Local Food Network (I am just a little bit proud because I am a founder member and I think it’s brilliant) but we are not unique. There are lots of groups like us who have directories of local producers and suppliers and information about local food news and events. Google your town and find out what’s going on.

Materials required

Eyes – to see what you already have!
Pencil
Used envelopes, backs of circulars to write out shopping lists, menus etc (we keep our on a magnetic bulldog clip on the fridge)
Cookery books or a head full of recipes
Diary
Shopping bags or trolley
Bus ticket/car/shanks pony

foraging

August 11, 2013August 11, 2013 ~ Gillie ~ 1 Comment

In a journey towards less, there is more to contend with than removing things from your home. You must also consider how and why you let things into your home, and indeed your life in general.

I have long been a supermarket avoider. I am one of the founder members of The Durham Local Food Network, and have over the years made my own butter, cheese, soap, shampoo, furniture polish, cleaning products, face creams as well as the more usual, preserves, breads, wines, fruit brandies etc. All were a huge success with the possible exception of butter, which though it tasted delicious was really not worth the effort. If I had to make all my own butter we would never bake again!

I have always loved foraging. I am not particularly knowledgeable, but have always been eager to learn. I have never poisoned anyone, but there have been some less than successful experiments. Acorn coffee tasted rather good, but like the butter, was a faff to make. Adding cleavers to salads enhanced it in my view, but not in that of the rest of the family. Rowan jelly is delicious after two years, it is vile in year one.

Imagine my delight to discover that the Boss and I were going on a two day coastal foraging course with Rose and Chris Bax and Caco from Taste the Wild. We went out mushrooming with them in October last year and it was such a fantastic day that when I opened the voucher on Christmas morning I was devastated to realise that I had to wait until August. It was well worth the wait.

I have pondered whether to give you a blow by blow account in one post or not. Fearful that some of you might not be able to contain your excitement and could suffer an unexpected early onset life threatening condition through sheer joy I shall sprinkle the reports over the next few weeks.

However, as a small taste of what is to come.

This is me fishing for whiting and cod on “All My Sons” with Sean. Day one was not a great success for me (though great for the others). I caught up well enough on day two. On the first evening I was also suffering from a touch of sea sickness and spent the latter part of the journey, whilst they were emptying the lobster pots, with my eyes firmly fixed on the horizon…

This is supper on day two… in addition to which we also had two HUGE lobsters, a guarnard, winkles, limpets and some shore crabs. Anybody recognise anything?! With the exception of the bread, the salad and salsa verde we caught or foraged all of it.

I would hazard a guess that depending on where you live, at least half of the “weeds” you are trying to eradicate from your garden you could eat one way or another.

chickweed
rosebay willow herb
fat hen
hogweed
grape plantain
Everlasting sweet pea (NOT the annuals)
Ground Ivy

And that doesn’t even begin to include all the things that probably don’t grow in your garden …..

frozen

July 15, 2013July 15, 2013 ~ Gillie ~ 10 Comments

It is hot today, well certainly for the north of England. Currently 25 degrees (about 73 for those working in farenheit) and stuffy. I can’t believe I used to live in the tropics, I must have been made of much sterner stuff when I was younger. However, it did mean that today was the perfect day to sort the freezer…..

This is one of our most shameful areas. I have tried all sorts of strategies to keep on top of it but none of them have lasted much longer than a month or two. We have three freezers. A small freezer below our fridge in our kitchen; a chest freezer and a small freezer in the outbuildings.

The fridge in the kitchen is the main daily use freezer. The one I use first when working out what we are going to eat the following week; the one the ice cream lives in; the ice box and any herbs I have frozen for over the winter.

The chest freezer is meant to be for fish (my husband is a trout and salmon fisherman) and whole or half animals bought direct from the farmer; freeze ahead meals (especially over the Christmas holidays); leftovers sufficient for another meal for at least 2 people; bones and meat for the dogs; odd stuff my husband buys when he is let loose in the farmers’ market on his own. Though as I bought an alpaca steak last time I went to the Hexham market I can’t really complain about the Desperate Dan Pie he bought.

Finally there is the small freezer used for fruit. We have a lot of fruit bushes and trees gooseberries, redcurrents, blackcurrents, apples, damsons, plums and quinces. We also have raspberries, strawberries, cherries and blueberries, but they never last long enough to make it to the freezer! Everything comes to harvest at once and I can’t can and jelly it all in one go so it goes straight into the freezer along with any foraged fruit (sloes, rosehips, elderberries) and I do bulk sessions at my leisure.

In theory it should work well. In practice it is chaos, not even of the organised kind. So out it all came. There was a shocking amount that fell into the unidentifiable category and combined with the dog meat and bones which had got wedged under a whole side of smoked salmon the dogs will be well fed this week. Then there were the soups. Now I like soup as much as the next man. My husband should have married the Soup Dragon. He makes soup by the gallon, thick broths and lentil soups made using a ham bone from a mutated pig the size of a shire horse and so thick they could be served by the slice. The one kind of soup I can’t stand. The problem is he makes it, bags it up and then forgets about it and makes some more. Henceforth he is banned from even mentioning the word “stock” until he has eaten at least 2/3 of the soup lake in our freezer.

The most interesting bits were the unused cuts from the whole lamb we get each spring. I am the only person who likes heart so I usually have that braised on a cold night whilst everyone else wrinkles their noses at me and snaffles some kind of dubious takeaway. I have plenty of recipes for skirt and breast and all those other cheap cuts that nobody else wants but even I was baffled by these.

I have added them to the dog pile.

Finally the leftovers. ” Bolognese sauce for 5″ is brilliant; “lamb hot pot for 2” could do my husband and I for lunch; unidentifiable meat dish dated October 2010 I thought could probably go.

So now I have this

All sorted neatly into bags

this

Meat drawer

and this.

Fruit waiting to be jellied

But more importantly what I have learned and what will I do differently?

Bags – sorting stuff in the big freezer by bag avoids loosing dog food under the salmon. I have a raw meat and fish bag, a cooked meals, soup and stock bag and a breakfast bag (bacon, black pudding, white pudding, fruit pudding and kippers).
All menu planning to use existing stocks in the kitchen freezer before going to the outside freezer and finally the farmers’ market.
Nobody is allowed to put anything in the freezer except me (because I am the only person who labels anything!)
Cut down on game purchases. Only my husband and I really like game, I can sneak it in to casseroles for the girls but they have been suspicious ever since they discovered “dark beef” was venison and “dark chicken” was pheasant! We do get given game by friends who shoot and my husband has brought the odd animal home himself but they tend to get eaten immediately. It’s the partridge picked up at the farmers’ market that just never gets eaten. The venison liver, which to be fair looks delicious but again as only my husband and I eat liver and game it’s not going to see the light of day on a regular weekday evening.
Leftovers. Is the reason there is so much left over because I efficiently cooked twice the amount, because unexpectedly half the family were out for supper or because it wasn’t a great recipe? In the latter case there is no point putting it in the freezer because nobody is going to eat it. A rather odd chicken and chickpea curry fell into that category.
Never put milk in the freezer. Nobody ever remembers it is there.
If I’ve not turned it into jelly or canned it by December I’m never going to do it.

PS loved the fact that WordPress spell check doesn’t recognise kipper or chickpea – foodie philistine!

the list

June 30, 2013June 30, 2013 ~ Gillie ~ 8 Comments

Sunday is menu planning day. It makes the rest of the week so much easier and I feel good as if I have ticked off a task but don’t feel as if I have actually done any work.

Menu planning means:

no more staring at the fridge or pantry wondering what to eat and serving up baked potatoes or spag bol for the millionth time
no more panic (and expensive) runs to the shops because you have “nothing to eat”
eating down your supplies, “shopping from home”
you have time to try out new recipes and experiment
buying less food because you only buy what you need
appropriate meals for appropriate days (essential if you have a family of teenagers with activities in the evenings)

What’s not to like?

First check your freezer/fridge/pantry. Always shop from home first. What have you got that needs using up. Make a list and bear that in mind when you get to the meal planning stage.

Then take you diary. Yup, your diary. See the final point above. You do not want to plan to eat souffle on a night when you are going to have to pick up one child from a music lesson and your husband gets home late from a trip. That is a baked potato or casserole type of night. On the other hand if you have a free day and have a great recipe that requires all day marinading or is a bit fiddly, that’s a great time to try it out.

Now choose a couple of cookery books, or fire up your computer and head for your favourite recipe sites and blogs. This is the fun part. This week I wanted to use up some chicken thighs and lamb shanks. I also have a lovely pork joint which we were going to have today until I realised we were going out (see even I get it wrong!). With that in mind I flicked through the books above and decided upon:

Green chicken curry (use up the thighs)
mozzarella Focaccia (busy day need something easy)
Tangia (free day so can make fiddly marinade)
Lime and chilli pasta (going out to drinks party so need quick light food beforehand also children can make theirs fresh later on)
Chicken with chilli and lemon (a bit like the previous night so may adapt on the day but liked the recipe)
Jerk Pork

There are only six meals because we are going out on Saturday and I’ll let the girls chose what they want on the day.

As soon as you chose a recipe write next to it the book and the page number (you will forget I promise, I speak from bitter experience) AND check ingredients to see what you need to buy.

Then construct the shopping list. We also have a blackboard in the kitchen for anyone to write down things that have run out. So next I add on these. Finally I add on any extras. For example I have just seen this recipe for Tropical Ice Box Pie which I am going to try out this week so I need some extra ingredients for that.

I don’t shop in supermarkets so I group items by shop but if you are a supermarket shopper group the items by the order in which they appear in the shop. That way you don’t have to go back and forth and you only go down the aisles you need and helps stop opportunistic buying of stuff you don’t need and is just going to add to the clutter you don’t want.

Finally pin your list somewhere where you can see it!

You may have noticed what I was writing on. You could do it online on your phone but as you can see from here, I struggle with that. I keep all our used envelopes, flyers, letters anything with a blank page and clip them together for shopping lists, messages etc. I’ll keep the spare square above for next week’s menus.

Now that’s all done I think I may go out and admire my garden before it starts to rain again.

the pantry

June 23, 2013 ~ Gillie ~ 7 Comments

It wasn’t as hard as I had expected. I am in the groove now. I still have to locate the out of date anchovies that my husband has turned into paste. I know him too well. He will convert something we have not used into something else we will not use and eventually I will be allowed to throw it out. No more. I have removed all food items we will not eat and, where possible fed them to the chickens, the rest have been put on the compost.

I use a weekly menu plan and shop only for those items that I need for the weeks’ meals but do not have in stock. This encourages me to use my cookery books and try out new recipes as well as making it a lot easier at the end of the day. All I have to do is look at the list on the fridge and open the appropriate recipe book at the appropriate page. Life is much easier that way. I keep my diary to hand when menu planning, if I am going to be out all day and then doing the Mummy taxi run in the evening there is no point planning a meal that requires preparation and last minute attention. On the other hand, if I have a day at home and everyone home by 6.00 then we can go for something a little more adventurous.

On a good week I shop from the larder and the freezer. Unfortunately now the freezer is mainly offering up those odd things we bought because they looked interesting. I love heart for example, it is tasty and cheap. I am going to struggle to slip it under the teenage radar. We usually buy a whole or half sheep. For some obscure reason I asked for one of the legs to be left whole. Dinner for 15 anyone?

This is what I hope to avoid in the future. No more whimsical purchases. A freezer with only food we know we will eat and know when we will eat it.

Tonight all the girls are out. So the Boss and I are having lobster and crab salad. That’s two items out of the freezer, salad from the garden and dressing made with the ends of various oil and vinegar bottles. A good clear up dinner I think.

refuse

June 22, 2013 ~ Gillie ~ 4 Comments

Removing things we neither need nor want is, to all intents and purposes, shutting the door after the first horse has bolted. The first step is to stop those things getting in the house in the first place. The first R in Bea Johnson’s mantra is Refuse.

What can I refuse to let into my home?

Packaging
Junk Mail
Bags (plastic/paper etc)
Books
Clothes
Food
Disposable items
DVDs
CDs
Plastic bottles
Yoghurt pots
Knick Knacks
Freebies
Unwanted gifts
Impulse purchases
Guilt purchases

That’s not your usual list. I’ve highlighted a few that you might not have expected to see. How can we get by without food for example? But I didn’t say no food, I mean food we don’t need. Look at just one shelf in your cupboard and take everything out. Put back ONLY the things that you know you need. Do you need

The bag of cookies 5 for £1 at the co-op checkout.
The super hot chilli sauce you bought at a food fair and is still unopened.
The various jars of sauces and marinades.
The sushi kit you bought after a great meal out

In our case we have all of the above and the answer is no. I make better cookies, sauces and marinades hence the jars gathering dust and the stale cookies. I love sushi but I prefer somebody else to make it.

This is about rethinking how we live and what we need and want to live that life. Today and tomorrow I am tackling the kitchen. This is the penultimate big room before I move into the outbuildings. It is the one I am most scared of doing. I love to cook, preparing food for family and friends is part of how I show my love and how I nurture and care. I need to rethink how I can do that without all the unnecessary extras.