Hearty stew

I have always carried a little guilt for my dislike of organ meats. It makes sense to me that we shouldn't just be picking the finest cuts and feeding the rest to cats. Meat production is ethically complicated, more so if the only product we choose to utilize from the resources, energy and pain that goes into it is individually wrapped chicken breasts and steak cuts. Whilst I have never been quite that extravagant with my meat, I don't get along too well with offal. Sausages, black pudding and pate are fine. Its not a visceral thing (no pun intended) but rather the smell and taste, so anything heavily seasoned is perfectly edible. Kidneys are out in any context; I have never come across a seasoning that can mask that smell sufficiently. I finally weaned myself onto DH's favourite liver and onions, though it is an occasional treat; my own version is doused in a liberal quantity of home-brew beer to take the edge off (of me or the livers, I'm not quite sure!); after which they are quite passable.

A few years ago, I bought some lamb hearts. I have no idea why I picked them up, I think I was just feeling brave on that particular visit to the butchers. Lamb hearts are meaty in texture and they taste and smell like lamb, although with a slightly more iron tang to them. They are incredibly lean and do need a long slow cook to tenderize, which makes them perfect for stews and casseroles, where a little goes a long way. They are also incredibly good value - I bought six for £3.40 from our butchers shop with the intention of stuffing and braising them. Then I got home and...couldn't really be bothered to learn something new. Stew it was, goulash(ish) style to celebrate the fact that my corner shop now sells very reasonably priced paprika. 

* * * * * *

Lamb heart stew (serves 6)

100g dried haricot beans, soaked overnight

3 lambs hearts

1tbsp oil

1 rounded tbsp plain flour

2 large onions, chopped

1 rounded tbsp paprika

1 pint stock

2 cloves garlic

Ground black pepper

1 rounded tsp cinnamon

2 bay leaves

1 tsp dried thyme

3 large carrots, chopped

¼ large cabbage, shredded

Mashed potato to serve

Bring the haricot beans to the boil and maintain for ten minutes. Drain and set aside.

Slice the hearts in half lengthways. Remove any obvious tough vessels, chop and rinse thoroughly. Toss with the flour.

Heat the oil in the pan and add the onions, spices and hearts. Cook over a medium heat until browned.

Add the drained haricot beans and stock. Bring to the boil and reduce to a gentle simmer for 1 1/2 hours. 

Add the carrots, cabbage, bay and thyme and cook for a further 30 mins, or until the carrots are tender. Boil and mash the potatoes during this final stage and serve.

* * * * * * 

I added just 3 and put the rest in the freezer, which makes for a tasty and frugal stew at around 60p a portion when served with mashed potatoes. Alas with the evenings drawing in and an already dingy dining room, there are no good photos of the finished product, but it looked good and tasted lovely. Autumn is definitely here.

Frugal frittata

Darling husband-to-be picked up two boxes of twelve eggs for 10 pence a pop last week, with a week left on their 'display until' dates (it is surprising that our local Co-ops haven't gone out of business, as this sort of evening reduction isn't an unusual occurrence). For us and anyone else who picked up a bargain that evening, eggcellent...

Eggs are a cheap and tasty source of protein, vitamins and minerals at around 20 pence per egg. They are also the basis for many very quick meals, a boon after a long day. Quite often they find their way into dishes with lots of leftovers and loose ends - hash, stir-fry, and salads. Last night it was frittata. I have had a jar of Lidl sweet peppers sitting in the cupboard for a few months now. I've used them before and always think that they are delicious, so I buy another jar - and can't think what to do with them. From memory, I think that they are good in lasagne. They also, apparently, make an awesome frittata.

* * * * * *

 Sweet pepper frittata (4 adult portions)

4 small potatoes, thinly sliced
1 small onion, halved and sliced.
2 sweet smoked peppers, chopped
1 tsp smoked paprika
Black pepper
Oil
7 medium eggs
Small amount of grated cheese.

In a frying pan, simmer the potato slices in a small amount of water for a few minutes until they begin to soften.

Drain away any excess water; add the oil, onions, peppers and spices and fry over a high heat until the onions have softened, turning regularly.

In a separate bowl, beat the eggs. Add them to the pan, rolling it to distribute as evenly as possible through the veg.

Cook over a low heat until cooked through, around ten minutes. Grate some cheese over the top and place under the grill to brown if desired.

* * * * * *

This was last night's dinner and it was appreciated by both children and adults. It currently works out at around 80 pence a portion (I was really frugal with the cheese), or buttons if your eggs cost you less than a penny each. Keep the stock taking errors coming, please, Mr Coop.

Portion up!

I am tempted to cross stitch this commandment onto my tea towels, because so often I don't bother and regret it later. Nearly all of the financial and health related woes cooked up in the kitchen have food waste and over consumption as main ingredients. We are wired to like sweet, fatty foods and so I suspect that these are rarely wasted, but they are over consumed. How many people realize that a single portion of cheese is the size of a small matchbox, not a box of firelighters?  This is not to say there is no room for being exuberant with the meat and dairy, but it pays to realize a little can go a long way and still make for a tasty, nourishing meal.

One of the best ways we overcome the waste (or gluttony!), when we remember, is to portion up high value food the moment it comes into the house. An intact 400g block of cheese in the fridge will be demolished within a day or two in this house;  a little cheese makes a meal out of so many store cupboard basics, it is infuriating to find it has all been grazed.  If you meal plan you can portion up individual ingredients for each meal, ensuring that you can stretch them comfortably through the week; or you can split things up into optimum healthy portions and make use of them as you see fit. If the excess portions are put in the freezer it means that they can't just be pulled out and used up on a whim, but even a stack of portions stored in the fridge seems to offer some psychological block to me that means I don't reach for the next one unless absolutely necessary.

There are other advantages. Smaller portions tetris nicely into a smaller space, which means we can make the most of our small fridge and freezer; which in turn means we can take advantage of offers or batch cook more meals; which in turn means we are less likely to reach for the takeaway menu when we get home late and have no energy. If we know what use we will be putting our bacon to, we slice it up before storing it, which saves a little space and prep time later on.

We normally buy our meat from the butcher, but recently our local Co-op seems to have lost all concept of stock control and are offering vast quantities of meat and dairy at cut price at the end of the day. Evening shop visits were something I used to do with my mum; but as an adult I have never bothered much, until now. The deals have been stupendous and over the last few weeks we have stocked the freezer with enough meat to last us a good few months. Meat is for the most part a flavoring ingredient in this house unless we have a roast. I have just portioned up a couple of packs of frying steaks for the freezer into two-steak portions, doubling the number of meals that we will be able to make from them. A couple of blocks of cheese have been halved and frozen and smoked back bacon was split into pairs of rashers.

The final bacon pack is hanging around in the fridge ready to hook up with some slices of bread and fried eggs come Sunday morning...a feast day indeed.

Extending the Table

Variations on this article have been doing the rounds over the last few years and for some reason have been popping up in the UK press this week. They are all a showcase of the book Hungry Planet by Faith D'Aluisio and Peter Menzel; yet another book which someday I will get around to reading. It is a photo journal of families around the world, the food they consume and the money they spend on it.

The UK example was horrific, which surprised me. Minuscule amounts of fresh fruit and veg and plenty of heavily processed foods, fat and sugars. And then of course there were the examples of countries where there was clearly not enough food of any kind. Darfur was a particularly poignant example, I wonder if that would even provide the basic weekly calorie requirements for that family. The more northerly, more western and more wealthy examples by contrast often had massive calorie overload.

Somewhere between the gluttony and paucity were the happy mediums. The agrarian societies where there was plenty to eat, plenty of fresh produce, good protein, plentiful basic staples and modest fat and sugar consumption. Some of the western nations that have held on to their food traditions managed it too. These were the pictures that left me wanting to head to the kitchen and cook. Omnomnom, give me eggs, barley and leafy greens to work with!

I have been stuck in something of a late-winter rut and we have found ourselves eating more cheese, meat, dairy and less fruit and veg in recent months. I treated myself to a new cookbook to see if it would lift me from my rut. 

Extending the Table describes itself as 'Recipes and stories in the spirit of More-with-Less' (The book by by Doris Janzen Longacre). I have been hankering after a copy of More-with-Less for many years since I saw it so highly recommended by so many thrifty cooks. I chose this one because it was considerably cheaper on Amazon marketplace, at a very reasonable £3.50 including P&P. It is thicker than I had expected, spiral bound and robust. The book is published by Mennonite Central Committee and as such there are testimonials throughout from church members dotted across the world. Some are terribly sad, others humorous and hopeful; all of them are easy enough to disregard if you wish.

This is an international cookbook with recipes from almost every country on earth. There are chapters on beverages, breads, soups, salads and vegetables, grains, legumes, stews and mains, feasts, meats and fish, snacks, condiments and desserts. This is how most of the world cooks and eats – basic staples, fruit and veg from local food sheds. All of the recipes are certainly achievable in a world of supermarkets and gas cookers, where we are not tied to our own food sheds – but most readily adapt to local seasonal produce with a little imagination.

I think this would be a particularly wonderful cookbook for a student or someone finding themselves in a kitchen for the first time. There are basic recipes for a range of meals from curry to noodle dishes to casseroles and cakes. The focus is on cheap, easy to prepare and tasty food. I have been dipping in and out and using it as inspiration as I am not one to generally use a recipe when I cook; and it is doing a wonderful job in getting me out of my rut. One day I will add More-with-Less to my kitchen shelf too.

Spiral bound cook books rock, by the way - a spiral binding and wipe clean cover is the mark of a cook's book. Leave dust jackets to the chefs.

Independence days

I am currently rereading the book Independence Days: A Guide to Sustainable Food Storage and Preservation by Sharon Astyk. I will write a review at a later date, but it is basically a 'why, what and (very basic) how' of personal food growing, storage and security. The title comes from the writer Carla Emery, whose The Encyclopedia of Country Living: An Old Fashioned Recipe Book I will also review at some point (the TL;DR of which will be that that particular book is nothing short of brilliant and I think you should buy it - like, yesterday).

Independence days were the days that Emery managed to feed her family from their own produce, their own pantry, and from local producers. Through the first part of the growing year she tried to sow something every single day. Halfway through the season her focus would switch to preserving something from her garden every day ready for winter. 

It isn't for everyone, but striving for true 'independence days' appeals to me - it suits my temperament, personal ethics and my obsessive love of growing food and being out of doors. In previous years, I have become discouraged at the 'smallness' of our efforts in the face of our annual grocery bill. Our tiny yard and plot seemed like a token shuffle on a long journey to self sufficiency that we will never complete. But that is not the attitude to have is it? As unrealistic as this goal may be at the moment, working towards it gives me some peace and purpose. I hope that one day we make it to an acre, some ducks and space for a root cellar. In the meantime, we do what we can. We have plans for modest food preservation this year, past the ketchup and chutney of past years. I am looking into buying more from local food producers. We are growing some food. 

In fact every day this week, we have managed to sow something. Today it was chervil seeds, yesterday a couple of pots of salad leaves; and in the days before that hyssop, physalis, alpine strawberries, bergamot, achocha and winter squash. Tomatoes have been potted on and moved outside and for the first year ever the aubergines have survived to grow more than two sets of leaves. All good practice for our future farm. In the meantime - who needs acreage when you are having fun?

The future mosaic

We tolerate a chipped mug in this house. Chipped plates, bowls and ovenware also pass muster. When things break into more than two pieces however, it is usually time to replace them. It has been a mixed year for pottery in this house. Above are a few charity shop wins - a stoneware biscuit barrel (£2.00), a salt pig (£2.50) and one of two Mason Cash no 24 pudding basins (£1.50 the pair), all picked up over the last few months. Much of my life is furnished with secondhand stuff and it isn't slim pickings. I usually manage to find beautiful, useful or salvageable things even in our tiny local charity shop.

The losses began with a near death experience in early December. The kitchen crockery cupboard launched itself from the wall, tumbling the full 2 metre width of the kitchen. It dented the sink, sheared the oven door off and glanced my elbow. The casualties were surpsingly few, no humans thankfully, but all the other good bits - the 'forever' pottery, were lost. One of a pair of Hornsea salad bowls we inherited when we moved into our first flat together. The beautiful blue pouring bowl we dug out of the seconds at Made in Cley on holiday. The cheap tide-us-over ugly mugs remained (of course!) chipped but intact. One day later, the other Hornsea bowl met with a freak accident of its own.

Fast forward to the beginning of January. There is a beautiful blue pie dish, a gift to me from my beloved and also rescued from the seconds basket of a potter, this time in Derbyshire. The beautiful pie dish is on the kitchen side, the remainder of the christmas nuts contained within. Also in this house is a cat. This adorable but dizzy/disobedient cat has a habit of getting up onto the worktop and on this particular day in January, launched herself at the worktop, skidded across the worktop and off of the other side, taking the pie dish with her. Nice crocks, won't you agree?:

Finally (at least I hope so) the  deep stoneware casserole dish cracked as it came out of the oven last week. This was particularly annoying as just the week previously I had been admiring the nicely seasoned finish I had managed to build up with my diehard lasagne habit - deep dish lasagne, a revelation! This was another seconds that was in turn gifted to us - secondhand seconds - and we really can't complain after a solid two years of use can we?

I priced up a little shopping spree to buy brand new replacements and realised just how good we have had  it all of these years on cast-offs, seconds and hand me downs. Reaaallllly good.

I now have quite the hoard of pretty, coordinating, broken crockery pieces, so expect a mosaic project at some point in the future, when I have finished mourning my losses.

T'is the season...to go nuts!

Yule must be coming around, because three nets of whole nuts have made their way into the Island Dreaming household.

This doesn't happen at any other time of year, for reasons that aren't really clear to me at all. None of us are allergic. I love nuts. Nick loves them. The kids are partial to them, including The Picky One (formally known of here as The Boy). Intact in their shells and stored in a cool dry place, they will store for a year or more and stay fresh tasting. Shelled nuts can be hit and miss, if not slightly rancid tasting and waaaay more expensive. No, for the rest of the year, the only nuts that make it into the house are either in butter form, enrobed in chocolate (possibly both) or, rarely, shelled and saltier than the Dead Sea. Defying all food convention, nuts will never be healthier in our house than they are during the biggest feast of the year.

I think this is mostly a problem of availability - most shops only sell whole nuts during a three month wintry window. I know if we are to be healthier this year then a daily portion of freshly shelled nuts throughout the year will do us some good, which means bulk buying over the next month or two. Whilst calorific (good for those trying to maintain their body weight and for fast growing kids) they are mineral and vitamin dense too. I have previously added flaked almonds to pasta dishes, crushed walnuts to shepherds pie and pistachios to rice dishes - but only between the months of December through to January.

In spite of my best efforts now that I have small children who believe in Santa, I am still an unreformed scrooge at heart. I have been ignoring the fairy light and tinsel early adopters in the streets around here since early November (as well as I can with a preschooler who shouts 'LOOK, MUM, SANTA!!!' every time we pass such a house), but now we now have a nut bowl on the kitchen counter, the season of good cheer and cut price plastic toot is well and truly upon us. 

Frugal breakfast - homemade instant oats

I have noticed at lot of people in my office bringing in sachets of ready oats and tubs of instant porridge - expensive sachets and tubs. Even the own brand ones are extortion over a bowl of homemade porridge. I do understand though that even if you have access to a microwave at work, it is quicker and easier to use the instant oats. I made the mistake of using the microwave during my 15 minute break to make regular porridge and ended up wolfing down a bowl of scalding hot porridge with two minutes to go.

Having said that, instant oats are far cheaper than my recent habit of buying food from the canteen or express shop. Buying food at work to eat at work so that you can earn money is one of those habits that I know is really really really dumb and yet I still do it far too often.

So I have made my own instant oats. Half a cup of oats, 1 level desert spoon of sugar (soft brown would have been preferable for that golden syrup taste) and 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon per portion. Simply pulse blend the oats until they are somewhere between cous cous and pudding rice in grain size. Put them in your lidded container with the sugar and spice and give them a good shake. That's it, until you get to breakfast time.

So, enough boiling water to cover, a quick stir, and a splash of milk to cool things down. Breakfast is served, at less than 15p a serving using good quality oats not bought on special offer. If you leave out the sugar and spice, it's less than 10p and still perfectly delicious. The leading brand sachets work out at about double that, which doesn't sound much until you work out that that is an extra £36 you are spending on porridge over a full time working year. Not to mention the 240 carboard tubs or foiled sachets and numerous carboard boxes that are going straight in the bin. I could do a lot with £36.

As it is so heartwarmingly cheap I might try and bling it up a little with some chopped fruit or nuts. Perhaps even cocoa occasionally. I have made enough for three weeks worth, each week is packed in a takeaway container, small enough to stay in my desk drawer; after that its crazy flavour open  season on porridge at my office.

Restocking the pantry - and the food bank.

One of the most popular posts I ever wrote at The Simple Green Frugal Co-op, or at least one that generated the most discussion, was this one about the reasons I keep a well stocked pantry. My definition of well stocked changes with circumstance - I had about six months worth of stores when I went on maternity leave in late 2008 and it saved us a fortune as food prices rose. It also made me feel nicely nested and meant that I didn't have to trawl around shops with a small baby.

The Guardian recently ran a series about 'Breadline Britain'. Food banks are on the rise in the UK after 4 years of rising unemployment and benefit cuts. As well as 'the working poor', the professional classes - teachers, nurses, middle management - are finding themselves with no cash flow and bare cupboards.
Now, I doubt that both of us would lose our jobs at the same time and at the moment we have modest savings to fall back on - but never say never. Nobody can say for sure where things are headed in the next few years; and so it is better to prepare as well as you can with the resources you have. So, it is time to stock up for autumn and winter and anything that might come our way. And as we buy food for our own cupboards, we will begin to buy a little extra for our food bank too. The Trussel Trust is one of the biggest food bank charities in the UK and there website will list your local bank, as well as ways to get involved.

But I think the best way we can support those support systems is to do everything we can not to have to fall back on them. Put as much distance between us and the need for a food bank voucher as possible. I know that there are people for whom this is too late, or who were never in a position to live anything other than hand to mouth.  There are also lots of people in a position now to cushion themselves who think that that kind of thing doesn't happen to people like them. I have a suspicion that during this long recession, a lot of folk are going to surprised at just what can happen to folk like them.

I think the best cushion is actual food in the cupboard, because it is then also a cushion against food chain disruption and other causes of barren pantries. Our stocking up strategy follows a several pronged approach:

• Every few months, using a £10-£15 money off voucher that the supermarkets send out to lure us in, we do an online shop costing around £60 - £90 after deducting the voucher. This buys us cat food, coffee and tea, flour, pasta, pulses, grains,oils and fats and sometimes frozen fruit and veg. A well stocked cupboard to me is now about three months worth. That money creeps up, or stretches a shorter distance with every month that passes. Higher food prices might well be here to stay. 

• In addition to this we frequent our local Chinese and Asian supermarkets for more unusual grains and pulses, tofu, spices and condiments. Most small cities and large towns now have such shops and they provide better value than the big four.

• If I see something on offer that I know we use frequently - say tinned tomatoes - we will buy a few months worth. I will take money from the savings account to do this, although technically £20 of our monthly food budget goes to restocking the pantry anyway.

• Finally, of course, we make sure we actually eat the food we buy and cook from the pantry and try to minimise our kitchen waste as much as possible. There is always a good meal to be made even if there is no fresh produce in the house, which really is better than money in the bank.

This week I will finally be getting to grips with meal planning. It is something I have never done, but cooking for a fussy preschooler on top of shift work is taking it out of us. Our kitchen waste has crept up. Planning isn't something I really like to do, being happy go lucky most of the time about most things, but this is something I am actually looking forward to, given the pay off in peace come supper time. 

Edible City

I found this via Gavin's blog and felt it deserves to be shared far and wide. The whole film is available to watch online and is worth an hour of your time. If you are struggling to find your grow food/change the world mojo after the ridiculous weather/diamondjubilee-London2012-pimms-teaparty season/grinding recession we have had this year, this might just help a little.

Our own growing project isn't going so well. A dry spring, followed by hot damp weather brought blight to our plot. No tomatoes, no potatoes. We have a few tomato plants in the back garden that fingers (and toes) crossed will reach maturity. The strawberries were decimated by slugs and the garlic crop failed to bulb before the stalks fell. I have seriously lost my own mojo. Too little time and a plot too far away to visit daily, plus torrential rain for weeks on end that has brought out the 10,000 gastropods of the slugocalypse. Urgh.

Corn still stands and sweet potatoes are translating all the rain into lush vegetation and hopefully some tubers. And nothing, NOTHING - not drought nor gales nor torrential rain- will dissuade the jerusalem artichokes from doing their thing. So all is not lost, even when it feels as though it might well be. There will be some overwintering veg courtesy of a plug plant pack we purchased last year too late in the season to be dispatched. There are plans afoot to cover the rest of that ground in thick pond liner over the winter, ready to hit the barren ground running in spring with mulch and plug plants. Next year, once again, will be better.

How does your garden grow?

Soon, my pretties...soon

I am hoping that it is going to be a good year for my favourite fruit. I love blackberries. Even in this city they grow rampantly and huge areas of common land are thick with accessible brambles. I have fond memories of blackberrying in woods and country lanes back in the motherland and on our holiday there last year we blackberried some, foraging for them along with damsons, apples and sloes. The stained fingers and clothes, the thorn scratched arms and occasional deeply cut finger are all worth it for the basket that never quite fills as every other berry makes its way into your mouth.

If there is one fruit I know how to handle in the kitchen, it is these. It is such a shame that they are so underused in this country. They are a rare sight in grocers (why, why, WHY do people choose watery imported blueberries and raspberries over these fat little gems?) usually sold in tiny overpriced cartons as if they are an exotic fruit. They are not; and if you are yet to experience a days blackberrying, now is the time to scout out some brambles. 

Another week or so and they will be mine.

Rhubarb ketchup

So...that was a long week. Instead of periodically dropping in and promising posts, I figured I might as well actually write one and post it.

Rhubarb, rhubarb rhubarb...I am having mixed results with rhubarb plants. For a hardy, easy going perennial I really have managed to balls it up. Of the two expensive fancy variety crowns that we planted on the allotment last year, one died and rotted within the month and the other did very little all year and hadn't emerged by the end of March this year (which is late around these balmy parts). I bought two more crowns, cheap common variety ones this time, and dug new holes close to the first two. In the process I discovered one budding crown deep under the surface - I say one, I had turned it into four with my fork by the time I realized what it was. The two new crowns remain on the plot and appear to be doing well and two of the four bits of root that I managed to split are now growing incredibly well in large pots in the yard, in complete shade. Who knew?

So, no personal harvest this year. However, our allotment neighbours have abandoned their plot, and the path separating us from them. They have a huge rhubarb patch that has gradually encroached across the paths and into our broad beans. So call this a contractor's fee for freeing up the overgrown paths on their behalf:

I may have a terrible track record at cultivating it, but I can pilfer it with the best of them. I love it! It's pink! And really, really tart and slightly poisonous tasting, which adds a little thrill to the eating experience. We brought back a lot of rhubarb, the back seat of the car was stuffed too. We gave some away which made barely a dent in it. The last two weeks have consequently been rhubarb appreciation fortnight in this house. Some was dipped in sugar and munched raw, but there is only so much you can eat like that before you succumb to kidney failure. To the preserving pan!


Rhubarb ketchup

Makes approximately 2 pints

6 cups rhubarb, coarsely diced
2 onions, diced,
I clove garlic
1 400g tin chopped tomatoes
2 cups white sugar
1 cup spirit vinegar*
1 cup water
1 rounded tsp ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
4 bay leaves
1 rounded tsp sea salt

*I confess I used wine vinegar, as that's all I had. In my professional opinion as a first time ketchup maker, spirit vinegar would have tasted better. Use that.

Bring all of the ingredients to the boil then simmer for about one hour:

When everything has softened and the rhubarb has disintegrated to goo, remove the bay leaves. Remove the pan from the heat and use a stick blender to puree the pulp. Return the pan to the heat (if necessary) and simmer gently until the puree reaches a ketchup consistency. The bubbles and stirring will leave a trace on the surface when it reaches the right consistency. 

Bottle into hot sterilized jars (bottles if you have them...we don't).

Run out and buy chips to test as a matter of urgency...

It's good. Two pints of ketchup should get us through to autumn, when I will probably have another tomato failure with which to whip up another batch of  Ugly Tom's. I am actually kind of hoping for a failure, if I am being honest, with just half a jar left and a whole lot of summer to get through.

Other stuff was done with rhubarb in this house. Those tales of rhubarb are for another day. In the meantime, I hope you are enjoying the pink stuff before its season is completely over. 

The trouble with chutney

The green tomatoes didn't really ripen too well on the windowsill, probably thanks to all the clouds loitering around these parts at the moment. Kind souls from all around have offered me chutney recipes as a way to deal with my green tomato harvest. I like sugar, I love vinegar, I adore sweet and sour anything. What could be the problem? I couldn't bear to tell a single one of those kind souls my very unfrugal, unautumnal, unsweet-and-sour worshiping secret.

I hate chutney. I am not a chutney person. I have never met a chutney that I have really enjoyed.

So it came as a surprise to me that I found a spare six hours in my hectic schedule to make chutney yesterday. A simple means to deal with the tomatoes threatening to turn bad, I had planned on giving most of it away, leaving only a token jar for the men of the house to enjoy. I spent several hours scanning recipes hoping to alight across something that appealed; and in so doing, I struck upon the root of my problem with chutney. I have never met a piece of chutney worthy dried fruit that I actually like. Sultanas, apricots and raisins...mollasses-y chewy yuck. And all of the recipes I found were brimming with dried fruit.

With understanding comes healing. I made this recipe up as I went along, using the unripe and half ripe Purple Calabash tomatoes. Aren't they ugliful?

Ugly Tom's Chutney

1.5kg mixed green and under ripe tomatoes, chopped
0.5kg young tart apples, chopped
350g onions, chopped
6 garlic cloves, slivered
150g demerara sugar
200g white granulated sugar
200ml balsamic vinegar
150ml white wine vinegar
250ml malt vinegar
1 1/2 tsp powdered ginger
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
Motherload of ground black pepper (I spent several minutes of grinding)
2 bay leaves
1 tbsp sea salt

Simply bring all the ingredients to the boil in a large pan...

Simmer down over a low heat for several hours, stirring frequently as it thickens, until reduced enough to leave a trace when the spoon is drawn through...

Remove the bay leaves, bottle, christen and label.

As for post bottling processing...I did it the traditional British way with quaint disregard for botulism, USDA guidelines, or scalded fingers. Next year I may get organized and take the  prescribed safer route instead (not least because it gives me an excuse to buy pretty Kilner jars).

I like this chutney. This recipe makes just under two litres, most of which I will be keeping for myself ourselves. It tastes like a slightly hot cross between tomato ketchup (which I heart) and brown sauce (which I most definitely don't heart - molasses-y) and I like it. It was my intention to leave them to mature for a few months, but so far one of the small jars is nearly empty. Turns out it makes a nice basis for a sweet and sour marinade and is also a good dip for chips. Not bad for some very ugly fruits.

Tomato woe

I know that I should have staked them the moment I planted them in the ground, but The Boy and his dad were grumpy and whining (yes, actually whining) to go home and get food. So we left the sturdy, perfectly formed tomato plants that I had carefully nurtured for so many months to put down roots unsupported. Unfortunately, I didn't personally get back to the allotment in the ensuing fortnight of hot moist weather to continue my nurturing - but boy did they put down roots in that time. Which meant that not only were the tomato plants not staked, they were also never pinched out, resulting in lots of foliage and few flower trusses. When I did get to them I removed as much of the excess foliage as I could, but quite frankly couldn't tell which branch belonged to which plant.

Unfortunately, because the plants are sprawling along the paths and over one another, the fruit that has set are dangling close to the ground and are being eaten by slugs, or are failing to ripen for lack of sun. We will be picking green tomatoes rather early this year and that our harvest from 10 plants (that could have kept us in tomato sauce almost all winter) will be measly. Sigh.

The tomato tale is painful, because home grown tomatoes are of course the very best flavour in the whole garden - and the few handfuls that we have brought home are delicious, a teaser of what could have been. I wish I could say that the woe stopped at the tomato bed - but it did not. The 2011 allotment tale is full of failures, of could haves and should haves and would haves.

There has been, and continues to be, a lot of empty ground, that could have produced something, anything, other than dust and weeds. Sigh.

There have been, and continue to be, a whole lot of weedy patches amongst the crops we did actually get into the ground. Sigh.

Thankfully, there have also been; and hopefully will continue to be; some small victories. We never come home empty handed, in fact we usually come home with a tote bag full of edible, organic veg (even if it is usually always some combination of beans, chard, beetroot and courgette). We have even eaten a few meals made entirely from our own allotment produce. We have a salad drawer full of new potatoes and two handsome and pungent braids of garlic hanging in the kitchen. The squash are fattening up nicely and the potatoes and oca are rampant. This week we finally sowed some late root crops. We have learnt a few lessons, such as quit your whining and stake the god damn tomatoes to never put off for tomorrow what needs to be and can be done today.

This year is OK and there is nothing we can do to improve that. Next year will be better and that is where our energy now needs to go. Sigh...of relief.

Grow sunflowers

We planted out five or six sunflowers on the allotment - a couple of giants that we are just starting to flower; and some of a smaller multi headed variety that are well into their flowering stage. Sunflowers are incredibly low maintenance and you get a lot of bang for your buck. They attract beneficial insects, add a cheerful splash of colour  - and eventually bear a nutritious (and relatively expensive to buy) food crop. What could be better than that?

It took minutes to separate the seeds from the flower heads - they are ready to go when the petals have fallen and back of the head is beginning to brown.

We have recently begun adding various seeds to our breads, and the small packets you buy in the supermarkets are expensive - paying for the convenience of a shelled seed. The shelling is relaxing however, like most things that make you use your own two hands; and can be done whilst sat watching TV or nattering.

We will store these in their shells (they will keep fresher that way) until we know we will need them and shell them in small batches, enough for a couple of loaves at a time. Some of the seeds will be resown next year, perhaps we will try and develop our own variety. There may even be a tallest sunflower competition. I envision a whole bed of them...did I mention how gloriously cheerful and pretty they are?

Time to whip out the teapot?

I have always drunk both tea and coffee - one of my earliest memories is of being given 'tea' first thing in the morning - basically warm milk that had had a teabag dipped in it for a few seconds.

I went through a phase in my early twenties where I had quite a collection of loose leaf teas and used to brew them properly, but fell out of the habit. Tea drinking holds a special place in British culture (according to Wikipedia we have the joint second highest consumption in the world at 2kg per person per year - assuming there are 3g of tea in a teabag, that's roughly 666.666667 odd cups) - but like most things that have become cheaper and more convenient, we have paid it less and less respect. Some of the big main brands are just plain awful; and yet at work I have supped them mindlessly anyway. Sitting down for a cuppa is something that I know my nan did; and my great nan and my great great nan... and that is quite comforting. I doubt I will ever give up the caffeine entirely, but I would like to cut back and start treating it with the respect it deserves.

Every morning now one of us gets up and brews a cafetiere of coffee, which sets us up for the day. We stopped using instant coffee about two years ago as we found most of the instant fairtrade coffees didn't taste that good and were quite expensive. This has actually turned out to be more frugal and healthier for us, because we drink less coffee - one or two cups a day, as opposed to four or five - but what we do drink is better quality. There is something grounding about boiling the water, waiting for the whistle of the kettle, pottering around the kitchen whilst waiting for it to brew, before finally sitting down with a cup to drink. Our tea on the other hand is generally the bagged variety brewed in the mug. The mornings that we choose to have a quick cup of tea don't feel quite so...peaceful.  As a result, the coffee is generally winning out.


Last week I was in the shop where we buy our tea and coffee and they had a display of their fairtrade products. The bagged tea and loose leaf tea were sat next to each other and surprisingly, the shelf labels gave a price per 100g for both products. The loose leaf tea was about ten percent cheaper than the bagged variety - and of course, because it has room to properly unfurl and stew when loose in a pot, you actually need less than is packed into one teabag to brew a decent cup of tea. The loose leaf variety also removes an extra layer of processing and packaging which can only be a good thing, surely?

I have dusted off the teapot and will be buying a box of  loose leaf tea when our current store runs out. Does anyone else use loose leaf tea? Or a teapot? Does it work out cheaper?

June harvest

OK - the allotment hasn't been going as well as we planned. By which I mean we haven't been sowing and tending as much as we planned thanks to Nick starting his work placement and me being increasingly tired and ungainly. The hellish end of May didn't help either. Still, a harvest is a harvest no matter how small; and June has been the first month where anything has actually made it back from the plot to our kitchen.

The tally so far, rounded to the nearest 100g -

Broad beans (The Sutton) - 4.5kg in pod, not including the several handfuls of tender young pods that never made it home as they were so nommable straight off the plant.  We eat the beans, the guinea pigs eat the pods. Next year we will devote a whole bed to these and pull a few plants as and when we need space for later legumes, because considering how little attention the 8 plants that took have had, they have cropped prolifically.

Garlic 'Solent Wight' - 2 bulbs so far harvested wet (about 100g). The rest will come up in about a month, if I can resist the lovely sweet bulbs as they stand now.

Courgette 'Black Beauty' - 2.1kg so far excluding one I forgot to weigh. 4 good sized tender courgettes and one heading for marrow-hood. Two of the three plants suddenly rocketed into action in the last fortnight and are thick with developing fruits. I hate courgettes from the shop, but fresh off the plant and sauteed with salt and pepper they are delicious.

Potato volunteer - 800g,  not from the allotment, but from a pot in the back garden. I was going to pull it but instead let it do its thing. We got a lunch out of it (a courgette potato rosti type thing) for absolutely no effort on our part.

TOTAL - 7.5kg. 

The sugar snap peas (Norli)  were poorly supported and turned into a tangled ground hugging mass of knots, but The Boy got a few on-plot snacks out of them. They will be replaced by runner beans this weekend. The potatoes are almost ready to be lifted too and most other things seem to to be doing well. The tomatoes are sporting a few fruits. I get quite disheartened when I look at our little plot, it seems as though large swathes of bed are barren or weedy, waiting for stuff to grow and fill up the space. This year is a learning curve - next year will be better. That's my mantra and I am sticking to it.

Frugal fun

I have had a week off from work, which for once coincided with family visiting - which in turn, for once, coincided with another week of fine weather. Usually we end up spending a small fortune when we visit people or they visit us, possibly because we feel like kill joys if we say no. A steady stream of eating out, coffee and cake, small gifts and visiting various attractions that are usually less entertaining than the blurb suggests gradually eats away at our budget and leaves us short for the rest of the month. This was not a month however for overspending our budget and we explained the situation with as positive a spin as we could.

Sometimes (funnily enough, usually always coinciding with time away from my paid employment) I manage to get my act together, make a plan and stick to it. A few hours work resulted in our contribution to a delicious and frugal picnic lunch, all made from scratch (mayonnaise and all, including the first salad pickings from the garden). In a word, I am...smug.

We ate the picnic lunch in the garden of the holiday cottage and then paddled in the sea at a lovely sandy beach in Sussex. We tried to engage toddlers in a sandcastle building project that was blatantly more fun for us adults than it was for them. We went to the woods for a barbeque that didn't get rained off.  We have spent a fair amount of time driving around beautiful countryside, just as the hedgerows are in full bloom and the spring babies are out in the fields. We had cream tea in a quaint little tearoom followed by (slightly wistful)  window shopping around an equally quaint town.

In short, I have spent more time gadding about in nature than I normally would being city bound - and I realize I need to make an effort to get out more to green leafy places. I have eaten more strawberries and whipped cream in one week than I normally do in a whole year. All very frugal, all very relaxed, all great fun; which is just how I remember my childhood holidays to be.

What frugal fun have you had this week?

Finishing

I finally bottled the 3 gallons of rhubarb wine that have been calling out for my attention for the past three months - I am a starter of projects, not necessarily a finisher. Once I had begun, of course, it wasn't so bad. I think it's the washing and sterilizing of the bottles that I usually find so tedious, though I now do them in small batches, standing them upright in a large brewing bucket of sterilizing solution, which makes the job much easier (and uses less water) than when I used to fill the bathtub, desperately trying to remove all of the trapped air bubbles.

After that is done, the sound of wine swooshing through a siphon and swirling into bottles is very soothing, as is the squeaky pop the cork makes as it slides into position  (once you overcome the sense of impending doom that quite rightfully accompanies leaning all of your weight onto a fragile glass bottle neck, of course).

The whole process is almost as soothing, in fact, as the sound of wine glugging out of bottles into glasses - but that will be a few months yet. In the meantime 'Rhubarb 2011' no longer needs my attention. What to ferment next?

Goat cheese experiment

Sometimes I bite off more than I can chew in my self reliance experiments, sometimes I have it bitten off for me. On a whim late last Thursday night, Nick bought four litres of goats milk that were selling for 10p each - having had the brilliant idea that 'we' could try and make curd cheese.

I have seen it done when I was small and understood that it is the simplest cheese making experiment you can carry out at home. All that is required is warmed full fat milk, to which lemon juice or vinegar is added to curdle it. This mixture is  then strained for a few hours through muslin, separating the curds and whey. The result is a spreadable soft cheese at very little cost. 

The first mistake I made was to think it a good idea to process all four litres at once. I started out following these basic instructions, deviating when it became apparent I was way out of my depth. The milk warming went well, I used a preserve making thermometer and a large stock pot. So far so good. I added the juice of a lemon that had accompanied the milk home from the shop. Nothing happened. No worries, I'll juice another. There were no others. OK, I'll use bottled lemon juice. I haven't kept bottled lemon juice in the house for at least two years. Oh.

It was with great scepticism that I poured in several tablespoons of red wine vinegar, the scepticism only increasing when I realised that cup volumes were obviously what was called for. When that had run out, I was all ready to give up, but as it was impossible to make the concoction any worse, I persevered and poured in a spoonful of malt vinegar. Finally the curdles began to appear.

Next came the straining. I keep a quantity of muslin for wine making, so placed a huge square of it doubled up in a colander (thankfully this is huge, comprising the steamer basket of an old pressure cooker). After half an hour, enough whey had drained that I could tie the muslin into a bundle, to be suspended from - where exactly? The bundle weighed the best part of 4 kilos! In the end we placed two dining chairs back to back, tied the top of the bundle with some spare shoelaces and tied the laces around the top rungs of the chair backs, suspended above a basin to catch the whey. In tying the knot we managed to squeeze a fair amount of the contents of the bundle over the chairs and hallway carpet. Several hours later it hadn't finished dripping, so I left it overnight and hoped for the best.

I needn't have worried. The cheese has an acidic tang to it, but is not vinegary, and is deliciously creamy. The only thing that the vinegar has added is a slightly pink tinge to the curd. I estimate that we ended up with over a kilo of curd, some of which is sitting in the fridge and some of which has been frozen into portions for stirring into pasta dishes. A quick survey suggests that ordinary curd cheese retails for around 40p per 100g, curd cheese from goats milk would be higher than that. The milk in this instance cost 40p, the lemon and vinegar a grand total of about 60p, the sea salt pennies.

Unfortunately, whilst scouring the Internet for curd cheese recipes, my eyes have been opened to the possibilities of real home cheese production. I have seen wondrous shops selling rennet and spores and waxes and molds and other stuff I don't yet know what to do with, but would like to one day. Another year perhaps...