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.

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 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.

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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.

Springtime iced tea

The living is easy in spring! The back door is open and we flow in and out of the house as the mood takes us. Yesterday I managed to get through a lot of housework, cooking and washing up. The weather has been lovely - warm and breezy. I smoked through 5 loads of laundry and I have another two under my belt this today. The first, crisp, line dried bedding of the year will be going on the bed this evening. Bliss.

 

 
Spring and summer are months for mooching off of mother nature. No extra energy (money) need be applied to warming the house, drying the laundry...or making tea. The herbs in the back border are springing up with no effort on our part. Yesterday was also Earth Day, time to celebrate its gifts! Our patio is a sun trap that is usually several degrees warmer than the street and yesterday it was warm enough to brew sun tea. I stumbled upon this concept on an American blog a few years back and have since made a few different versions and read lots of different recipes and methods. Always on the lookout for ways to reduce our fuel use and keep our kitchen cool in the summer, neither of these methods require use of the kettle. Also, you get tea!

There are a few hard and fast rules. Consistent direct sun and warm air temperature are required. Alternatively you can brew tea in the fridge if you leave it to steep for long enough - that method is actually considered safer, as lukewarm water left for several hours may be a breeding ground for bacteria. The jar should be cleaned thoroughly to reduce the chances of nasties ending up in your tea. I have made few different versions, but today's is very light. When summer is in full swing I will be making a huge jar that lasts through to the next day. The larger the quantity, the longer it will need in the sun.

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 Springtime Sun Tea - 2 servings

1 pint cold water

1 1/2 tsp loose leaf black tea

2 large sprigs each of fresh mint and lemon balm

Sugar and ice to serve (optional)

Place your tea ingredients into a lidded glass jar and place outside in direct sunlight for at least 4 hours. Alternatively place in the fridge for at least 6 hours, until desired strength is reached. Shaking the jar occasionally speeds up the process.

Place the jar in the fridge until cold. Strain into glasses and serve.  

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This is a very different tea drinking experience to hot tea. Lukewarm and cold brewing draws out different compounds at different rates to boiling water. I hate hate HATE chamomile tea with a passion - or at least I did until I made it in a jar in the fridge. Lovely stuff! I will never ever make iced tea from hot brewed tea again. That method brings out the bitter tannins and roastiness -  this one draws out the delicate summery fruity, floral flavours.

I also happen to know that a tot of whiskey or rum and some soda water doesn't go amiss in this after the kids are tucked up in bed. Ahem. 

Life is maintenance

In these bodies we will live,
in these bodies we will die
Where you invest your love,
you invest your life

- Mumford and Sons 

Why did it take me so long to embrace this? I rallied against the day to day details of life maintenance for so long - and I never did achieve the freedom from ordinariness that I was striving for.

We live in a world of outsourcing. From the cradle to the grave, we have an endless stream of services to take care of us and our loved ones, from the TV babysitter, through nightly dinners of preprepared carrots and ready-seasoned chicken, to the heart specialists that put us back together when we have consumed too much, burnt through too much cortisol and not moved enough. If they fail? We have the undertaker to take care of our dead. The maintenance of humans has been outsourced.

The most frugal among us have so much 'stuff' - and the means to acquire more - that only the wealthiest of households would have had 60 years ago. For all our household conveniences - we have just upped the level of day to day maintenance actually required to run our lives. We don't produce it ourselves much these days - we have a whole country of cheap labour east of here to do that for us. And when we take delivery of it, we do our best to avoid maintaining it - by throwing more money and stuff and time at it.

The things we have, inspite of all our mod cons, seem to require much more maintenance. My great grandmother didn't have wall to wall carpeting, and a worktop food processor complete with 48 hard to clean attachments. She had wood or stone floors and a broom, mop and a rug beater. A knife and a whisk are sufficient food processors if you have to work 40 hours to buy a kitchen aid that you rarely use because you hate to clean it. Her laundry day was hard graft - but I suspect she actually washed a lot less stuff and she wore an apron daily to reduce the number of clothes she got through. We have a hoover, a steam cleaner and biannual use of a carpet washer. All of them are ugly and take up a lot of space. And all of them need to be wiped over and cleaned themselves occasionally. Meanwhile, I still make use of a mop and broom and rug beater for other areas of the house.

It seems the whole of modern life is an attempt to escape the maintenance to get to the fun. But the 'fun' comes at a huge price, if it comes at all. Only the super rich who can outsource everything with no care for money or paid employment have a hope of escaping this. For the rest of us - the adverts lie. And none of us can escape the environmental costs wrought by our increasingly disposable, frantic lives. More stuff, more disposable, cheaply built stuff, is wreaking havoc with our planet and our quality of life. 

Over the last few years I have taken back that which is mine to maintain. I love maintaining my humans and I love the beauty of a garden in full bloom - healthy allotment produce for the win. Laundry is much easier when you love the clothes that you are laundering. Keeping your home tidy is much more enjoyable when you think the furniture is beautiful and the textiles are worth looking after - especially so if you have poured your creativity and time into making them or refurbishing them. None of this has to cost a lot of money. I like doing a little handwashing now and again so a few delicate hand knits only add to my enjoyment of life. I love sweeping and I hate hoovering - guess who won't be having wall to wall carpet in our forever house.

I think this sums up simple living in a nutshell. The motivating values for everyone may be different, but the result is the same - the taking back of the day to day maintenance of our lives and fully embracing it, appreciating it and aligning it with our values as much as is possible - and realising that there is more room for fun and excitement when you spend less time running away from life. Life is maintenace, so you might as well make a life worth maintaining.

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.

Wombling again.

I hate buying things new when there is a whole world of other people's cast offs to furnish my home and life with. I pull things out of skips, friends know to give me first dibs on their unloved belongings and I love trawling eBay and charity shops for bargains, but I rarely get the time to do it these days. My children's tolerance for shopping is quite rightfully low in the best of circumstances (toy shops), they appreciate trawling around looking at old furniture and bric-a-brac even less.

Usually I have to stay close to home, the only charity shop within quick walking distance. I dropped in on saturday and returned home with a set of bright cheerful curtains and some dining plates. The curtains cost  £3.50 and are handmade linen blend fabric, fit my windows perfectly and replace the horrible thin nylon drapes (£20 in a sale and not worth a fraction of that) that I bought in desperation from Wilkos last year. One of those curtains now temporarily covers a nursing chair that I acquired from a friend and am looking for time to reupholster, so has not gone entirely to waste. At some point I will add a lining to these new curtains in preparation for the winter, until then they are a huge improvement on the old.

My womble nature does need to be reigned in. Following the great declutter of 2011, new rules apply. I have a list of things that we need and buy only from that list. At the moment, the list does include room for some pretty, decorative items, though my preference is that they are functional too. Our nice decluttered house needs to be turned into a home. As it is my birthday today, my request was that we went a little further afield and looked around secondhand shops - wild thing, I know. My day was a success, though I am still looking for a 4mm crochet hook and a cutlery drainer, I did tick off a few items of clothing from the list.

Occasionally I come across something that I only realise I need in the moment I find it:

Gus is off for his first ever solo trip away from home with Gran and Grandad in a few days. It was only when I stumbled upon this I realized we don't have suitably sized luggage for him. It should be adequate for all the adventures he will have in the next few years; and in between trips can store out of season clothing. A sprinkle of bicarb to freshen it and a rub with some oil and it will be as good as new. I didn't think I could top my delight at the curtains, but this is one of my favorite finds ever and Gus seems pretty happy with it too.

What thrifted treasures have you found recently?

The mother of invention

As part of my winter preparations, a new hat is in order for yours truly - last year's acrylic crochet ensemble was a little too baggy tea cosy like, a little too garish and not warm enough. A browse of Ravelry led me to conclude that I wasn't going to find a suitable crochet pattern that (a) was big enough for my huge head (b) compatible with any of the stashed yarn I have to work with or (c) wouldn't look ridiculous on me. In the end I bit the bullet and begun to search the knitting patterns - ignoring anything with colourwork, cables, lace, fancy shaping or any other extravagance that could trigger another knitting related mental breakdown in me (though that happened later anyway when I happened across the bag containing the infuriating unfinished jumper that originally triggered it). I finally settled on this Wurm hat in Sublime Extra Fine Merino Wool DK.

Knitting in the round is one form of knitting that still holds some charm for me. I am mesmerised that the humans who came before me worked out how to create the most important extremity-protecting garments - the socks, the hats, the gloves - using just their opposable thumbs, a clutch of double pointed sticks (and particular kudos to the smart-arse that threw away all but two and joined them with a length of string) and some nifty shaping techniques. I like the fact that rows and rows of knit stitches form stocking stitch - no need for any awkward purling or turning or sewing up. I like the fact that thanks to the short needles it can be done, bleary-eyed, with a baby balanced asleep on my lap at 3am should the need arise - and last time around, the need arose fairly frequently. It's not crochet, but it is a beautiful thing nonetheless.

Unfortunately, during the great knitting revolt of 2010 and the great house decluttering of 2011, the DPNs and circular needles have been mislaid, bar a single set of 4.5mm circulars - which having found my pattern and being  itching to get started, is annoying. The cooler weather combined with my being unproductively beached like a whale on the sofa for much of my day just served to remind me that I have lots to do between now and autumn and I shouldn't be wasting more time than I have to. In desperation I remembered a set of kebab skewers that I had saved for use as plant markers and serendipitously they were 4mm in diameter, just the size required - a quick sharpen with a pencil sharpener and I was ready to cast on. They would be better if I could have been bothered to find sand paper; and five would be easier than the four I have, but beggars can't be choosers and they have performed admirably.

As I rarely need DPNs this wide, these will probably become my permanent set, saving me several pounds; I will have to trail the charity shops and eBay for my finer pairs - though I am now tempted to go the DIY route and make my own from dowelling. I hereby offer my apologies to my dearest OH for the rant about the evils of expensive preprepared kebabs I subjected him to when he brought home the offending pack from the shop as we have managed to get our money's worth. Happily, it looks like I will have warm ears this winter.

Information is power

I have begun recording our gas and electricity meter readings again, on paper, once a week, in the hope that we will be able to set a realistic usage reduction goal. I have finally found a use for the 'set reminder' alarm function on my phone and now it beeps at me every Wednesday and tells me to read the meters. You can of course do this by looking at your bill statements - though if they are anything like ours, they probably appear to be deliberately complicated and misleading and it will be simpler to do it yourself.

Yesterday I moved our energy monitor from the dingy corner of the kitchen where it has sat virtually ignored for a year to a prominent spot on the living room mantelpiece. You don't actually need one of these gadgets to monitor your usage (I would never have bought one as they cost the best part of a weeks food budget) but if you can borrow one or get one free from your electricity company,  it is a conspicuous reminder that you are using energy constantly - and therefore spending money constantly. I had great fun going around the house turning everything off at the wall, trying to get the reading down to zero (yep, that is fun to me). In a few weeks when it has become second nature to do so, we won't need it any more and will save the money (admittedly pennies) that it costs to run.

My thrifty instincts are in overdrive at the moment - I don't know if it is the drop in income (though bouts of thriftiness do not necessarily coincide with bouts of necessity), or that I desperately want to get started on saving up for my little house in Norfolk, or just my utter contempt for a system that thrives on parting me from my life energy in the form of earned money - but it is good to be on the wagon. Many people may think that studiously tracking consumption is a waste of their time, but personally I find that it keeps me on track and usually opens my eyes to something I have previously missed that may cut our expenditure further. It is the first step to recognizing where your energy and focus actually goes - as opposed to where you think it may go.

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?

Upcycle this

I tend to agree with the statement that most of the best things in life are free. That dish marked 'Free' that comes with your Indian takeaway order, the one that is probably the ends of several different dishes mixed together? Quite often the tastiest one. This is my 'Free' of the month, pulled from the top of a neighbour's rubbish collection:

My friends and I used to derive great pleasure as children from pulling perfectly serviceable items out of the huge walk in skip that was placed near to our house for the Sunday market traders to dispose of their waste. To this day I have no idea why most of it found its way straight into the skip instead of a reduced pile, as this was the early to mid nineties when the majority were struggling economically (oh my how times change!). Amongst the cardboard boxes and rotten fruit we quite often found brand new items of clothing from the clothing stalls, slightly dented trays of juice drinks and even entire boxes of fresh fruits. I found a  plastic laundry basket once that was slightly scuffed - it served as our laundry basket for at least the next 10 years. I was most proud to take that home as the red colour matched our kitchen. For a good few years, we made a good living out of that skip, though our parents were tinged with more than a little shame at our activities.


I am still a Womble at heart and hate seeing perfectly good useful items go to waste. Unfortunately, many people balk at the idea of even donating their unwanted things to charity shops, let alone buying from them. No matter how many magazines and TV programs advocate 'upcycling', vintage living and thrifting - there is still a whole world of difference in many people's minds between those trendy pursuits and being seen to actually take something out of a skip or buy from a charity shop (and I am not suggesting that anyone needs to wade around in rotting garbage here). I haven't actually been criticised or looked at pityingly yet for this particular piece of scavenging, but previous instances loom large in my mind and there are plenty of people I know who wouldn't share my enthusiasm for it.

Shame shouldn't come from making good use of something discarded, something free for the taking - it should come from sending enormous quantities of useful things to landfill and sneering at those that would want to divert those things from the waste stream, whether out of material necessity or just because they hate waste. I live in a street where, luckily, vanity doesn't get in the way of common sense. People commonly leave unwanted items outside of their property for twenty-four hours with a 'free to a good home' notice, before they attempt to dispose of them elsewhere - and other people generally take them.

I suspect that the ongoing economic problems that swathes of the western world are experiencing will humanize us a little. I hope that the quite frankly vile lust for money, bling and superior social status that has been exalted by our culture for the last few decades will give way to a kinder, less wasteful society. A lot more people seem to be  reassessing their needs and just trying to get by - which in turn will lead to a greater respect for thrift and creativity and the conservation of precious resources. I hope, but then, I am a dreamer.

Anyway, two tester pots of paint and a few hours waiting for paint to dry and this is as good as new - and usefully storing all those little things that seem to clutter up surfaces for want of a better home. My year long  decluttering mission is now 'complete' - the rooms are relatively clutter free and now it is just the small task of finding the best place for our remaining possessions. T'is done. 

Destructive, in a good way

No sooner do I get back from holiday with good intentions to use my Internet connection more mindfully (and to blog more regularly, as pregnancy brain fog is now lifting and I am actually doing things that I can write about once again), than said Internet connection is plagued by connectivity problems. I can't access Blogger, email or Google Reader reliably without it timing out; and so for the last week haven't been reading or responding to comments, emails or blog posts. This afternoon the connection seems to be holding, so here goes...

I have accomplished quite a lot this week, probably because of the lack of Internet connection. The house is a mess, because most of my time has been spent outside in the glorious sunshine, trying to find any excuse to stay out there. It has been so warm and sunny, my pasty complexion suffered its first annual flush of sunburn.

A pallet was dumped behind bushes at the end of our street a few years ago, but I never had anything to use it for and so left it, expecting someone else to make use of it. Nobody ever did; and this week it finally became mine for some therapeutically destructive crowbar therapy. It was hard work even for two of us, with a little wastage due to splitting, but after some very satisfying prising, sawing and nailing we now have some fetching wooden edging panels to stop the couch grass paths that separate us us from our neighbours from encroaching into our beds. Another two pallets have since fallen into my lap, each one being sufficient to edge one side of our plot; and I see a crowbar in their future.

I made a final push in the yard to get it ready for summer. I waged war on next doors privet hedge and collected 5 refuse sacks of clippings and loppings. I made the mistake of doing the green thing and letting the hedge flower last year, because the bees and insects love it. Unfortunately that just made it leggy and invasive on our side (the sunny side); and so I have taken it back right to the boundary where it won't drown out our pots, seating area and laundry line. I plan to plant lots of insect attracting flowers and herbs to make up for my destruction (which I am ashamed to admit was quite soothing - I hate that hedge). Unfortunately I can't make up for the local soil fertility that is going to be permanently lost when the clippings are sent to the local tip for composting. Using petrol (a precious resource these days) to transport another precious resource away is absolutely bonkers.

I also finally pulled back some stone slabs that have been stacked against a wall in our garden since we moved in- to reveal a mollusc's holiday camp. I put The Boy (who is too young to have developed any hint of squeamishness about such things yet) to useful work and he collected 40 or so of the blighters in a flowerpot - which he then proudly offered me as though it were a flower posy. Yuck. I did my own bit of temporary fly tipping and dumped this under the bushes at the end of the street, where they will either thrive in the undergrowth, or more probably have their numbers drastically reduced by the birds. The slabs are now up at the allotment, edging the long side of one of the beds. Slowly but surely it's all coming together.

Laundry weather

Today has been the sunniest, warmest day of the year so far. The patio was positively baking - perfect weather for hanging out the laundry, especially as there was a slight breeze blowing. Not the kind of day that I wanted to spend hanging around the house loading and unloading the washing machine.

Most of the western world is accustomed to being able to access (relatively cheap) concentrated forms of energy at the flick of a switch. Whilst line-drying is 'normal' in the UK, most of us never really have to arrange our lives around the intermittent availablity of energy or the passage of day or night. We can choose to do all of our work at night thanks to 24 hour electric lighting, we can dry our laundry whenever we want thanks to radiators and tumble dryers. Hot water increasingly comes from on-demand boilers. Any physical commodity we need can be produced far away and transported to us quickly over long distances with little effort on our part. I can't see this happy state of affairs continuing for much longer. Certainly in the short term I think we will see energy shortfalls that will force us to rearrange our lives around an intermittent energy supply and resource constraints. We will have to consider what use we want to put the energy and resources we do have to - and we will start to look at 'ambient' energy - the warmth of the sun, daylight hours - as an actual resource to work with.

As it turned out, I managed to get two full loads of laundry washed and dried. It smells lush - that faintly burnt but fresh scent that cotton sheets take on when they have been hanging out in the sun. It also gave me the opportunity to use the peg bag I have been crocheting for the past few evenings out of the ends of last years balls of dishcloth cotton. Every year I seem to buy new pegs as the old ones gradually go astray or I leave them on the line to get mildewy, rusty or brittle. Last week I bought some new wooden ones and vowed they would see me through more than one year of laundry hanging. Their new home is a little garish, but sturdy. I saved money, enjoyed some quiet crochet (and ensuing sense of accomplishment - small things, I know) - and, I hope, saved my pegs to see another summer.

Back - to the land

You may have noticed that I have been away from this space for a few weeks. I have been making the most of all the annual leave I have to use up before I go on maternity leave, visiting family in Derbyshire. A lovely week, with the best weather we have ever had (at any time of the year) visiting a much cooler and rainier part of the country - lots of sunshine and no rain for a whole week. No snow either, which means I will have to lay to rest my long running comedy bit about bringing crampons and down jackets every time we visit (in my defence, it did once snow  in June - meanwhile Portsmouth was basking in a heat wave).

I had a few sleepless nights whilst away, not for the cats or the guinea pigs we had left behind (who I knew would be amply cared for), but for our allotment, which has been left to fend for itself; and my dining room window sill, where I suspected the tomato plants I potted up before I went away were not going to survive my absence. Thankfully my neighbour had it all under control and we arrived home to find the tomatoes, chillies and loofahs doing beautifully. The allotment had also exploded into life in our absence - and as we haven't actually planted much up there so far, this was life of the overgrown weed kind. The quarter of the site that is yet to be cleared or mulched boasts admirable yields of chickweed (flowering and starting to set seed) and foot high nettles and dock. The grass paths (which haven't yet been edged due to the dearth of scavengable wood) are spilling onto the newly dug, mostly bare beds. Some of the cardboard mulch has become untethered by the elements and is ripping up, allowing some of the perennials we missed to poke through.


For the last few days we have spent a good few hours addressing these issues. Firstly, we got a few more things into the ground. We have two gooseberry bushes 'Invicta' and one crown each of rhubarb 'Stockbridge Arrow' and 'Champagne'. Preparing the patches of earth for these made me feel infinitely better about our predicament. I spent much of today enthusiastically tearing up clumps of chickweed and piling it into the compost bin, whilst Nick dug over a patch of ground and laid the patio slab shed base; and the boy looked on incredulously as his dad jumped up and down on paving slabs to level them.

We wanted to spend as little money on 'furnishing' our allotment as possible; and wanted to rescue as many materials from the waste stream as we could. Unfortunately there isn't much house renovation going in these parts at the moment; and materials have been scarce. Today I got creative with the materials I had to hand and began edging one of the eight beds. Firstly I used half width paving slabs that we inherited from the previous occupants of our house to edge down one length of the bed, sinking them just below the surface to separate the bed from the (weedy, you will notice) path. Once those had run out I started sinking upturned wine bottles in. They were trickier to place than the slabs, requiring a trench to be dug and back filled very gently from both sides, whilst the bottles were held wedged up firmly against one another. The end result will be quite pretty once the labels have weathered off. Now I am asking everyone who will listen to save their empties for me. Thankfully for me the recession hasn't hit home wine consumption in the way it has home renovations.

The hardest part of establishing our allotment has been going with the flow - essentially bobbing along at a very gentle pace. I had wanted everything up and running after our first month. But the resources didn't flow as fast as we anticipated - neither the cash to buy the big items we needed; nor the scrap wooden planks, mulch materials and paving slabs I had expected to procure easily and cheaply. This has been a blessing, in retrospect. It probably isn't good for a pregnant woman to throw her back out speed digging an allotment in the depths of winter. It is probably best also that we had the time to observe what was going on and how we could make best use of our plot before we rushed in and dug like demons. Gardening is a slow art, especially in the depths of winter; and I don't think I would want it any other way.

Ode to the black stuff

This week my decluttering attentions turned to the back yard. It is a job I have been dreading. Firstly it means lugging heavy pots and heaps of stuff around and secondly, in February, it means lugging wet and cold heavy pots and heaps around, usually across slippery patio stones in dank weather. Last year the yard was an experimental jungle, with far too many pots, plants and other projects crammed into a tiny space, most of which are still waiting to be cleared up. This year most of those experiments will move up to the allotment; and the yard will be transformed into an oasis of calm and morning sunshine. There will still be greenery - salads, fruit bushes and herbs - and an absolute riot of flowers and colour and perfumes and butterflies and all pretty things.

Okay, I am probably getting a little ahead of myself again, but what is a life without vision : ) ? Truth be told, the summer of 2011 will be declared a success if drying laundry doesn't have to compete with a forest of tomatoes or next door's privet hedge; I get one Dahlia to flower; and if there is just a tiny bit of room to sit and soak it all up for a few minutes in the sunshine. The fruit bushes and salads and riots can come a little later.

One of the projects that is moving up to the allotment is the compost bin. I started the bin three years ago when we first moved in. It was an virtuous move, recycling an old dustbin to in turn recycle some of our household waste on site. The bin was small and filled very quickly. Since then it has sat waiting for the fauna to do their thing, whilst most of our household green waste made its way to landfill. As the allotment is where we need most of our organic matter from now on, this small bin is on its way out. So I set out to bag up the contents of the bin for easy transport to the allotment.

On removing the bin from the pile, I was delighted to be  confronted with this:

 
A dark black friable heap of earthy-smelling beauty. No bag of garden centre bought compost will ever compare. This is the first time in my poor sheltered life I have seen homemade compost; which is probably why I am positively rhapsodic about it now; but I am truly in awe of the processes that took a heap of dying waste matter and turned it into a substance from which new life will spring. Instead of moving it up to the allotment as planned, I skimmed off the top uncomposted layer and spread the lush dark stuff around the large containers and bed that were intensively cropped last year. If I can't grow big showy Dahlias in this, summer 2011 will indeed have been a failure.

Not binning it

My decluttering over recent weeks has turned my attention not only to how much 'stuff' we store permanently in our home, but also to the transient stuff - packaging, junk mail, food waste, personal care items, that sort of thing. Obvious sound ecological reasons aside, there are some pressing personal reasons for wanting to cut down our waste tally. Firstly, I live in a small house with a small yard; and I can think of better things to do with that space than fill it with rubbish and recycling receptacles. So why we insist on producing two or three black refuse sacks and 2 boxes worth of recycling every week is any one's guess - although I would place good money on laziness and inertia as being the main culprits.

A large proportion of the waste we produce is kitchen waste in the form of vegetable scraps, egg shells, egg boxes and teabags, around 1/2 a refuse sack per week. The other half of that sack comprises bedding, wood shavings and guinea pig poo (which just happens to be an excellent compost activator or even direct manure) from our two guinea pigs. Our new compost bin is now installed on our allotment and is already eating prodigious quantities of kitchen and hutch waste.

So, now for the rest of our bin. Our biggest guilty secret is our sons disposable nappies - we gave up on terry cloths after he turned a year old. I had plans to get him completely potty trained early, but he wasn't buying it; and now 14 months on he uses an average of 2 pairs of pull up pants a day. That amounts to about half a refuse sack per week. Which means that the rest of our bin consists of plastic food packaging; and I suspect quite a few recyclables that neither of us can be bothered to fit into/balance on top of the overflowing recycling box. Part of the reason the box overflows is Nick's absolute refusal to crush tins and bottles down to size, despite weekly promises to begin doing so. The contents of our overflowing recycling box consists of plastic milk cartons, tomato and cat food tins, paper and card.

The ultimate solution of course is to redesign our lives to consume less, full stop. In the UK, there has been quite a lot of complaining about 'waste rationing', with local councils moving to fortnightly collections or even contemplating the introduction of charging schemes. I can see that this would be a concern for many, but most of that concern once again comes from the inconvenience of having to stop and examine your habits - and possibly find them to be improvable - which very few people relish. I feel a twinge of guilt when I put our rubbish out and look at our elderly neighbours half-full recycling box, with a small carrier bag of rubbish perched on top; and I know that I could do better.

By the beginning of March I want to have scaled our waste tally down to an average of 1 refuse sack and 1 (contained!) recycling box per week. This is a workable goal, but requires some life redesign and new habits. We have to start carrying reusable shopping bags without a second thought, a habit we have gradually fallen out of. We need to stop buying over packaged snacks and sweet things on a whim and instaed need to start a regular baking schedule. We need to take lunch to work every day, because the waste we dispose of away from home counts as ours too. We need to investigate reusable pull up pants, which is what we should have done all those months ago. We need to put up another 'no junk mail sign' on our door, something we should have done the moment the first one began to fade.

We need to stop buying so much stuff.

A life (slightly) less spicy

This is a good time of year for taking stock, and in this specific instance, taking stock of stock ingredients. I was going to run with taking stock of the stock cupboard, but that is for another day, so today's dire pun of a post will revolve around my spice drawer. Behold:

I think leaving home, branching out and discovering who you are and who you want to become inevitably involves some rebelling against your heritage and exploring what the world has to offer. In my case, that meant a good deal of experimenting with food and flavours. I am not a fan of bland, but a fan of strong, punchy, fragrant, warming, zesty, spicy, earthy, piquant, hot, cooling, sweet, sour, acidic, smoky and everything above beyond and in between. Which poses problems in a simpler kitchen, because you need a large spice drawer to house all of those adjectives.

With the exception of green cardamon pods, I have never met a spice or herb that I couldn't eventually work with. Living in a city with several excellent ethnic supermarkets meant I have had the opportunity to work my way around the world's flavours cheaply and find what I like. Unfortunately, I liked most of it.

I am now working and cooking for a family, which means there is less time for experimenting, less money for wasting and less space to store ingredients. So today I took a few minutes to pare down my spice drawer.  Firstly, I removed anything that was out of date, after a sniff and possibly a taste test. That removed about a quarter of the seasonings. Next I went through the nearly used up jars, to see if I could use them up before they were past their best. In my heart of hearts, I know that I will never use fennel and dill seed again, so they were out. I decanted my prized core herbs and spices that I could not live without into now empty air-tight jars and returned them to the drawer.

I like Indian food when eating at restaurants, but rarely cook it at home. All of the Indian and Balti spice mixes have gone, along with a few individual herbs and spices particular to those cuisines. Some seasonings are very versatile - garlic, ginger, oregano, basil, paprika, chilli, black pepper will service a range of different dishes from pasta to goulash to a stir fry or Thai curry (at a stretch). Some, such as cumin, I use only when I make a chilli or marinade meat, but then I make chilli quite often. Some spices I despise when dried but love fresh from the plant, such as parsley and coriander. Some seasonings are seasonal - I use sumac and dried mint by the ton in summer, but could probably go without over winter. Cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice don't see the light of day until autumn.

When I plan next years garden, I want to maximise my production of flavour ingredients. We have a potted bay tree; and bay also grows wild in the parks around here, as do massive rosemary plants.  We also have thyme, mint, tarragon, parsley and sage; and I plan to add a few others. I also need to learn, finally, how to preserve and store them at the end of the season.

A quick peruse of the Internet on spice storage is quite frankly, confusing, so I have distilled my own experience and a bit of common sense into a few basic rules that I will from now on be following: 

• Don't buy large quantities of spices unless you use that spice in large quantities. It isn't cost effective if they are past their best when you come to use them. Most have a shelf life of up to 1 year at best.
• Decant all herbs and spices the moment they are opened into airtight containers and store in a cool dark place, possibly even the fridge or freezer if ground. I lost good basil for want of this, sigh.
• Buy whole spices and grind them as needed, if possible. They stay fresher for longer.
• A quick sniff audit every now and again should tell you whether something is past its best - and that doesn't necessarily mean odourless. Savour the spices when they are fresh and you will know how they are meant to smell and taste.
• Explore you locality for wild growing herbs. If you have the space, grow your own seasonings. This should save money, beautify your surroundings and mean you always have seasonings on hand for the pot.

If you are wondering why this important issue is so dear to my heart, please have a heart for those forgotten citizens of your spice rack. ; )

The powered down kitchen

This week I have been brooding over both our food budget and our energy use. The food I have made great progress on whittling down over the last twelve months but still want to tweak it a little to incorporate building up a decent store and rotation. The utilities are going in the opposite direction. We pay our gas and electric bills by monthly direct debit; and once again the amounts have had to rise to take into account rising prices and our own profligacy.  It can be hard at the end of the day to change daily habits - for example, ooooh, lets say - hours sat in front of the PC, browsing mindlessly. Ironically, the path of least resistance in this case is the one that uses the most energy.

A few months ago I found a brilliant book  - The Victory Cookbook by Marguerite Patten. Marguerite, who is now in her nineties, was in effect Britains' first celebrity chef, a home economist in the Ministry of Food during WWII. The book is a compilation of her three wartime cookbooks and some additional illustrations, adverts, pamphlets and background information from the war, victory and 'austerity' years.

The first thing I noticed was how unappetising some of the recipes are a first glance, to someone who has a world cuisine at their disposal. This was a Britain before Elizabeth David and the prosperity of the sixties. There were no fast food joints, olive oil was bought from a chemist (that's a pharmacy to the rest of the English speaking world) and Coronation Chicken only popped onto the scene in 1953. Food systems were relatively localised and the cuisines of empire hadn't impacted on the nations taste beyond tea, cocoa, bananas and orange squash. Dig a little deeper of course and you realise that the book adapts quite nicely to a more prosperous population hankering after seasonal local food.

The second thing that really dawned on me was just how little people had to eat during the war - and how they had even less as the economy was mobilised for export after 1945. The absurdity of the average modern industrialised diet of too many calories, too much fat and too few nutrients (along with massive systemic and domestic food waste) is brought in to sharp focus against a national food heritage of war rationing and hunger that actually left the war generation the healthiest and longest lived in European history.

The third point, was the emphasis that was placed upon fuel efficiency throughout. Admonitions against lighting the oven for a single dish and over boiling vegetables sit next to recipes for griddle scones and breads, raw side salads and even a plan for a hay box, the low tech equivalent of the modern slow cooker. This is something that modern cookbooks, even the most thrift minded, do not take into account, because today cooking represents such a small percentage of our home energy use. Except it doesn't, when you take into account that the majority of cooks now have fridges,  freezers, blenders, processors, toasters, juicers, coffee machines, microwaves, slow cookers, electric carving knives, breadmakers and deepfat fryers at their disposal.

This happens to be an area of home energy use I would like to tackle. It began when I realised that my oven only had one shelf that could actually cook food, the shelf underneath burns anything to a crisp if it is placed within 15 cm of the heating element in the bottom of the oven. It is the middle of summer and I do not need to heat my entire house up via the incredibly inefficient means of a poorly insulated electric oven with leaky seals. Which means my old style bread making and baking routines will have to be put on the back burner (no pun intended) until the chillier nights of autumn. For the next few months we will be using the hob; and preferably one ring at a time.

The summer months are the perfect time, I realise, to do away with the oven. Salad ingredients are in abundance and low or no-cook meals are the key to lots of hours lazing in the garden watching the sun go down.  They go better with a chilled glass of wine or homebrew lager.

Today I cooked oatmeal cakes on the griddle pan (a recipe from The Victory Cookbook). We have breakfasted on pancakes and made flat breads to go with soup. I have gone from hating my griddle pan (possibly because I never really got the hang of using it for anything other than making charcoal out of batter mix) to adoring it. It is impossible to cook anything overly complicated on a griddle, but the simple food it can produce can be delicious.I love the fact that I could pack it in my knapsack and take it camping too, or stick it on the barbeque.

In late autumn, that period of blustery days and cool nights that demands soups and the odd casserole, I plan to construct a hay box, which sounds like an even lazier method of cooking than the griddle. I had been considering buying an electric slow cooker for a while, but would have to work 6 hours to buy a half decent one and I wouldn't really save fuel costs if the thing is on for 10 hours. I will instead invest 8 hours hard labour into buying a pressure cooker that will cook my pulses in half the time, heat up my meals ready for the haybox, and pressure-can all those pickles I plan on getting around to making 'some day'... I hate those words.

Taking stock

There are a few stragglers around the house. I know I am missing a few dishcloths and definitely a crochet blanket I am working on. Now I have taken stock, I realise that not buying any more craft materials until I have used up what I have won't actually be so hard. 

I can't believe just how many WIPS and UFOs I have. I would have estimated seven, it turns out there are closer to fifteen. Some will be finished in the next few months, some will be frogged and the yarn salvaged for reuse. Whilst I feel a tad guilty about the money this yarn represents, I am dead excited by all the wonderful textures and colours I have to pick and choose from. I might even get around to designing a few patterns of my own which I have wanted to do for a long time. 

My pretties are now sorted into bags and boxes and stowed away safely. I now know why Ravelry includes that 'Stash' tab. I might be making use of it, now I realise I have such a stash to keep track of. I have chucked all of the scraps and poor quality yarns that I will never get around to to using. I still have a big bag of tangled yarn given to me by my friends mum; eventually I will sort through it with a knitting friend and see what we can do with it. 

Of course, if yarn companies would stop producing such yummy yarns and wafting them under my nose, this wouldn't even be a problem...(whistle and wander away nonchalantly, neglecting to mention that there is also the sewing stash, the paper stash, the bead stash...).

A bid for freedom

Last month we managed to pay off over £500 off debt. This included a couple of hundred pounds to close a credit card, a regular loan payment and dribs and drabs to various other accounts. To get to the stage where we could pay off so much in one month and not be totally deprived is wonderful.

A few years ago, before the credit crunch, we were bobbing along paying off just the minimum payments and going into our overdrafts every month. Around 2006, I remember seeing the front page of The Economist magazine. I knew nothing of finance and economics back then, but I remember the title splashed across a row of foreclosed cartoon McMansions was something along the lines of 'Time's up for the American housing bubble'. I remember it gave me an uneasy feeling, not least because we as a nation tend to follow where the US leads on just about everything, bonkers financial models included.

At around the same time I came across the concept of peak oil, in National Geographic of all places. The more I read, the more I realised that we were heading into a period of huge financial instability. I began to take debts more seriously; but whilst a step in the right direction, our efforts were half hearted.  Falling pregnant with Gus, whilst a shock, was actually our saving grace. We ploughed our efforts into paying off debts, moving them around to zero interest deals and paying a small amount into savings each month. We are aiming to have cleared the remaining credit card and overdraft by the end of 2010, and perhaps pay off the loan early if it is cost effective to do so.

To get to this point, our mindset has had to drastically change:

• I think the most valuable thing that we have done is to write a realistic budget. We have been doing this seriously since february and it is in this period that we have paid off the most debt, which can't be coincidental.

• We pay extra debt repayments at the beginning of the month, before we have a chance to fritter away the money.

•  We generally withdraw cash to pay for everyday things instead of using a card. This makes it easier to shop in our local grocers and we do spend smaller amounts at a time. I still have the bizarre idea that it isn't fair on the shop to spend less than a fiver on my card, which as the big chains don't charge for small amounts, is absolute madness on my part.

• We do an online shop every 2-3 months for our bulk goods. I started doing this in the run up to giving birth, we stocked up on dry goods and 200 tins of cat food (I kid not) so that we didn't have to do much shopping in those first few months with a new baby. It worked out brilliantly. I hate supermarkets, I hate spending money on petrol to travel to supermarkets and I like having everything on hand that I need to prepare a meal and get me through a few lean weeks if need be (and  look at the panic buying that ensured following the snow last winter). I also don't impulse buy when I shop online.

• We now buy the best quality we can afford, or we buy second hand, we freecycle and most importantly...

• ...we ask ourselves whether we need the thing in the first place. Less stuff = less stuff to maintain and less clutter.

• We eat very little meat and lots of pulses and eggs and things. Vegetarian is definitely cheaper.  I have also started to work out what constitutes a healthy portion of something so that we waste less and still get everything we need from our food. 

Scones I made for Father's day

• We cook a lot from scratch.

• We save our pennies, literally, in a glass flagon on the mantelpiece. As a result of usually withdrawing cash to pay for things, there is always change left over; and it is amazing how quickly it tots ups. In the aftermath of the bank run on Northern Rock I think it is a good idea to always have some cash in the house.

• I read forums, such as the Old Style Money Saving board over at MSE, which are invaluable for support and ideas. Blogs such as Down To Earth and Tipnut are full of good ideas too. Having a few flesh and bone friends around you who are interested in a more frugal and sustainable way of life is a bonus if you can find them (or convert them!).

There are many things we can improve on and we still have a way to go. So my money saving goals to the end of 2010 are:

• I will take a packed lunch into work. This brilliant tool has told me that not only would I save about £450 pounds a year, but that that £450 represents 1.5 weeks of my working life.  I will also make sure I have sweet treats and baked goods around the house so that we do not go out and impulse buy.

• I will start making my own laundry powder again. I used to do it to wash Gus's nappies and saved a pretty penny, then just got out of the habit. I am actually pretty good on the green cleaning front though. Admittedly it only saves a few pounds a year, but that is better than nothing and I find it fun in a geeky way.

• I will work through the craft stash that I have before I buy any more. I will also start creatively recycling as much as I can so that I have craft materials to work with. 

Salvaging seed beads from my favourite, but unfortunately worn out, bag.

• I will look carefully at our energy usage and try to cut back. I particularly want to make sure that we use less heating in winter, which means a bit of DIY and sewing over the next few months.

I have many things that I want to achieve and these money saving ones overlap with many of my other goals. But ultimately, having no debts means that we are in effect, free human beings - which is a good place to begin a new life from.

Now the nights are drawing in...

It must be a week now since the solstice? I can feel a nip in the air, I swear...

This is the jumper I have been planning to make for my darling OH for the last 12 months and today I managed to find the perfect yarn. I am not unfortunately of unlimited funds when it comes to yarn and aran can be pricey, but this was 40% off and so I jumped at it. It has brightly coloured 'nebs' spun into the charcoal grey yarn and is a beautifully soft wool/alpaca/synthetic mix.

Today I visited my local yarn shop. This weekend it closes its doors for the last time and my local community becomes a little less complete. I am sad, not least because an independent shop has closed, but also because in those early lonely months with a new baby, the odd visit to that shop kept me sane. I think it can only be a good sign that it is closing for personal reasons and not due to the recession that is killing off so many other retailers. It must mean that people are relearning old skills and spending their money accordingly, which can only be a good thing. In an age of passive consumption, the sense of satisfaction and security that being able to make something for yourself gives is priceless.

This month I have visited the shop a couple of times to stock up and take advantage of some of the clearance offers. In  addition to the aran, I purchased ten balls of Sublime extra fine merino DK in various colours (so soft and richly coloured, it is wonderful to knit with) and some 4-ply cotton to crochet and knit some more dishcloths, which are unfortunately far too addictive.

I now regret buying some purely synthetic yarn to make a jumper for my son. Whilst its quite good quality as synthetics go, I know that when knitted into a garment it will pill and stretch too readily. I read an interesting article (whilst chopping up my magazines) about 'Precycling', which basically means to avoid waste altogether by thinking long and hard about what you consume before you even consume it; and making wise choices (along the lines of reduce, reuse, recycle) after you take possession of it. In future I will make sure that I buy as hard wearing and classic a yarn as I can afford so that when the original garment is worn out after many years of use I can frog it or felt it and turn it into something else. The gift of yarn that just keeps on giving!