Being useful.

Being or feeling useful?

I’m not sure whether it’s one or the other, but I’ve lately been lamenting the lack of skills that I have. Apart from skills related to a computer, and those within a vague field of “communication” (i.e. talking to people, running meetings, teaching, etc), I can’t do a whole lot and that bothers me.

One of my new year’s resolutions was to become more skilled.  (The other was to get myself more organised/productive…which always feels like I’m fighting a losing battle) I am hoping to set up food preserving workshops under Transition Southampton with a woman who makes jams that the Southampton Allotment and Garden Association sell at events. I can cook and bake, but my timing is terrible and there’s always more to learn so I want to set up more cookery sessions at my house and at community centres. I’m determined to make time to do gardening this year in our back yard and at the allotment, but I’m still not sure what I’m doing.

The big one is dressmaking. I have found a bunch of websites that refashion clothes, and I love it. I want to be able to scour charity shops for cute patterns and fabrics in all the wrong sizes and be able to turn it into something I’d want to wear. I love the idea of being able to wear clothes that I’ve made. I imagine the feeling will be similar to how great it is when I eat a meal I’ve cooked particularly well, especially if I picked out some of the ingredients from our allotment or the farmers’ market.

I want that sense of pride.

The only problem with my dressmaking goal is that I have no idea what I’m doing.  I went to a taster session from these guys by a woman who runs dressmaking classes in Millbrook and might be doing it a bit closer to where I live. There’s also classes run every Thursday night by the mother and daughter team at Recycle & Sew, which I might go to for troubleshooting.  My friend Somali and I are going to try to learn together, which should help keep me motivated. I can also try websites like Burda Style or Sew, Mama, Sew! or many many other websites available. At the moment I’m trying to work on this one from Clever Girl. I’m really hoping that dress making ends up being like so many other things you learn–you practice and practice the basics, and at some point it just clicks and then you understand how to put the basics together into something more complicated. If only my parents had taught me this along with reading and speaking…

If you live near me and want to bake bread sometime, make a pie, or roast some veg, come on over. If you want someone who is pretty terrible at knitting to show you the absolute minimum you need to get started, I’ll do that too. And if you happen to be an amazing seamstress (seamster? what’s the male version?), please show me how it’s done!

In case you’re also thinking “AUGH! Megan is so right! Why can’t I do anything productive? I want to learn woodworking or plumbing or how to cook”, I found a lot of comfort in the post from Rostitchery called “Being a Beginner”.  As she says:

not knowing how to do something is no reason not to do it. just make something, learn as you go, before you know it you’ll be teaching someone else all the tricks of the trade.

i LOVE this outfit, i am still proud of it, proud enough to show it to you here, proud enough to show it in person to anybody i can trap long enough to show it to them.

Here’s to making something worthy of pride.

Kitchen Happenings

The last few weeks have been fairly busy.

Two weeks ago we managed to make it to the farmers’ market AND the mushroom guy still had some available!  (often he’ll be sold out by 10am)

I bought 800g worth of mushrooms.

I know that might not seem like a lot, but imagine how nice and light and fluffy mushrooms are compared to other food. A normal punnet/tub/whatever you want to call it from a supermarket is 250g or so.

So we had two massive paper bags full of mushrooms. We had some that day in an omelet, along with local eggs, local cheese, and a Riverford leek or two. We had invited our friends who had gone to the farmers’ market back with us and then invited a couple more along the way. I made homefries which were NOT as good as my mum’s ones, but were passable.

I had a big bowl of cooked mushrooms with rapeseed oil, sage and garlic last Saturday for lunch, and while chopping up the mushrooms realised that a) we had a lot of mushrooms left and b) they were going to get pretty gross if I didn’t use them immediately.

I figured you can dry them since you see super expensive dried mushrooms in the supermarkets a lot, and google came to my rescue. Actually, it was eHow, but I wouldn’t have known to look there without Google. I love the internet. Only 15 years ago I would have had to call up a friend who might know or trek over to the library to see if they had any homesteaders books or go to a bookshop and try to find something. For a fairly obscure topic like “how to dry mushrooms”, the internet is a godsend, although it is still quite fulfilling to flip through a book to find information. Nor would I pass up a chance to get advice from a real live person.

Anyway, before everyone loses interest (I’m sure some already have), the instructions are this:
1) slice mushrooms thinly (we had oyster mushrooms, so my slices were fairly small because they are odd shapes, but ideally I would have mushroom-shaped slices)
2) put on a dish, one layer at a time. Do NOT add oil or butter or anything to it.
3) Put in an oven on the lowest temperature possible (mine was halfway between 100 and the off mark.)
4) Keep them cooking for about an hour on each side. You can flip them halfway through, or flip them more often, but you need both sides TOTALLY dry.
5) Store in a net bag (save one from your onions or something).
I even saved the “crumbs” so I can add it to a sauce or stock or something.

Thank you, eHow.
They gave plenty of other ways to do it, but on an overcast winter day, the oven was my best bet. In better, sunnier weather I might try drying in other ways.

(However, I’m not sure about following this guy’s advice in other areas. He lists instructions on how to get your kids to start their “dream” business (like pet sitting) and suggests that you have them set up a business structure and talk to a CPA if they have any accounting questions. Seriously. )

Another addition to my kitchen is a Bel Cream Maker

I picked it up on Sunday when we went to the car boot sale (flea market for us Americans). It was 1, and the guy kept trying to convince me that it was a pretty antique but wouldn’t work. Lucky for me, there’s very little that can go wrong. Some instructions are here although my directions aren’t nearly as stylised. I couldn’t be bothered with their instructions for how to de-salt your butter, and we were using it in a savoury dish anyway, so I ended up with salty cream.

Still tasted good, though! (it was in a dish something along the lines of this)

Now I can have semi-organic semi-local cream (our milk is organic but not local, and our butter is local but not organic)! Not bad.

Our crown prince squash that I hoarded from a couple months ago when squash/pumpkin season was just ending are still holding up well. I made some pumpkin bread from some that was roasted and then frozen, but I’m hoping to make some more dishes out of the ones still in our pantry. And yes, they do look just that colour.

Cut your Carbon Foodprint for Lent!

Alright. While I’m mulling over the Food Zones challenge, here’s a challenge that people can join me on AND it’s super easy.

It’s 40 days long, it gives you lots of options on how to do it, and you can measure how well you’ve done at the end. (Of course, I’m hoping that you’ll stick to it after the 40 days are over, but the challenge itself if fairly short) Oh, and did I mention that you’ll probably lose weight?

Here’s the deal:

1. Start by calculating your present footprint. See the Foodprint Calculator post for more details.

2. Figure out where your savings could be made.

3. Make sure you tell me you’re signing up to the challenge. A comment on this post is good enough for me. Also tell me where you live so I get an idea of who is doing this from around Southampton. Otherwise you can sign up here:

4. Stick to it for 40 days starting on 17th Feb (see below for tips).

5. After 40 days (3rd April), calculate it again. (Check your weight to see if I was right!)

That’s it! Not too bad, and it’s something different instead of the ol’ “give up chocolate” routine. Of course, you could always give up chocolate as part of this…  as I told some uni students I want to get signed up: “you can combine it with saving money (not eating out…as much), losing weight (less processed foods, less meat/dairy), and probably something else you wish you were doing.”

Tips:

• If you eat dairy or meat in most meals, cut down gradually by having meat in every other dinner. Or you could go cold (no pun intended) turkey.
• If you want to get more organic (and local) food, look into a veg box here or here or try to find out how you can buy organic more cheaply (hint: NOT organic ready-meals!)
• If you use a lot of imported food, start looking for UK on labels. (Don’t be fooled by “British” brainwashing, though. Look for the fine print when it gives country of origin. If there’s no UK option, stick to this side of Europe if possible)
• To try cooking a bit more and staying away from ready meals, check BBC Good Food recipes, vegbox-recipes.co.uk or get books out from the library.
• If you are doing well apart from the food you waste, get a bin and start composting!

Now that’s not too bad, is it? If you’re thinking, “Wow, I could totally do that!” Let me know and start calculating. I’d love some company.

Foodprint Calculator

Calculate Your (Food) Carbon Footprint

A carbon (equivalent) footprint is how much greenhouse gases you pump into the atmosphere. This includes the energy you use at home, the food you eat, the goods you buy, and even the government services that happen on your behalf (that’s a LOT of schools to heat and roads to fix!) This one just focuses on food.

Typical British diet (38% meat and dairy) Start with 2,000
A meat-heavy diet (50%)   Start with 2,250
A light meat diet (a little meat once a day or less) Start with 1,750
A vegetarian diet (replacing meat with more dairy) Start with 1,500
A vegan diet (no animal products)           Start with 1,000

If you never eat beef or lamb Deduct 200
(to avoid methane)

If nearly all of your food is processed
(ready meals, sauces, etc.)and/or imported         Add 200
If very little is processed
and/or imported              Deduct 400
If you buy air-freight fish, fruit or veg                  Add another 40
once a month or more (plane emissions)

(To avoid methane)
If you eat all leftovers and don’t waste food         Deduct 10%
If you compost all veg peelings, etc                    Deduct 200

Eating Out
(on average, 25% of meals in the UK are eaten away from home)
If you hardly ever eat in restaurants or canteens   Deduct 100
If half your meals are in restaurants or canteens    Add 100
If half your meals are takeaways Add 50

(To avoid nitrogen fertilizer related emissions)
If you eat only organic food                   Halve your final score
(adjust as necess. eg if you eat 50% organic, take ¼ off your score)
If you eat meat that isn’t organic, but IS free range Deduct 100

Total __________ kg of CO2 equivalent.
(1000 kg equals 1 tonne)

(apologies for the dreadful formatting. I probably should have done this as a table, but oh well. Hopefully it’s still clear what numbers go with what.)

Food Zones – contemplating a new challenge

Maybe it’s the new year and the lack of a challenge to accomplish, or the fact that this time last year I was gearing up for our first £2 a day (mostly-organic) diet, but I think I might try to convince poor Mac to join me on a Food Zone challenge.

Growing Communities' Food Zones

I’ve read a bit about 100 mile diets. I think that in many ways it’s fantastic–focus on local farms, make sure your food doesn’t travel halfway across the world, and support the local-ish economy. On a whim I bought a copy of this book which details a couple’s year of a 100 mile diet. I wish I’d waited until after I’d read some reviews, but I’m sure it will be entertaining and worth passing around (probably a lot like this one about living on £1 a day — entertaining, but not a good how-to guide) Anyway, they give you advice on 100 mile diet on their site, plus there are sites for a BUNCH of people in Manitoba who had a go and list resources, etc and they are even doing it in Scotland. I’ve talked to the guy in Fife, Scotland who said that they have two vegans and a vegetarian. I’m curious to see what they are doing for local protein.

Now, the thing about a local food challenge, is that in addition to better taste from eating food picked when it’s ripe and seasonal, is I’m looking for a low-carbon diet. That means that I might end up choosing tomatoes from France or Spain rather than those from UK hothouses. I also want to make sure that animal welfare is considered. I’m sure I could find factory farms within 100 miles, but that doesn’t mean I’d want to eat their meat, and their environmental costs are awfully high. Organic is also not considered–should we go further afield (200 miles? 300?) if local options are heavy in nitrogen fertilisers? While trying to find out an answer to the last one, I came across this article (and briefly considered getting a degree in food policy for about a minute) in which Professor Tim Lang suggests that food production with 12 miles is better than organic, although organic is obviously also something that needs support.

I’m thinking of trying to do a Food Zones challenge. Set out by Growing Communities, an urban growing initiative out of Hackney (part of London for US people), Food Zones (pdf here) is part of their manifesto and strategy for creating sustainable food systems. It doesn’t rely solely on local food, it distinguishes between those things that you would find within 12 miles, and those that you rely on a larger web of farms for, and doesn’t forget to include fairly traded coffee, spices, etc. This article, interviewing Sarah Elton who keeps a Locavore blog, makes similar points.

The main problem with the food zone challenge is that it would probably require just as much categorising and calculations as the £2 a day organic diet was. Eating for around £2 a day wasn’t the hard part–it was the weighing, measuring, and calculating that preceded and followed every meal.

I think I might do a preliminary check of our pantry and see how well we do in a UK/Europe/Rest-of-the-world ratio. I’m guessing not as good as I’d like to think.

The other problem is trying to get 2.5% out of my own gardening. How likely is that?

Here’s our allotment last summer.

Notice the lack of fruit and veg.

Hopefully we’ll all (especially me) make more of an effort this year, but I’m still a bit pessimistic. Maybe having a garden closer to home (it’s in our backyard) will help as well.
Some interesting reading:

A paper about low-carbon eating written by a consultant for Fife Diet.

Cooking Up A Storm – a summary of a research paper by the Food Climate Research Network. Some great information, good questions showing how complex the issues are, and some tips on what consumers can do on pages 13-14.

Responsible Consumption?

All throughout December, people kept asking me what I was going to buy first, or what I missed the most. To be honest, I think I’ve successfully built up a tolerance to shopping–even for Kath Kidston fabric (it’s £12/metre price tag helps), stationery or pasta maker attachments.

A good way to get over it has been to go shopping with my friend Paul. I’ve gone into game shops with him and he’ll easily spend £40-£60 on games. In my mind that would buy me at least 10 pieces of clothing in a charity shop (including the Gap wide-leg trousers I bought and Mac’s Diesel jeans we’ve bought since Jan 1), so I can’t imagine spending £40 on one game that you’ll get sick of after a few weeks. I had no concept of how expensive those were!

It’s also strange to think of how more disposable games have become since I was a kid. Up until the late 1980s, most people would buy card or board games (unless you were lucky enough to have an Atari) and you’d have it for years. Now although you have one console, you then need multiple games to keep it fresh and new.
I have bought some things new, however, mostly based on a new year’s resolution. My goal is to become more skilled–carpentry/wood working, food preserving, bike maintenance, dressmaking and altering, etc. So I’ve now bought myself two new rolls of duct tape, a French curve, a rotary cutter, a marking pencil, and some upholstery tacks. Since then I’ve made myself a dress form out of a charity shop shirt and duct tape (which is mostly correct to my shape), found a tutorial on how to alter a men’s dress shirt into a cute shirtdress, and reupholstered the dining room chairs we got a couple years ago from Freecycle. Now I just need to learn what to do in terms of sewing and altering. I’m thinking about trying stuff out on my own (I bought an old edition of the Complete Photo Guide to Sewing to try to teach myself), and then going to lessons with Ria and June when I get stuck.

Buy Nothing New year might be over, but I still think a LOT before buying anything new.  I’m not quite sure what responsible consumption is, though. There’s a LOT of greenwashing that goes on, a lot of actually ethical options for leisure products (like this and this out of many examples), and a lot of stuff that seems to be half ethical (Fairtrade cotton, but not the production of the clothing? Organic veg, but flown in from Chile?). Not to mention the fact that no matter how many fairly made organic cotton T-shirts there are, it’s not sustainable if we all buy a new one every two weeks! Turns out 10% of the “average” woman’s wardrobe sits unworn.

I’m not sure what “responsible consumption” really is, but I’m certainly going to work at it.

Buy Nothing New – year in review

Happy New Year!

Okay,
So I kinda slipped on the whole blog thing. (I’m sure lots of you are now talking to the computer saying “THAT’S a bit of an understatement.”) The Buy Nothing New challenge continued and went pretty well, but the blog updates were just nonexistent. For that, I apologise. I’m just not good at consistently writing things. This happened when I was little girl, and even later as a teenager, and kept trying to keep a diary. I’d get about 3 days into it, and get bored.

So now it’s a bit of a recap. Here we go:

I DIDN’T BUY

I sucessfully did not buy anything new for myself. Any of my biggest vices: craft supplies (at least not new), kitchen gadgets, home accessories or storage options.

I also didn’t buy any CDs, new clothes or shoes (my sneakers have holes in the back of both feet…. it’s fine unless it rains), socks or underwear (although Robin kept giving me pairs she got for free from Victoria’s Secret), jewellery or accessories, and or anything else cute that I wanted to get “just because”.

In fact, not only did I not buy any craft supplies, but I also ended up giving some away on freecycle. Not buying things just because I had a half-formed project in my head forced me to really look at what I had and realise that I didn’t need about 40 pairs of knitting needles… especially because I hadn’t done any knitting ALL year.

I BOUGHT:
Used – quite a few clothes, a bunch of books, an Etch-a-Sketch (!!), a couple pairs of shoes off eBay (and NONE of them fit!), some pillowcases (for their cute printed fabric), a beautiful blue travel typewriter from Belgium (a bit like this one, but a deeper shade of blue AND the travel case matches in colour! … oh, and some of the keys are different so it’s almost a QWERTY ), a set of cute retro cups (a lot like these ones), and probably some other stuff I can’t remember. It wasn’t too much, but it certainly allowed me some random needless purchased, and alowed me to get some stuff I needed.

I also bought new some supplies to fix up our old flat (a new shower curtain and paint, rollers and brushes to cover marks on the walls), but those all got left at the flat. I’m sure I bought a couple light bulbs, but those were exempt because you can’t buy them used. I think I may have bought one roll of tin foil ALL year, and no clingfilm. I started covering a lot of stuff with a baking sheet while cooking, and then we used a lot of random plastic tubs from takeaways, margarine, and yogurt instead of storing stuff with cling film.

Other new things were gifts for people (many were handmade, although not enough). I also got in the habit of buying postcards because they are like minigifts, but I could still support artists who’d made them and even keep them for a couple days. I bought some zines for The Art House to have as references, but I’ve been lazy and haven’t yet taken them there. Oops. I bought a LOT of stuff at the Craft and Zine Fair that I organised.

Unfortunately, I failed constantly at not buying “convenience” food, I bought quite a few packs of crisps while at gigs (although that could be argued as an “experience”), and some tea/chai while out and about. Probably less than during 2008, but it still wasn’t good.

FIXED (Macgyver style or otherwise)

A pair of shoes that were wearing out by adding heel supports that I had sitting in a drawer
A couple tops by darning
Two pairs of trousers (I still need to fix three more) by taking in the waist. Up until I learned how to do this, I didn’t have a single pair of trouers that fit me correctly–they all just sat on my hips, making the crotch of the trousers ridiculously low.

We also made do with our one-side-at-a-time toaster, glass roasting dishes doubling up as baking sheets, and I kept finding batteries and a never ending supply of dental floss sat around the house.

I LEARNED
- Take care of your stuff. There are a lot of things that I wish I’d paid more attention to them. I lost my stainless steel water bottle by leaving it behind at a conference–you aren’t going to find that used. I misplaced other things, spilled stuff on clothes, and marked up our walls in the old flat so we had to buy paint and brushes. Not being able to buy new cured me of the disposable attitude we seem to have with our things.

- “A stitch in time saves nine” is actually fairly accurate. Mending and repairing has been key. I’ve successfully learned to darn things (although my attempts are a bit clumsy), so unless you stared at the back of my green cardigan, you’d never know that there was a little hole at the top of it. I’m sure with practice and a wider range of colours and shared of thread, I’ll improve. I’ve thought about getting a darning mushroom, but I’m not entirely sure what you do with it.

- Take stock of what you already have (and use it). There were lots of times where I’d tell myself that I “needed” something which wasn’t actually the case. I didn’t really need more tops or jumpers, as I already had stacks at home. A lot of my craft supplies got used up because I actually paid attention to what I had already, instead of buying things when I saw them. As a result, I have two sets of really adorable bunting made with floral prints I’d had for YEARS and hadn’t done anything with held up by some of the ribbon I’d bought ages ago without any real purpose intended.

- If you’re going to buy something, go for quality. I really wish that I’d taken that advice when I bought the shoes that now have holes in them, or the baking sheets and cake pans that keep having the non-stick flake off. My mother has had the same baking sheets for almost my whole life. I need ones like that–I’ve gone through three sets in four years. With the money I’d spent, I could have bought really nice ones and saved myself a lot of hassle. The next pairs of shoes or boots that I buy are going to be ones I can get resoled by a cobbler. No more disposable shoes for me. I’m hoping to upgrade some of our freecycled furniture piece by piece to good quality antiques (or almost antiques)….or at least once we figure out which country we’re going to live in.

- Avoid temptation and gain some perspective. I didn’t walk into West Quay for months on end last year. When I did, I tended not to look in the shop windows. I’m a bit better now, having actually gone into TopShop, H&M, Principles and Debenhams to look at what’s in style so I can see what I already have and what I might try to pick up used. But it was a lot easier not to walk into the kitchen supply shop in Winchester than it would have been to have to debate with myself why I should not buy something. I feel like I am much more aware of the act of shopping now, though, so I don’t feel as tempted to buy things. I’d bet that going for a couple months without shopping would do the same–you’d think about the process a bit more, consider whether or not you want something as much as you initially thought.

WOULD I DO IT AGAIN?
Absolutely. It wasn’t that difficult, but I’d try to get ALL gifts for people as handmade (by me or others) or secondhand if I did it again. I don’t feel like I suffered through the year, and most of the time I didn’t even think about the challenge.

I’m in the paper!

Read all about it here.

Okay, so it’s a horrible photo. But I’m still happy that the whole Buy Nothing New got out there. Hopefully I didn’t found like too much of a nutcase or like too much of a hippy.

Any thoughts?

Unfortunately, I forgot/didn’t manage to get the radio show taped… In fact, I didn’t even listen to it (who likes the sound of their own recorded voice?) Oops.

Day 23 – Indian feast (well, almost)

Finally back to normal with not spending too much, it was my turn to cook and from our Riverford box we had two red onions, 2/3 a bag of spinach (which is now a week old) and a medium sized kohlrabi. Before our box arrives tomorrow, pickings were awfully slim. One of the drawbacks of breaking down the cost to a set amount per person, per day.

I thought about making a kohlrabi salad, something nice and summery, since kohlrabi is really refreshing and crisp anyway. Unfortunately the only one I found (that wasn’t a coleslaw type thing) used apples and dates–neither of which we have, and both of which are fairly pricey. Luckily, I found an Indian recipe. One sprouting potato leftover from Sunnyfields at the farmers market and our spinach from Riverford gave me another dish, and that recipe suggested tarka dahl (one of Mac’s favourites to get at Indian restaurants). AND it was all fairly cheap! Three dishes, plus rice, for less than 60p a serving. Not bad.

What was organic/local?
Organic - oatmeal, [leftovers for lunch: risotto rice, plum tomatoes, veg bouillon, haricot beans,] kohlrabi, red lentils, red onion, potato, spinach
Local - [rapeseed oil and cooking cheese plus herbs from the garden from leftovers] garlic, spinach, potato

Monji Kalia (Kohlrabi stew)
For half a recipe (4 very small portions) made without milk and yogurt, 15p total, 4p per portion

I had to cut the recipe in half because we only had 400g of kohlrabi. Also, we didn’t have any yogurt or milk, so I had to leave it out. Considering how spicy it ended up being (not too hot, but a bit hotter than I’d usually have), I wish I’d had some. It still tasted fine without, though.

Ingredients
1 kg (2.2 lb) Kohlrabi (ganth gobhi) (Riverford)
1 1/4 cups (250 ml) 8 fl oz Vegetable oil (used the recycled oil we keep for frying… kohlrabi maybe absorbed 10p worth?)
4 Cloves (laung) (oops. I forgot!)
2 Black cardamom (badi elaichi), crushed (2p)
a pinch Asafbetida (hing) (I’ve yet to buy this…)
1 cup (250 ml) 8 fl oz Water
1 tsp (2 g) Turmeric (haldi) powder (less than 1p)
1 tsp (2 g) Ginger powder (sonth) (2p)
1 tbsp (5 g) Aniseed (saunf) powder (missed this too…)
1/2 tsp (1 g) Garam masala (less than 1p)
Salt to taste 2 tbsp (60 g) 2 oz Yoghurt (dahi) (skipped)
2 tbsp (30 ml) l fl oz Milk (skipped)
3 Green cardamom (choti elaichi) (we used green instead of black earlier in the recipe)

Directions
1. Wash, peel and cut the kohlrabi into 1 inch cubes.
2. Heat the oil and fry the kohlrabi until golden. Drain and keep aside.
3. Heat 3 tbsp oil in a deep pot; add cloves, black cardamom, and asafoetida. Fry a little and then add water. Cover to prevent the oil from spattering.
4. Add the kohlrabi, turmeric powder, ginger powder, aniseed powder, garam masala, and salt. Cook on high heat for 10 minutes.
5. Add the milk and yoghurt (whisked together), stirring constantly till it comes to the boil. Cook for S minutes and then remove from heat.
6. Heat 1 tbsp oil in a small pan, saute the cardamom and add to the pot. Serve hot.

Tarka Dhal
£1.67 total – If 5 servings, 33p

Ingredients
The Dhal
300g red lentils (masoor dhal) (1.08)
40g ghee (I used 2tsp rapeseed oil and 2Tbsp veg oil) (10p + 6p)
1 medium onion, peeled and thinly sliced (I only used onion for the tarka, not the dhal)
1 garlic clove, peeled and thinly sliced (4p)
1.5 tsp turmeric (1p)
1 tsp ground black pepper (oops…I forgot. skipped)
Salt to taste
750mL water
1 dried red chilli-do not split (4p–I’m guessing)

The Tarka
1 tbsp sesame seed oil (skipped–I used one more veg oil)
1 tbsp vegetable oil (3p)
1 tsp mustard seed (optional) (3p)
1 tsp cumin seed (2p)
1 tsp coriander seed (1p)
8 curry leaves (optional)
4 garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced (18p)
1 small onion, peeled and thinly sliced (Riverford)
2 long dry red chillies (7p–I’m guessing)
1 tsp aswain or lovage seed (skipped. I don’t know what either are!)

Directions
1. Wash and sift the dhal (lentils) thoroughly to remove husk and stone. Drain.
2. Heat ghee in heavy pan and fry onion and garlic gently until softened
3. Add turmeric, salt, pepper and dhal. Stir gently to coat all dhal
4. Add water and chillies. Boil, covered, for 20-30 minutes until lentils are cooked and resemble a medium custard in consistency. You may need to add extra water to maintain consistency. Do not let them dry out. When cooked to your liking set aside in a serving dish in a warm place, preferably with a cover.
5. To make the tarka, heat the oil until it smokes and throw in the mustard and reduce heat a bit.
6. When mustard crackles add chillies and fry for 30 seconds, constantly turning. Mind your eyes as the fumes will be pungent.
7. Add rest of tarka ingredients except lovage and keep energetically stir frying until garlic is blackening or chillies are blackening whichever is first.
8. Add aswain or lovage, remove from heat and keep stirring for 10 seconds.
9. Pour mixture over lentils and cover. Serve hot.

The use of mustard and curry leaf is a South Indian variation. Try this recipe with and without the optional ingredients. When you’ve got the hang of it, try the recipe with other types of dhal and with mixes of dhal. I like a mix of masoor, toovar, urid and pearl barley. (masoor is sweet, toovar is meaty, urid is bitter and pearl barley adds bite.)

Saag Aloo
56p total for 4 small portions (we definitely did NOT have 500g of spinach, and I would ideally have wanted more potatoes). That’s 14p each.

Ingredients:
60g / 2¼oz butter or ghee (used 2Tbsp veg oil – 6p)
5cm / 2in piece root ginger, peeled and grated (our ginger disappeared. We probably had 1/2 inch – 5p)
4 garlic cloves, chopped (18p)
2 onions, chopped (skipped)
2 green chillies, chopped (used 1 dried – 4p?)
200g / 7oz floury potatoes, peeled and cut into 5cm / 2in pieces (probably 300g? 28p)
1 tsp ground cumin (2p)
1 tsp ground coriander (1p)
½ tsp turmeric (less than 1p)
¼ tsp salt (less than 1p)
500g / 1lb 2oz spinach leaves, rinsed and chopped (you can also use frozen spinach, defrosted) (Riverford)
pinch garam masala

Directions
Melt butter or ghee in large saucepan over medium heat. Fry ginger, garlic, onions and chillies, stirring frequently, for 2 minutes.
Add potatoes and continue stirring for 5 minutes. Then add cumin, coriander, turmeric and salt. Continue frying and stirring for 15 minutes, or until potatoes are tender. I found that everything really stuck to the base of the pan unless I stirred non-stop. If this happens, add a little vegetable oil rather than more butter.
Throw in the spinach at the very end. You want it to stay nice and fresh, so take the saucepan off the heat after you’ve stirred it in, as it will continue to cook for a while with the heat from the potatoes.
Sprinkle garam masala over and serve hot.

Plus, all of this was served with plan basmati rice (we have a 5kg bag in our airing cupboard, so that’s never an issue!)
(24p for 1cup… probably enough for 4. 6p)

Breakfast: oatmeal with 1tsp honey and a pinch of cinnamon, 11p PLUS Megan then had 30g raisins (7p) with 10g of peanut butter (2p)
Riverford: 77p
Lunch: Leftover risotto 34p
Dinner: fried kohlrabi (4p), tarka dahl (33p), saag aloo (14p) over rice (6p). 57p total for 3 different Indian dishes. Not bad! Plus Mac had two pieces of bread with pate before he went off to a meeting at 7 because we were too slow in finishing cooking (oops) (30p).

Total: Megan £1.88, Mac £2.09

Day 22 – Back to (budget) normal

Today we had our first meeting for the next half of our ethical food project–an ethical food conference. It will feature fair trade (and trade justice in general) more heavily, but will still hopefully tie into the ideas about eating ethically on a budget. I’d like to get someone in to talk about saving seed in developing nations and in the UK, to talk about the ethics of buying from a supermarket (which often supports Fairtrade suppliers, but can hurt the power of UK farmers) and getting through the idea that EVERYONE can afford to choose fair trade and organic/local produce at least some of the time.

One of the group members mentioned making clear the distinction between choosing to spend £2 a day on ethical food and having to spend $2 a day on living–food, shelter, medicine, clothing, everything. I hope that it will go well.

We’re looking at doing it in the spring next year. In other food news, I’m hoping that my friend Hannah and I will start up a food zine. I don’t know what would be in it, but I’ve wanted to write a zine since I was 14 or 15, and still haven’t. I’d like some wartime recipes in there, and maybe an interview. I think Hannah said I could be the “vegetarian correspondent” and she has a Norway correspondent and a London correspondent. Maybe she thinks there is a country called Vegetariana?

Anyway, we ate well today, and under budget. As I write this, the costings have all been done, Mac even managed to take some photos, AND we’re about to settle down, watch a film (from Lovefilm–we never remember to watch the films and send them back in time so it’s more like a £10 donation to their company) and have some popcorn with butter with the money we have left over from today.


White Bean Risotto
Serves 4 £1.36 total, 34p per serving
1 medium onion, chopped (skipped)
2 tbsp Rape seed oil (30p)
2 cloves garlic, minced (9p)
5 mini plum tomatoes, chopped (Riverford)
1 1/2 cups arborio rice (70p)
28 ounces stock (4p)
80g (1/2 cup) Dried Haricot Beans (16p)
5g freshly grated Lyburn cooking cheese (3p)
Fresh mixed herbs to taste (we used a bit of fresh oregano, fresh basil, and fresh thyme from the garden)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1. Soak beans overnight, and change water in the morning or a few hours before cooking, simmer for 1-1½ hours until tender.
2. Coat a large skillet with rape seed oil. Saute garlic of 1 minute, add tomato and cook for another 2-3 minutes.
3. Stir in arborio rice and cook for another minute. Add stock and bring to a boil.
4. Reduce heat to simmer and cook uncovered, stirring occasionally, until broth is absorbed and rice is tender. This will take between 25 and 35 minutes. Stir in white beans, cheese, herbs, salt and pepper. Cook until all ingredients are hot, probably an extra one or two minutes.

Breakfast: Mac had porridge with honey and cinnamon (11p), Megan had hers with raisins (13p) Riverford: 75p
Lunch: Leftover lentil stew (36p because it turns out there was only enough for 5 portions, not six) (plus Megan had one of the savoury muffins our friends brought over)
Dinner: Risotto (34p) and the last two savoury muffins Plus popcorn with our film!
£1.56 for Mac (before popcorn) and £1.58 for Megan (before popcorn)… although I’m now considering all the other things I can eat with my extra 40p! I can’t believe we had filling lentil stew AND a lovely risotto and still have so much money left. What on earth have we been eating for the last week?!?!?
Mac settled on 110g of broken cashews (at £3.50/kg, broken nuts are the way to go!) with a tiny bit of soy sauce and salt to bring him to just under £2.00
Megan went with 50g of broken cashews (18p), also roasted, AND 50g of popcorn (7p) with butter (7p) for a grant total of £1.90