Eating

There was a time when I did all my food shopping in the supermarket.  It was convenient, everything was under one roof, I worked full time and usually went shopping after work.  I didn't want to use up too much time and thought that was the most efficient way to shop.  I would wander through the fruit and veg picking up whatever took my fancy, paying no attention to where it was grown and whether it was in season.  At home I would make whatever I could with the food I had bought usually by looking through my recipe books getting frustrated most weeks by the one vital ingredient I didn't have!  Over time I migrated away form the supermarket, but not entirely, to using a variety of different local shops.  I am aware that I have plenty of time to devote to my food shopping should I want to but I did manage to shop that way in a lunch hour when working part time.

Food is important to me, using good ingredients I always cook from scratch from necessity as I become ill if I eat too many preservatives.  I don't worry about five a day or seven or ten or whatever the latest research/advice is.  I think more about the overall week to keep our diet balanced.  I do this through planning, the basis of which is vegetables.  We eat a mainly vegetarian diet, I am vege and do all the cooking!  I buy meat once a month at a farmers market which I will cook about two to three times over the month.  At this time of year all our vegetables come from the garden for the rest of the year, a veg bag from a local farm co-operative.  I devise a menu of meals for lunches and teas from the available veggies.  At the same time I also plan (or try to) our weeks' activities so that I know how many picnics and quick meals for late days out to plan.  Any ingredients for our planned meals that I don't have in the cupboard go on a shopping list along with items that I have run out of that I don't buy that often which I record on a small blackboard in my pantry, a cupboard under the stairs that we have incorporated into our kitchen!

Planning meals focuses and reduces my shopping time,  I can do all in less than an hour, despite visiting several shops and having two children in tow.  My list keeps me focused especially in the supermarket, I am not tempted by offers, reductions etc unless they are on my list.  It is also saves us money as I only buy what we have planned to eat so every fresh ingredient gets used before it has a chance to go off and we throw away virtually no food.  What little does go off ends up in the compost bin or on the bird table.

One of the major, and in my book best, advantages of planning meals ahead is it has gotten rid of the twice daily dilemma of what to eat, but I still need to focus on our meals.  There is definitely a better flow to our days when I have thought ahead about which meal on the list we are going to have and what time we are going to eat, otherwise I have hungry children snapping at my heals as I try to throw a meal together which is not a great combination.  It is difficult to come up with lots of meals that are quick to cook so sometimes I prepare bits in the morning to speed up the cooking when we do get home.  This salad is a good one for that.  It is a recipe that I have forgotten the provenance of I have no idea where I read this or if I made it up but this is what I do, actually recipe is perhaps a little grand for this as the quantities are made up as you go along.....

Broad Bean Salad

Broad Beans
Feta
Fresh Mint
Olive Oil
White Wine Vinegar

I have not given quantities as it is really hard to work out the weight of broad beans from their pods.  The pile above yielded 110g of beans.

• Remove beans from their pods and steam for a few minutes.
• Put beans in a bowl of cold water to stop them cooking and to make them easier to remove from their cases.
• Remove cases and put in a bowl, I know this is a faff but for this salad the beans taste so much better.
• Chop enough feta into small squares so it balances the quantity of beans.
• Likewise with the mint. which you finely chop.
• Combine oil and vinegar 2:1 I used 1tbsp oil and 1/2 tbsp vinegar for this salad and drizzle over other ingredients.

Stir, eat and enjoy!

****************

So are you a menu planner or do you prefer to fly by the seat of your pants or somewhere in between?

Satisfaction

Some of my earliest memories are wrapped up in gardens.  The garden of my childhood was a large one with trees for climbing, dens behind old fence panels, a concrete half buried Anderson shelter which was often knee deep in water, it was also a garden of produce, veggies, a homemade cold frame fashioned with old bricks and window frames and fruit, apples picked from the tree as an after school snack. My grandparents had productive gardens, a wigwam of runner beans covered in red flowers, a pot of parsley by the pack door always full like a green hairy head for the pot, picking or digging up the veg for a family Sunday lunch.  One of my aunts living in North London had a long thin garden full of produce.  When I left home I always wanted a garden of my own.

My wish came true, eventually, and the small patch of land I call home has been turned from a patch of grass to a more edible (to humans) one.  It will never make us self sufficient there is not the room to do that and coupled with frosts as late as May and as early as October it would be tough to make it a reality without several polytunnels.  There are often a couple of weeks of the year when all the vegetables we eat are taken from our garden.  This last week has been one of them.

I am a menu planner.  Each week I get an email detailing the contents of a veg bag we have delivered to the house which is how we buy our veg.  I use the contents of the bag to plan my menu and shop for the specific ingredients I need to make the meals I have planned.  I don't plan our meals for specific days but obviously as the week goes on there are less meals left on my list.  This week my plan was based on my own veggies and those I had in the fridge, leftovers from a recent scout camp.

It never ceases to amaze me how one year you can grow something successfully and the next it will either fail or produce little.  I love french beans and usually grow dwarf varieties, some years they have bought a whole new dimension to the definition of dwarf and barely produce a meals worth.  This year they have been, excuse the pun, highly productive and we have been picking them for weeks.  This week I cooked them in a Bengali style, and with a potato dish of yellow spiced potatoes, dahl, rice and naan made a delicious meal.  We have also eaten our potatoes with a quiche and a Lentil Salad.

We live in one of the wettest parts of England, our annual rainfall is over a metre of rain.  We have had very little rain in the last two months and coupled with high temperatures the garden needed constant watering.  The rain has finally arrived but sadly it has bought with it much cooler temperatures dropping to below 10°C overnight.  The courgettes which have been doing so well seemed to have stopped growing.  I had planned on two meals based on the number that were on my plants, but best laid plans.......we did manage one meal a simple pasta sauce with slow cooked onion and garlic, chopped courgettes and grated parmesan cooked on an open fire by the side of a local lake on the only dry evening of the week.

I tried growing broad beans this year for the first time, my father in law always grew them and told me they were easy to grow, we usually get ours from a local pick your own most of which I freeze to eat over the following months.  They are easy to grow, well this year they have been, and like the french beans we have had several meals from our plants. I have made several different salads with them and a delicious pâté.  This week I tried a new salad recipe, one with an interesting list of ingredients, which I wasn't entirely convinced would taste good together but I was proved wrong.  We didn't have many beans by the time I made it, darn that cooler weather, so I reduced the quantities but it was delicious.

The cooler weather means that I have added soup back to our lunches.  I had some lettuces that I bought back from scout camp.  They were rather past it to be honest and most people would have probably thrown them in the compost days ago.  But I cut off the worst bits and was left with a rather sad small pile, another raid on the fridge and I found a small piece of cabbage so that went in too.  So it was cabbage and lettuce soup loosely based on this recipe.  The children were a bit non plussed, I thought it tasted great.

So that has been my week in the kitchen, next week I am hoping that the garden carries on producing enough to make a stir fry, some courgette fritters, a bean salad, pasta alla genovese, cucumber soup and lots more leafy salads.

Slow Living

It is always lovely to look back and reflect on what you have done over the previous weeks or months, taking stock, observing changes and celebrating achievements.  Even better if you can join together and see what others have been doing too in their part of the world, blogging is a wonderful way of making the world a smaller place.  Christine over a Slow Living Essentials hosts a monthly link up of reflections here are mine for May....

...nourish this month has been all about eating outside whether at home or out and about.  If the weather is warm enough in the morning we have breakfast outside our back door, it just started to be by the end of the month.  We have picnics all year round, in the cooler months these tend to be eaten inside at museums etc.  Now we are enjoying them outside and it is fun to come up with ideas to ensure that we don't end up with sandwiches several days a week.  We have been eating pasta, rice or couscous salads, homemade pasties, veggie 'sausage' rolls, tarts and of course rolls and sandwiches!

...prepare as you never know when you might need a picnic lunch I have bulk cooked some pasties this month and put them in the freezer.  I have filled them with a spicy lentil mix and a spinach and feta mix.  They freeze fairly well although the spinach pasties are a little soggier on defrosting!

...reduce with the weather warming up it was time for me to sort out the children's clothes and work out if they needed any more.  I never actually put away their autumn/winter clothes as it has been known to be cold all year round in these parts.  My eldest had only one pair of shorts but several pairs of trousers with holes in the knees.  I have cut these as near as possible to where they are worn and sewed a hem, now he has several pairs of shorts!

...green I have posted before about trying to remember to drink enough water, I really struggle with it.  Life gets in the way of me remembering too.  I was talking to a friend about this and she recommended drinking 1.5 litres or 3 pints of water on waking up, then eat nothing for an hour.  During the day she was drinking a further one or two pints and never with a meal/food.  I have been trying this for the last month and boy does it work!  On the occasional day that I forgot I felt terrible, really dehydrated, groggy and tired.  The days I struggle with it are the ones when we have to be someone very early and I can't wait an hour before eating but it seems to be ok on the rare occasion I have done this.

...grow we are now heading towards our growing season it is very short, just a few months, so it feels like you have to devote much of your attention to it, to ensure any results.  May has been about caring for seedlings and a small amount of sowing.  I have always been tempted to plant my seedlings out in this month but it isn't really warm enough.  Night time temperatures are often just above freezing between 0 - 5°C, far too cold for tender seedlings.  I have kept them in the polytunnel for the whole month.  The only sowing outside has been potato chits and onion sets which have both survived the cooler temperatures.

...create it was my daughters birthday in May so I was busy making presents for her.  I made some  dolly clothes for a wee dolly I made her a couple of years ago.  I attempted to follow a pattern to make a dress which ended in disaster (it was completely the wrong size/shape) so I used a dress that I  knew fitted to make a pattern, and I wrote a tutorial so I could remember what I did for next time.  I also made a skirt.  She had a little party with a few friends and I made them all a wee bracelet to take home with yarn and buttons from my stash.

...discover I have not had much time for reading this month as I have been really busy making and creating.  My reading time is the hour or so before I go to sleep and this has been taken up with secret present sewing and knitting.  I have been dipping in and out of an interesting book on child rearing around the world.  This is not a book filled with expert advice but rather an interesting study of how cultures around the world approach child care.

...enhance in the last week of May our village outdoor pool opened for the season.  This is a wonderful resource to have so close to home, it is a ten minute walk from our house as opposed to a twenty minute drive to the nearest alternative.  We do a lot of open water swimming too but the season for this is really only August/Sept when the rivers and lakes have warmed up enough!  As we home educate it is easy for us to hide and not engage with the village community we live amongst.  It is great to spend a few months of the year fully immersed in it as we visit the pool four or five times a week.  It also means that our village is full of really good swimmers which is a vital skill for all to have.

...enjoy the highlight for me this month has been celebrating a wee gal's fifth birthday.  I cannot believe I have been the mother to two children for five years, the time seems to have flown.  I have treasured every year of her life and I am so blessed to be able to spend all that time at home with her. She requested a small party with a few friends, a few games, some delicious food and lots of play.  It was wonderful to watch and listen to all the children sat on a picnic blanket in our living room (it was too cold to be outside) chatting together and eating their picnic tea.

Moments...

It is the beginning of the month so, once again, I have a slightly different Moments post.  This is a reflection on the month using the goals suggested over on Slow Living Essentials, so here are mine for February and head on over to see what others have been up to.

...nourish we are moving towards warmer longer days in my part of the world.  Despite the fact that it hasn't been that cold, it feels like we have been through a very long winter, grey and wet for weeks on end.  We are now looking forward to the change in the vegetables that the change in the weather will bring, much as we love our root veg you can have too much of a good thing.  Right now we are enjoying the odd salad, thrown together with whatever ingredients we have in our weekly veg bag and in the garden.  This has included a new recipe for us, remoulade, a crunchy and delicious salad made with carrot and celeriac, a great way to use up root veg on a warmer day.  I would usually make stew or soup with celeriac which is not what we want to eat right now!  We had our remoulade with broccoli fritters.

...prepare now that our days are getting warmer (think this is going to be a theme.......) we are having more time out and about which means more picnics.  So that I can throw one together at a moments notice I make sure I always have homemade rolls and bread in the freezer.  I have been making these up during this month and now have a good store ready for those lazy days outside.

...reduce my eldest does not own many pairs of trousers/pants, depending on where you live, and the ones he does own often have holes in the knees.  I have been busy patching a few pairs this month using material from a pair he has grown out of ( and which had a hole in both knees!).  We have also acquired a few old pallets which we have been busy chopping up for kindling ready for next winter, you can never have too much kindling!

...green a couple of years ago I spend much of the year suffering from the symptoms of what I now know is urticaria (hives) and eczema on my hands.  It took me ages to work out what it actually was and what could be triggering it.  There are several triggers which I have now removed some food and some external.  The external triggers meant that overnight I could not use a single item of household cleaning or toiletry products in the house.  They were all carefully chosen to be low impact on the environment and humans but still they contained an ingredient my body found intolerable, Limonene, an essential oil added to all of the products we were using.  So I had to, very quickly, come up with my own.  Two years on we are still using all those 'products' which we make ourselves, only buying toothpaste and washing up liquid neither of which we have been able to satisfactorily make ourselves.  We had several bottles of our original products in the house each containing a small amount which we have slowly been using up, either my husband using them, or me with rubber gloves when my hands are good.  What we have noticed is the smell.  Even though the smell is more natural than most products, they smell really strong to us, my children even commenting 'What is that funny smell' when I was washing the kitchen floor with some of these 'leftovers' this month!

...grow there is not a huge amount growing in my garden as yet, despite the warmer weather during the day we had heavy frosts overnight most nights last month.  I usually wait until April to sow my seeds otherwise the seedlings die of the cold, even in the polytunnel!  I have chitted potatoes, pruned and tidied the garden this month in readiness for sowing.  We are still harvesting last years crops, we have had cabbages, kale and purple sprouting broccoli and in the polytunnel some self seeded, hardy salad leaves, red mustard, corn salad and greens in snow.

...create I have been doing a lot of sewing this month.  A daisy headband for a friend's daughter recovering from major surgery, a purple bag and a fabric bucket there is a tutorial in the post if you wish to make one for yourself. I have also been knitting.  A cardigan which I frogged more stitches than I knitted and a fulled/fellted bowl depending on your take on such things.

...discover I read a wonderful book this month Kith by Jay Griffiths which was an affirmation to me that some of the decisions we have made for our children have been good ones, even though they ver far from the mainstream.  She also talks in this book about having a strong desire, sometimes from a young age, to follow a particular path in life.  This might be the career that you choose or a skill that you can hone and excel at.  Again I feel that she is right and I have been pondering what this has meant to me and the way I have lived my life thus far.  This book, unlike so many on children and parenting, is not lecturing in its tone.  It is an essay, the authors opinion which you can take or leave depending on your own opinion.  It is a book I would recommend all parents to read.

...enhance a couple of months ago I mentioned a dilemma I was pondering over the Scouts in my area.  I have now decided to concentrate on my local Explorer pack and have been much more involved with them since then.  I really enjoy all my time I spend in the company of these wonderful teenagers, it troubles me that they get such a bad press.  Perhaps if those that say such things were to spend more time around teenagers they wouldn't be so negative.  In any section of society there is always those who break the law or who are difficult to get along with but the whole group  are not tarred with that brush.  Teenagers are at a bridge in their lives a transition from childhood to adulthood they need supporting not persecuting.

...enjoy this has to be the warmer, drier days which have enabled us to have some wonderful days out, walking, cycling and bird watching.  Our rhythm has changed with the transition in the season.

*************

....and continuing from my usual moments posts....

...reading Awakening by William Horwood, All About the Bullerby Children by Astrid Lindgren, and these picture books* you can read a short review of them here. 93. The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning, 94. Rats and Mice by Honor Head, 95. The Princess and the Pea by Lauren Child, 96. No Place Like Home by Jonathan Emmett, 97. The Pirates Next Door  by Jonny Duddle, 98. Rita and Whatsit go on a Picnic by 

Jean-Philippe Arrou-Vignod, 99. The Bear in the Cave by Michael Rosen, 100. Boom, Baby, Boom Boom by Margaret Mahy, 101. The Knight, the Princess and the Dragon by Helen Craig, 102. The Talkative Tortoise by Andrew Fusek Peters, 103. This Old Man by Pam Adams, 104. What the Ladybird Heard by Julia Donaldson

*Joining in with 300 Picture Book Challenge

Eating

I have posted before about my love of simple recipes, those that use a handful of ingredients to create a tasty, wholesome, filling meal.  These recipes are often quick, or ones that need little attention for most of their cooking, I need recipes like these in our menu for those days that we have been out having fun and returned tired and hungry needing a meal as quickly as possible.  I often cook pasta on those days, in a ideal world I would make the pasta it is one of the few processed foods we eat but I live in my world where to make it would turn it into a more time comsuming and complicated meal, so bought pasta it is.  I have a few sauces I make to go with pasta that take as long to cook as the pasta itself or you simply through a few ingredients in with the pasta after it has cooked and heat it gently through.  This recipe is one of the latter and there is never any left!

Pasta, Feta and Black Olives

Pasta
200g Feta
Cream
10 Black Olives

Cook enough pasta to feed those you are cooking for (the above quantities feed two adults and two small children) and drain.

Chop feta into small pieces, add to drained pasta with enough cream to coat the pasta, cook on a gentle heat until feta is melted.

Chop the black olives into three to four slices, add to pasta and serve.

Eating

Sometimes it is the simplest meals that are the best.  The ones where you have a handful of ingredients put together to make a wonderfully tasty, simple and nourishing meal, by chance most of the meals I have cooked this week have been like this.  We have had Root Vegetable and Blue Cheese Bake, Red Cabbage Salad and Garlic Beans.

Garlic Beans
250g dried pinto/borlotti type bean
4tbs olive oil
2 cloves garlic
Balsamic vinegar
1tsp oregano

Soak the beans overnight in cold water.  If you forget to do this you can do the quick(er) soak method.  Place the beans in a deep pan and fill the pan with water, bring to the boil and boil rapidly for two minutes before tuning off the heat leave to stand for a minimum of two hours.

Which ever method you use drain the beans and put in a pan, cover with water and cook for at least two hours until the beans are very soft, drain any remaining liquid.

Heat the oil in a frying pan.  Peel and crush the garlic, fry in the oil for a couple of minutes taking care not to burn.  Add the beans and cook until all the liquid has gone, this usually takes a out five minutes.

Add a splash of balsamic vinegar and the oregano, if you are using fresh then chop finely, stir to mix and serve.

Eating

As a vegetarian who does not eat tomatoes I am often ask what do I cook/eat.  Whilst I realise that tomatoes are a good ingredient in vegetarian cooking I am sure that you would not want to be eating them every day vegetarian or not.  Tomatoes are good at adding bulk and liquid to a recipe, over the years I have become adept at substituting another ingredient, although there are still a handful of recipes I have that I have still not got the substitution quite right.  Many Asian recipes seem to be full of tomatoes which are often hard to substitute as they are one of few ingredients.  I love it when I find one that does not require any creativity and I can just go ahead and cook it.  I love chickpeas and so do my family, we love this chickpea dal and eat it about once a month.

Chick-pea dal

2tbs oil
Pinch chilli powder*
1/4 tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp caraway seeds
250g chickpeas soaked overnight and drained
1/4 tsp tamarind paste
1/4 tsp salt
3 garlic cloves chopped
1 pt hot water

Heat the oil in a large pan over a medium heat add the chilli powder, turmeric and caraway seeds and cook for a few minutes.
Add the drained pulses, stir and cook for a few more minutes stirring occasionally.
Mix the tamarind paste with 2 tbs of water and add along with salt and garlic.
Add the hot water, cover and cook for 2 hours.

* or more if you like your food spicy!

I usually serve this with rice and or naan. Oh, and I don't eat tomatoes as I have a histamine intolerence and tomatoes are high in histamine.  If I do eat them then I have symptoms of Crohns a disease which I 'manage' by controlling my diet.

Eating

After several days of warmer weather and sun over the past week it has turned cold again these past few days.  Cold enough that I have felt the need for a hot lunch most days.  What better hot food to have for lunch than soup.  I had thought the soup days were coming to an end.  I discovered a huge amount of land cress (a land version of water cress) had suddenly grown in my polytunnel during our warmer days, so I decided to make some soup with it.  It was very green and very tasty, more so as the ingredients were mostly home grown.  I made this recipe up, you can tell, the quantities are vague!


Watercress Soup
1 onion
1 medium potato
Grated nutmeg
1 1/2 pints vegetable stock
Large handful of land/water cress

Roughly chop the onion and gently fry in butter until clear.
Peel and roughly chop the potato and add to pan with stock and nutmeg and cook until potato is nearly cooked.
Remove thick stalks from cress and add to pan and cook for a few minutes.
Blend to remove lumps.

Weekending

This week has been one of busyness and spending lots of time outside enjoying the sunshine.  We started the week with our usual trip into the local town for shopping and a visit to the library.  I had an extra child with me as we were looking after a friends little boy for the day.  The children spent the afternoon strewing  playing with toys all over the house!

On Tuesday we had a wonderful afternoon with friends doing some origami.  We had fun making paper planes and fish.  After clearing up some of us sat and chatted and laughed a lot.  It was a perfect afternoon and just what I needed.

Wednesday we had a day mostly at home.  Our Wednesday friends are away on a long holiday at the moment, we are missing them and looking forward to their return.  We baked some bread, made flapjacks, did two loads of washing, completed puzzles, did some colouring, drawing and read books together.  In the afternoon we went to the garden centre to buy seeds and seed potatoes.

The next day dawned sunny again and we all headed out for a walk around a local lake.  It was a wonderful day in beautiful surroundings.

Friday we met up with a local home ed group at the swimming pool for a swim, after which we headed out of town back to the lake we visited the day before.  We all walked up to the top of a small hill and had a play in the top.

Over the weekend we had a day at home on Saturday.  I did some pruning in the garden, walked up the village, made some pasties, planned next week and chilled out with the children.  On Sunday we met some friends for our first canoe trip of the year.  It was slightly cooler than the rest of the week but it was dry.  We stopped for lots of breaks and made hot drinks with the Kelly Kettle.  It was a great end to the week.

Eating

Whenever we plan to spend the day outside busy with activity it is good to have a homemade baked something to get you through the afternoon and provide a welcome boost of energy.  As a family we also spend time during the year on canoe expeditions so I need something that will survive and not be crushed, squashed or fall apart.  I usually make flapjacks to fulfil this need and have spend the last few years trying to find the perfect combination of ingredients that makes a soft, tasty flapjack that stays intact.  My first batch were hopeless, they were so brittle I thought we would all end up at the dentist!  I made them by following a recipe using golden syrup which I find too sweet.  Finally I seem to be getting close to the perfect combination but foolishly I never write it down.  The last batch I made were really rather good and were made using the following ingredients, as with all my made up recipes quantities are approximate I would mess about with them until you find what works for you.

Flapjacks
4oz butter
3-4oz date syrup or agave syrup
3-4oz fruit spread (I use this one from Suma which I buy in my local health food shop)
12oz rolled oats

Extras:
Handful of chopped dried apricots
Handful of chopped dried figs
2 tbs sesame seeds
Handful of chopped nuts

Or

1lb of fresh berries I love using blackcurrants.

Heat oven to 180°C.
Put the butter, syrup and fruit spread in a bowl and place over a pan of boiling water, making sure the bowl is not touching the water, and heat gently to melt.
Stir in the oats.
Stir in any extras you want to use.
Grease and line a shallow tin, I use a 22 x 30cm tin for the above quantity
Cook in oven until mixture is starting to brown and still soft to touch.
Remove from oven and leave to cool for a few minutes, cut into pieces and leave in tin to cool completely.

I have found that if you take it out the oven whilst still soft it does continue to cook in the heat of the tin.  By leaving in the tin to cool it seems to maintain a degree of softness which means you can eat them without endangering your teeth, but they stay together.

Eating

In the early days of this blog I posted about how little attention it appears some folks pay to the food that they eat.  Food that is convenient, cooked for you and has in some instances little in the way of raw ingredients that I would use.  I have been reminded once again of the reliance on convenience foods with the recent revelations in the media regarding certain meat products.  I am not one to eat this type of food I much prefer to make my own from scratch.  It does take longer and requires more thought but it is in my opinion tastier and, whilst I have no proof, I am sure is nutritionally better for you.

I have been pondering for some time why some people rely on these foods.  I know for many it is the convenience they lead very busy lives.  It is possible to be very busy, working long hours and still eat fairly well, if you have the money, there are some very good quality ready made meals that you can buy.  For some though I wonder if the convenience is because they are unable to cook.  To some of us it may seem unbelievable that anyone is unable to cook.  But if you grow up in a house where nobody cooks a meal from scratch how will you ever learn.  Cooking is a skill that is passed on from one generation to another.  I rarely if ever cooked when I lived with my parents my mother, however, cooked a meal from scratch every night.  When I left home I continued to do the same, it was the only way I knew how.

The abundance of ready made convenient foods is, I believe, further eroding a declining skill.  It's enabling those that have money to work longer hours and or be busy doing other things and then pop a meal in the oven or microwave when they return home however late it is.

For those on low incomes it is often cited as an affordable way to live.  It is cheaper than buying the raw ingredients and sadly in many cases it often is.  Although the ingredients that have been used are often dubious as has been demonstrated in the last month.  In the days before refrigeration their diet would have been other convenient foods such as bread which could be bought daily and at little cost.  The need for convenience was I suspect due to very basic, if any, facilities for cooking on.  Over the years and with the introduction of refrigeration the demand for cheap convenient food has not diminished and will continue to grow with each generation as cooking skills are not there to be passed on.

Eating

I have never been one for eating a diet consisting of processed food, of food made in a factory which is then packaged and sold ready to eat.  The last few weeks processed food has been in the news pretty much constantly starting with a revelation that products which were labelled as containing beef also contain horse meat.  Various investigations have ensued and further food has been removed from supermarket shelves as it contains meat that is not listed on the labels.  The supply chain for these products is bewildering and I could not make sense of this map at all.

Personally I prefer to buy, what little meat my family eats, from the farmer themselves or from the butcher in my village who labels all his meat with the farm they have come from.  This is how my mother shopped and I well remember, as a child, visiting the butchers shop ten minutes walk from their house.  This butchers is sadly long gone.  The meat I do buy is most likely, I have never compared, more expensive than the meat sold in the supermarket.  I personally would prefer to pay more for meat that I can be sure of its provenance and has travelled few miles.

I keep hearing that it is the consumer that is going to loose out, that the price of food is going to go up.  My argument is that surely that is what has caused the problem in the first place.  Good quality beef is expensive, as I would expect it to be rearing a cow is expensive.  Beef is only eaten two or three time a year in this house because of that.  So in order to make products containing beef cheap how do you keep the costs down?  I guess it has been bulked out with other ingredients which we now find includes horse meat.

One of the products that has been removed from the shelves in a number of supermarkets is beef burgers.  My mother always used to make these when we were children, whenever I cook them they remind me of the summer weekends as a child as we often had them barbecued and ate outside.  I have not eaten meat for nearly twenty years, the rest of the family eat meat so occasionally when I have some beef mince I make these:

Homemade Beef Burgers
500g minced beef
2 medium potatoes peeled and grated
1 medium onion finely chopped
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Mix all ingredients well.
Shape into burgers
Chill for about half an hour.
Grill, barbecue or fry for approx ten minutes.

Eating

Breakfast is a meal that I have never given much thought to since leaving home.  I always ate cereal of some sort or on the odd occasion something cooked such as egg or mushroom on toast.   For some time I have been thinking about alternatives, cereal is not a particularly healthy breakfast and it bears little resemblance to the grain it is made from being as it highly processed.  I made my own muesli for a while using grains bought from my local health food shop, but still the grains I was using were processed.

But what to eat instead.  I started to notice a number of articles in magazines and programmes on the radio talking about breakfast, the history of the meal, of cereal and what people now eat.  None of this provided any inspiration for what to eat as an alternative to cereal.  I started to make porridge, as I am unable to tolerate cows milk in its pure form, I can and do eat cheese and yogurt, I made it with water.  It does actually make a good porridge in my opinion, I now most people prefer it made with milk, I add fresh fruit chopped or mashed.  I also started to eat plain yogurt with fresh chopped fruit in it.  Then friends suggested making pancakes for breakfast, they all had their own recipes and preferences some involving large numbers of eggs, some with buckwheat flour which I sometimes struggle to get hold of, some which involved overnight soaking and one with oatmeal.  I took bits of each recipe and made up my own very simple one.  I call them pancakes but they are not like the thin pancake that you would traditionally make on pancake day, more a solid fritter type like a scotch pancake.  They are quick, easy, tasty and filling and I often make them camping.

Oatmeal Pancakes
1/2 cup oatmeal
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 egg

The night before mix the oatmeal and yogurt in a bowl, cover and leave overnight.  

In the morning add the egg and mix.
Heat a little butter in a frying pan and add heaped desert spoons of the mix and flatten slightly.
Cook until you can lift the pancake easily and turn over, you may need to add a little more butter, flatten slightly and cook for a further minute or so.
Continue cooking until all mix is used, you will need to add butter before cooking each batch.

The cup measurements are based on an American cup measure, but as long as the amounts are fairly equal it does not matter how much you use.  This quantity makes about six small pancakes.  If you want to make less I would reduce the quantity of oatmeal and reduce the yogurt quantity by more than the oatmeal otherwise your mixture will be very runny as you cannot reduce 1 egg very easily.  For this quantity of yogurt I have found you can increase to 3/4 cup of oatmeal if you want to make more pancakes.  I sometimes put a teaspoon of ground cinnamon in the mix.  I eat mine with chopped fresh fruit.

Weekending

It has been another busy week in these parts.  We started the week with our usual trip into the local town for our food shopping and a visit to the library.  I also bought some material from the sewing shop to make some trousers for my youngest.

On Tuesday we travelled south to our usual play date.  There were not so many children this week but fun was had none the less with Lego, battleships game, cushions on the floor and flags.

On Wednesday we had a train ride to a soft play area for a birthday treat for our Wednesday play date friends.  It was very noisy at the soft play as it was so busy, and it got really noisy when hail rained down on the metal roof the noise was deafening.

We were up and out early on Thursday to join a friend for a swim, after last weeks amazing achievements in the pool my eldest spent most of the time swimming underwater.  It is amazing how confident he has become.  We had our lunch on the poolside before heading to pick up some bits we had left last week to be repaired.  After we dropped our friends off we popped to buy a pair of shoes for the youngest as her feet have grown again.  It was a long day out and the children both fell asleep really early.

On Friday we joined a local home ed group that we have not met with for a while, it was good to catch up with folks again.  They were making jitterbugs a bit like this except that we used a CD for the body.  It was fun to sit and make them, although our legs kept falling off!  We decorated ours after we got home as we ran out of time.

Over the weekend we joined up with some friends for tea on Saturday.  We headed over in the afternoon so the children could have a play together.  We have not seen them for a while so it was good to catch up.  On Sunday I spent the day cooking and getting ready to go away.  We are off for a few days next week so it will be quiet on here for a few days.  If you leave a comment, thank you, it may be a while before it is published I am not ignoring you just having a short break from technology.  Hope you have a good week, will be back soon!

Eating

In cold wintry weather a hearty stew is a comforting meal to end the day.  I have several recipes that I like to make one involving lots of garlic and another has the addition of dumplings.  This winter I have been making a stew with green lentils and whatever root vegetables I happen to have in my veg box in a given week.  The other great thing about stew is that you can chop everything up, fry it a little and then leave it to cook whilst you get on with something else.

Green Lentil Stew

1 onion chopped
2 types of root vegetables chopped*
2 garlic cloves chopped
250g green lentils
1 litre vegetable stock
1 bay leaf
1 tsp dried rosemary or a sprig of fresh
1 tsp dried thyme or 4 sprigs of fresh

Heat 2 tbsp oil in a pan and fry onion until soft and clear, add the chopped vegetables and cook for a few minutes.

Add garlic and cook for a further few minutes.

Add lentils, pour in stock and add herbs.

Bring to the boil and cook on a low heat for 45 minutes, there will not be much liquid left.

*I have made this with a carrot and a turnip, a carrot, a potato and celeriac, a carrot, couple of potatoes and a parsnip all these combinations tasted good.

Weekending

We started our week, as usual, with a trip into the local town for food shopping and a visit to the library.  The afternoon was spend snuggled by the fire reading our library books, we were cold from our trip into town.

On Tuesday we woke to another cold day, we were due to visit friends for our usual play date.  I decided to have an early lunch of soup at home rather than taking lunch with us as we usually do.  We set off and about a mile down the road there was about two inches of snow, we have to drive over a high pass to get to our friends and the snow got deeper the higher we drove.  I hoped that there would be no snow as we dropped down the other side, there was less but still a couple of inches.  We were on a main road at that point which was clear but our friends live on a quiet lane some distance from the main road.  We did make it although it was icy in places and we had to stop to let a huge flock of sheep go past.  Most of the children were playing outside in the snow, but as we had not had any snow we did not bring any clothes suitable for joining in, my children did not seem to bothered as we were offered clothes to borrow.  They had a fun afternoon indoors playing with any of the children who got cold outside or who, like them, did not want to play in the snow.

Our usual Wednesday friends were away this week so we went swimming together and joined a friend for a play and biscuits afterwards.  My youngest and I made gingerbread men to share, it was a recipe that I had not used before from this lovely book.

The next day our friends from the south came to join us for lunch.  We had soup, I used some from the freezer and the remains of three others which were in the fridge!  It all got eaten.  After lunch the girls and mummies braved the cold and walked and scooted up to the park.  It was a bit cold for standing around, so we headed back after a short play for a hot drink.  My husband had got the fire going which was very welcome.

On Friday we had been hoping to go and join a home ed group for an activity, but it got cancelled on Thursday night as folks were pulling out due to the snow forecast.  I was sceptical about it reaching us, and sure enough it didn't!  So we had a morning at home building and playing with a wooden train track.  After lunch I walked up the village with my youngest the wind was biting but it was good to get out.  She has recently started to ask question after question and we stopped alot to look at and talks about things that she noticed, moss in the wall, ice crystals, lichen, numbers on houses, pub signs and I am sure there were more.

Over the weekend we had a quiet time at home, keeping busy.  We read books together, played with the railway track, drew pictures, read joke books and made each other laugh, played board games, went for short walks up the village, had friends over for dinner, kept warm by the fire and generally enjoyed each others company.

Gratitudes

Joining in with Taryn for her heartfelt Sunday tradition.

A time to slow down, to reflect, to be grateful.

This week I am grateful for...

...no snow, much as I love the stuff it does make our home edding life much more isolating if we cannot get out and about to visit friends.

...time to finish reading this, it is the first book I have really enjoyed reading for ages.

...spending time outside everyday this week, despite the cold it had been dry and provided you wrap up warm it has felt great to spend some time outside.

...sitting round a tables with home edding mummies, chatting and crafting, whilst all the children played happily together.

...sharing food with friends, I really enjoy cooking and it has been great to have a table full of great company to share it with, twice this week.

...finally working out what has been causing the friction between my children, something so simple and obvious that was very easy to resolve, calm has been restored.

...a cup of chamomile tea first thing in the morning and stories in bed with my children.

...our seasoned wood supply which my husband is now stocking up for next winter.

...decluttering and being able to pass on unused, unwanted or outgrown items to friends who will make use of them.

Eating

This post is all about soup.  At the weekend I visited my local farmers market and bought a large bag of veg with the intention of making a big batch of soup to freeze and eat for lunch during the month.  At this time of year soup is a great lunch meal, whether you at home or out and about.  It is easy to put in a flask and drink to warm you up whilst outside.  I made nine pints, we ate some over the weekend the rest went in the freezer.

I also had some rather wizened looking swede that had not been eaten yet, none of my recipe books had a recipe for swede soup so made one up, all quantities are approx as I did not weigh anything!

Swede Soup
1 onion
400g swede
1 small potato
1 small carrot
Freshly grated nutmeg
2 pints stock

Dice the onion and fry gently in butter in a saucepan until soft and clear.
Peel and roughly chop the other veg, add to saucepan and fry gently for a few minutes.
Add the nutmeg and stir through.
Add the stock and stir, cook for 15 minutes or until the vegetables are soft.
Allow to cool a little and blend.

I also made some carrot soup.  All the recipes that I have found for carrot soup include two ingredients that I cannot eat, tomatoes and lemon juice or it is the ubiquitous carrot and coriander which is notoriously difficult to get hold of where I live.  So I had a go at making it with coriander powder and it came out rather well, in my opinion anyway!  Again quantities are approx, due to not weighing anything.

Spicy Carrot Soup
1 onion
500g carrots
2 tsp coriander powder
1tsp cumin powder
Pinch chilli powder or more depending on your taste
1.5 pints stock

Fry the onion in butter in a large saucepan until soft and clear.
Roughly chop the carrots.
Add the spices to the onions and stir in, fry gently for a minute.
Add the carrots and mix throughly to coat with the onion spicey mix.
Add the stock and cook until the carrots are soft.
Allow to cool a little and blend.

Weekending

It has been lovely this week to get back into our weekly rhythm, it is comforting like a fire on a cold winter evening.

We started the week with our usual trip into the local town for our food shopping and a visit to the library.  As always after unpacking and lunch we spent the afternoon reading our new library books.

On Tuesday we visited our friends who we have not seen for ages for our usual play dates.  Illness, them not us thankfully, and Christmas has meant we have not seen them for about six weeks.  There were several families there again and the children all had a wonderful time playing together.  It was really calm and peaceful this time.

The next day we had a wonderful day of outdoor play with some friends.  We took a picnic and drove up the road for a lovely day out in the sunshine.  It felt so good to feel the sun on our faces again after so long.  The world feels huge when you can see the blue sky.

The next day we drove south to join our friends for lunch and a play.  Just after she had woken up, my youngest said something which proved to me that rhythm that I have worked hard to introduce into our week has all been worthwhile. We see the same the same sets of friends each week, each on a particular day.  She knew it was the day for our Thursday friends without knowing it was Thursday. It was good to catch up after a break over Christmas.  The girls had fun icing cakes.  The drive back was long through the dark and thick fog.

Friday we headed for a day round the county.  We started by dropping off a hire car that my husband no longer required as the job he was to use it for had been cancelled, such is the life of being self employed.  Then we drove to another town for swimming and lunch with friends.  After the children had played for a bit and the adults chatted we headed to pick up our flour order from a local mill.  On the way home we dropped in some more friends for a cuppa and to drop off some bits.  We got home exhausted after a long day out!

We had a fairly busy weekend based mostly at home.  On Saturday we headed out to the local famers market to pick up some supplies.  In the afternoon I cooked up a batch of soup to put on the freezer for eating this month.  On Sunday I had one of those days were I was highly productive without much effort.  I cooked up more soup, baked some bread, made some rolls, did some washing, hoovered the house, put together a big bag of stuff for the charity shop, read books with the children, danced, played, read some of my book whilst the children and my husband went for a bike ride and fell into bed happy and content.  A perfect end to the week.

Gratitudes

Joining in with Taryn with her heartfelt Sunday tradition.

A time to slow down, to reflect and to be grateful.

This week I have been grateful for...

...tasty sprouted seeds and beans that I sprouted myself after being reminded by a lovely mama on the forum I visit.

...a lovely evening with my children talking, laughing and joking, they were glowing with happiness.

...sharing good home cooked food with friends.

...pressing and drinking our own apple juice it was hard work and delicious.

...feeling snug and warm inside during the wet and wild weather we have experienced this week.

...watching my children enjoying each others company and playing wonderful games together.

...my husband returning safely to us after a week away.

...having the time to knit a sock in four days this week, it usually takes a lot longer.

...having a safe place to live after hearing so many terrible events in the world this week.