Steel Kitten

Going backwards with the gas bill

 

I made a lot of preparations last year for our goal of rebuilding a racing car, all aimed at reducing the household bills and general spending. I purchased a halogen oven back at the beginning of October with the intention of cutting back our gas usage, but until recently I didn't know how much it would actually save.

Now I do :-)

Before I tell you, the Halogen oven cannot claim all the credit for what follows, as we had an unseasonally warm autumn and our heating didn't go on for around three weeks after what we normally would, but I think it has contributed a large amount of the saving.

Between October 15th and January 20th we have used...drumroll please...388 units, a drop of around 200 units over the same period last year. That equates to us using 35% less gas - which is brilliant - and a gas bill of £187 pounds for three months. The electricity bill has also come in and as expected it has increased due to the halogen oven and unexpectedly having to run a fan heater and an oil heater this winter for a couple of days to heat up areas of the house where pipes froze (yes, the water in the washing machine pipes is still freezing in cold weather!). However, it has only increased by around £20, which I'm happy with. Given the recent price rises and the use of expensive fanheaters etc I was expecting a lot more.

Will keep you posted how we get on with this goal for the rest of the year. My hope is that after 12 months our savings will pay us back the original cost of the oven, cover the increase in electricity running it and still leave us with some money to spare afterwards.

Little Miss Busy gets cleaning

Yesterday I had to fly to Glasgow for a meeting. While I was hanging around the departure gate at Birmingham airport, I spied a rack with all of Roger Hargreaves Mr Men and Little Miss books. I use to read the Mr Men books when I was little but the Little Miss books were released when I was a teenager so I've never read them.

Until now. Quite what people thought of a grown women sniggering and reading the Little Miss books I'm not sure, but I had a lovely time. However, it appears the universe presented me with a unique opportunity to think about change. The first book I picked up to read was little Miss Busy. Little Miss busy doesn't get enough sleep and scrubs the house from top to bottom and bottom to top until she falls over unwell, and is forced to go to bed until she recovers. Just when she thinks she's better and raring to go, she's told she needs to rest for a bit longer and then she has a relapse with the stress of being forced to rest.

Considering what my weekends are like, it was a highly appropriate cautionary tale (apart from the whole falling over bit), and I think a few changes are in order. In fact, this weekend bordered on manic.

Saturday

If I'm at home, saturday mornings are always pretty busy for me before I even start on deep cleaning.

I usually aim to get done all the washing that needs to be done finished by 1pm - one coloureds, one lights, the towels and the bedding. Sometimes I even put a load on Friday night - mostly our working clothes - so the first load is ready to hang up to dry first thing Saturday. This warm weather has been a godsend and I managed to get two loads done, on the line and dry by midday. By 4pm all the washing was done and almost dry.

Then I get the kitchen shipshape. It's descended into chaos by the weekend, so by Saturday morning I always have to wash up, take the recycling to the main bin outside, change the rubbish bags, wipe down the kitchen counters from back to front, wipe off the cupboards, clean the range (although thanks to the halogen oven it doesn't need a lot of cleaning any more!) and sweep/hoover the floor and under the cabinets.

Somewhere in between that I, Martin and the cats have breakfast and the chickens get opened up and inspected as they troop out. 

To add to the kitchen cleaning this weekend, I unscrewed all the sink drains and cleaned them out to stop the nasty gunge and niffs building up. There's usually a screw in the centre of the plughole which you can undo, but be prepared for what lies beneath. I'd left it so long this time the scum had almost evolved into a living being. Gross. It took me nearly an hour to clean everything in the main sink and the half bowl with bicarb, vinegar and a toothbrush and then reassemble it.  

Then I attacked the downstairs bathroom, which usually doesn't need a great deal doing to it as I keep it clean as I go during the week. The toilet gets a once over, a quick wipe round the sink and then the floors get a wipe over. This weekend I also had to do the shower drain, which had got clogged. I had to use caustic soda to remove the blockage as no amount of poking, bicarb, vinegar, lemon juice and boiling water was shifting it.  Nasty stuff caustic soda and I hate using it, but it shifted the blockage very quickly, and then I gave everything in the shower a scrub down too. 

Tea break time and while sitting there I suddenly remembered I needed to rack off my cider this weekend.

So I spent a hour siphoning off the cider into clean sterilised containers ready to sit and mature for a few more months, and in between the bottles filling up I washed the dirty containers.

Pear cider - made with baking yeast on the left, champagne yeast on the right

Then the bed was changed and the sheets were in the wash shortly after.

By that time I knew I couldn't put off a job that had been building up - cleaning the toilet in the upstairs bathroom. Martin and I rarely use this bathroom during the week, so it was with some shock when I lifted the lid on the toilet to discover a limescale and gunge build up that no amount of scrubbing removed. I used the plunger to push as much of the water in the toilet up into the soil pipe, and then added a litre of malt vinegar. Then I left that for a couple of hours. Later a quick scrub around with a toilet brush and a few flushes and the toilet was sparkling once more.

Instead of having to cook dinner, Saturday night was spent scoffing fish and chips at Martin's parents. I managed to get a few more lines done on my knitting - a cowl for my winter lunchtime walks. I'm making it from a handknitted jumper I found at a car boot sale and unravelled.

Sunday

Up at 8:30 and dished out breakfast to all the living beings in the house and cleaned out the cat's trays. Then I yanked out the ironing board, revved up the iron and while on the phone to my mother and a friend in Australia managed to zip through everything I had washed and dried the previous day plus a few renegade items that seem to sit on the ironing basket for months.

Yes, I was on the phone for that long!

While listening to Martin swearing and cursing as he constructed a large 2 metre high cupboard in his hobby room, I tidied and dusted the entire living room, cleaned and polished his silver trophy on the mantlepiece (which he won this year for his dedication and services to his car club), cleaned the fireplace, scraped off all the cat fur from various spots and hoovered. I had to take one of the rugs outside and give it a good slap against a wall a few times to get all the grit out. 

Then it was out to the garden, where I spent an hour rapid planting winter veg - cabbage, purple sprouting broccoli and leeks. They looked a bit sorry for themselves as they had a bit of an exciting journey through the post.

After a restorative cup of tea and half an hour reading Ann Hoffman's Practical Magic, I was back out in the garden. This time the poor chickens got my undivided attention.

I washed and scrubbed their feet with savlon water, sprayed on scaly-leg deterrant, checked their bums and cleaned up any dirty feathers, treated them for lice, fleas and ticks, trimmed their beaks and claws, and then gave them some concentrated vitmain solutions as a booster.

Unfortunately the vitamin booster kicked in while I was cleaning out their coop, so I had five nutty chickens zipping round my legs and clambering into the coop while I was trying to finish off. Lulu was doing laps around the pen at speed for no other reason that she could and was shortly joined by a Georgia-belle doing a roadrunner impression. It was like an athletics meet with all the poultry in motion. Next time I'll clean the coop first ;-)

After a quick freshen up where I removed all the surplus savlon, louse powder, scaly leg spray and chicken poo from my person, I dusted the upstairs bathroom (pausing to admire the sparkly toilet) and our bedroom, before moving on to hoover the entire house from bottom to top. 

The bread machine took care of a loaf of banana bread destined as part of Martin's lunches this week while dinner was slapped into Hal at 6:20pm - a butternut squash curry - and I disappeared into the bath for an hour with a glass of cold cider and a good book. I emerged a new women an hour later ready for eating, watching a film and doing some knitting in the living room. 

At which point Martin looked round and said: "Have you cleaned in here today?"

I almost retreated to bed in a huff.

Little Miss Busy was not amused.

But it does beg the question - why do I put myself through all of this if really no-one but me notices?

I think I'm becoming more like the Hargreaves character every day...

The last of the jam making

 

Last week I filled my cupboards with jam made from  the last of the plums. I hadn't been able to do as many as I would have liked due to time contraints- about 20 to add to about 5 left from last year - but marmalade season will be upon us soon so I shall make up then. And of course I haven't yet done a hedgerow glean so I could well have a few more pots of jam to do then. 

 

While I was clearing room in the cupboards to fit all of the jam, I happened upon some of my alcoholic experiements from last year - the slow gin and the sloe...erm...I can't remember.

 

I think it might have been vodka in this jar (I remember wanting to do sloe vodka), but I'm just not sure because of course I didnt' label it. Twit. Anyway, that's bottled up now. In an old rum bottle that I haven't taken the label off. Just to confuse things further. Of course it could actually be that it is the rum in with the sloes because it begs the question of where the empty rum bottle came from. Whatever is in there, it needs a bit more time as it was a bit sharp. The sloe gin wasn't. Slurp. Yum. Slurp.

Oh and a bit of a warning. When you pour a whole bottle of alcohol in with the sloes, don't expect to get exactly the same quantity out. Spirits generally come in standard bottle sizes so I thought I was safe. Oh no. The alcohol extracts the juice from the sloes so you end up with more than a bottles-worth. And if you are like me that extra ends up on the work surface and on the floor while you stare in disbelief and try and work out where the excess came from. 

I'm attempting to keep the full bottle of sloe gin on the left for a bit longer to see what it tastes like next winter, but Martin made a lot of nomnomnomnom noises while sampling the half full one on the right and now has his eyes firmly fixed on my full bottle. I sense a struggle in the offing. 

Anyway, I'll be down to the supermarket this weekend buying bottles of gin for this years sloes and I intend to do an awful lot more bottles of it. I'd like to do six or seven, so I can keep half maturing for the next few years and drink the other half throughout the coming year, but that depends on the sloe harvest. 

Now, an honourable mention. My mother has been foraging.

Unfortunately, I was diagnosed as having a mild nut allergy a few months ago, but there's no reason why I can't grind them and use them with flour in cakes for Martin. 

Finally, there's been a lot action at Steeltowers last weekend besides the driveway being done.

I have finally decided to attempt home brewing.

The next post from me tomorrow will be about my forays into the shadowy exceptionally smelly world of making cider.

Six years

I woke to find this waiting for me this morning. 

Oh dear. I've been so wrapped up in myself lately I forgot that April 1st is the anniversary of the day Martin and I met six years ago.

Thank God for baking skills. 

I whipped up a triple layer chocolate cake with buttercream frosting and covered it with little shiny balls and love hearts.

Then instead of going out to buy a card, I hit the craft room and made one instead. I knew those Cath Kidston back catalogues would come in handy one day

The phrase "who would have thought it?" is one of our pet sayings and relates to the improbability of us having crossed paths the way we did despite the vastness of the Internet.

What else could the female bird have under her wing but some kind of baked product. I would have preferred cake but a plate of croissants was the only picture I could find after searching through all the catalogues!

Patchwork baubles

I've been at the crafting table again, this time having a crack at making some of the patchwork baubles I saw in an issue of Country Living.

I keep just about every scrap of fabric I produce, regardless of how small. Sometimes it comes in useful for stuffing something, but more often than not it's because of an absolute refusal to accept I can't recycle EVERYTHING somehow ;-) If I can't think of something to do with an item, it gets put away in my hobby room or in a bag in the attic until I do. 

I knew when I saw the patchwork baubles in the magazine I had finally found a use for the scraps. I had a search around the attic for the Christmas decorations and found an old bag of gold baubles that had seen better days.

 Then over the course of two evenings in front of the fire I snipped and glued the scraps onto the baubles. 

I only had Copydex glue, which proved to be HORRIBLE to use and I'd never use it again for anything to do with fabric. If you put on a layer of glue that is slightly too thick it can seep through the fabric (TIP: if it does never wipe it off with your finger! You end up with nasty rolls of sticky glue adhering to the fabric). It took me right back to school days and that massive stinky pot of white glue on the middle of the crafting table. It always had a huge stiff brush ruined by hundreds of layers of dried-on copydex mingled with old sequins and glitter from previous projects. I hated that brush and the fishy smell of the glue. 

Anyhow, the baubles are one more step towards a homemade Christmas!

I won a giveaway!

Last week I entered Liz's giveaway over at Violet Posy and found out on Thursday I had won a fantastic Ollie and Nic bag that everyone was salivating over.

Isn't it fabulous!

Very pleased. After an exhausting week of writing and house painting, that cheered me up no end!

Thanks Liz.

****

Yes, you read that right. I'm decorating. And no, I'm not going to show you! Not yet, it's not finished.

I can tell you it's not the kitchen though. I'm clearing the cupboards in there at the moment ready for all hell to break loose next week.

I still have another couple of days work before my decorating is completely finished so you can see it then.

Promise.

****

There is a new washing machine making an appearance Monday. Martin saw how utterly unconcerned I  had become (read lazy!) about finding one and has taken matters into his own hands. Hmmmm.....

She's freed from the tyranny of washing....

(Peasant hanging out the washing by Berthe Morisot)

It's been almost three weeks since my washing machine broke. The last wash I did was memorable for the way the machine nearly took flight during the last spin and the sheets were covered in concrete grit. Somewhere one of the concrete blocks inside had come loose, pierced the skin of the outer drum and dumped its shavings into the wash. We could have repaired it, but it was a complicated repair and would have taken us some time. As the machine was 14 years old, we decided it was time for a new one.

Predictably I ran around like a headless chicken for a few days comparing the endless choices available and getting nowhere fast. My mother let me use her machine to do a couple of washes. And then a funny thing happened. The following week my parents were at my sister's and I couldn't do the two washes I needed to do on that day, so I pootled off to the launderette.

Half an hour, one wash and £5.40 later it was done. And that was it for the rest of the week.

We seem to have adjusted to life without the machine. I don't really understand how I can do a wash every other day when I have a machine and then happily just one wash a week when I don't, but that's what has happened. The launderette has much bigger machines, so I guess that must account for some of it - I can fit our clothes, bedclothes and towels into one machine load.

Perhaps we've also adjusted by not changing our clothes so many times a day - sometimes the outfit I wear in the morning is different to the one in the afternoon and different still from the one in the evening. Unconsciously, I've changed to wearing only one set of clothes a day, and even then they are jeans or a skirt that can be worn a few times before washing.

Right now, even though it's costing me money to go to the launderette, it's actually saving me time and simplified my life. I don't have to think about whether I should do a load in the morning - washing gets done on a Saturday afternoon when Martin has taken off his uniform. I don't have to clean the machine and its seals or run it through a hot wash with vinegar to get rid of the limescale. Someone else maintains the machines and if they break pays for the engineer to fix them. Plus I get to check out the charity shops and library etc while the wash is on and I can persuade Martin to hook up the box trailer and dump a bit more junk and rubble - left over from our numerous projects - down at the tip.

It's been tough to explain to Martin though why I prefer life without a machine. After all, a year of doing one wash a week adds up to around £280 a year - or the cost of a new machine.

He's not buying the 'simplicity more important than cost' argument, so I guess I'll be made to buy one shortly.

He'll be dragging me kicking and screaming though.

Just what is the Flylady programme?

Just in case you've never heard of Flylady after my post yesterday, I thought I'd talk a little about how the basic programme works and how it will work in the garden. 

Flylady is designed to split housework down into manageable chunks of time and organised routines so you don't have a house in CHAOS, that is Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome. First, you set a routine for the morning, afternoon and evening. For example, my morning routine is:

Make bed

Feed cats

Make invalid chicken food for Paxo and open up chickens

Have cup of tea while checking calender for the next couple of days ahead and making to-do lists

Shower

5 minute swish and wipe in the downstairs bathroom (Wipe round sink, swish toilet bowl, wipe round toilet, clean cabinet mirror and every other day swish floor with microfibre mop)

Get dressed

Put on load of washing

Take vitamins

Wash up

Do Flylady 'mission' for the day 

 

What's a mission?

That last one needs a bit of explaining. As part of the Flylady programme, you mentally section off the house into 'Zones" and work on decluttering and cleaning a new Zone every week. There are also little 5-15 minute missions throughout the day to clear hotspots where papers or clothes or shoes have built up, or accomplish a small task you might not ordinarily do, such as clean out your handbag or get rid of the rubbish in the car. I usually do these missions in the morning. 

Anyway, back to the basic programme; one of the first things you do every week in a Zone is a 15 minute declutter. This is usually accomplished by a) walking around the Zone with a bin bag throwing away rubbish b) the next day grabbing items to give away to friends or charity then c) the following day picking up and returning objects that do not belong in that zone to their rightful places around the house. That's a bit simplistic but essentially everything you do boils down to those three things. 

So for example, if you're in the bathroom you might be asked to go through your cabinet and fling away all the out of date stuff, then the next day collect all the opened things you tried a couple of times but didn't like and give them away. If you're in the bedroom you might be asked to pick two pairs of the your rattiest old shoes to throw away or pick the most unflattering item of clothing and put it in the charity bag.

 

The last few days in the zone is then spent doing some cleaning that perhaps doesn't often get done (for example light fittings, behind furniture, under beds etc). Over a period of months you end up completely decluttered and then each week in the Zone is just spent deep cleaning or doing projects that need to be completed. 

This week was Zone 1 

In the house Zone 1 is the porch, lobby and dining room. 

This week most of the junk in my house in those three areas has been cleared, either by throwing away, giving away or returning to their rightful homes. The front door, back door and internal doors in between have been wiped down, the light fittings cleaned, and the windowsills wiped down. It all took less than 15 minutes a day in addition to my routines. 

Tomorrow I do the main cleaning in the house for an hour: clean the upstairs bathroom, dust the lounge and master bedroom, hoover the house and change the bed. Then I have the odd bigger jobs to do when it crops up every now such as cleaning the car, washing the windows, washing carpets and upholstery, wiping out the fridge, cleaning the oven....you know the sort of jobs I mean. 

It seems to work ok for me, but I am not strict Flylady. I do not do my washing up at night and shine my sink, as I'm stink tired at the end of the day and can't be bothered. I'd rather have a bath and read a book in bed! I also do not get dressed down to my shoes, as I prefer to run around in bare feet to give them a rest, and I'd trash my carpets very quickly if I wore shoes in the house. 

Flylady in the garden

Flylady has also translated very well to my new garden Zone plan too. 

My morning garden routine:

Check all pots and water any that need it

Water hanging baskets

Check tomatoes in greenhouse

Pick up any rubbish that crosses my path

Check over plants for obvious problems that need looking at later during evening routine

Very quick weed (usually of bind weed) while the watering cans are filling up at the water butts

Then there's the decluttering and missions - so far in Zone 1 this week I've thrown away dead plants and empty pots, emptied and cleaned out a water butt with Jeyes fluid, cut back and fed the herbs in the butler sink and planted a new clematis against the fence.

 

The breezeblocks and small rectangular pavers have been dragged off the stone seat and up to the end of the garden, and the seat scrubbed down with algae cleaner. 

 

 

By the end of the weekend I aim to have some new bedding plants in the patio bed and the dahlias staked and tied back. I have even made rumbling noises about finally making up the seat cushions with this fabric I bought last August:

 

Personally I blame Carol at Boxwood Cottage for all of this. Click on her Flickr pictures on the right hand side of her blog and check out her garden pictures. Pure inspiration. I now have some leads on wonderful climbing roses and plants I want in the garden. And thanks to her I've also made up my mind that - yes - box hedging in the beds is the way to go to contain everything neatly. My bank balance may not recover after this.....

Getting back to basics - rubbish, recycling and food coverings

I've actually had this post written for over a week and it's been waiting for photographs, but an interesting story in the papers this morning made me realise it's about time to get it on here. 

Do you remember how the government wanted to introduce a local bin tax that would make everyone pay for the rubbish they throw away? They couldn't get any councils to step forward to take part in the trials though so they shelved the plans. Guess what? They're back, but this time they're going to be brought in by the Joint Waste Authorities, which neatly sidesteps the local councils. As of next summer they plan to start charging householders for the waste they produce. 

I can't decide whether to be pleased or angry. On the one hand it will force everyone to consider what they throw away and make changes. On the other, it's going to cause tremendous problems as people try to dispose of as much rubbish as they can in other ways. There'll be neighbours hot-footing it to each others bins in the middle of the night, an increase in fly-tipping, more skip hiring, and more back garden bonfires and waste being burnt in open household fires. 

I think Martin and I will be ok as I've made a huge effort over the last year to recycle or re-use everything I can. Plastic milk containers and tins are the only things that we recycle in quantity because with hundreds of plant pots, I have no use for the milk containers, and I have tried to make other things from the cans like planters, but they rust too easily and look unattractive.

But there is another thing I can't use or recycle and it's really irritating me. I've noticed over the past year that the amount of rubbish I'm sending to landfill is decreasing, but the proportion of plastic in what I am throwing away has increased tremendously. I've decided to attack this as it makes me quite depressed to look in a rubbish bag and see nothing but a sea of plastic that will sit in a landfill for hundreds of years.

So I've been making some changes over the past week to tweak our existing routine waste and recycling routine.

Clingfilm city
The first thing that has changed is my clingfilm usage. I'm tired of all those containers in the fridge covered in cling film. Leftovers from meals all sat in bowls covered with  - clingfilm. When I make rhubarb jam, I put the rhubarb and sugar in a bowl in the fridge overnight and cover it with  - clingfilm. When I left my whey out on the bench overnight I covered the tops of the jugs with - clingfilm. I seem to have descended into the clean convenience of clingfilm hell without even noticing.

So I've rooted out all the containers I have with lids (all naturally at the back of the most inaccessible cupboard) and stacked them in easy reach - if I want to put leftovers or other food in the fridge, there's no reason why it can't go into a container. Quite a lot can be simply covered with a plate or bowl. For everything else I decided to do some cloth food covers from a re-purposed vintage linen bolster pillowcase. This was part of the stitching I was doing over the Bank Holiday weekend. 

I don't have any weights yet for the edges of the little covers (yes that is a cross-stitched duck!), but I'm hunting for beads and big buttons that will do the job. Eventually I aim to have a mix of various-sized flat covers and round covers with elastic or ties round the edges to fit over bowls.

Food packaging
The second thing in my rubbish is plastic food packaging. As I'm still at the point where I'm buying things in from supermarkets, everything that comes into the house seems to come in wrapped in plastic. 

Growing our own fruit and veg automatically cuts down on those irritating plastic bags from the fresh produce section (even the paper bags for mushrooms have a plastic window in them), but in the meantime I'm going to take a few trips down to our local farmer's market and see if I can get loose produce straight into one of my own bags. Paper bags are an alternative, but long-term they just add to the amount of resources that have to be recycled, so I may make some out of cloth.

Then there's the meat from the supermarket, butcher's shop and mobile butcher's van, which all seems to come individually wrapped in several layers of plastic. I have more flexibility with the van to get the meat wrapped in what I like, so I'll be using it a lot more and maybe ask if all of the meat could go into one bag and sort it out into my own containers when I get home. 

The big one to combat will be the food packaging of dried goods. I'm looking to buy a lot more foods in bulk in the future. I already buy 4kg plus bags of pasta and rice and am hunting for a supplier of bulk flour so I don't have to keep buying small 1kg bags. I'm also on the lookout for somewhere that allows you to refill your own dried goods in whatever container you like. A few years ago I remember living near a shop that did this, and I would  go in and look at all the dried grains and pulses lined up in storage bins. It was a terrible temptation to dig my hands into the bins and let all the goods run through my fingers (small pleasures!). I haven't seen one of these shops for years though. 

Finally, I'm aiming to increase the amount of cooking I do to combat the need to buy ready-made food. For example, Martin buys Cornish pasties or slices for his lunches during the week, which come in a plastic case surrounded by a plastic sleeve. I'd like to make these for him if I can perfect my pastry. He also adores noodles, so I end up buying those little packets of noodles with foil sachets. There must be an alternative to this. I've stopped buying pizzas from the supermarket, which come wrapped in plastic and often a cardboard box, and now make my own. And much tastier they are too....no more overloaded soggy middles!

So I challenge you to look in your rubbish over the next couple of days and see how much is made up of plastic. Some is biodegradeable, most is not. Can you change anything to cut down the stuff that isn't? 

Meat and the self-sufficient lifestyle

As part of my journey into self-sufficiency, I've recently started playing with some cheese recipes. I believe cheese is going to contribute a greater role in the future I have planned for myself, so getting to grips with it early is a good idea. Before you burst out laughing at the "cheese in my future" reference, which admittedly sounds a bit kooky, listen up because there's a method in my apparent madness and it's all to do with meat.

What would it take to put meat on my plate?
It's easy enough when you shop in a supermarket to put whatever meat you like in your trolley, but when you start to consider meat from a self sufficiency point of view where supermarkets don't come into it, you realise how expensive and difficult it is to produce. I don't just mean in terms of money, but also in terms of resources.

Just to clarify, if you're self-sufficient, strictly speaking you have a closed system where you produce everything you need to live. Buying or bartering things from outside the system, such as feed, straw, hay, hybrid seeds etc can introduce undesirable problems like weeds, fruit and vegetables with little flavour or cannot be used for seed saving, and diseases, not to mention the fact you have to find the money from somwhere to pay for it all.

I believe that type of self-sufficiency is a long, long way off for me. However, if I want to be as self-reliant as possible until then, ideally I would either produce my own meat or perhaps barter some of my own goods to exchange for it. Producing my own is a bit beyond me right now - I'm not ready emotionally to take on buying or renting land, buying cows, sheep or pigs yet, although poultry, rabbits and small scale aquaponics for fish will be possible shortly in the future when I can get over the whole slaughtering aspect. Yet even then I would still be buying feed pellets, wood shavings, straw and hay unless I had the ability and space to produce my own.

The latter - bartering - sounds much more preferable, but think about how much I would have to produce to pay for it. Generally, farmers like to sell 1/2 animals, not the odd chop or rack of ribs, and to match it would take up much more than my garden or chickens could produce. I may have to look at an allotment and the drain on time that will take up. Yes, I could barter my writing services, but the prices I charge would be beyond the small scale local producer to match in goods. You see, one way it's too much in goods for me, the other way it's too much in goods for them.

So ideally, meat must play a much smaller role in my future as it is so labour intensive to have regularly, (although Charlotte if your Dad has no use for brace of pheasant there is always a place for them here :-)  )

Where will I get the main source of my protein from?
Without that source of protein in my diet, I have to get it from elsewhere and that's where cheese makes an appearance. I'm not a great meat-eater and before I met Martin cheese was my main source of protein every day. It wouldn't be too tough to go back to that again for me, and a gallon of milk is much easier to barter for than meat. The fact that Martin dislikes the taste of cheese is the only slight fly in the ointment, so he would have to continue eating some meat unless he was happy to go veggie and I would find other protein sources for him. He does eat quite a few veggie meals, but it has to be his choice and not something I can push on him.

How much is enough?
The Food Standards Agency recommend that men get 44-55g of protein a day while women need 36-45g and here's a list I've compiled of the protein values of some common foodstuffs Martin and I eat.

6oz steak  42g
Pork chop        (average)     22g
Grilled chicken breast (average) 42g
4oz cooked beef mince 24g
Egg     6g
4oz cottage cheese  15g
4.5oz  lentils  9g
7oz chickpeas  16g
8oz  baked beans  11g
2tbsp peanut butter  8g
0.5pt  Milk  9g
1 cup yoghurt  8-12g

When I look at this, I see how easy it would be to get enough protein every day without resorting to meat, especially considering the value of cottage cheese, which is supposed to be the easiest cheese to produce at home. Also, I made a curry the other night of chickpeas and kidney peas (Martin's favourite meal) and the protein content with just those two ingredients was 32g split between the two of us. Once you add in the rice and chopped tomatoes you're taking it to 18g a piece.  By having eggs in with breakfast or lunch, a glass of milk, some yoghurt and fresh fruit for dessert, some cheese here and there, perhaps peanut butter on bread for an afternoon snack, you're up to the recommended amounts every day.

So that's why yesterday saw me up to my eyes in curds and whey. And as this post has got 'whey' too long (snigger, snigger), I will blog about my cheese escapades tomorrow.