Why did I say it? Why? The minute I say "finger's crossed nothing else breaks" something else breaks. I'm magnetic I swear.
My Andrew James halogen oven is out of action. I had to change the bulb in it, which was fine as that is expected from halogen ovens after about a year and I've had mine about 13 months. What wasn't fine was the rust and the missing coating on the bulb housing, which presumably we have eaten.
Ewwwwww.
I've contacted the company about it as it is still under warranty and will set about trying to get it replaced or fixed, but until then I'm back cooking on gas again.
I've been pondering the merit of having more than a week or two's food on hand just in case of sudden emergencies. While Martin was away for three weeks with his mother at the hospital I came to appreciate the little things I've always taken for granted, like easy access to shops because I haven't yet taken my driving test. But even if I had though, he had the only functioning car!
Thankfully I had a full freezer and a couple of week's food in the cupboard, which was a godsend because despite being picked up by my sister-in-law every day, I only had the time to prepare and do a proper weekly shop once in three and a half weeks. The rest of the time, I managed fleeting rushed visits to various places to grab things needed by those at the hospital, the odd thing I had run out of, and cat food. I actually did run out of layer's pellets for the chickens and a chicken keeper friend loaned me a bag.
Frozen blackberries
So the chicken's laid their eggs, there was some fruit and veggies in the garden, and that six pints of milk that was bought the day before Martin went lasted for ages after I decanted it and froze some of it. But it did go to show me that emergencies can and do happen, and having a bit of a stockpile is important and can allow me to focus on what is really matters at that time.
Which won't be running around a supermarket.
The start of doing any stockpile is anticipating what emergencies you need to be preparing for. I've written down a priority list of emergencies that could happen to Martin and I, and once I started to consider what is likely to happen plus the ramifications if it did it's quite eye-opening. It makes you realise just how much you rely on the status quo - and rely on other people to keep the status quo going - despite chaos and change being natural and ever present.
These are my personal emergencies...
Redundancy
Illness or death in the family
Pregnancy
Long-term illness
Break-in
House fire
...and likely natural emergencies...
Heavy thunderstorms
High winds
Severe winter weather
Mains water contamination (which we've had before)
...and man made emergencies...
Economic depression
Rampant inflation and soaring food prices
Civil disorder and crime
Chemical spill (we have a main train line at the back about 30 metres up a hill)
War (even between other countries affects our economy)
The first one on each of those lists are the ones I believe actually will probably happen in the next six to 12 months, so I will be preparing for those first. The ones that follow are listed in the order of what I think could affect us from most likely to least likely but still possible. Each one has ramifications which I'm mulling over and deciding on how to deal with.
At the same time, over the last few days I've tried to find a system that lets me work out what would be required in terms of food for those times where finances, time or ability would make shopping trips difficult. The first system I've tried out is simply estimating what we would eat each week if an emergency happened, but that hasn't worked out as well as I hoped.
Estimating our use of each food by week - not a goer
First, I know from experience we eat differently during a crisis. My emergency stockpile is probably about 40% different to what is usually in my cupboards. For example, when I'm skint, I do everything from scratch, including cakes, pastries, bread, pasta, and speciality indian breads. When we have a bit more money, I pick the convenience of ready made. I'll make chapattis when the sh*t hits the fan because I feel I have to save money no matter what the time involved, but when I work 60-odd hours a week and life looks ok then a manufacturer can do it for me. I reduce our consumption of meat and increase our veggie meals. The trouble is, stockpiles need rotating to ensure everything is eaten before its sell by date so stockpiling all the goods I would use during a crisis would see a proportion of it go unused during normal good times.
Second, the majority of my stockpile should really include stuff that can be stored at room temperature, because anything that knocks out the power grid for a few days is going to see the food in the freezer, which is mostly meat, go to waste as it defrosts. But there's only so much damn spam and corned beef I'm willing to accept in my life and I'm not keen on canned fish apart from tuna, which doesn't leave much protein-based canned options.
Third, assuming I did have power I can't get a complete stockpile of food at the moment anyway. At best, I can only store so many days/weeks food in the freezer and some things, like fruit and veg I can't store much of due to how poorly it freezes or preserves, and limited freezer space.
So that led me on to the second system, which maybe should have been my first port of call as it is based on a system designed by Wendy Dewitt, who is a food storage advocate for the Latter Day Saints. Her system is pretty simple - at a minimum pick seven of your absolute favourite breakfasts and dinners (14 would probably give you more variety), write down all the ingredients, multiply each by however many weeks you're storing food for and then get to work storing the ingredients. Lunches are not included as I believe Wendy's system involves eating the biggest meal - dinner - at lunchtime and having a snack of some kind in the evening. I've been watching her videos on youtube and they are excellent (she's a natural very funny speaker) except for one tiny thing: a lot of it depends on canning and vacuum packing.
She. Cans. Everything. If it is edible, it gets canned including meat. And chocolate.
We have never really got into that in the UK. Sure we do a few bits and pieces in water baths and ovens, and vacuum sealers have found some fans but the US way of preserving foods is heavy on the high pressure canning and vacuum sealing and that kind of equipment you generally have to get imported if you can find a company who wants to. For meats it has to be canned under pressure to prevent spoilage.
Anyway, below is one video of Wendy to give you a good idea of her system, and I'm going off to ponder this issue a bit more.
My father-in-law is now nearing the end of is life and we can do nothing but keep him comfortable, help him eat and drink, and hope that he doesn't suffer in the end.
Martin is spending long hours at the hopsital and then with his mother and brother afterwards. I flit between work, home and the hospital, making sure the cats, chickens and ducks are looked after, clothes are washed, dried, ironed and returned to the respective family members with new hankies, pills and vitamins are remembered at the right times, and food eaten and naps taken no matter whether someone wants to or not. I'm being pretty militant about the last two. Martin has not taken care of himself over the last 10 days and both he and his mother have come down with colds. Mind you, I'm one to talk. I feel like I hardly have enough time to do anything more than snatch a snack on the run.
Over the weekend I decided that I had to get some small domestic tasks done in addition to what was needed by the family. It was my release valve. There is little to take comfort from at the moment but these little smallholding tasks made me feel that no matter what happens, we have food in the freezer so we'll be ok. Yesterday I managed to make myself the first cooked meal I've had since last Monday.
Picked the first 8 ears of corn and canned the kernals...
...amazingly super sweet and tasty
Some leeks, found in the supermarket bargain section at 22% of their original costs, sliced and ready for freezing for leek and potato soup
Another clearance bargain - a large head of brocolli for 24p chopped up and into a cheese bake
Not many apples on the trees this year, but what is there is being turned into fillings for pies and crumbles
Ditto plums - this the sum total off one tree!!
Finally processed some frozen rhubarb into jam
Too small an amount of raspberries to preserve so I have these on my breakfast.
I might have gone a bit overboard on the sloe gin last year ;-)
Last night I decanted this lot into bottles, and ended up with four bottles full of sloe gin to put down to mature. I still have around 250ml left from 2009 to drink and then a full wine bottle left from 2010.
Whether or not I have any to do this year remains to be seen. I have barely found any sloe bushes at all while out on my walks this year, even in some of my favourite haunts. The fruit has already been stripped. Instead I'll probably make plum vodka using about a pound of wild plums and bullaces I found a couple of days ago and leave it at that.
I'll just ration last year's four bottles to fill the sloe gin gap.
Well, after eating clean for a week, three basic weights sessions and one 20 minutes cardio session I've appear to have lost 4lb. Pretty good considering how lax I am at cardio! I don't think I've ever done an eating regime or diet where I have still eaten carbs (I've been eating brown rice, brown pasta and oats) and still lost weight. Normally I cut down the starchy carbs and the first week I lose a lot of water, so this is a revelation. Eat carbs with every meal and lose weight? Holy Moly.
I went out and bought a new set of digital scales using Tesco vouchers the same day I wrote my post about the lottery money, and was very glad I did. My old manual scales have been telling me I was 12st 2lb. Come rain or shine I've been 12st 2lb now since I lost half a stone at Christmas, so I've been quite pleased I've managed to maintain this.
Or not as it transpires.
After my first post about my new eating habits the new scales weighed me in the following morning at 12st 8.4lbs.
Huh?
It seems that I must have been close to, if not more than 13st, when I lost that first bit of weight six months ago. Well actually, the manual scales have been so wrong that I don't know if they've been consistently weighing me from one week to the next anyway. Who knows what I weighed at the start, what I lost, what I put on since and when it all happened.
Thinking about it, this makes sense. Martin has used those old scales to weigh packages to be sent abroad (i.e.you weigh yourself with the package and then subtract your weight), and on more than one occassion has come back from the parcel courier swearing because they charged him more. He always maintained their scales were wrong. It turns out ours were.
So, I don't really know what I weighed 7 days ago when I started this, although according to the manual scales this morning I'm STILL 12st 2lb, but I'm one week in and happy with what I'm seeing. Six small meals a day means my blood sugar levels are pretty stable and I've not had any cravings plus I feel more energetic. I wouldn't say I bounce out of bed and hit pints of water - at 5am my eyes are still pretty glued up and I still want my tea every morning - but I'm managing to down a minimum of three pints a day (about 1.7 litres), plus green and herbal teas when I want a hot drink.
I've still managed to keep my consumption of caffienated tea to 2-3 cups a day - so reduced my weekly sugar consumption in tea from 210 spoons to an average of about 33, but haven't given them up completely yet. I'm still really enjoying each cup. However this morning I've dropped my sugar from two spoons to one and I'll see how I feel about tea in a week's time.
Well, after finding a horrid surprise of Dusty's body in the coop yesterday, today I had a lovely surprise and discovered we had won £67 on the lottery. Despite our scepticism about the futility of doing something where the odds are so stacked against you, like many people in the UK we still have a flutter once a week.
I suggested the money could go on some new door hinges for the car we're rebuilding, Martin told me to keep it and spend it on some things that will help me with getting fit again. I'm not arguing! He also told me to use the £18 of Tesco clubcard vouchers that were stashed so I have £85.
This is what I have on my shopping list:
A pair of digital scales £20 - to replace an ancient manual one that shows varying weights if you step on and off it several times in succession. The model I want has a BMI and bodyfat analyser.
Two kindle books on Eating Clean by Tosca Reno £18 - this is a method of eating only foods that our bodies are designed to run best on, such as lean proteins, complex carbs (plenty of grains) and healthy fats. You also eat more frequently, up to six times a day, to ensure you keep your blood sugar stable. Sugar is considered a poisen as is white processed flour and processed white grains like white rice, so this way of eating fits with what I want to do. I'm starting to think sugar is evil stuff anyway after what I've watched it do to me over the years.
Digital subscription to Oxygen (£16) magazine
I also want to get a barbell (basically a five foot pole you put weights on the end of) as I currently only have hand weights, and that makes quite a few weights exercises off limits to me at the moment. However I want to try Freegle first to see if anyone is getting rid of any weights equipment and then eBay before I spend £25 on a new one.
That still leaves me with some money left over for the future if I decide I want to get any other equipment to help me, so that will go in the piggy on the mantlepiece.
I'm almost at the point where I'm ready to give up caffiene althogether. Since Friday I have had two cups a day for the majority of the time - morning and lunchtime - apart from yesterday when I had people over for tea and had a cup in the late aftenooon. I still have some residual headache, but that should be gone soon and then I'm going to give up the lunchtime cup. Hopefully that will be tomorrow. So considering that usually I have a cup of caffeinated tea with two sugars roughly every hour from when I get up at 5:30am until about 4:30pm, and then have decaffeinated thereafter (so about 15 cups a day), the last few days I've cut my sugar consumption from 30 spoons of sugar to about 4. My aim is eventually none.
I'm drinking a pint of water or weak squash with at least three meals a day, so that's 1.7 litres of fluid extra. I'm also having a cup of green tea with lemon at some point during the day, as well as the odd cup of herbal tea.
I've switched over to unsweetened soy milk for my breakfast to add some extra protein to it, and to be honest I can't taste much difference so that's a good change that will stay.
The only difficulty I have is making sure I eat protein with carbs at every meal. I think a lot of us have got used to the idea of eating only carbs, such as crumpets or toast for breakfast, pasta with sauce for dinner, carb-loaded snacks etc etc. The resuslt is blood sugar levels that peak and trough all the time, rather than remaining stable. I wonder how many people look at their meal and wonder if they have enough protein in there? I certainly never did and now I know that I was probably getting much, much less than I needed.
Theorectically, you need 1g of protein for every 1lb you weigh, so in my case I need 170g a day. If you think a normal size chicken breast has around 30g, and I've been mostly vegetarian since Christmas, I don't think I've been getting anything like what I need every day to be healthy. The last few days has been a real eye opener. You can get high protein bars and powder to be made into shakes, but these have never agreed with me and gave me stomach cramps. Martin experimented with taking protein shakes on his delivery with him, and they made him very sick. So we both stay away from them.
To help me with this, I've been hanging around the Clean Eating magazine's website to get some ideas for pumping up the amount of protein in my meals. There's plenty of free recipes on there for me to try.
Anyway, I'm off out for a walk before I have a shower and figure out what my next meal is going to be in about an hour.
I'm still feel full from my breakfast and that damn huge glass of water...
So how are we doing with the big goal, the ones that will put us in the poor house ;-)
Pretty good so far! We are 23 days into January - our fourth week - and are bang on budget. I set my groceries budget for £160 a month, and so far we have spent £114.51. This includes cat food and cleaning stuff. In fact, we have eaten better this month since being on a strict budget than we do normally because I’m trying to be very careful to ensure we get our five portions of fruit and veg a day and make the food as flavoursome as possible.
I base the food for the week around a roast dinner on Sunday evening. Whatever I cook, Martin has the meat from it on Monday and Tuesday for his sandwiches. Tuesday night I then make up something else for him to eat for the rest of the week, usually some kind of pasty or large sausage rolls with pickle or peri-peri sauce inside depending on whether he wants a traditional one or spicy little number. Then on Wednesday I cook up a Chinese. He seems to be addicted to green peppers in black bean sauce at the moment, so I thinly slice up whatever roast meat is left and do that with noodles and/or egg fried rice.
This all works of course because I don’t eat meat at the moment.
If I were eating the roast dinner along with Martin, there wouldn’t be enough meat to last for sandwiches or his Chinese on Wednesday. Instead I have the largest Yorkshire pudding known to man made in a cake tin. Then I pile a load of veggies and roast potatoes into the large yorkie with gravy. Occasionally if I’ve done some kind of pastry based pudding for Martin, I’ll do a veggie slice with cheese and have it without the yorkies and just vegetables and potatoes. This is a mushroom slice with a base of onion relish that I found ‘seasoning’ in the back of the fridge.
I do have a tendency to be a little lazy during the week with my food. If we’re having a big casserole with lots of veggies, I tend to have it too but only put in enough meat for Martin. Then I’ll mix my meat-less portion with couscous. I’ve found that rather than eat a lot of protein in the evning, I tend to eat quite high protein foods during the day, which fills me up and helps me avoid snacking.
So over the last few weeks I’ve alternated cheese and crackers, hummus and pitta bread, egg or cheese salads, lentil soup, beans on toast or in a jacket potato. I also try and have a coffee every day made with milk, as milk has valuable proteins in it too. I don’t like tofu or meat-alternatives like quorn, as I think they are very expensive for what they are and I don’t like the texture when I’m chewing it. For obvious reasons being allergic to nuts has taken out quite an important source of proteins for me. I’m a little concerned I’m not getting enough iron so I want to start taking a multi-vitamin on the days when I don’t think I’ve had enough.
Sorry for not being around...all I've done is work and knit with precious little time for anything else, but sadly I did too much of the former and not enough of the latter.
I wasn't able to finish Martin's jumper - I'm halfway up the second sleeve with not much further to go, but I decided to 'give' him his present this evening so I could offer up the first sleeve and if it fitted finish the second in a concerted couple of hours and make it all up. Sadly it was just as well as I fessed up this evening, because after I offered up the sleeve I realised it was waaaayyy too long and I need to frog it back and lose at least two, probably three inches.
So perhaps it wasn't such a bad thing to not finish. It would have been heartbreaking to have done all this work, sewn it up and then have to undo it all. At least I can get a decent finish on it now.
Anyway, tomorrow I'm doing a simple turkey-based roast for us and hubby's parents, then on Boxing Day a roast beef lunch for eight with my family. As of 6pm tonight, everything that needs preparing for the two days is done. I have two trifles in the fridge - a sherry one and a cointreau chocolate orange one - just waiting for their respective vanilla and chocolate custards to go on top. There's two lots of red cabbage, a whacking great portion of Marie Rose sauce for prawn cocktails, around 40 pigs in blankets and then part of my niece's boxing day lunch so the flavours could mingle and develop for a while.
Having a vegetarian niece is one thing, having a vegetarian niece with a peanut allergy is quite another. The shops are useless when it comes to this sort of thing - everything revolves around nuts - so you really have no choice but to make something yourself under the circumstances. So I plumped for a greek spanakopita - spinach and feta filo pie using this recipe. Originally I was going to do Jamie Oliver's recipe without the pinenuts, but luckily I read through it first right to the end and realised that he's done something that almost all professonial chefs do - they forget we mere mortals do not generally have professional equipment. His recipe requires me to use a pan on the hob for a while and then put that straight into the oven to further cook the pie. That's fine if you have completely metal pan from top to bottom. I have what most people have - a teflon pan with plastic handle. So that recipe and way of cooking it was out and I searched until I found another. I think this one will be a lot tastier too as there is more varieties of cheese to give it greater depth. And of course, I'll sort out a separate pan of stuffing, tatties and veg for her without any animal fat.
So, Merry Christmas one and all, I hope you have a wonderful, relaxing and peaceful few days.
I'm going back to my port, Morecombe and Wise and knitting by the open fire, and I'll be back in a few days, hopefully with a finished jumper to show you!!
I feel sorry for jam tarts. When faced with their glamourous and voluptuously decorated cupcake cousins they look like the pantomime equivalent of Cinders. But ask anyone about jam tarts and they'll admit they have a place in their heart.
I haven't made a batch for a long time, peferring to make larger cakes that could be portioned up or perhaps fairy cakes that could be iced. However, after making a batch of 24 jam tarts at the weekend on a whim, I was surprised by just how popular and well enjoyed they were this week. I made them Sunday night and by this morning there were two left.
Martin's father has had a regular supply while in hospital, and for someone who has a bird-like appetite and is a bit ho-hum about cakes, the jam tarts were polished off two at a time at speed about 10 minutes after we walked in the door. Martin obviously loves anything sweet and particularly liked these as they didn't crumble while he was eating them and he could carrying on sorting letters with his other hand.
So, in praise of the humble jam tart, here's the recipe I used based on a rich flan pastry. This has much more fat than a normal shortcrust pastry and does make it more delicate and difficult to cut and shape, so you might want to try normal shortcrust or even a shortbread pastry base. You can also use different flavour jam, but beware! Don't be fooled by how cool the pastry on the tarts might feel after they've been on the rack for a while after cooking. The jam is still so hot after 20 minutes it is capable of burning and removing lip skin. I speak from experience ;-)
Jam Tarts using rich flan pastry (should make 12-16, although I like thin pastry so I stretched it to 24)
8oz plain flour
6oz butter/marg
pinch of salt
2tbsp sugar
1 large egg
1 tablespoon water
jam for filling
Sift the flour into a bowl with the salt. Cube the cold butter/marg and rub in the fat with the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add the sugar, beaten egg and water and using a fork lightly work the pastry until it comes together. Lightly kneed (don't overwork it or the pastry will be tough) the pastry on a floured surface, warp in clingfilm and put in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.
Lightly roll out the pastry on a floured surface, bearing in mind that it will be stickier than a normal pastry and more delicate to handle, and stamp out circles to match the size of your jam tart/fairy cake baking tray. Grease and flour the tray if necessary (mine always needs it as they have the odd scratch from over zealous evicting of cakes using a knife!) before lightly pressing the circles into each hole. Add a scant tsp of jam to the centre of each, being careful not to overfill the cases as the jam will leak out over the edges.
Put in a oven pre-heated to Gas Mark 5/6 and cook for around 15-20 minutes until the jam is bubbling. Gently remove from the tray and put onto a wire rack straight away.
Then WAIT for 30 minutes or so before attempting to scoff or risk losing your lip print and the skin on the roof of your mouth.
The day started off in a very yummy way and ended the same. Nothing beats Saturday morning pancakes, but we're both purists when it comes to what we put on them. Lemon and sugar only. Adding in fruit or chocolate or syrup makes it seem too much like a pudding.
Then later an immensely filling, but cheap and nutritious liver and bacon hotpot for dinner.
Liver is a weird one isn't it.
You can split a room of people cleanly down the middle about it. You like it or you loathe it. I used to know someone who would gag at the mention of it. It's smell and taste is so powerful the feelings associated with it stayed amazingly strongly at the front of their brain.
I like it, so does Martin, in fact sometimes I crave it, but somewhere along the way while I'm eating it my brain says enough now and my gag reflex kicks in. Maybe my body craves something in liver and when it knows its loaded up it says stop.
Anyway, tonight I had the liver craving and knocked up a liver hotpot for us. It's a great cheap recipe but once a month or so is plenty for us!
Liver and bacon hotpot
400g of lamb's liver
2 rashers of back bacon, rind removed and chopped small
1.5lbs of potatoes, thinly sliced
3 big carrots, sliced
1 large onion, sliced or two medium leeks, sliced
2 tbsp of flour
400ml of chicken stock
1tsp of dried sage
Salt and pepper
Parboil the potatoe slices for 5 mins, drain and out aside.
Brown the liver on both sides of each piece in a little oil for about a minute and put into the bottom of a casserole dish.
Cook the onions, carrots and bacon in the same pan for about 8-10 minutes stirring frequently.
In the meantime, make up the stock and add the sage to it. Add the flour into the pan, stir in and then add the stock stirring.You should now have your vegetables in a nice thick gravy.
Season the mixture with salt and pepper then pour everything over the liver and arrange the potato slices over the top. Brush over a little melted butter.
Cook at about 200oC for 45 minutes until the potatoes are browned.
