The Really Good Life | Growing, Making & Doing in the UK

The financial pros and cons for building up a food store/pantry

Writing about my “I’ll keep a store cupboard in case zombies attack!” paranoia yesterday (ahem) reminded me that I wrote something for a personal finance website last year but for some reason, didn’t get around to sending it over. I’ve re-edited it to make it suitable for here/now but have kept it purely about the financial side of things. I would love to hear your thoughts on it. Over the last few years, we seem to be experiencing more and more cases of extreme weather and natural disasters. This year in the UK, we’ve had an unusually wet summer, leading to flooding, and elsewhere around the northern hemisphere, it’s been too hot, which has caused fires. There have also been unseasonal hurricanes/tornados, and while we’ve been comparatively lucky so far this year, 2011 was horrendous for other natural disasters such as the earthquakes in New Zealand and the earthquake/tsunami in Japan. There’s no question that having a small supply for food and water is essential if bad weather is predicted and it’s important to maintain emergency supplies in case an unforeseen disaster strikes. But I’ve recently been considering the financial pros and cons of keeping a larger store pantry. Why it makes financial sense to keep a large food store at home Aside from the security of having emergency supplies when needed, the largest day-to-day benefits of maintaining a large store at home are the financial ones. Many people with large food stores grow and/or preserve a lot of their own food when it’s in season so have put-up supplies that are a lot cheaper than it would cost to buy them ready-made in the shops/out of season. Certain items (such as sacks of wheat berries, dried pulses or rice) can be bulk bought, resulting in a cheaper cost-per-serving, and in many places can also be bought direct from the producer or through a not-for-profit co-op, cutting the price even further. Having a well-stocked store and list of “store-cupboard recipes” should also reduce the amount of times/frequency with which you visit your local supermarket. When you shop your own pantry, you’re not going to get persuaded to part with a few pounds on unnecessary temptations and treats. Depending on how far you are from your local shops, that may also save a considerable amount of money in fuel/public transport costs too, as well as time. As well as saving money directly and indirectly in the first place, a large pantry is also essentially a saving scheme. In the UK interest rates on savings accounts are considerably lower than the rate of inflation so our bank savings are actually shrinking in real terms while food prices are rising. Items bulk-bought...

How I lead a green and frugal life by Lily-dog

It’s two years to the day since we brought Lily-dog home so I asked her to put some words together about how she leads a simple, green & frugal life with us. Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Sorry, got a bit overexcited there, I do like meeting new people. Would you like me to bring you a shoe? Because I can go and get one if you like? Here! Here’s a shoe. I hope you like it. It’s my shoe. Don’t try to take my shoe! I like shoes! Ok, ok, I’ll put the shoe down and start telling you what you want to hear. I’m not quite sure what the female feedy-huggy one has asked of me because I am a dog but I’ll try my best and will try very hard not to randomly woof. Although I am told I enunciate my woof splendidly, with a proper “wuh” at the beginning and everything. Wuh-oof. So, yes, I have lived here for two years now and I think I lead a pretty green & frugal life. Well, a white-and-brown frugal life. I grow my own fur so I don’t need clothes – 12 items in ’11? Pff! I had less that 12 items of clothing in 11 years! – and my fur can be composted when I don’t need it any more. I am also more than happy to snuggle underneath a duvet or a blanket too for extra warmth, no need for gas-guzzling central heating. I do not – NOT!NOT!NOT! – like going in the car because they are expensive and noisy and sometimes involve journeys to the vets which are expensive, noisy and sometimes involve injections. If I had my way the tail-less ones would get rid of the car and we’d just walk everywhere we needed to go. Because the only place we need to go is the woods, right? Definitely NOT the vets, just the woods. I like the woods. They are at the bottom of my garden. Walking in the woods is my favourite hobby and it makes me happy that we go there every day. If I wasn’t such a scaredy dog, I’d probably run around the woods on my own all day, making sure I’m instantly aware of any changes in smells and to check that those squirrels aren’t up to anything. Those squirrels are always up to something. That’s why they need barking at. “What are you up to, squirrels?” I say with one single well-enunciated woof. They know I’m onto them, that’s why they run. I like eating things I find in the woods. Once I found a tuna sandwich. That was a good day. I carried it for...

Washing in winter: ideas for reducing laundry?

Hi guys, sorry for the radio silence for the last few days – I went on a drama training course on Tuesday and have only just recovered ;) It was a lot of fun and very useful but I’m farrrrr too lazy for what was essentially a five hour exercise class. My neck is sore and I’ve a huge bruise on my knee from stage combat training but on the other hand, pretending to beat up a new colleague for 2.5hrs is a really good bonding experience :) ANYWAY, back to reality now. Lazy, lazy reality. I do like being lazy in winter because it can actually be an efficient/frugal way to do things: yesterday, John was out of the house all day so me & my aching body worked from bed until I had to go to out myself – no need for heating. And as I’ve said before when talking about linedrying laundry in winter, some things just get left until spring: throws/blankets get taken out of service, occasional wear that I won’t need for another few months can stay in the washing basket, and bedding etc gets left in the washing basket too until a nice drying-outside day, even if that’s another month (or longer) away. Lazy is good. But I wondered what other strategies people use for reducing the amount of laundry they have to get through in winter. Aside from burst washing machine pipe incidents, the washing isn’t the hard part but the line drying is, particularly if you’re tight on space at home. I remember looking into the issue of laundry a year or so ago and being shocked how much people wash clothes – a whole outfit in the wash every day – some people wash bedsheets & tumble dry every day. I mean, gosh! Around here, underwear gets changed every day, t-shirts every other day, jeans & jumpers not so much. They get washed when they’re dirty, which isn’t after one day for us desk jockeys. I also have different sets of clothes for different jobs – for example, my scruffs (for gardening/chicken coop cleaning/DIY) have a much higher dirtiness threshold than the nicer clothes I wear when I’m teaching. How about you? Do you try to minimise the amount of washing you do in the winter (or all year around)? If so, what tactics do you use? If you don’t – how do you keep on top of it all in the cold days of...

Book Review: Stitch Step by Step by Maggi Gordon and Ellie Vance

It was a moment of serendipity when I spotted this book, Stitch Step by Step by Maggi Gordon and Ellie Vance, on the “new additions” shelf at the library back in September – I didn’t know it but I was about to get poorly sick — not ill enough to just collapse in a heap but not well enough to, you know, move. I suddenly found myself with a lot of sewing playtime! The design of the book grabbed me from the outset: the pretty blue/dotty cover; the clear, well laid out tutorial pages; and the stitch galleries, oh my, the stitch galleries. I think it’s worth noting that I’m quite new to embroidery. I’ve cross-stitched for a few years now but I’ve not spent a lot of time looking into the different stitches available when you break away from the cross (or fractions of it) and backstitches. The stitch galleries in this book really opened my eyes to the different possibilities – I could suddenly see the appeal of making samplers! As this is nearly all counted-thread work, it didn’t seem a million miles from my cross-stitching and it gave me the confident to jump straight into some stitching myself. I’ll admit, I followed a handful of the tutorials because it was clear to see what to do from the stitch gallery pictures but those that I did follow were clear step-by-step guides as the title of the book suggests :) The pictures were crisp, with good fabric/thread contrast so it was easy to see what was going on. (The one I “chose” to take bad pictures of to illustrate this point is probably the least contrasting one but you can see the layout.) In addition to the colourful thread work, there were also sections on whitework – which was a new concept to me (the idea of using the stitches to open up holes in the fabric I mean, not just the white-on-white stitching), using beads & sequins and on designing as well as stitching Florentine/Bargello work. Purr. Me like! As with all tutorial books, they covered the basics as well – how to use embroidery hoops, useful tools, finishing and whatnot – which again, was useful for a newbie like me. Overall, I didn’t read this book cover-to-cover or feel like I wanted to try every different stitch/tutorial – but it’s not for that: it’s for providing inspiration and reference, and I think it does those things very well. I did have two minor problems with it though – both design issues. Firstly, I had the hardback version from the library. Apparently there is a paperback version available too — I think the hardback would be...

My ten favourite simple living/growing/cooking/making books

(Inspired by book-aholic buying behaviour this month, I’ve decided to have a bit of a book-themed week both here and on my recycling site, Recycle This.) Despite living on the internet & using it/blogs for most of my day-to-day info, I’ve got quite a few simple living related books and as you might expect, some are better than others. Some were chosen after careful research, others randomly picks from charity shops & the like – but as is often the case, there is little correlation between that and which are the better books! Here, in no particular order, are some of my favourites: The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency by John Seymour – this is a great overview book of so many different things. It’s admittedly more aspiration than practical for me at the moment – and because it covers so many different areas, it doesn’t feel like the most practical book anyway (it doesn’t have space to go into detailed how-tos/trouble-shooting on each different topic) but it’s still very useful. If I was fleeing to escape the zombie hordes*, this is probably the non-fiction book I’d grab. Growing The Vegetable & Herb Expert by DG Hessayon – my first veg growing book and the one I keep going back to over & over again. Not hugely detailed on each type & some bizarre comments about only eating chillis if they’re part of “your heritage”, but very clear, with lots of pictures (very useful when troubleshooting pests/diseases) and packed with useful info. Grow Your Own Vegetables by Joy Larkcom – this book is almost the opposite of the Hessayon – lots of detail but not anywhere near as easy to dip into and few illustrations. I like them together but would struggle with the Larkcom on its own. The Edible Container Garden: Fresh Food from Tiny Spaces by Michael Guerra – I was a little disappointed when I got this as it includes a lot of whitespace, big pretty rather than purposeful pictures and a lot of general overview text — but the 30 pages on “what shall I grow?” made the book worth it – very useful reference information about varieties, pot depths etc. I would recommend it to anyone who grows more than just the basic herbs in containers – but try to find a secondhand one so you don’t resent paying for the padding. Foraging Mushrooms by Roger Philips – not a field guide but a very comprehensive, very clear reference book for all sorts of fungi found in the British isles and thereabouts. No “if it’s got this shape cap, it’s this” identification charts but lots of very clear pictures once you have an idea...

Lessons from our garden so far

Posted by louisa on Friday 16 July 2010 in growing | 0 comments

As we only moved into our house last autumn, our first growing season has been one of experimentation – see what grows here, what doesn’t, and what else we have to contend with.

Here’s some of the lessons I’ve learned so far:

Butternut squashes take longer to germinate that most other things. I planted six seeds and a few weeks later, when everything else was well underway, I had just one sprout poking through the soil. Oh, I thought, that’s a really poor germination rate. Damn you, eBay seeds!. Then I planted another 40 (…) seeds with the hope of getting half a dozen plants. And a couple of days later, the original other five seeds sprouted. And then about 30 of the second sowing. I have a lot of squash plants this year.

(Ditto, to a slightly lesser extent, courgette plants. I had seven in my original planting then got some free seeds from BBC’s Dig In project and planted them too. After giving some away and losing some to one thing or another, I think we’ve currently got about 14 plants fruiting or about to fruit. Unsurprisingly, the self-germinating ones have been a lot more productive so far.)

Homemade dog treats: drying offal in a dehydrator

Posted by louisa on Thursday 15 July 2010 in frugal | 1 comment

In the supermarket a couple of months ago, John noticed that the dog treats we were buying our old springer spaniel Lily cost £11 a kilogram. The prepackaged lumps of cereals, additives and mechanically recovered meat were more expensive gram for gram than cheese, steak or a nice roast. That didn’t seem quite right to us.

We swapped to using cheese for a while – mostly because it kept longer than meat – but Lily wasn’t that keen so we decided to try making some homemade dog treats by dehydrating some meat instead: it would last longer than cheese and wouldn’t need refrigeration.

Bad Buys: the garden swing

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 13 July 2010 in bad buys, frugal | 0 comments

This will be an occasional series of posts documenting my worst buys over the years and why they were a mistake. I hope it’ll help me – and other people – learn from my mistakes.

When we moved into our new house last autumn, there was an old garden swing cemented into the patio in the garden. My mum and dad had a similar swing for a few years when I was a kid – a white metal tube frame with big puffy plastic-coated cushions – and according to our photo albums, our family lived on it in the summer. John wasn’t keen on the swing here though because it looked rickety, somewhat knackered and in white, stood out against the natural colours of our garden – but I thought we might as well use it since it was there. Maybe play up the retro – brighten up the white & cover the dated floral cushions with a red polka dot design. It was put on the list for “things to do over the summer” and forgotten about.

Then a (used) swing popped up on my “around here and cheap” eBay search. In a mushroom-y beige colour, it wouldn’t stand out so much, it looked more solid and best of all, it was more practical because the seats were the plastic mesh, meaning we could use it without having to climb two flights of stairs to get the cushions. It was £30 and only a short drive away. We ‘bought it then’. At no point did we ask ourselves whether we actually wanted a swing – we were just hell-bent on replacing the old one with a better one than the one we had.

Charity shop bargains from Shipley

Posted by louisa on Monday 12 July 2010 in charity shopping | 0 comments

I did a little impromptu charity shop-shopping in Shipley on Saturday.

For the size of the town centre, Shipley has a good number of charity shops but I didn’t make a mammoth haul because like in most poor-er areas, the general stock tends to be lower quality – discount shop/supermarket clothes, and trashy books I’ve either read, got or wouldn’t touch with a second-hand bargepole. That’s not to say that bargains and/or super-cheap expensive goods aren’t ever spotted, it’s just less likely. In my experience in Shipley, the BHF has slightly better quality items than the others, while the Age Concern Community Action shop & JOY have the most random stuff. (JOY, the only shop away from the main market square, on the other side of the market itself, is stuffed full of stuff and definitely one for rummagers.)

Anyway, on Saturday I bought:

a 100% cotton stripey cardigan. It’s a man’s one but fits me. It cost £3.45 (it should have been £3.50 but the woman was really low on change – I could offer a £10 note or £3.45 in change, using every last penny in my purse – she accepted the latter.)
a basket for £3. I’ve wanted a few baskets for a while – for foraging, for craft stuff, for kindling. This one, which only arrived in the shop while I was in there, is more of a traditional shopper type — I used it for my shopping while I was in Shipley and it was great — and will be perfect for kindling as it is, or I can line it with pretty fabric if I want to use it for yarn. Or I could keep it as a shopping basket. Decisions, decisions.
A giant measuring jug for 50p (not pictured), which was a great spot as I was on my way to buy a normal sized one for using as a chicken food scoop. (Up until now, we’ve just been using an old plastic tub but I thought we’d get a measuring jug to keep a better eye on how much food we’re putting in every day.) This bigger one means less trips between the feeder and the foodstore – great for lazy people like us.

Not a huge haul but the basket was a bargain – cheaper than the ones I’d seen on eBay and without having to pay for p&p, the cardigan will be useful for layering in the autumn and the jug is already in use.

Using the last of everything: how do you do it?

Posted by louisa on Thursday 8 July 2010 in frugal | 2 comments

This is cross-posted to my reusing & recycling blog, Recycle This, in its ‘Reduce This‘ category.

I’ve reached the end … of my shampoo bottle and our mayonnaise jar. And it made me wonder…

Every vaguely-frugal family has their own tricks for getting those last bits of gloop, sauce, oil or whatever out of jars and bottles – but what are your top tips?

Most bottles – from condiments to shampoo – are easily emptied by standing them upside down for a few hours.

Cooking sauces – jars/cans of tomatoes – are easy too: a little squish of water around to pull off the last of the sauce/juice then into the pan it goes to be reduced off.

Cooking oils bottles and jams & honey jars get left in a bowl of hot water to make the remaining contents a little runny and easier to pour out.

Metal squeezy tubes – like tomato puree and old school toothpaste – can be rolled up and squeezed, but the new plastic toothpaste tubes aren’t so rollable – cutting them open seems the only option.

What other methods do you use?

Chicken update: one week on

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 7 July 2010 in chickens, growing | 1 comment

I’m not going go on and on and on about the chickens but I thought I’d just do a quick update because it’s a week now since we got them – and we had a good bonding day yesterday.

The as-yet-still-unnamed girls seem to have settled in well. The first couple of nights, they needed a little encouragement to go to bed but now they go of their own accord. They were also sleeping in one of the nestbox in a big heap too but now they seem to be using the perches more.

Diet wise, they’ve shunned some of the scraps I’ve taken down – the bolted lettuce has been mostly rejected – but they like leftover pasta and nettles (which is good because there are *loads* in the field next to our house but I’m going to get better gardening gloves before I pick any more as the ones I had one yesterday weren’t good enough and ow-ee, stings all over). They’re eating borage leaves in this picture, which were also popular – handy since we’ve got a healthy patch of them in the herb bed.

John’s Grandma’s marrow flower fritters recipe

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 7 July 2010 in cooking, growing, recipes | 0 comments

I remember eating some of John’s Grandma’s marrow flower fritters at the very start of our relationship and so they always remind me of that exciting trying-new-things-with-a-new-person stage. I’d been thinking about making some with the courgette flowers we’ve had popping up over the last few weeks – when John’s mum arrived with a bag full of them last week.

While I encouraged our niece Mia to play ukelele and take photos of strange things, John and his mum whipped up a batch of fritters for lunch. Here’s the recipe – but unfortunately it’s a bit vague as it’s not been written down in their family for decades (if ever!) <- suggestions for revisions gratefully received!

Marrow Flower Fritters Recipe

Ingredients (to make roughly 6 palm-size fritters)
Self Raising Flour about 2oz/50g per egg
The aforementioned egg or eggs
About 6 marrow flowers per egg
Some courgette/zucchini (optional but makes it more of a meal)
Pinch of salt
A little black pepper
A little water
Oil for frying

Method
Tear up the marrow flowers into pieces – size is up to you – anything from confetti size to about half the original petal size. If your plants are already fruiting, you can add a thinly sliced courgette (zucchini) to the mix too.

Mix the flour, egg, salt and water together to achieve the consistency of American pancake/drop scone batter – slightly thicker than usual British pancake batter.

Mix the flowers (and courgette, if you’re using that) into the batter.

Heat up some oil in a frying pan for shallow frying. (John & his mum used less oil when they made them and they stuck & burnt a bit.)

Drop a dollop of the batter-with-flowers into the hot oil and fry until golden brown. Flip over to cook the other side and serve immediately. John & his mum ground some more salt onto the top of the cooked fritters but that made them too salty for me – I’d have much preferred more pepper on top instead.

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