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...

Big portions vs food waste: a dilemma

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 6 July 2010 in eating, frugal | 1 comment

While going about our chores, we had lunch in Saltaire on Saturday. We only wanted something light so got sandwiches – but when they arrived, the plates piled high with food – enormous sandwiches, stacks of salad and a generous portion of homemade coleslaw. It’s not often we’re overfaced by food portions but it happened there.

Big portions are obviously good from a being-cheap point of view – if we go back there again, we’ll half the cost by sharing and still probably have enough to eat – and people feel better about paying the (frankly quite expense) prices if they get so much food they can’t eat it. But we both ended up leaving food. Since they were covered in salad dressing and sandwich fillings, the stuff we left probably won’t be composted (if the cafe composts their leftovers at all) so our meal generated food waste that will be sent to landfill.

I like food and I like getting as much for my money as possible but I don’t like stuff going to waste. I might have been happy as a frugal bunny but sad as a waste-reducing greenie.

Has anyone been in a similar situation? Any advice? Where does your preference lie – in perceived value for money or minimal waste?

First courgettes from the garden

Posted by louisa on Monday 5 July 2010 in cooking, growing | 0 comments

We picked our first courgettes from the garden on Friday night – the first thing we’ve harvested other than herbs and salad from the garden this year.

They’d been ready for picking for a couple of days but we weren’t ready to eat them – but on Friday, we picked some to have in our Mexican-ish dinner. I thought they tested a bit more courgettey than normal and stayed firmer during cooking. John was too busy cramming his mouth with nachos to say much about anything. Here, they’re frying with some cumin seeds and garlic – yum!

These were the first batch of seeds I planted – an early fruiter, although I’ve lost the seed packet so I don’t know exactly what they were. We’ve got five plants of those though and another five of the second batch, which have flowers on but no real fruit yet — there is a strong possibility we’ll be overrun with courgettes later in the summer!

More experiments with wild garlic seed pods

Posted by louisa on Friday 2 July 2010 in eating, wild food | 1 comment

After the pickling success a few weeks ago, I wanted to find other ways to use wild garlic seed pods for the year.

Experiment 1: Mint and wild garlic seed pods pesto
*Everyone* makes pesto from wild garlic leaves so I decided to give it a go with the pods and mint leaves. (After the pickling, I, randomly, went to clean my teeth and noticed that the lingering smell of that chivey garlic on my hands mingled wonderfully with my Sensodyne – and I wondered if that wasn’t a perfect jumping off point for my George’s Marvellous Pesto experiments. As luck would have it, our mint has gone mad this year so I had a lot of leaves to work with.)

The seed pods have a much lower water content than leaves so when blasted together, it was very dry and needed quite a bit of olive oil to make it ooze. Although it’s supposed to be pretty decent oil, the stuff I used added an unpleasant note to the paste – even over the super super strong flavour of the garlic and the mint. All in all, it was a bit overwhelming.

Verdict: Fail.

Economics of having chickens: getting started

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

After 18 months of waiting, we *finally* got some chickens on Tuesday. This post is the first in what I imagine will be an occasional series about the economics of having chickens.

Despite my tight-fisted frugal heart, having chickens at home isn’t about getting cheap eggs. It’s about getting good eggs from well treated and well fed chickens. It’s about food metres and not food miles. It’s about using up an otherwise hard to make productive bit of ground. It’s about introducing more diversity into our garden and harvesting poop for fertiliser. And it’s about living with some fascinating pseudo-dinosaurs – learning about them, looking after them and laughing at them because they’re such fun, odd things. But while those things are almost priceless, they do have a price.

Back when I first got giddy about the idea of having chickens, I read a great page about the economics of having chickens – breaking it down to the cost per egg over the first year (when there are higher capital costs but potentially high egg production) and in future years (smaller capital cost, slowing egg production etc). It was great – but can I find it now? No. I hate Google sometimes. But I’m going to work out something similar for myself and this post is the first stage of that.

Chickens!

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 30 June 2010 in chickens | 1 comment

Yesterday, I alluded to needing a quick dinner because we were going to be busy doing exciting things (the casserole was yummo, btw) – well, the exciting thing was this: we got chickens!

We’ve been planning to get them for about 18 months and a chicken-facilitating garden was on my desirable-but-not-necessary list when we were looking for our house. In anticipation, I read loads about them and went on a course about keeping chickens in April last year, and got super excited about having them ASAP – then the house purchase got delayed and delayed and delayed… When we eventually moved in, it was late autumn and we couldn’t do that much in the garden. Then our plan from just having a random coop and a wire fence around the bottom of the garden evolved into levelling up a section of earth and building Fort Chicken (pictured below) – and, well, we’re slow and disorganised, with a billion other jobs needing doing at the same time.

But anyway, anyway, they’re here now. We went for point of lays – more expensive than hatching eggs or day old chicks but better for first timers and when we expand/replace in the future, we can look at those options, letting our existing chickens do the hard child rearing work for us*. Following a recommendation from a friend, we went to Edward Boothman near Silsden to get them and brought four home last night. Fort Chicken’s coop can apparently hold 15(!) chickens but we think the space in there and the run is more suited to 6-8 — we’ll get settled in with these girls then get the others as POL in the late summer/autumn (spring chickens come of age).

These girls are ISA Brown/Warrens – Edward’s recommendation for first timers as they’re good layers (300-325ish a year each!) and have friendly personalities. I’d like a few different types eventually but these are good to start with. Names to be confirmed when we get to know them but likely to be either chemical elements (if we follow our main pet naming scheme) or Buck Kar, Stanley Chicken (my best friend’s grandfather’s name), Warren Buckland (a lecturer of mine at uni) and Warren’s Song, Pt. 7.

Bargain dinners – lamb curry and lamb, chorizo & chickpea casserole

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 29 June 2010 in cooking, eating | 1 comment

I intended to write more about wild garlic pods today but we cooked up such a bargainacious storm last night I can’t resist telling you about it.

I spotted a perfectly-fine looking 2kg shoulder of lamb in the reduced-to-clear section of the supermarket a few weeks ago. It was less than an hour before closing and the shop was pretty empty to they’d marked it down from £12 to £1.35 (it had originally been on offer at £12 too!). A 2kg joint for £1.35! The reduced meat gods were looking out for us that day – one of the staff had wrapped a couple of packs together with the sticker price of 75p – the top pack was ox tail, a less observant person might have thought the bottom pack was too. It wasn’t, it was £8-worth of sirloin steak! We ate the steak the following evening but the lamb went straight into the freezer until a time we fancied a nice roast.

I got it out to defrost yesterday and fully intended to slow roast it yesterday afternoon but work was a bit frantic and it just didn’t happen. By dinner time, we needed something quicker than a 5-hours-in-the-oven roast so I decided to hack it up instead and let John whip up a curry with it instead. There was so much meat though that I had enough to make a casserole with it too – a slow cooked one so I could use up the tougher meat.

John’s made a few excellent Achars recently but lacking yoghurt today, made a jalfrezi instead. Then forgot to add the egg, the numpty. We’ll add it when we have the leftovers though and add some more spices to freshen it up again.

Pickling wild garlic (Ramsons) seed pods

Posted by louisa on Monday 28 June 2010 in eating, wild food | 1 comment

I love wild garlic. It was the first wild food I really tried and the one I’m still most comfortable with given how easily identifiable it is, and how it makes the world green when everything else is still hitting the snooze alarm after winter.

Usefully, the woods next to our house are *filled* with it, more than anywhere else I’ve seen – we’ve even got a sizeable patch growing at the bottom of our garden, which made it very easy to forage for a few handfuls of leaves at a time when I wanted to fling them in a recipe. Unfortunately though, like when you have most things in abundance, you don’t think about the time when they’re not going to be there any more – and I didn’t think about preserving any leaves until it was pretty much too late.

I’ve got a baggie full of stems in the freezer though – for using like spring onions in stir frys – and I was already thinking about how to preserve some seed pods when ManUpATree Nick Weston published a post on pod pickling. Very convenient timing!

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