Food for thought? Foody thoughts

Well well, it's been a while. We've just been a bimbling along in much the same way as ever. Admittedly I've felt that we've rather been falling off the edge a bit - I'm becoming tired and disillusioned with... well... everything, and Will's still plugging along with his work, nothing changing. But I feel a second wind now, like things will slot back into place and the wheels are starting to turn again. We know our direction and we're still headed in it.

The garden is still going and growing. Beans are coming thick and fast now, and we're also about to pick our first runner beans which is exciting. I'm spending less time out there now that it's all just getting on with its business, but it's really nice being able to regularly use vegetables and plants that have grown out there.

 The runner beans have finally stopped dropping their flowers without fruiting, which is a relief. I'd not encountered this before, but it looks as though it was because of the hot weather. As it's difficult to predict a hot summer in this country, it seems a bit risky to plant the beans later in the year next yeaar, so I don't know if there is a solution to this problem.

We, or perhaps just I, have been mourning the loss of a couple of tomato plants that we had to remove because they had a fungus. I'm not really sure what it was as so many of them looked the same when I looked it up, but the stems were going white and hairy, then dying and going brown, and some of the fruits also shrivelled and went brown. We removed the plants and a lot of the soil, but I'm a bit nervous about putting anything else in their place as I'm not sure if whatever it was can affect other plants? Fortunately the tomato plants on the opposite side haven't been affected, but I think next year I will grown in pots.

RIP

This aside everything in the garden is doing well. Between the beans and the new flowers the garden is filled with the bees, and either the tug of the season of the marigolds and gypsophila have worked because there are a lot less butterflies now as well, though I noticed a few eggs on the nasturtiums.

A few weeks ago we collected some ripe plums from a tree in Will's Dad's garden which is pretty good luck. We picked about three kilos, and I'm hoping to get some more soon. The majority of them I stoned and froze for later in the year when there are apples and I can use them for pies and jams. I discovered a worm in only one of them, so fortunately queazing was minimal this time.

I used the plums that I didn't freeze + a handful of our July blackberries to make a pie, and also made a tarte tatin of sorts, but didn't use any sugar. It was fine! You don't need it, and actually for a while, and still I'm really trying to make sure sugar sneaks into our diet as little as possible. Regardless of any recent health studies or government warnings, sugar just makes you feel crap. It's pretty instant - you're tired, slow, crabby, headachey. Anything that makes you feel so bad can't be good, and it's added into so many food products that it can be pretty much constantly topped up, so you forget how it feels to be without it. Much better, is how you feel. I also made a 'quick jam' last week with a couple of handfuls of blackberries and a spoonful of jaggery just cooked down. It set, and was sweet and purple, but not sickly - perfect!

 Will also recently learned from his stepmother how to make noodles (+ pasta) which is invaluable. It's something I couldn't have imagined would be so easy, and it now means that there's another food product that we don't have to buy - excellent as I don't think I've ever seen British Pasta in a shop.  Will bought a 20kg bag of Organic British wholemeal flour, so we're sorted.
It's simple enough that I think it's worth me just writing out the steps:

Make a soft dough from just water and plain or bread flour. I'm not sure what the proportions are, but I use my hand to mix as I add the water, and  you just want a dough that's soft + easy to work with, but not sticky, similar to pastry.
Coat the counter + your dough with flour. There is a LOT of flour added throughout the process, so keep it out + just keep adding it. Every time I roll the dough I flour it + flip it over + flour it again. Flour flour flour.
Roll your dough out into a rectangle. Roll dough quite thin, probably 2-3mm-ish, but it doesn't matter that much. Really jut as thick as you want your noodles to be - obviously the thicker they are the less fragile they'll be, though I've also found that they are a lot less delicate when you use wholemeal flour as well.
When you're done coat your rolled sheet of dough in flour so there is no chance it will stick to itself.

Fold the dough in half from top + bottom (so both end meet in the middle of the sheet). Fold again in the same way, and again if your sheet was quite big. This is just to make it into a smaller sausage-shape so it's easier to cut in a straight line. Chop the sausage the width that you would like your noodle to be - again, the wider they are the less likely they are to break. As you can see, we've used a meat cleaver as it's quite heavy + sharp. Any big knife will do.

Slide a chopstick underneath the middle of your sliced sausage and lift it up - as you do this the noodles should unravel. If they don't separate very easily give it a bit of a tap or a shake. (this is why it's important to have so much flour!!)

I usually have to roll the dough out in more than one batch because I'm making a lot of noodles + it's easier to work with smaller amounts. Just make sure the finished noodles are coated in flour so they don't stick to each other + put them in a bowl or on a greaseproof sheet while you do the rest.

Boil or fry the noodles for a few minutes, and voila!

 I have also made ravioli - slightly more time consuming, but very nice + no need to go to the shop! I filled mine with spinach + garlic and made a tomato + red wine sauce to go with.

One exciting day this week I also made a salad from the garden using our nasturtiums as well as radishes, perpetual spinach and spring onions. I've known for a while that you can eat nasturtiums, but haven't really tried it yet, just the odd leaf here or there, as I've been told it's like rocket which isn't my best favourite. I used about equal nasturtium leaves to spinach and found it much milder than rocket, and very green tasting.
We had the salad with homemade wholewheat pasta + garden beans + a couple of vegbox carrots.

And finally, in a happy turn of events we went for a walk in the local cemetery yesterday + found an apple tree teaming with dessert apples! We only had our pockets with us sadly, but still managed to grab a fair few, and I'm sure will go back soon with a more appropriate vessel. We are also planning to go for a run tonight (which will be our first since June!) and take bowls with us to collect some more blackberries for the freezer, so jam will soon be on its way.

Now, that's everything we've eaten for the last month or so! But what else? Well, as we're finally living in a place that actually feels like one, I've been having a lot of thoughts about community. Northfleet North, where we live, is a pretty deprived area and was chosen as one of the first 50 for the Big Local scheme - a ten year programme providing funding and support to improve communities.
At the moment I don't know that much about it, but I've been learning by talking to people at the food bank where I volunteer, and now hopefully through the No Walls Garden where I began helping out at yesterday, which is funded by the scheme. The Garden brings people who are out of work, out of prison, or recovering addicts together, and provides a space to be creative, get back into the mindset of work, and enjoy the fruits of their labour. The garden is open to all, as is its produce.

Although this is an area that apparently has so many problems, I've not yet lived in a place that has had such a strong flavour of 'it doesn't have to be this way' as Northfleet does. As I get more involved with local schemes, as I hope I will, I'm sure I'll be able to talk about it more, but even now I am completely struck by how involved so many people are, and how they don't feel that they have to take the marginalisation that this area seems to be experiencing lying down. It's equally disappointing, and horrifying however, how evident it is that once an area is 'poor' it's apparently a downward spiral as they are abandoned by authorities. It's not a surprise that so many people are feeling let down and disillusioned, and if this is how you are feeling it's very difficult to want or believe there can be change for the better. I believe that communities really are the most important thing - a strong community can be a great foundation for so many good things. The idea of community is certainly something that I will be coming back to, as it seems to dominate the way so many of us are living now - either community or a lack of.

I have also been thinking further about coffee. In my recent post about it I pretty much concluded that it is bad. However I left it at that, hoping that I would find a loophole that would alleviate my conscience and allow me to continue drinking it. As I said, I have one cup a day, and I really enjoy it. I still haven't really made much of a development on this, coffee is still bad, and I'm still drinking it. However I really do believe you should be the change you want to see, and I certainly don't continue drinking milk knowing that I=that's bad, so why coffee? So I'm going to make a concerted effort to cut down. A lot. Coffee, like bananas or anything else that's delicious and from far away should be an exotic treat, if that. I will continue my research and if anything satisfactory comes up then I'll be sure to update.

Finally, I will share the 'Live Slow Manifesto', a set of life-guidelines written by me and Will one drunken wurbly night a couple of years ago down the pub in Plymouth:

Make love, not money
Do nothing
Gather ye condiments while ye may
Don't eat Anyone
Never forget that people are human - even if it's hard to admit
Be gentle even when you're not treated gently
Trust yourself
Listen to the quieter voices
Be content with simplicity
Marmite
(Chris Isaak)
Mind your manners
Be careful, your words and actions may mean more than you think
Better be last and right than first and wrong.

Goodnight

Plants plants planh plah blah blah blah

Well we're back, we're married, and it' been a hectic (and very sunny & rainy apparently) couple of weeks culminating in a lot of work to be done in the garden.

Our wedding was wonderful - very very hot and sunny, lots of friends, and lot of homemade vegan food, and our honeymoon was double wonderful - a week in a cottage in Llandeilo.

Unfortunately when we got home our first discovery was that a couple of our cacti have been struck down by mealy bug, very upsetting as our plants have never had any diseases before, and this meant that after a quick bout of the Queasies we had to quarantine and spray the plants, and are now just waiting to see if that's enough. Luckily the new garden table is perfect as a temporary plant treatment zone.

Our second discovery was that in all this beautiful weather our garden had gone MAD. The beans are creeping off the end of their poles, weeds have taken over, the peas have disappeared off somewhere, and unfortunately my lack of foresight in firstly not thinning the cabbages before the honeymoon, and secondly not putting netting up, meant that we had to face a major invasion of caterpillars. After a second quick Quease I finally thinned out the, now fairly large, holey, and caterpillary, cabbages and Will and I put up some netting, so now we'll just have to see what happens.
Does anyone have a pesticide-free butterfly deterrent they can recommend? And has anyone found companion planting completely successful? We now have gypsophila and marigolds (talk about locking the stable door) and with future crops that's certainly something I think we'll make sure we do as a priority.

We harvested our first crop, or some of our first crop, which was our radishes and found them very  hot! I'm planning to plant another load in a pot this week as they were such a quick + easy to grow veg.

I've finally put some flowers in the garden to encourage bees and also just to make it a bit nicer thanks to very generous friends and family giving us gifts of money for the wedding, and already our garden is filled with buzzing. I also planted a bird bath that was from my Mum's garden as it's quite a catty area and I'm a little worried about putting water in it and encouraging birds into the garden (I know we have a bird house, but the only thing using that is a big spider).

 I also planted out a few leeks, kale and beetroot so with any luck we'll have a few more vegetables this winter. We're not even approaching producing enough to be self-sufficient in vegetables, and won't be able to in this space, but any step closer is pretty exciting at the moment. We were also able this week to go blackberrying after Will got home from work, and collected a Kilo and a half of berries with a lot more to pick  next week. We also found a couple of plum tress to go back to in a month or so, so we're planning to freeze a lot and have jam and pies for the rest of the year!

Finally, a surprise gift for the house from the husband arrived today - very exciting if you are me, which I am.

Now, I'd better go and find a job. Morrissey Sympathises.

Pants, plants, bread and shed. And everything else.

So here we are, we are connected once again and back in the world. We are moved into our new house and are settling in well so far.
Since the move, as a result of all this time on my hands, I’ve taken a fairly hyperactive approach to living a simpler, more ‘hand-made’ life, and have spent my time scurrying around fixing, cooking, cutting, planting, sorting, baking, bathing and sleeping. So as a slightly chaotic first entry, all I'll try to do is document a few of the things I've been up to.

One of the first things I made sure I did, as the year is creeping on, is dig and plant the garden. We only have a small space here, so it'll be an experiment to find out how much, and how efficiently we can grow in it. Fortunately it seems as though, at this time of year, certainly, most of the garden is in sun for most of the day, so I just dived in and dug a couple of beds and got sowing. As it was already mid-June we were fairly limited with what we could plant from seed, and some of the things I've planted I'm pushing it a bit with, but I'm hoping very much that we should have at least a few successful crops, and as the year goes on I can extend the beds and plant things at the right time. Will is also doing his best in the evenings to get the shed up, and it's been really nice establishing ourselves in a garden again.

I spent a dull day fixing a huge pile of Will's pants and other garments, and found a really good solution to hems that have completely disintegrated, which on many of Will's pants they had, and that is using old ties. Let's face it - ties are useless, nobody wants them. They are however pretty sturdy, have a range of widths on every one, and conveniently already have a sharp crease in them. Luckily, for reasons unknown, I've been collecting them for the past few years from charity shops with an inkling that they might come in handy one day. Just cut away the old hem and slap a new, ready-made one on. Alright, so these pants might not be winning any prizes for being the smartest undergarments, but they are pretty striking and should at least last a few more years.

(Sorry Will for putting your pants on the internet)

As we’ve not had the phone or internet we haven’t been able to order our usual organic vegbox, and have also not had a weekend to get out and find a farm shop or wholefood shop to buy our dry goods from, so have had to make a trip out to an out of town supermarket. We were pleased to find that we were able to buy entirely from the store’s organic range, however without the internet or books available we still felt unsure as to whether we were being responsible in our choices of what foods to buy or not, and this is something that needs work. As well as this, all of the food came with an alarming amount of non-recyclable plastic packaging. Something that we are working on though is also cutting down on our portion sizes and making food last better, and this is something that having a regular vegbox has really helped with, in that we are having to ‘budget’ our vegetables for the week ahead and not be wasteful.

I have also spent a couple of happy weeks baking loaf after stupendous loaf of bread, and making massive amounts of houmous from dried British Fava beans (courtesy of Hodmedods, a superb company from whom we bought two enormous bags of dried beans and peas last year - and which we're still working through). Something that we've really been sticking to is using as little energy as possible when cooking. This has meant using the slow cooker a lot, and at times when we've had to use the cooker or oven, filling it to make most use of the power. This is another thing that has made us aware of how much food we are consuming and how best to make it last, and it's been a new approach that's been easy to settle into.

Rye don't we do this more often?

I will share a recipe as I'm here. It's not my own and I can't take any credit for it, but it's one I've used again and again, and is not only fool-proof, but perhaps the quickest, easiest bread recipe in the world. It's the Grant Loaf, so called because it was invented by Doris Grant, a lady well ahead of her time singing the praises of unprocessed wholefoods and condemning processed carbohydrates in the 1950s and 60s, and whose book Dear Housewives I fortuitously came across a few years ago at a church sale.
This is a slightly updated recipe on her original, and uses dried yeast.
In place of the sugar I use either jaggery or molasses, and both work well. Other than that I follow it to the letter. This recipe makes a really delicious, though quite dense bread.

No need to kneed

I also visited the local library last week and took out Michael Pollan's In Defence of Food, which has had me totally absorbed, and shocked by how completely I've been sucked into the ideals of 'nutritionism', and am hoping to soon get my hands on The Omnivore's Dilemma as well. Although I have for the past few years taken food quite seriously, it's becoming evident that I've been acting somewhat misguidedly and am desperate now to learn everything I can, but to also really start listening to myself. As Pollan quite rightly points out, our parents' parents, and their parents didn't need government guidelines and fancy packaging boasting the nutritional content of 'food products' to nourish themselves, and I'm not sure I do either.

Anyway, that's probably enough for now. From now on I’m hoping to blog on a semi-regular basis with updates on what’s going on with us and changes we’ve made, things that I’ve learned and the impact they’ve had. For now this is just a bit of a catch up and our starting point, although already I feel we’ve made more of an effort to use less and buy more consciously where we have to buy at all. We have also been discussing things that we can do in future to improve our ability to grow our own food, store food, and make things that we need rather than buy. We also have our wedding coming up in just over three weeks so there will be a vast amount of cooking and making needed for that, so things will be a little hectic around here for a bit.

-Jess