Thought For Food

It's five years since I did my 'Live Below the Line' challenge in 2017 and reading my blog posts from back then and considering how I've cooked and eaten since, I'm struck by how much it irreversibly changed the way I shop, cook and eat. I don't think my household was particularly wasteful of food, for example, but now we waste a good deal less. We weren't self-sufficient then, by any means, in terms of the food we grew ourselves, and we aren't now, but we've expanded where we can and have learned to make substantially better use of what we do grow. I shop a great deal more cannily and selectively. Better for the planet; better for the purse. 

Of course, a great deal has changed in the wider world in those five years and more recently we have experienced some 21st C problems with food supplies that back in 2017 would have looked as if they only belonged in the pages of history books discussing life in WW2. Difficulties with obtaining flour and yeast for bread-baking during the pandemic for starters. 

Most shortages and supply problems in the UK during the pandemic were relatively short-lived and caused by panic-buying and / or temporary transportation problems although they were a shock to the system nonetheless and certainly for me, they were a first taste of rationing, not for an idle challenge, but for real. 

One of the enduring memories I will always have from 2020 will be of marking my remaining bags of bread flour with allocated not-to-be-used-before dates in order to spread what we had over a period of time to make it last, for example, and starting a new sourdough culture (as so many others did) when commercial baking yeast became unobtainable. That sourdough culture that I began out of necessity on 13th May 2020 is still going, I'm pleased to say. He is known as 'Fuzzypeg' and has turned out to be the most sturdy and energetic of all the sourdough cultures I've experimented with. 

One of Fuzzypeg's recent efforts -
just a simple, straightforward, white sourdough loaf
but with a lovely, crispy crust, a nice open crumb and a well-rounded, un-sour, wheat flavour.

Fuzzypeg himself - still raring to go 2 years on!

Now, with the cost of living generally sky-rocketing and the impact of the war in Ukraine, we are facing new challenges if we want to eat healthily and well without costing the earth (either literally or metaphorically). The price of wheat on the world commodities market has already spiked and food prices across the board are rising or have already risen significantly; rationing of cooking oil has already started in several UK supermarkets and there are rumours of other impending shortages caused by rising energy prices that are discouraging farmers from growing out-of-season crops like tomatoes under glass. Add to that the rising costs of living on other fronts and almost every household in the country is looking to put food on the table more frugally and sustainably. I was reminded of my food challenge by the fact that it is World Hunger Day on 28th May and the question floated into my head as to whether it would even be feasible to repeat the challenge five years on when the price of pretty much everything is higher, and the 'Live Below the Line' budget was stringent, to say the least, in the first place.

But today there are additional reasons for many of us to see how far we can get with how little and I thought I would give it a go. 

I am not sure how many people still read blogs like this one but I will post progress of my efforts on here because it helps to feel accountable.  

Some of the experience may turn out to be a bit déjà vu - there's no point in reinventing the wheel after all, and my basic food tastes haven't fundamentally changed but hopefully there will be some new discoveries to add to what I did five years ago.

I'm going to repeat the approach I adopted then of calculating the cost of my ingredients from a wider range of foods than I would have at my disposal if I simply went out and spent £6 on new ingredients for my six days of £1-a-day menus as this feels more realistic for the way I operate in the kitchen and as before, my intention is to find some joy in the experience rather than simply to survive.

My basic ground rules will remain unchanged from those of five years ago - food collected from the garden, or foraged from the  hedgerow, I will regard as free. That includes eggs from our nine bantams although, as before, I shall only use eggs as a cooking ingredient not to make a whole meal out of. Water from the tap, any ingredient that works out as costing less than a penny and anything that would otherwise be regarded as waste and destined for the compost, or food bin, but which has been turned into food, I shall also regard as free. And I am only calculating costs in whole numbers so anything after the decimal point won't count. As it was in 2017, this is a slightly unsatisfactory compromise but I've made my peace with it because it's pragmatic and still encourages creative ingenuity with very little which is what this kind of challenge is all about.

As I discovered last time, some preliminary preparation is useful and eases the quite considerable workload in a project of this kind. So, as well as making a sheaf of scribbled costings and menu plans, I've been building a few culinary foundations. Making dandelion honey again, or 'cramaillotte' as it's called in France, where the idea originated, is one of these. 

In 2017 it was a fortnight later in May when I turned my hand to this and I was hard pushed to locate enough flowers - I've done a bit better this time as there are still plenty.

And this time, I used a sachet of pectin, as per the original recipe, to get a better set so hopefully it will be slightly more versatile than my rather runny version of 2017. 

The ingredients I used for this batch are as follows:

480 dandelion flowers picked from the garden and a couple of steep, grassy verges down the lane - free!

1500ml tap water - free!

a handful of dried tangerine peel collected from tangerines eaten at Christmastime - free!

2 lemons (27p) from a bag of four 'Wonky lemons' costing 54p from Aldi

1 sachet of pectin (55p) from a pack of three costing £1.65 from Ocado

1 kg sugar (70p) from an enormous 5 kg sack of granulated sugar costing £3.50 from Sainsburys. 

The cost of the whole batch works out therefore at £1.52 in total, ie 8p per 100g or less than 1p for 10g. 

The method I used is exactly the same as in 2017 - see my post here for details, if you're interested. It's made a lot more this time because of the much higher number of flowers and correspondingly larger quantity of water - 1.690 kg to be precise. 

And encouragingly, it's worked out, five years on, as costing almost exactly the same. The 2017 version costs just a penny less per 500g. I'm even using the same jar, I see! 

As I found before, the flavour of this is very like real honey - flowery and aromatic - but very substantially cheaper. I am hoping to use it, as before, on porridge and as a sweetener in cooking. 

Since 2017, I've discovered a couple of other thrifty sweeteners that, in addition to cutting cost, also reduce how much sugar a dish actually requires which is healthier too - more of them in due course!

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