Cooking ingredients: where to spend and where to save

Following on from her kitchen equipment list, here are my chef sister's suggestions on how to eat well, where to economise, and where not to, when food shopping:

It is obvious and much repeated but if you only shop in season you’ll get better value for money. Buy English strawberries only in mid-season and you can eat them every day. Asparagus just coming in is expensive, but hold on a bit for the price to go down.

Investigate the end of line baskets at supermarkets, they often have interesting random vinegars etc in their fancy foreign muck sections which don’t sell, so end up going cheap. The same goes for bin-ends for wine - you can find some interesting things.

Do what peasants around the world have been doing forever – just use a little meat in a hotpot/stew/whatever as a flavouring. One of the loveliest things I ate on a very greedy holiday in Andalucia was a stew of mostly potato, onion and pepper, with just a little pork, all cooked in delicious stock. The potatoes took on all the meaty flavour as they cooked.

Do not scrimp on:

Bread – it is such a major part of our diet but most people make do with the dullest, cheapest stuff.  Don’t put up with it! Buy the nicest you can, and then ‘something on toast’ is transformed.

Pasta – don’t ask me why, but supermarket value brand stuff is just not as good as more expensive versions.

Baked beans and tomato ketchup – only Heinz will do in my opinion.

Potatoes – have realized why the value bags are cheap – they sometimes seem to be a random selection of diff varieties and all cook at different speeds, so you end up with a pan of falling-apart and rock hard. Disaster.

Kitchen equipment recommendations from a chef

As mentioned in an earlier post, I asked my sister, a Leiths' trained chef, for her suggestions on where to spend money on kitchen equipment.  Here is her, surprisingly short, list.

Kitchen Equipment List

Knives! One big chef’s knife, one small paring/office for veg cutting, and one steel for sharpening – serrated is also useful for tomatoes and fruit, but not vital.

1 big saucepan, one small, both stainless steel, not non-stick, the best quality you can afford – they will last. A handle that isn’t screwed on, is part of the pan, or it will start wobbling and fall off.

A good big chopping board, wood is good as long as you don’t worry about hygiene! Just don’t use it for raw meat, get a plastic one and keep it only for that.

A frying pan – opinion is divided on this one. I like a good, solid non-stick one which, I admit, won’t last forever unless you’re militant about no metal utensils and watch other people like a hawk if they use it…Or some serious types get e.g cast iron and just season it very carefully. Never seem to manage it myself.

A good large mixing bowl; lightweight metal is good for most things.

A nice big balloon whisk, electric hand whisk also v useful., or see below if you have the funds… 

[Digital scales: I recently had to reprimand Penny for using old-fashioned scales for baking.  They just aren't accurate enough for cake-making...]

More extravagant items include

A lovely, solid, and supposedly lifetime-lasting Le Creuset. A casserole for 6-8 people is probably your best bet, in whichever colour you won't get bored of.

A Kitchenaid or Kenwood mixer. Kitchenaid is my preference, but Kenwoods are known to be v reliable and long-lasting, though just don’t have the glamour factor.

Unseasonal home-made baked beans

It seems a bit unseasonal now, as it is really hot - for England - here at the moment, but last week I had a go at making baked beans in the slow cooker, something I had been meaning to try for a while.  It worked rather well; recipes abound, but I chose one from the useful site  All Recipes. Just don't do what I did initially when making the beans and forget to add tomato ketchup and mustard for the last hour of cooking, as without these flavourings the treacle flavour is overpowering, and the dish tastes rather odd.  Leftover beans went nicely with pasta and some grated cheese.

Back to reality with a bump - and a general catch-up

We got back from holiday at the end of last week.  The day we returned to the UK, the sun was blazing, much as it had been as we travelled home from Italy, so the transition to home was quite easy.  (We took the overnight train from Venice; a great experience which I thoroughly recommend, by the way.)  Yesterday and today, however, it has been raining - a lot.  Oh, the joys of the English summer.  

Now we are home, we are trying to readjust to not eating out,  to having chores to do, and of course to work.  We're back on our £50 a week food budget, and it is actually quite nice to be cooking for ourselves again, although I'm occasionally missing the seafood pasta and prosecco of Venice.

I'm planning to start a food growing project shortly, hopefully when the weather improves a little.  It is rather late in the year,  of course, but I didn't want to leave seeds un-watered while we were away.   

Another summer plan is to do some fruit picking, to make jam and for freezing.  Strawberries are available now, and gooseberries and other berries are coming soon; my sister made amazing gooseberry jam last year, so I am hoping that she and I will make some together this year.

Finally, J and I both read quite a bit while away; one book that I have not read yet, but which I have been discussing with J. since he read it, is 'The Spirit Level', a book about equality, of which more in due course.  In the meantime, because of it we may change some of our shopping habits, and have already opened a new bank account.

Smart shopping tips revisited

Thanks to those who commented.  From feedback received, my own ideas and habits, and some reading I have done, I have come up with the following:

• Buy-one-get-one-frees: only buy if you have cash, space to store, and the items won't go off before they can be used.
  
• If you haven't much space to store bulk-bought items, consider clubbing together with friends or family to buy them between you, and share the benefit of the discounts.
  
• Consider own brands vs branded items: compare the price per 100g, but generally own brands will be cheaper, and taste just as good.
  
• Plan meals, even roughly, before you go shopping, bearing in mind how many meals you need to cater over the week, and buy only what you need for those.
  
• If you eat a lot of ready meals, consider cutting those down and cooking more; this will be cheaper as well as healthier.  Something on toast, e.g beans and poached egg, will cost less and be quick to prepare, as an alternative to a ready meal.
  
• Keep a running shopping list on the fridge and add to it as you run out of things, so you don't forget anything when you go shopping.  
  
• Don't go shopping when you are tired, hungry, or in a hurry.
  
• Set a cash budget for food per week; take cash out at the beginning of the week, and use this to pay for groceries until it runs out. (This will help with budgeting, and also it is psychologically harder to spend cash than use cards.)
  
• Try to last one day longer than you think you can manage without going food shopping, and make that last meal with what you have left in the cupboard.  
  
• Try and make enough food for two or three meals, in one go: e.g make enough spaghetti bolognaise to turn this into chilli the following day, or freeze half of what you make for another day.
  
• Pick-your-own fruit and vegetables when it is cheapest, and store in the freezer or use to make jams or chutney.
  
• Even if you don't do PYO, then still buy fruit and vegetables that are in season.
  
• Keep cleaning products to the basics: supermarket own-brands will generally be much cheaper and no less effective than branded products.
  
• Buy Christmas paper, cards, and birthday cards when you see them on special offer, if you can store them.  (Or make your own.)
  
• Check washing instructions before you buy new clothes, and avoid those which need dry-cleaning.
  
• Buy shoes with soles which can be repaired or replaced.
  
• Sign up to receive nectar or clubcard points, don't buy things in order to get extra points, however. 
• Processed cereals are expensive and not very nutritious; porrige or homemade muesli are filling, cheap and healthy.
  
• Avoid, or minimise, fizzy drinks.  Squash, or one nice idea I read, lemon juice and sugar, make an alternative soft drink.
• Compare prices online before you go shopping, e.g at http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/
• Watch the cash register and look at your receipt before you leave the shop, to avoid mistakes.
  
• If you are going to the shop to buy a pint of milk, don't pick up a basket; if you are planning to buy a few items, take a basket rather than a trolley.
  
• Toiletries will likely be more expensive in a supermarket than chemist.
  
• Check whether loose or packaged fruit and vegetables are cheaper; loose generally cost less.
  
• If you do buy bags of fruit and vegetables then weigh them to ensure you are getting the correct weight.
• Instead of cooking large portions of meat, cook pasta, rice or beans to accompany a small amount of meat. 
  
• If you are a meat-eater, try having a few meatless days a week.
• PS - If carrier bags are charged for where you shop, take your own.  Otherwise, use the free ones for reuse as bin liners.

Smart shopping: any good tips?

As part of the financial capability scheme I'm volunteering for, I've been asked to prepare a 40 minute presentation on 'smart shopping'.  I need to get this done before going on holiday in ten days' time, and am quite busy with various other projects in the meantime.  While I gather my thoughts, I thought I'd - rather cheekily - invite suggestions....  I would love to hear from you if you have any suggestions for tips you think I should include.  The audience will be a group of older people living in sheltered housing; the main things they need to pay for from their pensions are food, clothing, entertainment, and Christmas and birthday presents.

My sister, and spending money on food and kitchen equipment

My sister has been staying us for the last couple of days, with her baby girl, as my brother-in-law, whom I interviewed in an earlier post, has gone away on a job for a few weeks.  

As I may have mentioned before, my sister is a - very good, though I'm possibly rather biaised -chef.  She is therefore slightly horrified, though I think interested, by our £50 a week food challenge, as her standards of food and cooking are rather higher than ours.  We are still sticking to our food budget, by the way, although occasionally it is a bit of a stretch.   

My sister and I talk quite a bit about food, what is worth spending money on, and where economies are feasible.  Despite her training and general preference for use of the best quality ingredients, my sister and I are both influenced by our grandmothers' wartime and austerity Britain recipes.  Yesterday, we attempted to recreate one grandmother's flapjack, which had a treacle-y, chewy toffee-ish texture that we have not found in flapjacks eaten since.  We read through dozens of recipes, then made two batches, using slightly different proportions of fat, sugar and oats, in an attempt to create the perfect flapjack.  We do not yet know if we've achieved it, as one thing we can recall about our grandmother's method was that it involved leaving the flapjack to go chewy for several days before being eaten.

I've asked my sister to contribute some thoughts in future posts on economical eating, areas where she feels it is particularly worthwhile to pay for high-quality ingredients, and also to comment on the best, minimal, kitchen equipment she can recommend, and where it is worth spending on high quality. Whenever she cooks at my house, I'm always a bit ashamed of my rather blunt knives and scrappy baking tins, and so once she's formulated her list, I'm hoping to persuade her to come shopping with me to help me choose a few new pieces of equipment.  

More to follow in due course...

Lessons from February

I like the way many personal finance blogs, particularly US ones, include a goals and net worth update at the end of each month. I'm a bit too inhibited to do the same, even anonymously, but this month felt I'd learnt various financial lessons, and had a few small successes, which I thought I would document. This may even become a habit....

Here's my list:

• Joined a local oil-buying consortium and cancelled my oil direct debit
  
• Continued using up toiletries, cleaning products and freezer contents
  
• Kept within our £50 a week food budget
  
• Saved most of my freelance earnings
  
• Experimented successfully with life without a car for a few weeks. (The experiment continues, beyond my control...)
  
• Learned that if an oyster card is not swiped firmly enough, the gate may open, but extra money will be deducted from the card as a penalty. (I got most of the extra few pounds re-credited when I queried how my card could be down to a £0 balance after a very few uses, but am not sure I have heard many things as nonsensical as this explanation. Others may not be aware of this quirk in the system....)
  
• Was charged interest in a catch-22 type situation by my credit card - but managed to get it deducted after pointing out the unfairness of the charge. (I had been asked to re-register my payment details after a new card was issued, did so immediately, but not in time for the next payment due date, and my payment was therefore inevitably late.)
  
• Discovered the dangers of buying cheap car insurance through a broker. Next time, I will check feedback on car insurers before renewing, rather than just going for the cheapest quote, as my current insurer was, for many days, completely failing to progress an insurance claim. (It is now ongoing again, after much pestering from me, thank goodness!)
  
• Learnt much about the handling of debts, budgeting, and the UK benefits system, as part of my financial capability training course. These budgeting tools from Martin Lewis's site were recommended to me; I intend to try some of them out in the

The cupboards are feeling bare...

I've mentioned that we've implemented a cash food jar each week; although we've managed to stay within budget - £50 - every week so far, one of the side effects is that we have been using up some of the odds and ends in our larder and freezer, to keep within our cash limit.

However, I'm now starting to panic slightly at the fact that our stores of food are running unusually low; I suppose that the only time this would actually matter would be if we were snowed in, or overtaken by some other natural disaster, and  I think that if that happened, we'd find enough to eat for quite a few - probably rather dull - meals. In the meantime, I should probably try and get used to our new 'just-in-time' system.....

P.S I am not sure whether £50 a week is a lot or a little, for two people (and one cat)?  It is definitely less than we were spending before we started this system.  We have included small-scale entertaining and wine in that figure, and lunches, as we pack these ourselves.   Any meals out come out of our 'fun' jar.

Japanese Women and their secret savings

I've long been intrigued by the fact that in Japan, it is reportedly standard for women to control the family budget, giving their husbands pocket money.

Having read some more about Japanese women and money, I've learnt a few things:

• Japanese housewives tend to control the family budget, as this is seen as part of the role of the homemaker.
• Food shopping in Japan is often done on a 'little and often' basis. This seems to be partly because of an emphasis on the freshness of food, limited storage space in small flats, but also because of a concern about avoiding waste. It seems that the Japanese would rather pay slightly more per unit, than bulk buy and then throw food away.
• Credit cards are much less-used than in the West.
• Women have traditionally made savings from their shopping budgets which are kept secret from their husbands, and the rest of their family. This money, called 'hesokuri' which may eventually be used to buy stocks, or property, is often kept in cash, in their homes.
  
• When couples marry, they are both expected to have saved money, often through living at home with their parents while earning, until they marry.
  

See recent Bloomberg articles, however, on the fact that Japanese women have had to dip into their savings, over the last year.

Planning for a decreased, or decreasing, income

One of the reasons I started this blog was because I had decided to change jobs, and do something different. (More on that another time.) I have now left my full-time corporate job, and am working as part-time freelancer for my old employer. So far, the resultant drop in income has been manageable, but I am preparing for the fact that in a few months' time, I may well have no income at all for a time. And my husband works freelance, currently on a contract until mid-May. And when he finishes that, we would like to take advantage of some free time by going travelling for a few weeks.... Hence my heightened interest in saving money.

So far, we've made a few changes, which I've written about here:

-Trying to keep track of everything we spend, on excel. I think that we spend less as a result, and it is a useful exercise.

-Starting a weekly food jar. I mentioned this briefly, and will no doubt write about it more at some point, but allocating a set amount of cash, and using that to pay for all food, is something we've been doing for the past few weeks. So far, it is working well and we have stayed within budget each week, and quite enjoyed the process.

-Reviewing all our regular outgoings more stringently, and making another attempt to cut, or reduce, those that we think aren't really necessary. (Having read more about pet insurance, I cancelled that, as it is true that I cannot envisage a situation where we would be able to actually claim on it. However, the cat may now develop a rare disease needing expensive treatment....)

-Saving as much as possible, and in my case making full use of my ability to contribute to a pension, while I can.

I do think that having more time to spend on watching our outgoings and planning ahead, and so far being happier and less tired, means that we 'need' less to live on at the moment. Fewer meals out, less impulsive shopping to cheer me up, more time to plan meals and so on.

If we do end up living on one income for a while, then I'm determined that even if things are a bit tight in other areas, we a) keep allowances, even if they are small ones, for personal spending, and b) that we both keep paying into pension schemes. (His is automatic, and a much more valuable scheme than mine in terms of benefits, but I will keep up a contribution of some kind even if I am not earning.)

Reporting back on the crock pot

A week or two ago, I mentioned the crock pot we had got for Christmas. As we have been away quite a bit lately, we have only used it a few times. However, we have made two batches of chilli in it. The first time, I used a recipe which didn't involve browning the meat or onions before adding to the pot, and in which the crock pot was left on the low setting for eight hours. The result was edible, but rather insipid in taste and appearance, and generally rather disappointing.

The second time, Jian browned the meat and onions first, started off the cooking on high for half an hour, in the interests of speeding up the cooking time, as well as improving the flavour, and then turned it down to low for several hours. This worked really well, and smelt delicious as it was cooking, which was nice for me, as I was working from home that day.

The only other recipe we have tried is a 'pulled pork' recipe - not something I'd tried before - which we found on the internet. This involved no pre-cooking, but the meat and vegetables were cooked on high for the whole cooking time, for four hours or so. This was also very good, though a slightly longer cooking time would have made it even better.

In summary, so far the crock pot seems worth having, although it is another gadget to store...

2010 so far: snow, food, and financial resolutions

It has been a while since I posted anything, partly because of the distractions of Christmas and the New Year, and also because of a week away last week - of which more later.

Now I am back to reality, with the slight excitement of the snow - which I for one am still enjoying - to mitigate the usual January flatness.

In terms of goals for 2010, I haven't made any specific financial resolutions, as I have noticed after many years of error that as soon as I make something a resolution, I lose all desire to do it. Instead, we are trying out some new ways of doing things.

One thing, that I started in November and am going to try and continue for a few more months, mentioned in the budgeting article, is the practice of recording all our expenses on an excel spreadsheet. This does have a slightly preventative effect as far as spending is concerned, but also provides information on where small to medium sums are going each month. (I'm noting where the money was spent, as well as its category.)

A second new thing, which I've read about in various places recently, is the idea of an envelope system for expenditure. We are already using virtual envelopes - specially-named jars within our mortgage offset account - to save up for cars, holidays and fun, but I thought that this was impractical for food, as we would be constantly transferring small amounts of money in and out of the current account for each food purchase.

So instead, we have started a cash jar for food, which we will top up with a set amount each week. The idea is to see if we spend less money because we are using cash, which feels more real than cards, and also because we know that once the jar is empty we can't spend anything more until the next week's money becomes available. This is a new initiative for this week, only started on Saturday, so it is too early to say if it is working, except that we currently have well over half our budget left, as well as over half the week left for it to last!

(Tonight's dinner, to which I am already looking forward, will be toad in the hole with green beans, from 'The Pauper's Cookbook'.)

A Christmas present crock pot

At his request, I bought my husband a crock pot for Christmas. We're trying it out today, making chilli con carne, in a break from the Christmas leftovers. More to follow on how it works in due course....

Cooking without waste 2: Basic recipes

This is the second guest post on frugal cooking from Jian.
Every culture and person in the world is going to have a different idea of what a basic recipe is, depending on their answers to the questions in my last post. What might be best, would be for me to talk about what we tend to use, and how we've answered the above questions.
1)Penny and I chop and change our preferred recipes a lot; this comes of reading the paper and recipe books a bit too much, I guess. Still, our basic recipes tend to stay fairly stable, mainly because they're reliable, comforting, and easily made from long-lasting ingredients.
2)I'm quite an improviser myself; I prefer to learn basic principles through practice and then never follow the recipe, and don't plan ahead much. Penny follows the recipes closely, adapting and changing based on experience and common sense, and prefers to plan ahead.
3)We cook for two. It's a very easy number.
4)We have a hob, grill, and oven. We have a kettle, toaster, food processor, blender, rice cooker, and microwave. We have a fridge-freezer. We shop at various supermarkets (Sainsbury's, Tesco, Waitrose) and at the local farm shop, which I think came up in a previous post.
The basic recipes we most often use are:
1)Tomato sauce for pasta, which Penny's mentioned before. Basically needs onions and tinned tomatoes, which both keep well. Useful as the base for a hundred and one meals, including bolognese, chili con carne, puttanesca, jambalaya, vodka-sauce pasta, minestrone, lasagna, ratatouille, and bouillabaisse. Like all basic recipes, practice often to make it as reliably as possible; it's difficult to screw up.
2)Noodle soup. I suppose you could use a packet but really I mean good stock, probably some miso, and dry noodles (of any kind; egg noodle, ramen/lo men/ramyun/etc,, soba, thin rice noodles, thick rice noodles, udon, or even spaghetti or linguini). Add any chopped vegetables (spring onions, peppers, mushrooms, bok choy, bean sprouts), sliced grilled or fried meat (teriyaki beef, grilled or foil-baked salmon, marinated or char sui pork), and anything else that fits with the sort of taste you're going for (seaweed, won ton, a raw egg or two, coconut milk, ground peanuts, chilli peppers, lemongrass, ginger, kimchi) to endlessly customise into a quick, simple, warming meal. For a different take in the summer, try it with soba, cold clear stock, sliced cucumber and pear, and ice: nengmyun. Sometimes, though, only packet ramen will do.
3)Chips. By which I mean oven-baked thick fingers of potato, made like roast potatoes (which, indeed, basically differ only in shape and are more appropriate for some dishes, like roasts). Basically, take some floury potatoes (waxy ones will do, but work less well), peel, and cut into the shapes you want (more or less even and about 2” across for roast potatoes, or long and more like 1” thick for chips). Meanwhile, heat the oven to about 200 and put in a suitable oven dish with some oil in the bottom. Parboil for 5-10 minutes, drain, and then put back in the pan with the lid and shake about so it goes all fluffy on the surface. Add oil (and salt and pepper and even occasionally a dash of chili oil, but that's just me) in the pan and shake to coat evenly. Put in the pre-heated oven pan and cook for about 40 minutes, turning over once or twice, until nicely and unevenly browned and crispy. Serve with suitable main (sausages, with or without some good greens such as green beans or steamed green or black cabbage, or with braised red cabbage; steak, of course; home-made battered fish, occasionally), or as the main focus (chips with two boiled eggs and a nice salad or well-seasoned vegetable like beetroot, red cabbage, or mushy peas work very well).
4)Stew. Now, this takes a while, so it's not really one for the weekday evenings unless you have a crock-pot (which we don't) and can cook it all day beforehand. But diced floured meat (beef or lamb, usually), potatoes, carrots, onions, tinned tomatoes, stock, herbs, maybe some barley, maybe parsnips – hard to go wrong. I quite like making it with a herby scone topping (like a cobbler, but savoury), or with additional spices and flavours (they have to be fairly sturdy to make it through the overwhelming lovely meaty-vegetably goodness) like oranges, chorizo, or chili pepper. Still, a bit wintry and rib-sticking, you wouldn't want it every day.
5)Prepared food. Sometimes, you want to bake fresh bread and cook all day from scratch with beautiful organic local fresh ingredients. Sometimes, you just want beans on toast in five minutes. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Making things: Christmas puddings

This weekend, I made two Christmas puddings. I'd never made Christmas puddings before, but as we are having Christmas here this year, I thought it was time to attempt it. I used the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe which was in the Guardian, a few weeks' ago. The ingredients weren't particularly fancy or expensive; lots of dried fruit, suet, breadcrumbs and marmalade were the main components.

Although not time-consuming to make, the puddings needed to be simmered for six hours; they have since been topped up with brandy, and will be cooked for another two or three hours on Christmas Day.

It is a good, satisfying feeling to have the puddings ready, though of course it remains to be seen how they will taste.

Cooking without waste 1: The questions

This is a guest post; the first in a series on frugal cooking, from Jian.

Since Penny's somehow formed the opinion that I'm a fairly frugal cook, and good at using up leftovers and ingredients, she's asked me to write something about buying food economically and cooking without waste. Very topical these days. Few cookbooks seem to go out without at least a small section on how to stock your larder with most bang for your buck, and avoiding throwing away food.
I would say we throw very little food away; mostly, the waste we generate from food shopping is packaging, which is a bit of a pain. I think that in order to cook economically, one needs to ask and answer some basic questions about priorities. The main questions one needs to answer seem to be:
1)What do you most often cook, what do you most like to eat, and what do you most like to cook? The three categories do not necessarily overlap much, and it's therefore best to try and make them so as much as you can. Once you know what you will cook, you can be prepared with the right sort of ingredients, and avoid waste. It's a pain to buy a nice ingredient (like bok choy, or halloumi, or venison) that you like the look of, and is in season or on special offer, but to have to throw it away because you didn't have a plan for it.
2)How do you plan your cooking? Are you the sort of person that likes to plan a whole week's menu in advance, with cascading recipes (e.g. spaghetti bolognese to chili con carne and meatloaf, using a tomato-based mince recipe as the base), or do you prefer to improvise? This is, I suspect, as much a matter of personality as anything else, though of course you may be a very well-organised person who's rather chaotic about their cooking, or vice versa. Also, do you follow recipes closely, or do you prefer to make it up more as you go along?
3)Who do you cook for? Cooking for yourself can be wasteful, sadly, since proper cooking for one can be quite uneconomical in ingredients. Cooking for several people will raise the issue of differing preferences, and if some of them are children or eat at different times, things get progressively harder, more expensive, and more wasteful. Penny and I are in the happy position of only cooking for each other, which helps tremendously, but that won't be of much use to you.
4)What cooking resources do you have? Just a hob, or a grill as well, or an oven too? Do you have a kettle or a toaster? How about storage – a fridge, a larder, a freezer, even a chest freezer? How about less common equipment such as a crock pot, deep-fat frier, blender, kitchen mixer, microwave, sandwich-maker, or low-fat grill? What utensils do you have? Finally, what ingredients are available to you at your local shops: what's at your supermarket, do you go to farmer's markets, delicatessens, or ethnic food shops?
That all said, it's clearly going to be very difficult to give any useful advice that's generally applicable to everyone who'd like to cook more economically. I will, however, give it my best shot in future posts.

A weekend away

Last weekend, I met a friend for the weekend. We met halfway between our respective homes, which are very many miles apart. We had both decided that we did not want to spend too much money, while having as good a time as possible, and did the following, to this end:

-My friend found a hotel with good reviews and a reasonable two night with one night's dinner deal, and booked us in for that. (It was a very nice hotel, and the food, especially breakfast, was excellent.)

-She also suggested a book-swapping arrangement; we each bought some extra books with us, so got to read some different things from usual, without needing to buy them.

-I had initially planned to take the train, but discovering that even by booking ahead the cost would be double that of my petrol, I reluctantly decided to drive. (I realise this is not ideal from an environmental point of view, though my car is at least small and pretty fuel-efficent.)

-Driving would mean of course that I wouldn't be able to drive or listen to my ipod, so I rented the audio book of ' The Small Bachelor' a P.G Wodehouse novel, from the library. This was excellently well read and entertained me for very nearly all my journey there and back, and my husband is now listening to it on his commute. £1.50 well-spent.

-For once, I planned ahead and took sandwiches and some extra apples for the journey so that I would not need to stop for food.

-While at the hotel, we took full advantage of the very good English breakfast, which it suited us to eat late, meaning we did not need lunch.

-Instead, we had afternoon tea back at the hotel which took us through to late evening and a plate of cheese and bottle of wine. (I realise that from a nutritional point of view, this sounds pretty poor, but one can't have everything, and this was part of the fun.)

-We were staying a little way out of town, but walked in rather than driving, so as to save the bother and expense of parking, as well as getting some exercise and seeing the sights.

Making things: ice-cream

A couple of years' ago my sister gave us a lovely present, of a low-tech ice-cream maker, and so every so often, we make our own ice-cream. (We bought some cream today so we can make some to have with apple crumble, when my parents come for supper later in the week.) The machine we have is about the size of a small mixing-bowl, and needs to be put in the freezer for a while before being used. Once it has been chilled, it only takes about half an hour for the ice-cream maker to turn your cream, sugar, and other ingredients into ice-cream; if you taste the mixture before putting it into the machine, it may taste horribly sweet, but it will taste quite different once frozen.

In terms of flavours, we have added chocolate chips or gratings – creating something along the lines of the straciatella ice-cream we liked so much in Italy, and, another time, peanut butter to remind us of amazing ice-cream eaten at an ice-cream farm in Scotland; another successful flavour was brown bread. (I hope I do not sound too greedy when mentioning the major food associations we have with all our holidays?) By the way, as well as the peanut butter the Scottish ice-cream farm made some other wonderful flavours which we have not yet tried to replicate, including turkish delight and rhubarb crumble..

It is fun using the machine, though it does make quite a bit of noise, and the ice-cream produced is definitely cheaper than the fancy brands we like eating as a treat. (It probably does not work out cheaper than margarine-style ice-cream, but is a rather different experience from that.)

De-cluttering the larder

I have been reading the recipe book "Economy Gastronomy", by Allegra McVedy and Paul Merrett, from which we've cooked some good recipes lately, and have been rather horrified by the figures on the vast amount of food wasted in the UK. Although we are fairly good about using up things in the 'fridge and freezer, sometimes packets or tins get forgotten about at the back of the cupboard.

I'm going through our larder at the moment, finding those things which should be used up before they need to be thrown away, and working out what to do with them.

Amongst various other bits and pieces, I've found the following:

Two packets of barley - there's a great barley salad recipe involving goats' cheese in Economy Gastronomy (p.199), but an even simpler meal is barley cooked in stock with some vegetables or salad and grated cheese. (The barley needs to cook for around half an hour, but needs minimal preparation.)

The end of a bag of couscous - also good with cheese or bacon and vegetables or pesto.

Red lentils, nearing their sell-by date - 4 oz can be made into lentil soup with a tin of tomatoes, an onion, and about a pint of stock. (Again, extremely easy, to make and takes about half an hour to cook.)

Green lentils - with onions, stock and garlic, could be made into a mush to accompany sausages.

Half a pack of walnuts - will be used to make a lovely coffee and walnut cake - a normal victoria sponge with a dash of strong coffee in both the cake mixture and the icing, and decorated with the walnuts.

Nuts, seeds and dried fruit - I found quite a few ends of packets - could all be added to homemade granola. (By the way, I've found that keeping all small baking supplies like nuts and cooking chocolate in a small box in the cupboard helps to reduce the chance of my buying duplicates.)