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Happy Birthday! Okay, so this wasn't the most exciting of birthdays. I celebrated with a BBQ on Sunday, so we stuck to the £2 a day today. It was my second day of work and I managed to tell them that it was my birthday AND about the £2 a day ethical diet. Becky, one of the girls I work with, got really excited (turns out she's a bit of a foodie!) and they told me about a local abattoir. They say it's from farms that the guy knows, but I think I'll have to wait and see. There are lots of "local" farms around the States that are intensively farmed. Despite the fact that people should treat you on your birthday, the tradition in England is that you buy people cakes on your birthday. I think that's ridiculous, but I guess that ensures that everyone takes a turn and people don't have to remember everyone else's birthday. I told them I'll make cookies and bring them in Thursday. They'll be the peanut butter and oatmeal ones that I made at the beginning of our February challenge.
Good news is that we got the small box this week, so the cost of our box goes down 10p per person per day. Also, I made us homemade chips, which made me a very happy girl. Don't they look good?
AND then I made cookies (the link has the egg replacement recipe. Use it for ANY cookie recipe and it works perfectly for a lot less money) and we both had one before going to bed.
The bad news is that although Mac was super sweet and cooked for me, he chose an awfully expensive meal (and this is the toned down version of the recipe! The original wanted TWO cans of tomatoes and LOTS more puree. Ridiculous. The version that we made still tasted very tomato-ey and was fine.
Combined with the super expensive pasta and asparagus from yesterday, we went WAY over.
What was organic/local/fair trade?
Organic: potatoes for chips, chickpeas, tin of tomato, tomato puree, cous cous, peanut butter, flour, oatmeal and raisins. Plus the pasta and basil from yesterday.
Local: aubergine, garlic, and butter.
Chickpea & Aubergine Curry
Serves 4 to 6 (Served 5. 2.84 total, 57p per portion.)
Ingredients -
1 Large Onion (skipped)
300g Chick Peas (17p or thereabouts because we made it from 1/2c dried)
1 large Aubergine (50p)
2 inch piece Root Ginger (15p)
2 Cloves Garlic (15p)
2 to 6 fresh Chillies (used a sprinkling of crushed chili flakes instead - 2p)
800g Tinned Tomatoes (used only 400g--1 tin- 75p)
100g Tomato Pureé (50g of puree 28p)
125ml Tomato Juice (skipped, used water instead)
2 Teaspoons Cumin Seeds (4p)
2 Teaspoons Brown Mustard Seeds (4p)
2 Teaspoon Ground Cumin (4p)
2 Teaspoons Ground Coriander (2p)
2 Teaspoons Ground Turmeric (2p)
1 Teaspoon ground Fenugreek (4p)
½ Teaspoon Cayenne Pepper (skipped)
1 Bunch Fresh Coriander (skipped)
300g cous cous (66p)
Directions
* Soak the chick peas overnight in cold water. Drain them, rinse and put in a sauce pan covered with cold water on a high light to cook. When boiling turn down to a simmer, cover and allow to cook. Chick peas take a long time to cook, up to an hour so it is best to give yourself time. The good news is that you cannot overcook them even if you try.
* Put your heaviest pan on a high light and add enough oil to cover the bottom. Put all the seeds in a saucer or other vessel and whilst the oil is heating peel and chop the onion. When the oil smokes throw in the seeds, cover the pan and shake it a little to get the seeds really popping. CAREFUL! It is really easy to burn yourself when the oil spits. Turn down the heat and as soon as the initial explosion is over and put in the onions stirring so they do not burn.
* Wash the ginger and chillies, peel the garlic and crush or blend them to a smooth paste, using a little oil if necessary. As with the previous recipe just finely chop everything if you are without benefit of blender. Add the paste to the onion mixture and allow to cook for five minutes or so, making sure it does not stick.
* Add all the rest of the spices except the fresh coriander and carry on cooking, stirring it all well to prevent burning.
* Wash the aubergine and cut into fairly large dice or slices and add to the pan. Leave to cook for ten minutes.
* Blend or chop the tinned tomato and add to the pan along with the puree and the tomato juice (or puree and water if being frugal). Mix it all together and allow to continue cooking.
* Once the chick peas are cooked, drain, rinse well and add to the pan. Stir the curry together and season to taste. Cover and allow to simmer slowly for 30 minutes adding water if necessary.
* Wash and chop the fresh coriander, if using, and add. Stir in and serve immediately.
Breakdown:
Breakfast: Both porridge with raisins 13p, Megan had a cup of tea 3p
Riverford: 77p
Lunch: leftover pasta, 68p, Megan had another cup of tea at work 3p
Dinner: homemade chips (potatoes were Riverford, and we're going to reuse the oil used for frying. I'll estimate 50mL was used for frying plus then a Tablespoon or so of cider vinegar once they were done - about 13p total!)
Then we had chickpea and aubergine curry (57p) AND a peanut butter and oatmeal cookie before bed (7p)
AUGH! Way over at £2.35 for Mac and £2.41 for me. Sigh.... I guess that's what happens when you get asparagus in one meal and aubgerine in another all in the same day. Nice to know we still would have gone over even without the chips or cookie, though!
I started my new job today. Everyone seems really nice, but I did have to spend a good chunk of the day reading through health and safety guidelines and looking through an "induction pack". I think they only make packs like that because they know that otherwise the first day on a job would be fairly boring.
Mac has, over time, told people at his work about his £2 challenge and other things--although I'm still not sure if they know whether we don't have a TV. (Of course I've been watching more Alias, Angel, and Numb3rs episodes while cooking and doing blog updates than could ever be good for me, so it's probably not fair to say that we don't have a TV. I still watch crap) I'm not sure whether or not to tell people....who am I kidding? I like talking, so I'm sure I'll end up telling people anyway.
I do wonder sometimes if this is worth doing as a challenge--the idea is to show people that it can be done, that buying organic isn't beyond people's means... but if we're worried about even mentioning it because we might alienate people or weird them out, what's the point? We don't need to prove anything to ourselves anymore. Maybe if we did a £3 a day challenge and were able to eat more cheese and fruit, we wouldn't feel so weird mentioning it. Of course, then if might not get the same kind of attention.
Anyway, as to what we ate today, what was organic/local/fair trade?
Organic: oats, raisins, milk in tea (the tea was fair trade), pak choi, red pepper, carrots, pasta (also fair trade), tomatoes, and basil.
Local: asparagus, butter, bread, garlic, and probably a fair portion of our veg box ingredients.
Summery Pasta with tomatoes, basil and asparagus
This is a quick and easy summer pasta recipe. You can use more basil and tomatoes and just use those, or slow cook in butter some mushrooms, or sautee until brown some courgette (zuchinni). There are lots of options for this, and just about all of them taste good--especially if you have fresh, local ripe tomatoes (do not EVER try this recipe with crappy supermarket out-of-season tomatoes! It will be bland and horrible and probably put you off tomatoes for life. I may be exaggerating slightly, but it won't be good. Trust me.)
400g pasta - 96p
Asparagus 250g - £1.00
Assorted cherry tomatoes RIVERFORD
6 cloves garlic 45p
a few handfuls of basil - from our windowsill(!!)
2T extra pressed rapseed oil - 30p
Heat oil on medium-low heat, and preheat your oven to 200C (400F) or thereabouts. You aren't baking, so it's not an exact science.
Once the oven is hot enough, place the whole cherry tomatoes in it on a baking dish. You can gently cover them in oil if you like, put a bit of salt and pepper ontop, but neither are necessary. Leave to roast for 20 min or so.
Meanwhile, slice your garlic and add to the oil. You don't want the oil too hot because the garlic should NOT burn. You want it to ever-so-slowly turn a light gold colour. Depending on how small your asparagus is, you might get away with just adding it to the oil. Before you do that, snap off the ends by bending both ends until it snaps--it will snap at the point where the woody-bit ends and the nice tender bit begins. Hopefully you won't lose too much asparagus that way--that's another good reason to buy local seasonal produce!
When you add the garlic, boil up a pan of water at the same time. You can add the asparagus to this for a minute and then strain out--you'll use the same water for your pasta.
If you aren't short of pans, you can always place the asparagus in a pan of boiling water for 2 min. Mac boiled about an inch of water and then placed the asparagus standing up for about 5 min (we don't have a fancy-pants asparagus steamer pan). Once you've done that, you can either grill it (my favourite) on a ridged grill pan or add it straight to your oil and garlic. Asparagus is fairly flexible.
Once 10 min or so have passed since you put in the tomatoes, add the pasta to a pan of boiling water and cook for however long the package says.
Take out your tomatoes (they should be bursting at the top, but still pretty whole), add all ingredients to a bowl, stir well and add the basil.
Breakdown:
Breakfast: Both: porridge with raisins 13p. Megan had a cup of tea, 3p
Riverford: 85p
Lunch: leftover stirfry 27p, Megan had 2 more cups of tea 6p (they really like tea at my new job!)
Dinner: Pasta with roasted garlic, tomatoes, asparagus and basil for £2.71 for 4, 68p per person, plus a piece of sourdough bread with butter (18p + 7p)
Total: £2.18 for Mac, £2.27 for Megan. Stupid asparagus.
On Monday I basically sat around and did nothing. I didn't pick up our food order from the co-op, I didn't meet up with anyone, I didn't clean up the house, I didn't even update the blog. I started my new job on Tuesday, so this was one day to relax. I think I read two books between Sunday and Monday. I think I might have gone to a gig or something Monday night. Maybe that makes up for it?
Vegetable Stirfry - mostly taken from here: http://allrecipes.com/HowTo/Super-Easy-Stir-Fry/Detail.aspx which gives GREAT overall directions for a stirfry.
We made enough for 4 - £1.09, 27p per person.
Ingredients:
2 red peppers (RIVERFORD)
Pak choi (RIVERFORD)
7 little mini carrots (RIVERFORD)
2 cloves garlic (15p)
1/2 inch piece of ginger (4p)
1 1/2 cups basmati rice (36p)
2 oz of soy sauce (34p)
2 oz of vegetable stock (1 heaping teaspoon plus 2 oz boiling water)
2 tsp rice wine vinegar (3p)
1/4 cup shredded basil (from our windowsill!)
Broken cashews (half the price of normal ones!) (14p)
Follow the instructions on the allrecipes website for this recipe. It gives you general instructions on how to make a stirfry, no matter what the sauce, veg, or protein (we skipped the protein because we didn't have any tempeh or tofu or chicken or anything handy... plus they all cost too much) We used the herb sauce they listed, although most of them would probably be good.
I highly recommend allrecipes in general for recipes because they allow people to rate and review them saying "actually, I used less chili pepper for this" or "this was delicious --try it with almonds!" sort of thing. Invaluable to get advice from people who have tried the dishes.
The breakdown:
Breakfast: Mac: Toast with pate 18p + 18p - Megan: 2 pieces of raisin and walnut bread - 47p with peanut butter and jelly 10p
Riverford: 85p
Lunch: Mac: leftover lentil stew 26p. Megan: 27p for cabbage (RIVERFORD) cooked in butter (4p) and a bit of lemon juice (2p) (with 1/2c of bulgar wheat (13p), a handful of chickpeas (8p?) and some cumin (1p) and turmeric (1p)
Dinner: Vegetable stirfry with cashews over rice, 27p.
Totals: Mac: £1.74, Megan: £1.96
I decided, since it was the day after the Food for the Future event which had taken over my life AND it was a few days before my birthday AND it was the day of the Winchester farmers' market, that I would celebrate my birthday today and not stick to £2 for the whole day. Notice the bunting in the picture above demonstrating that this is not an ordinary BBQ, it is a birthday celebration BBQ.
In the end, I ate a perfectly reasonable breakfast and lunch, and then ate loads at dinner. Actually, the lunch was mostly supplied by the free samples of chutneys and cheeses and things (plus a bite of someone's water buffalo burger and a bite of a hog roast sandwich). I heart the Winchester Farmers' Market.
Some cheeses from Loosehanger farm. I'm glad they didn't make the guy who served me wear their silly cheese hats that they sometimes have. I bought the little wheel of goat's cheese that you can just make out in the front of the lefthand basket. About 250g for £4.50. Apparently that's a good price for their cheese because it's more expensive to cut and package the wedges.
Other highlights from the farm? We got two aubergine for half price (you can't barter with ASDA people... yet another reason to love the market) I finally got my 5L of rapeseed oil for £20--that's about what you'd pay at an ethnic food store for 5L of olive oil. It's also half the price of what I had been paying for the same oil in a 500mL bottle. Also, everyone I was with was super excited about the market and I think I have a dedicated group who are willing to go with me! I hope that the other people who live up in London start going more often to markets near them, too.
After going to the farmers' market, we went to relax in a local pub called the Black Boy (I find that name slightly strange.... It's behind the Black Rat). We read the paper, the boys amused themselves by drawing penies over pictures in the newspaper, and our butter started to melt (which of course we didn't realise until we were almost home. Oops.
Here's some of the local spread at the BBQ. You can just see in the corner my basket that I carried around the market and then Paul helped me carry back. By the end it was REALLY heavy. There was talk of doing a photo like a cornucopia showing off all the stuff we bought in an artistic way, but I totally forgot. Oops. Maybe next time!
Anyway, I'm not going to bother doing a breakdown because I know that we ate a lot more than
£2. However, what we ate was the following:
Breakfast: Mac had toast (?). Megan had toast with peanut butter and jelly
Lunch: We got lots of free samples from the farmers' market, and then came back and Mac had some more Moroccan stew.
Dinner: We brought a garden salad and strawberry shortcake to Hannah, Ed and Dan's for a BBQ. I ate a local Hampshire garlicky sausage, a bunch of Hampshire cheese with local sourdough bread and chutney, more than a pint of Hampshire apple juice, some potato salad, some garden salad, and then strawberry shortcake. It was a good pre-birthday party. Mac managed to eat two sausages AND two burgers. I think it's fair to say that neither of us are vegetarians.
Saturday was the Food for the Future event at the Down to Earth Community Farm. It went really smoothly, all the events went well, but we just didn't get nearly enough people throughout the day. I think it was probably about 80-100 (if you include families with kids) and the rest of the Fair Trade Group estimates about 50. Chances are it's somewhere in between. Which is a shame. We could have easily had over 100 at any one time without having it seem too busy.
Well, maybe next year.
Stalls
The garden area (they had wheat growing on top of the normal potatoes, cabbages, strawberries, etc. and the farm area--they had brand new piglets which were really cute.
Sunnyfields provided catering--they had local meat, own-made veggie burgers, their own salad leaves for a salad. It was great.
We're going to Sunnyfields July 3rd for a Mediterranean meal using local ingredients AND it's only 25.
This is how I got fed for most of the day. It was DELICIOUS. This is Kate Hughes on the left who did our cookery demos. She runs cooking classes from her business Cook Academy.
I'll have to try her recipes for myself and post them. She made an aubergine and cous cous fruited salad, a broadbean and pea pate, puy lentil and fresh soy bean salad, and a strawberry tart. It was all amazing.
I also ate a little bit of dried fruit that we were giving away as samples.
This is me giving a talk to people about the £2 a day diet. I didn't know quite what I should say, but I thought just giving general tips would be helpful to people. Plus I thought it would be handy because people kept trying to walk off with the two copies I had of the explanation about the diet on a stall.
It went well, although I was disappointed with the turnout (as were, I think, most of the stallholders). However, all the people who went as attendees seemed to really like it. I dont know how we get more people to turn up. Maybe if it was at a school? Billed more as a fete? I don't know....
Anyway, onto the food:
Breakfast: Megan had toast with peanut butter and jelly (12p), Mac skipped breakfast
Riverford: 85p
Lunch: Megan got free samples from the Food for the Future event (and they were DELICIOUS!) Mac had a few free samples and ate leftover Moroccan stew with chickpeas (21p + 3p cabbage)
Dinner: We were hurrying back from the Hobbit and Mac needed to get to his gig, so he didn't eat and ended up finishing off Andy and Nic's falafel from the place near the Joiners because they couldn't eat it all. Megan was happy to be lazy after an exceptionally long weekend and had leftover lentil and vegetable stew for dinner 26p.
£1.23 for Megan, £1.21 for Mac.
I was sick on Friday (otherwise known as day 12). I felt fine, but kept throwing up. Sorry, that's not really appropriate conversation for a food-full blog, but it explains why on the breakdown for that day it lists pretty much only toast (and it was cheap Co-op brand bread, too)
I spent a few hours at the food co-op that we belong to sorting orders until I was sick and realised I should go home. So I went home.... and wrote up some resources, sent them off to Staples to get copied, helped Chris pot up compost for the salad kit giveaway, bought some supplies, and eventually had to go down to Staples to help them re-format some documents and pick them all up. And every so often I'd go to the bathroom and throw up. By the evening I was feeling really hungry, but didn't want to try eating food. So we went to the Illustration show by the third year students at Solent University (including work by my friend Kate. I ate half a brownie (probably not the best first food to try) and eventually went home to have four pieces of toast and two mugs full of broth. Delicious.
Mac was in a big hurry to go to about 3 different gigs that night, so he left me and ate some of the food I was given for helping out with the co-op (which I had absolutely no intention of eating) before quickly leaving.
As a result, not a whole lot going on this day food-wise.
Breakfast: Porridge with raisins, 13p
Riverford: 85p
Lunch: Mac had leftover kohlrabi stew (21p + 3p of cabbage). Megan had 2 pieces of dry toast (yum) 10p and peppermint tea (5p)
Dinner: Megan: 4 pieces of (super cheap) toast with peanut butter (20p + 12p) , 2 cups of broth (6p) Mac: food I got for free from the co-op
Total: £1.22 for Mac, £1.45 for Megan.
I don't know what's going on with the font size on my blog, but it's a little irritating. Sorry!
Two days before the Food for the Future event. I didn't work today because I wanted to make sure I was able to get ready for this. Instead, I ended up going to Kate's house and prepped up another things of bunting. I also cleaned the WHOLE flat and it's never looked tidier. I wish I'd taken pictures. That was so that it would be nice and neat for when the Daily Echo photographer and journalist came over (they brought a work experience student with them). In the end they took pictures of me holding up the things I'd bought since January (used, of course). I'll try to post the article once I've scanned it (although I look terrible). The journalist asked about the Buy Nothing New year long challenge, the £2 a day diet, a bit about the Food for the Future Day, and questions about why I'm doing all of these different things. I was just amazed that she knew how to write in shorthand. (It looked amazing!)
Best parts about the day shown in pictures I stole from Google Images?
Shorthand, finally eating a banana and finding a good recipe for kohl rabi (stole that picture from Frumpyfoodie.com--great photos but MAN does she talk a lot. I would probably just look for her recipes like those here.
Not much interesting food-related stuff happened on Thursday, so I'll just post the lovely recipe for Moroccan kohlrabi stew and the daily breakdown.
Kohlrabi Stew
Recipe 84p for 4 - 21p per person - Note: we adapted a lot of the ingredients. Actual price for the list on the link will be a bit higher.
Origin: North Africa
Ingredients
(L) 2 Tbsp oil (we used veg oil--5p)
(O) 1 medium Kohlrabi RIVERFORD
1 large onion, chopped [We skipped]
(O) 3-4 large carrots, RIVERFORD
(O) 1 tin tomatoes (we didn't have any, so I used a bit more water and 3Tbsp of tomato paste - 25p)
(O) 400ml can of chick-peas, with liquid (or 1/2 cup dried chickpeas cooked for 2 hours - 17p)
100g Bulgur wheat (16p)
(O) 100g raisins (I think I only had about 60g - 16p)
1tsp ground coriander (2p)
1/2 tsp ground turmeric (less than 1p)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon ((less than 1p)1/2 tsp ground ginger (2p)
1/4 tsp ground cumin (less than 1p)
700ml water
Don't look to the original website for instructions. I mean, you can, but you won't find many. Their advice was to stick it all in a pan and then simmer for 30 min. I'd look for one line instructions if I was making a cup of tea or a peanut butter sandwich--not for a whole stew.
Directions
Peel and chop the Kohlrabi and onion. Don't peel the carrots, but chop into large chunks.
Heat oil and add onion (if using) and the carrots. Cook for a little while. Add kohlrabi and all spices, stir to coat with spices and cook a further 5 min.Add tomatoes and water, and bring to a boil. Simmer for 15 min or so until carrots are tender, but not soft. Add raisins and bulgur wheat, and stir well. Cover and allow to cook until bulgur wheat is fully cooked (it will probably absorb most of the moisture).
Tanzanian Braised Cabbage
Yield: 8 portions (we made enough for 3--23p total, excluding RIVERFORD costs. 7p each)
In a saucepan saute 1/2 cup bermuda onions (purple), chopped finely [we skipped this bit, because we were out of onions] 1 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes (2p), 1/2 tsp. curry powder (less than 1p), 1/2 tsp garlic powder (I used 2 cloves fresh garlic finely chopped instead 15p(L)), 1/4 tsp. powdered ginger (less than 1p), in 2 oz. oil (I used about 10g butter instead - 5p(L)).
Once the spices are cooked (and, if using onions, the onions are soft), add 2 Ibs. cabbage cut in 1-inch wedges. (we probably had about 300g cabbage--enough for 2 people and a little left over from RIVERFORD(O) ). Saute lightly until cabbage begins to lose its crispness.
Add 1 cup vegetable stock (O) (3p) and seasonings to taste.
Simmer for 5 minutes.
Total breakdown:
Breakfast: (O) Porridge with (O) raisins, 13p and Megan had a (O/FT) banana (36p)
Riverford: 85p
Lunch: lentil stew, 26p and a nice fresh salad (O) (all from Riverford!)Dinner: morrocan stew with bulgar wheat, chickpeas and kohl rabi and a side of spring greens 21p for the stew, 7p for the cabbage.
Total for the day: Mac: £1.52, Megan: £1.88
AND then I made cookies (the link has the egg replacement recipe. Use it for ANY cookie recipe and it works perfectly for a lot less money) and we both had one before going to bed.
Chickpea & Aubergine Curry 
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