I found the all experience very rewarding and by the time is ended I realised that it was not difficuly at all.
I have enough food to carry on another two months or more. I will ask my family to help me to finish what is left in the freezer in order to stock again fresh stuff. The only thing I probably will be buying is the cheese. My cheese was absolutely fine, but only soft cheese was the one I could make. You need the milk that has all the fat in it to make hard cheeses and the one from shops is not good enough for it. Still, occasionally a soft cheese with herbs is very good to have.
So, four months have gone but it does not feel like.
It feels that I have started this protest / experiment a couple of months ago. I think, as I was very busy in doing things the time has gone faster.
The all experiment was really illuminating for what I have discovered e learned.
The first thing I can say is that I really feel better inside.
I have learned that I can survive with little money without changing a lot your life stile, and still eating good food. This is achievable only if you are prepared to make your food and cook it.
I have learned to eat less and discovered that really we eat more than we need, or our body needs.
I have also learned that I am not addicted to cheese ( one of my favourites foods) . I have eaten very little cheese, and I still have three jars of the one I have produced.
I have used probably one pint of milk in all four months.
I have drunk no coffee except in four or five occasions.( back to Sardinia , Susan’s Do , restaurant).
The wild fruit teas I made were more than satisfactory and in fact I still have four bottles in the freezer. The dry wild mint tea was not sufficient so I know that we need to preserve more of it.
I am still calculating the amount of flour I have been given in exchange of my pastas, the amount of oil used, the butter and the tomato sauce, but I am sure that if I had bought these items in order to make the bread and the pastas I need it, the value of it is around £ 40. So, £10 pounds a month.
I have discovered that I can preserve wild greens such as nettles, ground elder, dandelions leaves, sweet Cecily and wild garlic in a combination of cider vinegar or oil or both. All of them were edible after six months kept in jars. I have also created other dishes with these herbs and fillings for ravioli pasta.. I still have three jars of wild herbs in stock.
In the freezer there are still lots of cultivated vegetables such as peas, beans, beetroot, and winter cabbage. I still have 3 rabbits, one pheasants, rabbit burgers, pig burgers and few fish cakes from the pike. There is also a variety of other things.Full list the next few days
In this experiments I have learned that if I am even better organised I could try to live this way for the all year. Is a matter of collecting enough food from April to October from the wild, and cultivate more winter vegetables such as Brusselsprouts, winter cabbage, white cabbage and onions.
Make more use of the chickens eggs now that they are producing 2 or 3 a day and sell them in order to buy those essential ingredients mentioned before: flour, oil, butter, tomato sauce and milk.
I need about 2 kg of flour per month, half bottle of oil per month, 2 bottles of tomato sauce per month and 125 grams of butter per month. Possibly 2 pints of milk if a do make more lasagne. Translated in money is about 9 pounds sterling or less.
Today I did not change my way of eating. My bread slices and my jam for breakfast, wild herbs ravioli with our bacon for lunch, bread, cabbage, sardinia cheese (from my friend in Oliena) and a piece of plum my yplum cake from the freezer.
here some recent pictures.
Frittata with wild herbs and fried boiled potato.
Some of my preserved products clock wise:
beetroot in vinegar, nettles and ground elder in olive oil, storks of sweet cecily in vinegar and oil, my bread, potato from the garden and in the middle my cheese in olive oil. One meal with a little bit of everything.
