Pasta, bread and cheese and minestrone

When I was seven year old I went to college with my brother,six, and never expected to spend nine years in the "continent", or Italy mainland as we called now. Were we  lucky at that time? We were too young to understand but my father and my mother never told us a lie. They said clearly that we were too poor and that it was for us a good opportunity to have a better education....and thinking now, a better variety of food.
Yes we did have a better education, altough for me knowledge comes from different places and school education yes gives you knowledge and a good start in life, but is never enough to keep you alive! My grand father always told me that the hoe was better than the pen. Or, more useful. Always the thruth is in the midle.
But, what about food. Did we eat better? No. But we did eat a better variety of food. My first negative impact was the water. In my parents town water was  gathered from the fountains distribuited in various places in town. Water coming directly from the above mountain, untreated and pure. The water in college was undrinkable because of the use of clorine. But we did get use to it.
Food was a surprise. Meat, fish,different cakes,different types of pasta,rice etc was not common on our family table. Having meat at least 3 times a week was a luxury. Jam and butter in the morning was also unusual. Cocoa was also a misterious thing to be use with milk. Breakfast in my family was with local milk from cows or sheep ( we use to drink sheep milk and as you know we make cheese from it ) with home made bread ( Sardinia bread is a very thin bread like crisps and it was crashed into the milk. Basically what is now the cornflake type of thing). You would not need sugar as milk was reach of fat and with it much sweeter than water down milk we buy nowdays.See picture below of our bread.My mother still make it. if well kept it last for a couple of months still crunchy.

Lunch in my family was generally pasta with tomato souce most of the time. Water at the table for the young ones and home made red wine for the adults. Dinner consisted in bread and cheese and various home grown salads when in season .Fruit was mainly home grown, but again when available. We did not buy much fruit in those days ( 1960's).

Minestrone was very seasonal and would last at least two meals. Meat was rare. Once a week, not always. Roast chicken was a big event to remember, but meat was abboundant in special occasions such as weddings. The family pig was killed at the beginning of winter and that was the main intake of proteins. We rarely killed a chicken as they were too precious for the eggs.  The food we ate was most of the time the same but changed in the seasons. It was genuine and quality was excellent.

In college on the other hand we learned to eat pasta in different souces, have meat e roast chicken often and discovered that breakfast was not only made with milk and bread. Quality was not probably the same, but I gues it was not too bad. I do remember that the cook use to add litres and litres of water to the milk so she would have enough for the 250 plus kids in the refettorio. It was some kind of cheating .

Now, what is available on the supermarket shelves was untinkable back then. The big change for me is not the variety of food we have access to, but the attitude towards it. I do accept that the aboundance is not a negative thing, but it comes with a more sottile negativiness. We buy too much because there is too much to choose from. We buy even when we do not need it. Our eyes are full of food before our stomach is. And we eat with our eyes before we are hungry. And because of that, we have no good relation with the food we buy and eat. And because of that we wasted. And we wasted because has no value. So I have experienced three different approches to food.

The first in my family, were food was  important for our nutrition,was local. own grown and  own made. The second in college were food was a learnig process about the variety of it,coming from different sources, and the discovery of manipulating food for the creation of dishes. The third one, related to the over production to please the palate before the stomach. Cheap food even if is coming from the other side of the world.

Yes food should be a pleasure but only if the food we eat has a relation with  our being. Otherwise it is only stuff that goes in mechanically. My question is simple. Is it food (or is it not) the most important thing in our lifes? Everyone knows the answer.

Tomorrow I will be making more bread for the coming week and then see as I go.

Our new shed as a larder. Wines, beers,and lot of jars.

Eggs, potatoes, nettles and dandelions leaves ready for a dish.

The dish ready

four days to go

 I am  nearly there....from monday the first I will be starting my experience trying to eat only what we coltivated and what we collected from wild, with the help of some game and wild fish provided by people who have accepted in exchange some of my lasagna or ravioli.
I have already rescued some milk from the nursery and made some cheese. this weekend i will be making some bread for the all week, but still waiting from some flour to arrive ( another exchange of product).
As you know Lesley and Christopher are not involved in this ( fully ) as they will be buying any food they like, but when I will be making pasta and some other dishes they will be eating the same as me. This morning I have attempted to make my own coffee from our almonds trees from Sardinia. Not too good but drinkable. Wild fruit teas and wild herb teas are very good  and maybe I will forget the coffee unless I will improve it.
I am experimenting new dishes all the time and today I have attempted with success ravioli with pumpkin pulp. pumpking seeds were from Nursery as they are preparing for Halooween, so I have rescued some pulp attached to it and made  a filling for the ravioli. Some pictures for you to look at.

Above, pumpkins fritters
Left, Pike cleaned (in flakes )ready to be tranformed into fish cakes

Pumpkin ravioli

120 meals

Difficult to say if I will be ready. I do know that I will need 120 lunches, 120 dinners and 120 breakfasts.This will cover the four months. It is a clear starting point for me as I already started to collect different engridients from natura to cover these meals. The list is long but includes potatoes, peas, beans,nettles,dandelions,cabbage,beetrot,mushrooms all coltivated and from the wild.Some in the freezer and some in jars under oil.
I also have different homemade jams and chutneys. I have a parma ham hanging from last november from christine pig, some bacon ,and other meat from the wild which includes rabbits, pheasants, duck and pike.
I will be making my bread,pastas and my cheese. I have also preserved several bottles of concentrate juice from wild cherries, raspberries.damson and apples. The juice can be use with cold water for a juice drink or hot water as a tea. Other differents wild herbs are collected for making teas. I will not drink any coffee unless I will manage to make a surrogate of it from dandelion roots ( to be try in november ). .No meat or fish or any veg will be bought. Everything is ccoltivated or from the wild. having chickens will be a great help for some eggs.( I already experimented to keep them in a jar full of water and they lasted up to 2 months as fresh as the first day they were laid)
I will be making cheese once a week and bread probably twice a week. Pasta is the easiest one. I can make pasta for 3 in half an hour. My family is not directly involved in this  but they will be eating my bread and pasta and some dishes made with natural ingredients. They are free to buy food! My son Christopher is already trained to my products and is happy eating wild stuff and drinking my juices which he also takes to school. I already made different new dishes with little ingredients, and this variety is the key to eat well and not get bored with the same thing all along. I will be describing what I am preparing and adding some pictures when possible.
I did invest a small amount of money to buy a new freezer and this is already 3/4 full. It looks that I already have a lot of food but I am not sure...I already done my first exchange with Dr Drennan who provided me a wild duck in exchange of a try of my lasagna.
Peter's claypigeon shooting friend has provided some rabbits which are going to be processed into burgers. Peter is going to try the burgers as I am trying to convince him that are better than fishfingers...We will see.
See now some pictures of some of my products.

My grissini with wild herbs

My bread

My half  moon ravioli with wild herbs

My experiment for the winter coming

Four months without buying food from the beginning of November to the end of February.
Here is the blog for you to follow. See and read what the experiment is about, what I will be doing day by day and what i will be eating day by day. I will try to explain why I am doing this as I go.
The main reason is  "Waste ".
As incredible it mybe, we, modern,civilised society ( !sic !)we waste 65% of the food we produce. The food we waste between us and the USA in a year can feed 1 billion people. The food we waste is taking a big tall to the land we coltivate and the land coltivated in other countries for our food consumption. The food we waste is taking away huge quantities of water in countries where water is scarce. The food we waste is often still good to eat. The food we waste is creating more hunger in other places around the world.
We now buy food for pleasure and not for necessity.
We spend an average of 30% of our wages for food whereas in poor countries 80% of their wages is spent for food.  We want cheap food which is produced far away by poor paid workforce, exploiting their lands and water. This also has an environmental impact which we should be ashemed of.
Second reason is to demonstrate mainly to maiself that I can eat well and better using natural engridients, coltivated ones and game. Yes it is time consuming to prepare food of any kind, to go and find it in nature, to coltivate it, to make dishes from it etc but, I am strongly convinced that we spend far too much time doing things which are not teaching us anything about real life.
How many hours we spend in front of the tv screen and how many minutes we dedicate to food preparation and consumption?
We are becoming spectators of our lifes rather than taking part in it. Everything is done for us so we can have more time for....doing nothing really.The complexity of our modern life and the implication that this system is afecting others and the environment is not well known or  well hidden by the system itself.
Well, I will try to find out if it is possible to move away from it at least regarding the most important thing we need: food. I do know that I will not be able to achieve it 100% but, I want to get close to it.
I will need some engridients that are not in nature or that I can  not coltivate. milk, flour, butter, oil are the most important ones. I need them to make my cheese and bread and fresh pastas. I will be offering my ravioli or lasagne in exchange of some of these products. So, hope to find someone willling to help in this.
Below is a mushroom which grows in aboundance oround drumnadrochit. I have collected different speciments and kept some in jars for the winter.

Wild food.Birch boletus from queens'rock area.