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Weekend

First week has gone fast and I am happy with the way I was organaising my meals and preparing things  in generals, without creating problems with the needs of my family. Overall we had four meal together which were not bought from shops.It will be not only myself trying to survive with wild stuff and home made things ect, but when possible the all family will be involved. The easiest eating time is of course breakfast, as two sliced of bread and home made jam is generally what I eat, with the occasional egg from our chickens. One morning I had cheese, bread and jam. In the past in Sardinia people working all day long in the countryside would eat cheese and bread with a cup of strong coffee. breakfast had to be abboundand to last till lunch.
Yesterday at lunch we all had left overs and in the evening we made a bonfire in the garden and I cooked the rest of the venison in the fire. The other dish was roast potatoes and pheasant ( small one ). usual breakfast this morning and ravioli for all at lunch time. Before we started working in the garden I prepared some bread to be cooked later one and more apple juice for christopher. As I said before I make my bread with the yeast from the beer that has stopped fermenting. Some pictures below shows the product.

Beer yeast

Bread raising

I did not use much stuff from the freezer, so the freezer is stil full. Dandelions and nettles are still available in  the garden. We also got 8 plants of brussel  sprouts and few cabbages in the school garden are still there as well ,and  some parsley too . Parsley is very versatile as I can use it in different ways,especially for condiments. Cabbage like brussel sprouts can be boring eating stuff, and I know that brussel sprouts are not the favourites of the maggiority of people.( They smell too much? ) But who then has decided that they should be part of the Christmas dinner? My favourite cabbage is the white one, and I like both row and cooked. Cabbage actually has a lot vitamins : A, B1, B2, B9 and a variety of minerals like calcium, iron, potassium and others. The way I like to cook the brussel sprouts is to cat them in half, fry them with butter and then add some sweet wine or even whisky to finish with a teaspoon of honey or kind of jelly sweet product. All will melt together nicely. Do not forget the salt and pepper. I stiil think lot people will not like them.

Dandelions leaves

Cabbage

Beetroot leaves

couliflower mushroom from queen's Mary rock

As we can see, examples of wild food and coltivated ones. Some of the coltivated vegetables  actually were in the past wild, and then we managed to produce them under our controll. The only problem with the coltivated ones is the way most of them are produced. Lot of land is used for one crop, lot of water and lot of chemicals are also used to make sure the quantity is great. The arable land has now been used so much that natural nutrients are not there anymore, so we use fertilasier to make the lad fertile. This process is not natural, as we use products which are exstracted from oil. pesticides are also used in large quantities and they end up to our plates. They do not disappear as we think ( or we hope). What goes in , comes out.

The taste of wild vegetables is different as is the taste of game in comparason of chicken from battery hen houses or similar meat. but, we forgot that taste. We do not recognise it.Our palate now has been changed by the way products are manipulated, and our brain reacts to them as they (?) want it. Mild, insignificant chicken breast full of water, or super sweet puddings, or super fatty pies ect. I love choccolate, I love fish and chips and pies. Problem is, how much of it can I eat before I start to anticipate my departure from these lands.

Food waste facts:

Between 2 and 500 times more carbon dioxide can be saved by feeding food waste to pigs rather than sending it for anaerobic digestion (the UK government’s preferred option). But under European laws feeding food waste to pigs is banned. In Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, by contrast, it is mandatory to feed some food waste to pigs.

Day 3 and 4

Another two days gone. Wednesday morning i had my usual breakfast with bread and jam, bread and cheese for lunch with a piece of my pizza, left over. I have received fresh liver and the heart of two sheep and all was sliced in steaks shape( No the heart ). My dinner was two sliced of liver cooked with sliced leek from the garden and half teaspoon of very concentrated wild cherry paste which had given to the  liver a sweet taste.The liver was very good and very different from ,say ,liver from a pig, which is much softer.The dish was served with beans and peas from our garden, from the freezer. Liver is very rich in iron and every kid should be eating it at least twice a month. It can be cooked in different ways to please the taste of it.
Thursday morning I have changed jam for my breakfast. Strawberry jam received from my neighbour in exchange of one of mine. Lunch was a vegetable type of sausage roll and cheese. Breaks with a apple a day and yesterday a slice of my carrot cake. For dinner I had more liver ( too good ) and boiled cabbage from the garden. I also made a special bread with  my cheese.
Here some pictures.

Fresh liver and hearts

Liver sliced and with the condiments

Dish ready













Today lots of programs on tv are talking about the way we eat, what we eat and what we should  and should not be eating. Recently chefs are promoting the good habit of eating liver, heart and other offals. This is related to the crises we experiencing around our time, and I am sure some kind of push has come from the autorites. This make me think that we were, untill now, eating only the so called best cuts of the animals because very cheap to buy and so available, leaving  the rest of the " bad cuts" and offals to be mosltly wasted. This is not the only reason of course, because culture has a better part in this bad habit. In other countries the offals are eated first as they are more delicate , but also for many others are the best part of the animal. If meat was not so cheap we probably would change our habits and eat more of everything.

I will post some facts about food waste. ( When i will remember )

An estimated 20 million tonnes of food wasted in Britain from the plough to the plate.

Day 2

My breakfast this morning was a fry egg ( from our chikens ) two sliced of bread and jam. For the drink, concentrated damson tea. Of course, our damsons! I think the concentrated juice of those fruits are very good and easy to use.You just add cold water or hot water and the drink is ready. I have cherry, damsons,apple and raspberry in the freezer, all reduced to a thick liquid like honey. Lots of free apples are kept in the shed. some of them wil be processed to make fresh juice,mostly for christopher, and others will be used for cakes and wine. three lots of wine were made last july/august with aples from last year ( stuart ones) and the wine I have tried is good. So, I am determined to try again, but amatorial wine makers never have the same result twice.We are not scientists. I say this, because the first lot of nettle wine was really successful, to my surprise it was really good.Dr drennan will confirm this, but the second lot was not the same, and I guarantee that I have use the same procedure. All the wines are now bottled and left to mature for a bit longer.To be tried at Christmas.
Last night we all had pumpkin ravioli which I made when finished working in school. With the rest of the filling I made three calzoni ( like big sousage rolls).And about 60 ravioli are in the freezer which will provide 2 more meals for all or 6 more meals for myself!!!
Lunch today was bread and cheese and a apple at break time.Last night I have also made a carrot cake with rescued carrot base flour and rescued carrots.We had a slice each later on with a custard cream made from our eggs and rescued milk.
Tonight I made pizza.My pizza of course was without mozzarella, tomato souce and dried yeast as these engredients are from the shop. I made my pizza with beer yeast from end barrel ( were beer has been fermenting ), my flour and pumpkin left over for topping. It was different but still good. lesley and Chris had a margherita one.
So, second day gone and no problems.
Nursery staff gave me another 2.5 litre of milk near its end of date and I have already started another cheese.
I have now probably enough cheese for the month...maybe.
Tomorrow I wll post some pictures

Sample of my cheese

potatoe dish with wild sweet cecily

.

Day one

Good start today. Crispy temperature outside but hopefully nice sunny day later.
Flour arrived friday from kitchen staff in exchange of my lasagna and yesterday I made my bread, a loaf and 8 rolls. I have saved the pumpkin from Saturday night and choose the worst potatoes from aur garden, cooking the lot and making two sort of bread with potatoes and with pumpkin. the result was good and this is my bread for the week. If not enough I will be making more later.So my first breakfast was sliced of my bread and raspbery jam made last August. No butter and no coffee. As a drink I had concentrate from spearmint ( from school garden made in August )with hot water.Here some pictures of the bread and pumpkin fritters.
Last night we had venison gently provided by Bruce and a mash of potatoes and pumpkins with tops of leek from the garden, all fried and then cooked in the oven with pecorino cheese on top.
My first lunch will be bread with my creamy cheese, a apple from the garden and a couple of pumpkin fritters. For dinner I am going to make pumpkin ravioli for all the family.
As you can see, from a small ,pumpkin I managed 4 different products: bread, filling for the ravioli, mash and fritters.

Small ugly potatoes.Nothing to be wasted.

Pumpkin fritters

Sample of the bread

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