End of the month

First month is gone…I say fast, and surprisingly every thing went well. Better than I expected. I will try to record an account on what I have experience, how much food I have use etc.

First of all, I feel great, gratify and looking forward to the next month, and Christmas time where I want to try to do something special fore this special occasion.

Something for all family. We will have a banquet with all wild and own grown food, game, homemade sweets and drinks.

The main benefit from this experience is that I feel more relax because I know I am doing something positive and not only for myself. I am spending most of the time preparing food and reading lots of fact about food, its waste, the problems that are afflicting other people around the world. My mind is free from other thoughts and I find myself thinking intensively, but the all self thinking is very therapeutic. I also observe nature in a different way. I try to gain secrets, or new thought observing the birds in the garden, the behaviour of the chickens, the trees changing colours and all the others thing around us.

Most of the things I know I have learned from observing my father, my mother and my grand parents. We lost that skill because everything is done for us.

So, so far I have eaten homemade bread and homemade jam for breakfast except for the occasional eggs from our chickens.

Lunches were mainly with a variety of homemade pastas, from ravioli with different fillings( all own grown or wild herbs and veg ), gnocchi, linguine and lasagne. Other meals were made with our vegetables, both fresh, from the freezer and jars. We still have cabbage on the ground, leeks and Brussels sprouts.

I used some of the meat from last year pig, including meatballs from the pig head, bacon, pancetta and fat for frying things. I also used two all rabbit, two all pheasant, some fish cakes from the pike and some rabbit burgers. I had some creamy home made cheese with my meals, but I have to say that I did not eat much cheese at all. In fact, I still have lots of it and the last one I made was in the middle of the month.

As cakes, I had my own carrot cake from rescued carrot cake mix and my invention of panettone which I am planning to perfect for Christmas.

Overall I think the diet was balanced with lots of carbohydrates and lots of proteins and vitamins. As fruit I had only pears and apples from our trees.

Coffee was not missing as my wild fruit teas and the spearmint are a very good drink.

We, as a family, drunk juices made by myself and as alcohol, we had homebrew beer and home made wines. In facts, we bought ,I think, only 6 bottles of wine in the entire month.

At weekend  I had some sandwiches (unsold and destined to the bin) from the school kitchen. Food going to be wasted because unsold, is a common fact around every western countries. Most of the milk I used for the cheese was out of date or just about out of date, and the nursery staff kept it for me. If you process the milk to make cheese, even if it is out of date, it is still good to be use.

If I had bought the flour and few other ingredients for making my pastas, cheese and bread that were given to me in  exchange of my stuff  I would have spent around £12 or 15 pounds in the all months. That is 50 pence a day. But, even one pound a day would be still remarkable.

My freezer is still nearly full of vegetable, different meat and juices, so I am confident that I should manage for the rest of the experiment. I still try to resist not to eat too much or save the extra slice of bread or make the pheasant to last at least three meals.

As for this weekend, I did not manage to do anything outside. Snow is deep in the garden and is too cold to be comfortable to work.

Saturday evening the all family had pheasant and vegetables. Sunday we all had my pasta for lunch and in the evening my pizza. So, that was three meals with wild and our own products for all family. In fact, during the all November we ate (no shop food )15 times together. This gives me an indication how far the all family could go with this experiment. Maybe two months? Monday for my lunch I had pasta with pieces of the pheasant breast (left over) and peas. Dinner was 2 fry eggs and three different vegetables from the jars. I opened for the first time a jar of wild garlic, wild nettle and dandelions leaves preserved with my apple vinegar and salt. Really interesting taste. I also open the first mushroom jar and a mix vegetable jar in the liquid saved from a jar of courgettes/gherkins  . This last one was also very good. Tuesday lunch more gnocchi with pheasant breast and in the evening more vegetables from the jars with two sliced of sheep liver from the freezer.

(our chickens in the snow)

Last Saturday I also tried to create a panettone cake from two egg whites, some sugar and flour. It was nearly as I wanted, but I need to improve it by making it to raise more. This would be a possible cake for Christmas as in |Italy, the panettone and the pandoro are the cakes for Christmas. I have a picture of the first attempt.

Christopher loves it, so, must be better than I think.

The panettone cake

 

First snow

First snow has arrived. The garden looks good but the chicken are not happy. Only one of them this morning advetured herself out, and standing outside the kitchen door, was calling for food. it was nice to make the fire and get the house that good feeling of warmth while out was snowing.
Had  a look in the frigdge and decided to use the last boiled potatoe, some chunchs of boiled parsnip, turnip carrot and cabbage. Cut and mash it, then add some fresh parsley all together to make some filling for a version of vegetarian ravioli.
So, I mixed 300 grams of flour, one egg and 30 minutes later the all thing was ready. The ravioli were bigger than normal as I put more filling in it.
Christopher came back for lunch yeasterday and he had gnocchi. Same for me e Lesley later on. Today different pasta for both as Christopher had packet lunch in school.
Here are some pictures of the dishes.

First snow in the garden

My meal today.

The vegetable ravioli

water as food

After watching the documentary from BBC2 I though to write what I think about the water business around the world. Water is a primarily element for our existence. As I wrote before in this blog, water is now a right for every human being living in this planet. the UN has finally agreed on this not long ago.This is a extract of the document:

"By a vote of 122 in favour to none against, with 41 abstentions, the General Assembly today adopted, as orally revised, a resolution calling on States and international organizations to provide financial resources, build capacity and transfer technology, particularly to developing countries, in scaling up efforts to provide safe, clean, accessible and affordable drinking water and sanitation for all.

By a text on the human right to water and sanitation, the Assembly expressed deep concern that some 884 million people were without access to safe drinking water and more than 2.6 billion lacked access to basic sanitation.  Bearing in mind the commitment to fully achieve the Millennium Development Goals, it expressed alarm that 1.5 million children under five years old died each year as a result of water- and sanitation-related diseases, acknowledging that safe, clean drinking water and sanitation were integral to the realization of all human rights."

But before every human being in poor parts of the world gets this right ( drinking water available for everyone), we still have to provide this fundamental resource to people living in modern countries. As I said, after selling the land, now we are selling the water. Why? And why only few multinational groups have this monopoly? Who authorise them? They say that they can provide pure clean water, better water than the tap water. Why they do that? Because water is now polluted in many rivers and is not drinkable. Who polluted the water?
Water should never be privatise as private companies put profit first. No one can deny this because otherwise the companies won't do it for nothing. The precious liquid, that from rivers and sea and rain finally reaches us to keep us alive is now sold into plastic bottles made from oil. We buy water and soon we will be buying the air we are now breathing for free. The free water from the fountain in the streets of my town are no there anymore. it was free water from the above mountain, canalised by the Benedictine monks long ago, and because someone has decided to take it away ( the water ) we had to wait long time before the infrastructure was in place in order to have water in the houses. Now the water from the tap is not drinkable, so we are force to buy water at extra costs, because we already pay water taxes.
Water is food. No water, no food. To produce a bottle of coca cola the water used and wasted is unthinkable.
" Communities across India living around Coca-Cola's bottling plants are experiencing severe water shortages, directly as a result of Coca-Cola's massive extraction of water from the common groundwater resource. The wells have run dry and the hand water pumps do not work any more. Studies, including one by the Central Ground Water Board in India, have confirmed the significant depletion of the water table.
When the water is extracted from the common groundwater resource by digging deeper, the water smells and tastes strange. Coca-Cola has been indiscriminately discharging its waste water into the fields around its plant and sometimes into rivers, including the Ganges, in the area. The result has been that the groundwater has been polluted as well as the soil. Public health authorities have posted signs around wells and hand pumpsWater shortages, pollution of groundwater and soil, exposure to toxic waste and pesticides is having impacts of massive proportions in India. In a country where over 70% of the population makes a living related to agriculture, stealing the water and poisoning the water and soil is a sure recipe for disaster. Thousands of farmers in India have been affected by Coca-Cola's practices, and Coca-Cola is guilty of destroying the livelihoods of thousands of people in India. Unfortunately, we do not even know the extent of the damage as a result from exposure to the toxic waste and pesticides as these are long term problems. Most affected are the marginalized communities such as the Adivasis (Indigenous People's) and Dalits (formerly untouchables), as well as the low-income communities, landless agricultural workers and women. Taken in its entirety, that's a lot of people in India. ps advising the community that the water is unfit for human consumption. "
We can see how those multimillion profit companies act and I think they do not care about what they do as long their profit goes up. They say is because is a people choice, I say it is not a fair choice. if you go to a supermarket and you find on the shelves 10 different products, then you start to be in difficulties to decide what to choose. If there are only 2 products, then you will choose between them. Is not people choice is them creating it. That would be OK if what they created is damaging, or ,putting in danger people life.
So, that precious water is actually the basic ingredient for the food chain, and not only a simple essential drink. What the UN meant using the " affordable " term remain unclear or suspicious, but still better than nothing. At least the message is clear in the waider contest. If it will became applicable depends on individual governments.
As for me, business as usual. More pasta and vegetables ( left overs). I hope to be able to calculate what I used in the first month, just to have a better idea on how much food I really need.

Pheasants

Yesterday I have received 2 pheasants and today I cleaned them and stored in the freezer.
I also received the flour ,so I can make more pasta to give it in exchange of these birds. I have cooked the hearts and liver with a small piece of breast for my lunch. It was delicious.So tasty and fresh.
For tonight I will have a bit more of the rabbit stew I made the other day,with some bread and cheese. The potatoes I have cooked on Sunday night were too many, so I had some of them at lunch and for dinner.
Tomorrow I have to have some greens to balance the diet. I am not worried in eating pasta every day, but meat is not the same. I have lots of game but only some pike fish cakes left, so I am saving them for now.
I was asked from some friends if I could do some pasta making demonstration, so I am thinking to arrange a date before Christmas. I will be happy to know that some families  will be preparing home made pasta during the festive days. When four years ago  we promote a mushroom festival the people who participate were all very enthusiastic. We should actually try to promote events like this one more often, because it bring people together, and you will be meeting new friends and doing something more rewarding for yourself in terms of learning new things, socialising, and keep healthier. For example we should organise a apple festival,a house home made cooking display e so on. Share things and knowledge and products.
 Some pictures of my lunch tomorrow.

hearth, liver and breast

My lunch. What is better than this?













Today 24th November . This is my new condiment for my gnocchi. I wanted to use plenty of vegetables, so I made some pasta gnocchi and boil a carrot, a parsnip,a turnip( small )and some cabbage( all these are cultivated). All this was then chopped and fried adding the heart and liver of 2 partridges.When pasta was ready I mixed all together to create a new dish. No bad at all. For dinner I finish off the rest of the stew rabbit with some of the vegetables left. ( I have still more for another two meals). I know, it looks that I am eating same dish three o four time , but there is no other  way. Like in the past, you have to eat all of it even if you have to eat it more than once. here some pictures of today.

All the ingredients in the pan

Dish ready

Pizzas

It was not a busy day yesterday as my back pain let me down, not able to start working on the wooden floor in the garden house. I hope on Monday it will be better. The days are now starting to get very short, and with the combination of darkness and damp wet weather that syndrome of SAD is there, in the corner of the early evening, waiting for you to sit in the lounge, switch on the TV, open a bottle of wine and les  jeux sont faits. Well I decided to make some more bread, ravioli and pizza for everyone. Two different types of pizzas, as mine has to be shop free one.The flour I had in exchange three weeks ago is now finish and I had to improvise a dough with strong brown  bread flour instead. I did use again the yeast from the beer ( it keeps for very long time, possible a couple of months.by the time is finish or inefficient the next lot of beer has been fermenting any way).
The brown coloured pizza was better than last time. I did add some anchovy oil which I kept in the fridge from last time we bought them ( September? I keep the  anchovy jar oil as it is good as a condiment. Now more than before nothing is going to be wasted ).
In the morning went out to look for dandelion leaves and nettles leaves in order to make the ravioli. Well no much is left out  there. it tells you that by the end of October no much food is available from the wild. I kind of knew that, and this is way my freezer is full of wild herbs and other stuff. Do I have enough? Difficult to say but I am confident because I have got lots of cultivated peas,beans,beetroot and so on.
To the filling for the ravioli I add some marjoram and sage from the garden and mixed with the other herbs and mashed potatoes. Ravioli are for Josie and Sheila as both b provided some products to my exchange. Vegetables and flour.
Thinking about the wild herbs in the garden, in a book written by Vivien Weise called  Cooking Weeds, there is an interesting table regarding the content of proteins per 100 grams of edible parts of weeds compared with vegetables we buy in the shop. Here is the sample:

Vegetables                                                 Weed

White Cabbage    0.2                                 Chickweed           1.5
Chicory                0.4                                  Daisy                   2.6
Red cabbage        0.4                                 Sorrel                   2.8
Lettuce                 0.9                                 Dandelion             3.3
Spring leeks         1.0                                 Dead nettle            4.1
Chinese cabbage  1.3                                 Fat hen                  4.3
Spinach                2.5                                Good King Henry    5.3
Brussels sprouts    2.8                                Ground elder           6.7
Curly kale            3.0                                 Common mallow     7.2

Average              1.4                                 Average                  4.4

What is interesting for me is that my favourite cultivate vegetable ( white cabbage ) is the one with less proteins. On the other hand, the ground elder, which I have discovered this year to be edible ( thanks to a history program on channel four) has one of the highest content. Ground elder is considered to be a terrible weed/pest, but as Vivien suggests in her book, do not fight it, instead eat it. Within the cultivated ones, Brussels sprouts has is one of the highest, and as we know, nobody likes it!!!
Now that the festive season has started two months early what we a re going to do with our shopping?

According to the Love Food Hate Waste campaign we waste, on average, a third of the food we buy each week. However, during Christmas, WRAP claim that this increases by a massive 60 to 80%. You only have to set foot into a supermarket before Christmas to see people queuing down the aisles with trolleys laden with food. Many of us buy food as if we are feeding the five thousand, going to be snowed in for a week and the shops will be empty for a month.

This represents a staggering 230,000 tonnes of festive food worth approximately £275 million that gets thrown away across the country during Christmas and the New year. I am shocked and horrified.

My way of thinking is this: buy less do not meas eat less, it only means waste less. If the figures are correct we would better buy less food and at the same time we will be not only saving millions but also feeding millions of others around the world. Is not good enough to be generous at christmas, giving money or other thing for charities and carry on wasting soo much food. All that waste, as we know means only one thing : more hunger somewhere esle. We know that water and land is exploited;we know that people are exploited;we know that is not good for the environment, so we need to think twice before we buy food.
My suggestion will be: waste less and you will be already given the best present to million of people around the world for this christmas. I like this to be a new trend because we underestimate the value of this savings.

Cabbage

Last night did not have much time to do any food preparation as we came back from the swimming pool late. Fire to be prepared first, as priority then some food for the youngest one, some dish cleaning and so I decided to boil some cabbage ( from the school garden ). I also boil the outside leaves although not as tender as the middle ones. Normally I would keep them for the pigs, but wanted to try them in a dish.
After boiled and drained, the cabbage was chopped  and added to the fry pan, where I have melted some fat from the sheep neck.( I am trying to use fat rescued from previous cooking dishes and some fat that I have preserved in salt from last year pig belly. It works alright. No need for oil in some dished). To the frying cabbage I added some bits of the meat from the neck ( carving it out with a sharp knife), pinch of salt and voila', ready for the plate. It did not look any good, but it was OK. In fact this morning I have taken some for my lunch to school with some bread, plum chutney an apple and a pear.
I have a feeling of satisfaction every time I manage to go trough the day with such poor dishes. I say, well, it was edible, not too bad, and it was sufficient. I firmly believe that our palate( the part of the brain connected to it) gets trained to the taste of food. And you get use to it if the food you eat is eaten often.
I say this because I think about the bland food ( some ) sold in supermarkets. Chicken breast full of water for example. When you eat that for 20 years, then you try a real chicken you my find that the taste is too strong and you do not like it. Think about what other people eat in other countries, and some of their food taste and smell horrible for us but is tasty for them. So, the palate can be trained to food. I stick with my cabbage till is finish. As I said before I love cabbage anyway. In summer months in Sardinia our kitchen garden is always reach of cabbage. Lots of them. We eat cabbage ( white one ) as a salad, mixed with tomatoes, salt, olive oil (ours) and wine vinegar ( ours ). In my family over there we produce lots of varieties of vegetables,but we also produce our wine, olive oil and we have plenty of almonds trees. Some time the production of one crop is far more than we need, and therefore we give it to friend, relatives and neighbour.  Every one do this, so we have an exchange of products in a natural rotating system.
Here is today's fact:

If we planted trees on land currently used to grow unnecessary surplus and wasted food, this would offset a theoretical maximum of 100% of man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

Why we own the planet?

When the planet was created and the first living creatures started to benefit from nature the land and the waters were not own by anyone. When the first people started to live in it, none of them had a concept of owning the land or the waters. The planet was there to support life in any form, with no discrimination between creatures.

Our planet is actually our house, a special one, as it provides shelter, water and food.

We are here only for a very short time  and we are going to leave this place for others after us. There is no need for owning a piece of the planet as it is not our own. After 100 years all the people living now in the planet will be gone. Others will be living and we have to leave this resourceful hearth to who is coming after us.

The concept I am trying to extrapolate from my mind is not applicable now days as the planet has already been divided into continents, countries, regions, private land and so on.

But the principle stands behind the thinking of the planet as the place for every living creature. It can not be different from this, as  laws or legislation regarding the partition of the land and the waters were not written at the moment of its creation. Who started this business? The Homo Sapiens! I always question the concept of humans being as the most intelligent creatures in the planet.

Is not the life of the planet a intelligent, clever development of a form being as a all?

Someone called Gaia or Mother as it gives birth to every thing including our self. So, are humans only a part of this intelligence, cleverness?

Or, we think we are. We only our self can think about our self as intelligent people. None one else. In fact, as we are so clever, we are destroying the only place that can actually keep us alive. Can we call it progress something that actually has a strong relation with pollution, destruction,  explotation, waste of resources and death?

New philosophical thinking is now need it for our  “modern “ society. So, volunteers please.

As for my day by day business, last night I have made more pasta for today lunch, more potatoe cakes with bacon from last year ( still very good. it was salted too much and this has helped to preserved it for longer.I just cut it in strips and boil it for 20 minutes or so and the salt is washed away), cooked another sheep neck and toast the last pumpkin seeds. Christopher loves  the potatoe cakes and if I leave him he will eat all of them at once. Toasted almond from our trees in Sardinia and the pumpkins seed are my snacks in the evening whilst drinking a glass of own brew beer. I must say, the cobination is really good. Snacks during the day are garden apples and pears. Last night we tried a glass of plum wine from last year. it was fizzy, rose' type of color, and a bit sharp. A medium brut type of champagne, but it need it more sugar added during second fermentation. not perfect, but I new that not all the wines would not. On the other hand, rhubarb, apple and nettle wines are very good. Cherry and worcesterberry ones are still to be tried.