Non-chicken plan - Live Below the Line

The plan I posted about yesterday was based around getting a whole chicken (a Lidl free-range one) and making the most of it in a variety of guises.

That is the idea I've had in my head, getting a few bits of different things and then making them stretch for the 5 days.

I guess that is because this tends to be the way we eat anyway, but with our normal budget we add things as the week goes along. It is kind of a rolling programme of leftovers, we start with chicken (or ham, etc) on Sunday, then we add a spanish tortilla on Tuesday, make a risotto with the stock we have made, add a flan or tart of some kind, maybe make some hummus, cook some sausages, and it just kind of grows and evolves over the week. We use the food for both lunches and teas.

It also felt more authentic. When you don't have much money to spend on food (even when it is more than £1 a day) then you don't get to make many choices. The monotony is one of the demoralising things about poverty; the reality of that lack of choice particularly in such a consumer society grinds you down. If you've bought a bag of rice, then you're having rice, you don't have the luxury of just being able to make a simple choice like swapping to pasta.

And the lack of choice isn't just food, you often don't get to choose a job, where you live, what you eat, what you wear, you just take what you can afford and hope that is in some way works. It is one of the reasons that when you have a limited income (be it benefits or with a low-income job) you buy small 'treats' even when know that you can't really afford them, just for the relief from the relentless sameness and lack of choice. For some people, and particularly in some countries outside the UK, this lack of choice may mean having to move your whole family away from the place where they have always lived, it might mean not being able to choose an education for your children, it might means having to leave your family to go and find work so that you can send a little money home to them to help them survive.

But, these thoughts aside, I thought I should maybe try looking at our Live Below the Line budget another way, so I'm going to try and plan an alternative menu which doesn't use the chicken and buys things on a more day to day basis. I'll see how it goes and keep you up to date.

As a PS, while we're talking about poverty here's a nice graphic showing how relatively few people really are on unemployment benefits as a share of total welfare spend (only 3% on Job Seeker's Allowance). The current rhetoric on benefits doesn't help anyone, and those on severely limited incomes can certainly do without the 'scrounger' stigma that is being pushed by the government and media (and those on benefits may be in or out of work - many people on welfare are on in-work top ups of their low wages) :

Image from Jon Leighton on Facebook, click on his name to check out his info on it.

Meal plan - Live Below the Line

So, as I'm sat here with the children asleep, with a cup of tea and a rich tea biscuit with nutella on it (soon to be forbidden luxuries all), I thought I'd write out my meal plan.

I'm not sure I can afford to do it this way, as I think I'm a bit short on veg in my budget, but this is what I'm thinking at the moment. It may change to dhaal and pinto bean chilli before we actually get to the date, but here is where I am for now. It would be a lot more bean and pulse heavy already if it wasn't for the boys' aversion to all pulses except baked beans.

This is on a budget £20 for all 4 of us for 5 days. I'm hoping to find cheaper cooking oil than I have so far which will give us more money for veg, I only need a little bit but the Live Below the Line budget rules means I have to account for the whole bottle, the only thing you are allowed to just budget for a portion of are herbs/spices.

I've underlined the text below each time a new thing makes an appearance, for ease of reading.

As you will see it is somewhat monotonous, but we knew it wasn't going to be a gourmet experience:

Day 1
Breakfast: porage made with milk, plus fruit for the boys (kiwi, banana, blueberries).
Lunch: Split pea soup, homemade flatbread, plus cheese for the boys
Tea: Roast chicken and roast veg, flatbread, plus yoghurt for the boys.
Rice pudding
Snacks: oat and apple biscuits

Stock will be made with the chicken carcass to use for risotto on another day.

Day 2
Breakfast: porage made with milk, plus fruit for the boys (kiwi, banana, blueberries).
Lunch: Split pea soup, homemade flatbread, plus cheese for the boys
Tea: Roast chicken and roast veg wraps, rice? flatbread, sweetcorn fritters, plus yoghurt for the boys.
Rice pudding
Snacks: oat and apple biscuits

Day 3
Breakfast: porage made with milk, plus fruit for the boys (kiwi, banana, blueberries).
Lunch: Split pea soup, homemade flatbread, sweetcorn fritters, plus cheese for the boys
Tea: chicken and veg pizza, plus yoghurt for the boys.
Rice pudding
Snacks: oat and apple biscuits,

Day 4
Breakfast: porage made with milk, plus fruit for the boys (kiwi, banana, blueberries).
Lunch: Split pea soup, homemade flatbread, sweetcorn fritters, plus cheese for the boys
Tea: chicken risotto, plus yoghurt for the boys.
Rice pudding
Snacks: oat and apple biscuits

Day 5
Breakfast: porage made with milk, plus fruit for the boys (kiwi, banana, blueberries).
Lunch: Split pea soup, homemade flatbread, sweetcorn fritters, plus cheese for the boys
Tea: chicken risotto, plus yoghurt for the boys.
Rice pudding
Snacks: oat and apple biscuits

So what have I forgotten? Help me!

I must be missing something glaringly obvious and this lot takes me up to £19.97!

As I say I'm a bit light on veg at the moment, but I hope I'll be able to either find some cheap almost best before date veg/fruit bargains, or find some cheaper oil so I can get more veg.

I also think I might need more milk, I've put a 4 pint big bottle in the budget but I'm note sure that will see my milk guzzling boys through (as well as the rice pudding and all the porage making). Although they do usually leave quite a bit in the glass, so I guess it will just be a case of giving them less and then topping up if they want more to try and eke it out further.

I also need to look at my flour usage, I've not looked at my flatbread/pizza base/wrap/fritter recipes to double check how big a bag I'll need.

That's it for now.

Live Below The Line

I haven't posted on this blog for a VERY long while as we don't have the allotment anymore, and for the last nearly 2 years we haven't even had a bit of garden.

But we're planning on taking part in Live Below the Line this year and this seemed like the place to write about it, as it is all to do with food and eking out as much as you can from as little as possible.

https://www.livebelowtheline.com/uk

So that is £1 per person each day for 5 days, for all food and drink. We'll give the difference between that and our normal food budget to charity, and hopefully it'll focus our minds on food waste, and food poverty here in the UK and in other places too. Some kind people might also sponsor us!

At the moment we're plotting and planning to see if we can do it as a family, without the kids losing out too much. They are way too young to understand (not quite 3 years and 1.5 years) and don't really do lentils/split peas/beans/chick peas, so the options we would take just for ourselves are out of the window!

I'm not sure if it will really work if we're trying to cook like normal for them but on on £1 a day for ourselves, so that is our focus just now.

Our plan just now is to try and buy a whole chicken, rice, veg, split peas, oats, milk, sugar, flour, frozen sweetcorn, oil, (maybe yeast too) and a few spices with our budget to feed us all, and the spend the boys' £10 on fruit, cheese, macaroni, and yoghurt to top them up.

Today's experiment was trying to make biscuits. If I have biscuits for morning and afternoon snacks alongside a bit of cheese, then they probably won't even notice anything has changed!

My Live Below the Line experimental recipe is 2 glasses of oats, 2 glasses of milk (not quite as full), 1 apple, 1tbsp sugar, 1tbsp water, 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon.

I cooked the chopped apple in a pan with the sugar and water until soft. Then added the cinnamon.

In another bowl I mixed the oats and milk left them for a bit, then microwaved them to thicken them a bit.

Then I mixed them both together and split the mixture into 24 dollops onto oiled baking trays. 15mins in a 150C oven saw them brown nicely on top, and they are now cooling.

They look OK, but we'll have to wait for the taste test to be sure!

All Over

Well, we have given up the allotment, finally.

We had done almost nothing on it last year, and humphing a baby over there with all the associated accoutrements was meaning I ended up never going. A 10 minute job of watering things became too big a task, even though it is only a 15min walk away.

So we decided that if we weren't making good use of it, then someone else should have it and get enjoyment out of it.

We took out a few prized tools and locked up for the last time a fortnight ago.

We hope to find somewhere with a garden at some point, having all your plants growing outside your own door seems like a much easier option! Or maybe we will get an allotment again when the baby is a bit bigger.

Signed up for another year!

Well I went and signed my missives and handed over my association fees this Saturday just gone, so we are signed up for another year.

I didn't really do anything at the plot, apart from empty the green house of some mouldy dead plants, re-attach a downpipe on the shed guttering, and tie our shade fabric canopy back up.

Oh and brought home mouldy leather gloves to wash. It has been very cold in that shed, it is all going to need a really good clean now that it is warming back up again.

But the plot didn't look as disheartening as I expected. It is a big mess, but all that work in previous years to put some structure into it means I can still see hope under all the weeds!

It is do-able - one bed at a time.

2010

I see I only managed 1 blog post last year! Not very good.

I promise we did go to the allotment more then that, although not as much as we should have done in the second half of the year. However we did get lots and lots of soft fruit, some potatoes, various beans and peas and some salad from the plot, so it wasn't too bad. We also got lots of weeds!

This year we hope to do better. However we are also growing something else, a baby due in May, so best laid allotmenting plans may not come to fruition! And I'm going to try and photo and blog too.

I haven't been to the plot yet this year, it has only just emerged from the snow and ice really, but I am going to try and have a walk over there soon.

Happy New Year!

Back to the plot!

We have been very lax so far this year, having hardly been to the plot at all, but we both went down today.

While I went off to the committee meeting, MrUrban dug up our Jerusalem Artichokes, sorted out the bed they were in and then put some back for this year. So we have quite a big bucket of JAs to eat our way through.

After the meeting finished I got to work on some weeding and tidying and MrUrban sowed some pea and bean seeds in biodegradable pots. That worked quite well last year, so we decided to do it again. I think they are Borlotta, Pink Lady, Runner, Purple Dwarf, and Broad on the bean front and Starlight, Ambassador and Kelvedon Wonder for the peas, like last year.

I had a good wander round the plot too, to see how it was all doing. The strawberries look happy enough, and the runners we took off and potted up in the Leanhouse are doing well too - even a flower on one of them. The soft fruit bushes have lots of healthy looking leaves and shoots too.

The fig trees in the Leanhouse have tiny little fruits starting off which is cheering, I hope we will be able to look after them and get them to ripen. I'm not going to bring them out of the Leanhouse yet as I think there could still be frosts which would do for those fruit.

The only other thing growing is purple sprouting broccoli, but it is a bit small and sad looking. But between the 3 tiny plants we may manage one batch of Stilton and Broccoli soup eventually.

Shed Refurb

Our shed floor has been falling in since we got the allotment 17months ago. It seemed to be dipping alarmingly in the back right corner. We dealt with this by ignoring it and piling lots of crap into that corner; we just didn't use it.

We knew it was a job for good weather (as we had to empty everything out), but last summer we were just too busy to get round to it. So this summer was the earliest possibility.

The other evening at about 6pm, after a full sunny day on the plot, we thought we would 'have a little look' to try and suss out what the actual problem was. The next two days were forecast to be rain free and we were available, so it seemed to make sense to suss out what problems we would be tackling.

It turns out that, as we see when we pull up the ply and broken floorboards, the people who built the shed decided that a single nail would be fine to hold each joist, and these joists are about 7 or 8 inches off the ground at the rear of the shed. Obviously without any support the joists have just sagged, the nails have just bent, the wood has twisted and broken, and the floor caved in.

So . . . we figured we needed to support the areas where the joists meet the wall, and at various points along their length. We decide breeze blocks are the answer, especially as the nearby B&Q has them at 91p each.

After a little work with a mallet and a cold chisel we have suitably sized lumps to fit underneath. While we have the floor up I throw some damp proof plastic sheet under there to try and keep the evaporation up into the shed to the minimum, and we get it re-boarded with some tongue and groove we salvaged from a local theatre company's store, when they were emptying it.

This gave us a good sound surface, but there was still a bit of movement. Without taking up all the floor we couldn't secure it all on blocks, but we decided that if we could board over the whole floor with sheet material it would secure it enough.

We have a storage unit with lots of bits and pieces we have collected over the years, so we went there to see what we had. We found some 'paintings' we had done for an exhibition in 2006. We will never use them again as they were site specific, so although they are technically exhibited pieces of artwork (created for an International Festival no less!) they are also bits of MDF with paint on one side!

We sawed them up at the storage unit into pieces 400mm wide (so we could fir them in our car) and 1700mm long, which is the front to back measurement for the shed.

And: Voila! A shed floor, complete with exciting decoration! It must be the most stylish floor on the site. And much more stable than it was. We then started putting furniture in. We had a drawer/cupboard thing already, which went in the formerly wonky corner. It already had a batten on the side of it, so we used some offcuts to fill in the space next to it as a desk.This would then become the 'kitchen', with our little camping stove, and storage space for the plates etc. We had also found a lovely gate leg table in the street in June, with the intention of it going in the shed, so that got added too. Along with some metal shelves, new hooks for all our tools, and a few rails and shelves for our bits and bobs, the new style shed was complete.

We have spent so much time in it since then! It has been quite humid here for the past few days, so it has been a case of do a bit outside, and then pop into the shed to have a sit at the table and read. Then back out again.

It will really be the biggest benefit in winter though, when it will make the prospect of going to the allotment much more desirable.

Summer! Sun! Growth!

It seems we are having a summer, so I have been at the allotment a lot.

I will get the photos of my phone and get blogging my activities soon.

Maybe even today, as it looks a little overcast out the window.

Bistro Bumpkin

We have recently bought a saucepan, and taken a small cast iron griddle up to the allotment, so we can cook a bit better. And get that harvest, to pan, to stomach time down.

The first proper allotment meal was our first pea, bean, mint and feta salad of the year. This was a staple last summer, but the broad beans and peas seem to be a little later this year.

It involves lightly boiled peas and broad beans. These are cooled a little and the outer white skin removed from the broad beans. I warmed the pittas on the griddle (well more burnt them really).

Collected plenty of mint. We had the amount in the photo each. The plates came from the site skip, they are in perfect condition so I have no idea why they were there.

And plenty of salad leaves (Saladin lettuce in this case). And then mix, add oil and vinegar and eat. Enjoy!

Tagged

I’ve been tagged by Courgettes and Fennel. The rules are:

Link to the person who tagged you.
Post the rules on your blog.
Write six random things about yourself.
Tag six people at the end of your post linking to their blog.
Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Six random things about me:

1. My favourite TV programme is the Mighty Boosh.

2. I trained as an Interior Designer, but have never worked as one.

3. I have an Abyssinian cat called Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

4. I am English but have lived in Scotland for 11 years.

5. My favourite place in the world is Trotternish on the Isle of Skye.

6. I have had my allotment 1 Year and 120 Days.

I am tagging:

Kennyhill Cottage, MuswellHillBilly, VegMonkey and the Mrs, Down on the Allotment, and Little Gems.

Help the bees

Have a look at this petition:

"The British Beekeeping Association has requested £8m for the government to fund 5 years research into Colony Collapse Disorder. The government has stated that no funds exist within the existing farming research budget.

Kept honey bees provide a significant percentage of pollination to food crops, fruit orchards and of course provide honey.

This fundamental research needs to be performed in order to protect the country bees before it arrives. As in almost all cases, being prepared for something reduces its impact for a fraction of the cost compared to being unprepared.

Currently only £1.35m per annum is available to the National Bee Unit (part of Defra), this funds all its statutory activities as well as research. If there is no money in the farm research budget, then money should be made available from contingency funds."

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/BeeResearch

http://www.britishbee.org.uk/bbka_research_campaign.php

flapjacks 2

They are still cooling, but I stole one to have with some vanilla ice cream and they are fab!

I ended up putting sunflower and pumpkin seeds in, as well as the raspberries. And it took nearer to 30mins in the oven, I think because of the added moisture of the fruit.


I'm looking forward to them being ready, I'm going to take some to the allotment next time I go to keep me going.

flapjacks

I'm getting my hand in with the syrup flapjacks today. Although I don't have any raspberries of my own yet I bought some local ones and am going to make raspberry flapjacks.

Well, I need to get my eye in before our raspberries come along, I wouldn't want to waste any of ours, so I need to do thorough tests!

I'll post some pics when they come out of the oven.

I'm doing 200g oats, 200g syrup, 100g butter, 100g sugar, and a small tub of raspberries.

Put the sugar, syrup, and butter in a pan and melt over a low heat. Remove from the heat and add the oats and mix thoroughly.

Then add the raspberries (or strawberries, or raisins, or chocolate chips, or pumpkin and sunflower seeds) and mix through.

Press into a shallow greased tin and put into a pre-heated oven (180°C or Gas Mark 4) for 20 mins. When they come out cut them into squares but don't take them out of the tin until they have cooled and hardened.

yesterday and today (and tomorrow)

Weeding, weeding and more weeding mainly.

You can now actually see between the rows of strawberries, and the rows of onions.



And the Jerusalem artichokes aren't having to fight with the docks.

The squash have got some room round them too now. And they are starting to form fruit, I'm very excited by the yellow ones and the round ones.

And I got the sweetcorn in, a block of 3 by 3 up next to the Kale, garlic, carrots, and turnips.


We got a load of flower seedlings into pots too. Tomorrow I need to get the salad out from the leanhouse, it is too hot for it in there and it will bolt if I'm not careful.

plans for the future

I've been on the allotment committee for a few months now and I'm getting involved in some plans for improvements around the site. We want to get more people involved in our site, and improve the visitor experience, the place is a bit of an eyesore at the moment, which I'm sure doesn't endear us to the neighbours!

We have already given 4 plots to make up 2 large community allotment plots with various groups using them, they have had the land for a while and the lead group have just raised money for landscaping and a cabin with a toilet, so should be able to start planting it out soon. Various other community groups, some local residents, and some local schools would also like to get involved more so hopefully we can get ourselves in a position to do that.

I'm on the funding team for our committee, and we have identified the things we want to fund, and some of the places we are going to apply to. Hopefully we can put together a good explanation of what we want to do and then get it funded.

One of the first things will be a healthy eating project with the community groups: the new beds that are going into one of the community plots will hopefully be meal themed, one for pizza, one for a kind of soup, one for a salad, so the people using it can really see a link between what they are growing and what they end up eating.

Along side that we want to do demonstrations of cooking in the plots, and also collect up recipes from all the different plot holders and make a collection out of it that we will aim to get printed. I'd love for us to be able to do that one, it will give a real good sense of community inside the allotment, and also give us something we can share with our neighbours so they can see what we are all about.

Here's hoping.

It is also a time for change and plans in allotments in general in Glasgow. There is a consultation going on about allotments: their use, provision, upkeep, funding, thier benefits, security, etc If you are in Glasgow then you can make a comment, the strategy documents are available as a pdf, and it can be responded to online. Links here: Allotment Strategy. Closing date 20th June for responses.

more growing, less typing

I've been neglecting this blog, so my apologies.

However, you will be pleased to know that I haven't been doing quite so badly on the allotment. It is still a running battle between us and the weeds, but we are winning in enough areas to have some decent crops going on.

So, a catch up post. In May things just kept on growing. I was away on Skye for a while, but everything survived my absence. The summer squash and courgettes went into the beds, the salad started filling out the bath and the peas and beans grew like crazy.


In June this first bit of June we have got our scarlet kale in, potted up our peppers and chillis to bigger pots, saw the Jerusalem artichokes shoot up, and loads of fruit and flowers appear.

The tomatoes have started to flower, the vintage wine and red robins are furthest along: the biggest and smallest fruit.


And the sweet peas have been planted to grow up the old metal frame we put in our flower 'meadow'.

Bath O' Salad and summer squash

More salad in the bath this evening. Rocket this time to add to the lettuce and endive.

The greenhouse is looking quite lush, plenty of tomatoes, peppers, chillies, and squash.


We are going to put the squash out (into what was the strawberry bed last year) in a couple of weeks time. We will build another of the tunnel cloches for them to keep them safe from the late frosts.

peas and cloches

This evening we got the pea plants, which we had started off in the greenhouse, into their bed. 3 Ambassadors (and one seed in the ground to make it 4), 4 Starlight (with pale pods and dark leaves for easy picking), and 4 Kelvedon Wonder (an early). We also got 7 broad beans in, with another 5 or so in the ground to make it up to 2 rows.


We made a cloche for them with a wood frame we had (an abandoned cold frame attempt from last year) and some correx from the previous leanhouse™ covering.


Hopefully that will help them get acclimatised. They were in biodegradable pots, so there shouldn't be much root disturbance, and we have put the copper pipe frame around the bed in an attempt to foil the slugs again. It worked really well with the cabbages last year, so hopefully it will keep our little seedlings safe.

Mmmmm peas!

ship shape in the evenings

The light evenings since the clocks changed have made a big difference to our workrate.

The first job came from a windfall. The community group that has a plot on our site is doing a load of work at the moment, they have had some luck with funding and resource allocation, so will be making a big push to sort out the space we have given them, with our help. This means a certain amount of clearing of their plot, one of which has a lot of gravel in it. Our Secretary made sure that they weren't considering just throwing it away and we are now working at moving it around to where it is needed.

First lot he moved to a big boggy area on the main path, and then a second batch we wheeelbarrowed away to our Leanhouse™ to make a floor for it. It is particularly boggy there (one of the reasons for siting it there - the soil was too damp to use as a bed) but now it has a ground sheet down and gravel on top, to keep the weeds at bay, make it look a little neater, and improve drainage. There is still plenty of gravel though, so we will have to get some other uses for it going. Probably communal paths.


This also coincided nicely with us retiring some metal shelves from use at home, so we reconfigured those as Leanhouse™ staging, putting the shelves on the wrong way up to form shallow trays. They are the perfect size for grow bags and seed trays. They cost us a few pounds about 10 years ago, so we are definitely getting our money's worth!


They are almost full now a couple of days later, we have mixed salad, peas, beans, broccoli, kale, chard, lettuce, all sorts of stuff just sowed or as young seedlings, in there.

Also in are the potatoes, we have gone for Arran Pilots and Desiree this year. We used compost from our functional bath, the Bath o' Salad, to go in the trenches, and then refilled the bath with new stuff ready for lettuce seedlings, which are now in.

And then last night we did a bit of spring cleaning rather than planting. We had put the last of our home produced compost in an old broken bath which was sitting there and looking unattractive and taking up room, so I dragged out a black compost bin and transferred it all to that. The cracked bath is now in the skip. Once that was gone we rediscovered a metal arch underneath it, so that has now been installed in the middle of the 'flower' bed ready for sweet peas to climb up.

And the old strawberry plants have been transplanted from their overgrown bed to a nicely cleared new one. That leaves up clear to do some serious grass removal in that bed in preparation for the squash going in.

All in all it is coming together, I reckon a couple more evenings and we may have it in a fairly neutral state, with all the beds ready to go.