Disappointment pending...

2012. I’m living in the future and it’s not at all what I had hoped for. Despite the lack of rocket pants, however, and the fairly constant low level anxiety, I remain relatively content. 

We’ve had a lovely holiday. Christmas was a family day (without my kids but with Mum, my sister Sue, Robin and Callum and, of course, Ian & the Queen). On the 29th we drove up to Scotland for Ian’s niece, Kirsty’s, wedding. This was jolly fun although I wasn’t convinced by the symbolism. They each lit a candle and once the words had been said, together lit a big central candle. How lovely! And then they, together, snuffed their individual candles. I’m beginning to think I’m spending far too much time worrying about symbolism. At a talk some time ago I suggested that the speaker stopped ‘arming’ their audience with information and began sharing information. These ideas do not endear me. I should shut up. 

Fran, John, Laura & Lady Godiva

New year’s eve was with Julia and Doug and a host of lovely fans. To describe it as a feast rather undersells the whole thing. The food was amazing (who would have thought that beetroot mousse would be so yummy) and the presentation was fabulous, both the food and the lovely handpainted 'tapestries' courtesy of Julia and Sally. The only problem now is that of finding anyone brave enough to try to host next year’s celebration. We can comfortably seat eight but there is no way I could find the money, time and kitchen space to produce such a banquet. Wow! Sheffield fandom will be subsisting on the leftovers for some time to come. Of course there will be a follow-on extravaganza in May when the wedding of the century takes place in the Daly-Spencer household.

Over the holidays I spent two mornings on the allotment disinterring large quantities of junk, watched three TV progs (the Big Fat Quiz of the Year (tick good), Dr Who (tick vg) and Sherlock Holmes (tick excellent)) and listened to a number of radio programmes. I failed to finish a book (any book) and bemoaned the dearth of blogs and cartoons although  I did spend an inordinate amount of time reading postings on ‘Do the Math’. More on this sometime soon. I ate too much of too rich food and drank far too much. And all the time that vague low level anxiety hovered. Maybe more on this sometime soonish too.

So, it is the evening of new year’s day. Despite my best intentions I did not clear and clean the house - we entertained instead. I did, however, put my resolutions into play. I didn’t, despite the temptations still hanging round the house, ingest any refined sugar and I only had a share of one bottle of really quite splendid Amarone whilst eating my frugal dinner. There have been rather more photos taken of me than usual, given the additional festivities, and it was difficult to ignore the somewhat ample girth displayed. So, sigh, the following resolutions:

I will not drink alcohol on my own and I’ll limit myself to a share of one bottle of wine

I will not eat or drink refined sugar (goodbye hot chocolate with cointreau)

I will live within my means (because I so haven’t this month)

Yeah, I know. Every new year I intend to do the same old things. Get thin, get rich, get organised. I’m still ample, poorish and messy. It’s a tradition. I’ll see if I can get to February before I give up this year.

  

Day five

It’s the last day and I’ve just eaten my last meal of the five days (chick pea and lovage omelette). I have 300g barley, about 25g quinoa and a dusting of porridge oats left together with 40p. It’s Friday and I really, really want a glass of wine.

It’s been an interesting week. It has been an enlightening experience and the cause of many conversations but I haven’t spent so much time thinking, and talking, about food since I was a dieting teen. I have never been desperately hungry but there has definitely been a peckishness; a desire to eat more, and more varied foods, than I had available. On the other hand I feel quite well. No coffee, tea, wine or sugar, no bread and very reduced amounts of dairy food have left me feeling better than usual. A more equitable sharing of resources would probably benefit the rich world as well as lifting 1.4 billion out of a level of poverty that this week has only given a vague glimpse of.  

Finally I’d like to thank everyone who has (or will) donate money. I really appreciate it.  

Day four

A whole banana with breakfast this morning. It felt like luxury. For lunch I cooked a cup of quinoa, mixed in chick peas, olive oil and mint from my depleting pot and divided it up for Sally to eat at home (there was a strike at college) and me to take to work. It was surprisingly delicious and very filling but, as I was running a course with lunch provided, I had to explain to the delegates why I was eating this when they were tucking into exotic sarnies and several varieties of cake. The course was about sustainability and, whilst talking about resource issues we’d discussed escalating food prices and their effects on the developing world so it was an interesting talking point. Tonight I used up all the vegetables bar one onion in a soup, which I’ll liquidise for tomorrow’s lunch. I was a bit appalled to find two of my remaining three carrots had gone manky. I salvaged what I could rather than flinging the lot. 

Only one more day!

Live Below the Line, Day Three

Today has been a hunger free day! Before setting off for work I simmered a handful of barley grains, threw in some chopped kale from the back garden and added it to my left over stew to make a fairly decent quantity. I cycled into work again along the canal. It was lovely and I paused to take a few photos. Breakfast was porridge and ½ a banana again with a dash of milk.

I had half a bowl of stew at noon and another half at 2pm. I’ve found that spreading the meal reduces the hunger and gives me something to look forward to.
Cycling back along the Five Weirs Walk, towards the end I was definitely flagging. Also, whilst I adore my bike, the saddle is not comfortable. Tomorrow I’m running a course so I’ll bike down to the station and catch a train in an attempt to arrive feeling less jounced about.

Once home, as it is half way through the five days we had a treat. It’s a meal I used to cook all the time when the kids were little and the Rayburn was always hot. Savoury oat bake is from Rose Elliot’s fab book, ‘Cheap and Easy’, and consists of porridge oats, a tin of tomatoes and 100g grated cheese, layered and baked. Total prep time five minutes, baking time 30 minutes. Comfort food of the best sort, being both cheap and yummy.

Anyway, enough of this thinking about food. I need to read a paper about resource efficiency and then go to sleep. 


To donate please go to my donation page.

Live Below the Line, Day Two

Today has been fine. I've been mildly hungry most of the day and I've really missed my hot drinks, other than the peppermint tea first thing. I've drunk a lot of water which, again, probably wouldn't be sustainable in a real life situation. Clean water is not easily available for people living in extreme poverty.


In an effort to be more realistic I cycled all the way to and from work today. That's about three hours cycling which may well be comparable with the time spent travelling to look for work (or fuel or water etc). Of course my bike is a nice shiny new one with gears so not truly comparable.


Porridge with a bit of my milk and plenty of water together with half a banana was a quite filling breakfast (35g oats) but less than I would normally have. Plenty of nettle soup for lunch so I had half at lunchtime and half before heading off to woodwork. I've just eaten half my dinner and will save the rest for lunch tomorrow so that I'm not reduced to banana and plain barley. The rest of the meals are sorted, it's just tomorrow that I'm short of. Not really short, of course, there are calories left but I'm too tired to cook barley tonight and don't want to get up before 6am to cook it.

Live Below the Line, Day One

I tumbled out of bed this morning feeling distinctly peckish and desperate for a cup of tea. Oh well. I picked a sprig of mint (a perennial planted three years ago and no money spent on it since) and made a mug of mint tea. It was very refreshing and made me wonder why I buy mint tea bags. On the other hand, it’s not that big a pot of mint. It will probably last me the week and then I’ll have to leave it alone for a month. This would definitely not be sustainable long term. Nor is the use of an electric kettle just to make a drink.

To distract myself I got Ian to give me a lift up to the allotment with my fork, rake and watering can. Of course, a convenient lift is another luxury not available to people living in extreme poverty. It took me over two hours to clear a tiny bit of weed engulfed land that I then sowed with wild clover as a holding crop/green manure until I’ve got something more useful to plant there. Once the backbreaking digging was finished I picked a bag full of nettle tops. Another free ingredient but one I wouldn’t have walked over a mile to harvest.

Back at the house I fried the first of my four onions in a dollop of olive oil then went into the garden to dig up a couple of leeks. These are going rapidly to seed. It's amazing they survived my garden being decimated by the builders earlier in the year. I reckon I should put 5p in for my leeks and another 5p for the chard running to seed in a pot in the front that I intend to use. This leaves me with 46p. I chopped my straggly leeks up and added them to the pan. I would not usually use the green leaves but this is not time to throw away food value so the whole lot went in along with three spoonfuls of cooked chick peas, the bag of nettle tops and a fair amount of water.  Five minutes later I liquidised the lot. There’s a decent amount, enough for lunch tomorrow as well. It’s a little thin but tastes delicious. Normally I would have grated nutmeg into it and eaten it with a good tablespoon of yogurt and a hunk of bread. Not today.

I’m already starting to worry about the onions. I’ve only got three left. That’s a worry. I had probably better do a bit of planning.

So, at 6.30pm I’m feeling the sort of peckish you get when you’re on a diet. By no means awful, but noticeable.  We’re just waiting for the 1/3 cup of quinoa to cook. One of the things that is increasing my hunger is that Ian is, very ostentatiously, eating a Chinese takeaway in front of me and drinking a glass of Sauternes. Bad Ian!

Dinner tonight, for Sally and me is chick pea and barley stew with onion, carrot and potato. Two onions, three carrots and three potatoes left. Tomorrow will likey be the same meals again. I’m in the office and then will go straight from work to woodwork at the college. I won’t be home until around 9.30pm so there will be warming up rather than cooking. I’ll have to think about what to eat and when to cook Wednesday lunch. 

It's been a pretty good day. It feels like a very healthy diet so far. I'd just really, really like a glass of wine.

Ingredients

I have never spent this much time thinking about what I was going to buy to eat for a week. At my best I sit down and plan out menus for the week then write a shopping list, which I take to Waitrose and stick to, pretty much. At my worst I shop when I’m hungry and pile anything that takes my fancy into the trolley. I usually end up with too much stuff, most of which I do eat but after it is past its best, some of which I throw away when I find it mouldering gently in a corner at the back of the fridge. This week, with so little money I have spent quite some time online comparing prices.

The first thing to think about is that I must buy what is available. That is, I can’t buy in bulk and then split the food into smaller lots. If 500g is the smallest size of an ingredient that is sold, that is what I must buy. This, of course, presents the first difficulty of shopping when you are poor. The less you can buy at a time, the more it costs per unit. The economies of scale are just not available. It used to be that there were lots of bin-shops where you could find large numbers of open bins containing dry foods. You scooped out as much as you wanted. What an excellent idea. Unfortunately this fashion seems to have disappeared around here and there are no such shops in walking distance. And that’s the other thing I decided. If I am eating on £1 a day it is cheating to drive half way across Yorkshire to find food that is 20p cheaper per item. Everything must be purchased within walking distance of where I live. That leaves me Tesco, Waitrose, the Co-op a couple of health food shops and a greengrocers. There is a market in Sheffield that would probably be cheaper for fresh vegetables but it is a bus ride away (£2.60 there and back) or an hour and a half walk.

My usual supermarket of choice is Waitrose but I haven’t been able to use them this week because they tended to be up to 10p more expensive than Tescos. The Co-op is my nearest supermarket but is also more expensive for most things and has a very limited dried food section. My eggs and onions come from the Co-op, my cheese from Waitrose and all the rest from Tescos.

Shopping for one person is very difficult. I went for the following:

250ml Tesco extra virgin olive oil, 98p

500g dried chick peas, 78p

4 onions, 60p

4 carrots, 28p

500g pearl barley, 39p

300g quinoa, £1.69

10 Tesco value stock cubes, 10p

As you can see, a week of very boring meals for me! Having cooking oil seems very important to me, the flavour is in the oil, and a lot of the calories. Chick peas are my main protein with either barley (extremely cheap) or quinoa (my most expensive choice but a complete protein source). There are only two vegetables, onions and carrots. Onions are cheap, provide a decent amount of bulk and give a lot of taste. I’ve chosen carrots for the vitamin content and, again, the taste. I can’t afford any spices so the stock cubes are to add some additional taste to the grains. Luckily there’s a bay tree and a little thyme bush in the garden, which I am considering to be free because I haven’t spent anything on them for three years.

Having grumbled to Sally she suggested I reconsider and feed her too. Mm, good idea. That immediately made everything easier. With another five pounds to spend I was able to add the following:

500g Tesco porridge oats, 62p

1pt full fat milk, 48p

6 Co-op free range eggs, mixed size, £1.20

120g Wookey Hole Cheddar cheese, £1.06 (from the cheese counter at Waitrose)

4 new potatoes, 60p

1 tin Tesco value plum tomatoes, 31p

I’ve chosen full fat milk because it is the same cost as skimmed or semi and has more calories and nutrition for the money. The value eggs were much cheaper but I’d rather do without than use eggs from battery hens. The cheese is more a condiment than a major ingredient and was only affordable because at the cheese counter you can get whatever amount you want. The plum tomatoes are 2p cheaper than chopped and, when every penny counts, I can chop my own tinned tomatoes.

What I am doing without is tea, coffee and alcohol because it’s just not affordable on a tight budget. I’ve also decided not to buy any fruit. It’s relatively expensive and it doesn’t give enough calories for my cash. In a few months time I’d be able to eat blackcurrants out of the garden and forage for early blackberries. At the moment all I can forage is leafy vegetables.  There’re nettles, dandelions, and ransomes. I’ve also got the remains of some going to seed kale and chard and I may use the green shoots of one of the garlic plants. This is the equivalent to eating you seed corn as there won’t be a bulb from that plant at the end of the year. What this demonstrates is that anyone with access to land can live much better than those reliant on shops.

I’ve currently got 91p left to play with and I may go looking in the reduced bins. Now I’ve got to plan how to make these ingredients stretch for fifteen meals.

Live Below the Line

This is a very interesting idea and way of raising both money and awareness of extreme poverty. I am participating on behalf of Christian Aid. This is my message on the fundraising website:

This May I'm going to be living below the line! From May 2nd - 6th I'll be surviving off just £1 a day for all of my food... Given that sometimes I spend that much on a piece of cheese I expect it to be eye-opening.

I'm expecting it to be difficult (I'm going to have to wean myself of caffeine to prepare), but it's an awesome way for me to raise money and awareness for the 1.4 billion people who have to live like this every day - and who have to make £1 cover a lot more than food!

I will be blogging about what I'm eating and how hungry I am at http://yvonnemrowse.blogspot.com/. Have a look.

Please donate to support me, and critical anti-poverty initiatives. After donating - you should consider joining up and doing it yourself!

I have spent much of today doing research which has been fascinating. I've got my ingredients list sorted. I just need to work out how to cook my very limited ingredients so that I'm not bored. I'll write up my research in my next posting. If you want to read more the website is here.

Spring!

This morning I finally made it to the allotment to do something other than gaze happily and show it off to friends and family. I think I probably need a skip to dispose of all the assorted trash that has built up there. I wanted to trim the hedge back but there were areas where the footing definitely wasn't safe. I need to find out what is rotting below the undergrowth before venturing up to the hedge line. It took me 40 minutes to walk there but there are buses (81 and 88A) which I will catch from now on. I spent an hour and a half clipping and digging and have 7/8th cleared one tiny bed, as you can see. The bed was mainly supporting docks, dandelions, buttercups, wild strawberry and more couch grass than seems at all reasonable. I stopped at 7/8th cleared because I was concerned I wouldn't be able to walk home if I didn't.



In the areas further in there were a fair number of young stinging nettles. This is a good thing because it tells me the land is fertile. The buttercups indicate wet ground. The soil seems quite reasonable; a tendency to clay but not too heavy. There is also, to judge by the tubs strewn around, a slug problem, but that just seems to be the case anywhere is Sheffield.


Eventually, having spent some time on back-breaking work and coming to the end of my available time window (it was due to rain but, more importantly, I'd drunk enough tea to need to be looking for a loo), I spent a few minutes picking my first harvest. Early spring nettles, before they get all dry and stringy, make wonderful soup.

So here it is. Yummy nettle soup made with onions, garlic, leeks (from the garden), potatoes and a little bit of nutmeg. And a dollop of greek style yogurt. I suspect it'll be quite a while and a lot of hard work before I get anything else worth eating from the allotment.

Thursday at the Fringe

We missed a day on Wednesday. Because it wasn't Fringy I didn't write it down and now I have no idea what we did, other than eat. Lunch at Equi's Restaurant & Ice Cream Parlour. I had real food but Ian and Julian both had enormous ice cream sundaes. If you are ever in Hamilton you really ought to make the pilgrimage to this wonderful place. The ice cream at Nonna's in Sheffield is excellent but Equi's make Dime Bar Crunch, and apple pie ice cream and lemon curd ice cream and the sublime cranachan ice cream. I had a tiny cone of dime bar crunch, just so I wasn't resentful of the boys. Dinner was at Pintxo in Glasgow which has been refurbished to fit more tables in but was as wonderful as always. I love tapas (and meze and thali and etc) and Pintxo does the best tapas I've tasted in the UK. Julian ate until he could hardly move. We didn't have pudding. Then I, cautiously, drove home. Hardly driving these days results in a certain amount of nervousness but Ian was starting to complain about never being able to drink at restaurants.


Thursday we had a late start and a very gentle evening. First, however, we took Julian to see the Pineapple. Here's the Pineapple in all it glory:


Full details of this remarkable, beautiful and rather silly building can be read online here. Ian never buys me a present like this. I am faintly resentful, although what I'd do with this delightful place without the associated fortune and a four wheel drive car I don't quite know. It's a long commute to Sheffield.

Here's a picture of Juilan's face when he saw the fabulous structure:

From this revelation we made our way through South Queensferry into Edinburgh where Julian and I did a quick raid on Transreal. The rather reserved guy who runs the shop looked quite pleased to see Julian but was probably desperately disappointed when Julian restrained himself from his usual spending spree. Travel by train means restricted luggage. I only bought four books myself, three planned and a Diana Wynne Jones novella which was rather sweet. 


We rendezvoused at Under the Stairs for a cocktail and to make a table booking for later then dashed off to meet Lilian at the Stand to see Andy Zaltzman. This was a tremendous show. Andy is one of our favourites. I was originally introduced to him the year he was jilted by John Oliver who heartlessly abandoned him for Jon Stewart. He was good then if a little lost. Since then we have seen him each year and got a regular fix from the Bugle podcast. What can I say? His description of his delivery of his son was magnificent. He surely isn't as incompetent and unsupportive as he suggests or there probably wouldn't be two children in the family. He would have been jilted again, long since. The rest was, as always, both funny and thought provoking.


What did I eat Under the Stairs? Pitta and dips, because I always do, and cauliflower cheese. Both yummy. I shared a bottle of Viognier with Lilian and then we up and dashed back to the Pleasance to see Emo Phillips. He is a very odd comedian but well worth seeing again. His delivery is slow and idiosyncratic but worth concentrating on. Sadly I didn't take a notebook and it's been almost a week, so if you want some examples have a look at the vids on his website.


Now I'm going to bed because I've got a ridiculously early start tomorrow and I've got to edit the presentation into shape on the train, so I'd best be awake enough to do it. 

Back to work

So it was back to work with a vengeance today. Nose to the grindstone from 9 to 17.30 with five minutes for my PB sandwich and Questionable Content. Still, due to there being little to eat in the house I left on time so that I could get to Wayne's greengrocers before he shut, to purchase eggs and yogurt. I came home and opened the fridge to find half a monster yellow courgette (they get away so quickly if you don't pick them). It seemed a perfect opportunity to make potato and courgette soup. There were enough potatoes under the self-'seeded' potato plant in the garden and a lovely soup resulted from this garden bounty. 


Whilst wandering around the internet after eating I came across this somewhat alarming story about the end of the effectiveness of antibiotics. At work we had been talking about the upcoming wheat problems, and the potential for further recession under the austerity budget/s but had come to the conclusion that the world would not end this week. There do, however, seem to be an alarming number of bubbling problems. We will reassess the timescale for TEOTWAWKI after the October budget.


To cheer myself up I wandered onto Casaubon's Book for my regular fix of Sharon's good sense. She was writing about how few of us know how to cook from basic ingredients any more. I've been interested to see that there are organisations in Sheffield offering basic cooking courses. Many years ago I used 'The Pauper's Cookbook' by Jocasta Innes but in these vegetarian days, when I'm hungry but poor (back from the Fringe way overspent) I look into Rose Elliot's 'Cheap & Easy' which quite wonderfully provides advice on how to cut her family-sized recipes down for two or one lonely person.


All this was just passing time before going out into the dusk on a slug hunt but when I emerged by lovely neighbours were sitting out on their decking eating barbecue with a bottle of wine. I didn't want to interrupt their romantic meal with the squelch of popping slugs so I thought I'd blog instead.


It's very quiet in the house without Sally who has abandoned me and the Guinea Pigs for a trip to see her school-friends and Dad. Before I arrived home she had vacuumed the downstairs and the stairs, cleaned the bathroom and washed the dishes. I was dead impressed. I guess I have to keep it nice now.