Living Below the Line – Locally

£1

This is my Live Below the Line challenge week. If you have not come across the challenge before the basic idea is that you spend no more than £5 for five days’ food and in anyone day you eat no more than £1 worth – the rules are fairly strict, you can read more here. Last year I bought in bulk and cheap at a big supermarket but this year I have decided to buy local and use food from the garden. My core purchases have been a litre of raw milk (£1) from Fen Farm Dairy‘s wonderful milk dispenser, four tomatoes, two carrots, two onions (£1.40) and 500g of oats (60p) from the Framlingham Market, the remainder is the cost of eggs (10p each) from my own hens, lettuces (10p each), sorrel, herbs from the garden and a few teaspoons of oil for cooking.

My day starts with water based porridge 6p; lunch is lettuce, carrot and tomato, 26p (with a few oats not used in the porridge and toasted with some cajun spice), supper is a stir up of onion, lettuce, sorrel, porridge, eggs and milk 61p. The first day I converted the milk to paneer but felt it a waste to throw the whey away, I didn’t intend to it was tidied up by others. The first day I forgot to use any onion, I now realise what a difference and onion can make to a meal. It isn’t very varied but actually seems to be doing the job, I’m sleeping for Britain due to the caffeine/alcohol detox and I will undoubtably be loosing weight so it would not be suitable for anyone who was underweight already. I am also reflecting back on my notes of last time on relative wealth, poverty, food sourcing, you can read them here .

 

 

This year I am raising money for Homeless Link. Homelessness is one of those issues that some prefer to ignore, or apportion blame for but if you spend time with homeless people or those that have been homeless it can soon become aware that there are many ‘there but for circumstances’ situations, addiction, debt, job loss, relationship breakdowns and mental health issues can all be enough to pull the rug from under the feet and the roof from over a head.  Dig deep and donate if you feel able.

 

 

Living Below the Line

£1

I’ve been involved in a healthy conversation today about living below the line.  This followed on from an excellent BBC Radio 4 food programme about 5:2 fasting and fasting in general. The particular emphasis was on how fasting can help people to understand better their relationship with readily available (no thought required) food and having a greater understanding for those who have to think about food due to budget restrictions etc.

I sent a tweet congratulating the team and saying that for some Living Below the Line might be worth considering. It involves five days of living on £1 per day for food. I did it last year and used the opportunity for some reflective posts on my blog. As part of the conversation there was discussion on the shopping video on the live below the line site which basically is about bagging yellow label supermarket products. I admitted in my posts last year that although it was contrary to how I normally shop it is exactly what I did, cheap porridge, cheap rice and a bit of black pudding being major items. I also bought and weighed rather than trying to limit myself to only spending £5 in total, I just used less that £1 worth of items in any one day. As a result I made a tonne of soup with the excess at the end of the week.

I had been debating whether to join in this year, but following the conversation I think I will and try to do it on the buy local basis.  That will be a challenge, rural markets do not tend to do end of day mark downs and the £5 will certainly not go as far as it would do otherwise. Perhaps if I feed the hens on nothing but scraps for the week I could count my own eggs into the equation and as no planting has been done with the dickie weather there will be nothing to pick. So the challenge is on – are you joining in?

Have decided that my charity for this project will be Homeless Link – you can donate here

 

CheeseSmiles – Cheese Course at High Weald Dairy

I have just completed a one day course at High Weald Dairy, I had hoped to tweet on the day but having twitter photo loading issues so here is a quick whizz through in photos.  First things first though, it was a great day, relaxed, well organised and I learnt a huge amount.  High Weald Dairy is based at Tremains Farm in Sussex, set in beautiful countryside, it has grown and developed over the years from a small family business to one creating a wide variety of cow, sheep and goats milk cheeses that are sold through farmers markets, delis and supermarkets. The whole team at Tremains Farm are, as I have learnt to expect in cheese makers, smiley people.  Husband and wife Mark and Sarah along with ‘the apprentice’ Chris ran the day. The course took place in a training room above the cheese maturing shed, with a teaching kitchen and place for teams of two to work on their cheese, a soft cheese had been part started and the cheddar was worked on throughout the day. The course materials are good too, with plenty of detail and information on suppliers, cheese record keeping, etc so lots of take home value is included.  My main interest was to learn the processes and equipment for hard cheese making and maturing, to work out if it is feasible to do this at home.

The picture above is a valuable one to me for the little blue jug and the blue manmade cheese cloths. Up to now I have been transferring my curds with a ladle but the little jug is much more efficient.  I also tend to use cheese cloths from Lakeland but they aren’t quite big enough, having a generous sized cloth definitely helps and the blue does mean if there is any loss into the cheese it would show.

The picture above is the soft cheese curds draining, they were left with minimum disruption to gently give up their whey.  Just occasionally we moved the cloth to softly tumble the curds allowing puddles of whey to fall into the container below. The final processing, salting and adding flavourings was carried out at the end of the day, I created a cayenne and chilli version and kept one batch plain (I may add some horseradish from the garden to half and try the other half with fresh blood oranges). The soft cheese is delicious and the flavours enhance over the following 24-48 hours.

 

The other main cheese production of the day was a cheddar. This gave the opportunity to stir the curds as they were reheated in their whey, a key part of the process the curds reduce in size and increase in ‘ping’.

 

The resultant curds are then strained and later pressed lightly in a single block. The block is then cut and stacked, the cheddaring process. Later this is broken down by hand into smaller bits, milling, and salted before putting into the press for the final stage.

After pressing, turning and pressing again the cheese emerged, pale and interesting.

 

Now my little cheese is sitting in its cave, actually a cardboard box with a cup of water to raise the humidity and has become mellow yellow. I am exhibiting my best efforts at patience while it matures and becomes a star in its own right.

Of course I have brought the stages of the day together in this post; one of the great things about cheese making is that its not a hurry, there are pauses and opportunities to do other things.  Have coffee, chat, a wonderful lunch was provided (no surprises that cheese featured heavily) and a tour of the dairy manufacturing, packaging and cheese storage rooms. we also made mozzarella with much elastic stretchy, pinggggy fun!  The cheese below I really like the look of, the shape is from the colanders that the cheese are formed in and they remind me of the sourdough breads made by @pumpstreetbakery that take their form from the proving baskets.

 

Huge thanks to everyone at High Weald Dairy and the great company of those who were also taking part in the course, it was a superb day and actually as it was pouring with rain outside I can’t think that there would have been a better way to spend the day!

 

The Lady Vanishes – Vanish Oxi Action, in Action…

 

I’ve been doing some more bzzagenting. This time the product on trial is Vanish Oxi action. I have used Vanish before, normally in bar form, this is the first time I have tried the powder. A couple of weeks ago I found a shirt in the bin, being thrown away due to a curry stain. It had been through the wash once but the stain was still there, but knowing the Vanish was on its way I retrieved it.  The day came to try it out, admittedly not an entirely fair test as the item had been washed so I guess the stain may have ‘set’. The Vanish came with an instruction manual, for curry the advice was to make a paste with the powder and rub it in with the back of the scoop. this is left for a while and then the shirt is washed adding more powder and your normal detergent to the wash.

I may have misinterpreted the add to the wash instruction. I put Vanish and then some of my regular Ecover liquid in the same dispenser. Perhaps I should have added the Vanish to the drum. after the initial soak with the powder paste, things had been looking good. However, once the shirt came out of the wash there was still a stain evident. I didn’t fully appreciate why until I went to do my next wash, the Vanish + Ecover mix had formed a solid lump in the dispenser.

I dried and ironed the shirt, sorry that the lighting conditions were not the same in the final picture. However, the shirt has been declared fit to wear again and I will give it a second go with the Vanish, this time adding the powder to the prewash or to the drum.

I would use the product again. Later in the week I used it to clean cloths that I had used for dyeing the leather sofa and they have come up well, still muddy looking but certainly not mahogany brown.

 

Postcard from Puglia 3 – Negroamarro

Guagnano in Puglia is at the heart of the Negroamarro territory and last summer was home to a wonderful evening of wine, food, art and music in the form of  Terra del Negroamarro 2012. Earlier in the week Donna and Paola had hosted a tour of three cantinas in the area ranging from a small family affair, to a co-op, to a smart modern set up. The behind the scenes look at the work, lives of those involved and of course testing the products, with drivers and translators to hand makes for a great day out! They work hard to find the best places to visit and to arrange the whole experience so I won’t burst the bubble by saying which places were on the tour, but they are all very good.

The evening event was wonderful, as usual arriving too early, the booths were still being constructed and there was not that much evidence of what would follow.  A short sojourn to a café and gradually it was evident that people were moving towards the old town centre. On leaving the café the ends of streets had candles alight and following them led to the town in all its glory.  Suddenly thronging with people and queues at the ‘casa’ discussing what tickets to buy. On this occasion a ticket would buy a glass for tasting and a certain amount of samples of wine or various options on numbers of plates of food.  Basically you exchange the tickets as tokens for food and wine.  Different cantinas had paired with restaurants.

One of my favourites was the mozzarella stall, where they were making mini mozzarella fresh. There was such a range of dishes, candle lit roads leading to the stalls, fabulous wine, lots of live music and art shows to go with it.

An evening for strolling in very busy streets doing the circuits with a new experience at every corner.

The wine tour was arranged via Debbie and Bob hosts for the fortnight.  Donna and Paola both have villas too, follow the links under their names. I thoroughly recommend doing a wine tour with people who have researched the cantinas and developed valuable relationships, the behind the scenes views, translation (and transport) are well worth it.

 

Stinky Pits? – Vaseline Compressed – Bzz Report

 

I am a Bzz agent... sounds exciting (maybe), well it is quite nice; I get sent free samples of stuff to try and the condition is that I let people know what I think of the products. The current gig is Vaseline’s new compact deodorant. So here’s the Bzz from Unilever ….

• Lasts just as long with less packaging
• Delivers even better protection than your old Vaseline can
• Perfect size for your handbag
• More environmentally friendly – it’s easy being green!

My view:

- well yes you can see from the pic above it’s smaller than your average deodorant aerosol – that green thing is a standard coffee coaster, made from an old circuit board.  I can only assume that it does use less packaging and propellant gas – smart move on their part as well as being less environmentally damaging I assume the lower price of materials will cover the development costs over time.

- I don’t normally use Vaseline, or Sure or any other aerosol. I’m normally a roll-on person and my preference is actually for PitROK or a similar neutral product.  So I can’t qualify if it offers better protection than other cans. I do know it smells more.  I’m not used to smelling of deodorant and the fact the smell is there hours later when you get hot again is unusual.

- Yes I agree it’s small, not as small as a roll-on. The Bzz guide suggests you leave it out for people to notice when you are at the gym etc. I tried – can’t say anyone was bothered to be honest and I will keep doing so while the product lasts (I have two free samples). However, my general thought is that aerosols are antisocial beasts, the whole changing room does not want to share your spray. Whilst it is fairly ‘targeted’ in action it still spreads a smell a lot further than a roll-on would.

- More environmentally friendly? Discuss. I had an interesting twitter chat with someone when I mentioned the product. They said they would never use a Vaseline product. I assumed it was a Unilever/big corporate issue. But no, they assumed it had petroleum jelly in it. So I took a look at the product list for it and PitROK – Here is my compare and contrast….

 

 

Vaseline	PitROK
	Water
Butane
Isobutane
Propane
Cyclopentasiloxane
Aluminium chlorate	Ammonium Alum
Parfum	Parfum
Disteardimonium Hectorite
BHT
Propylene Carbonate
Cholesterol
Tocopherol
Helianthus Annus Seed Oil	Citrus grandis (grapefruit) seed extract
Lecithin Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice	Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice
	Hydroxyethylcellulose
Citric Acid
Maltodextrin
Potassium Sorbate	Potassium Sorbate
Sodium Benzoate	Sodium Benzoate
Alpha-Isomethyl Ionone	Polysorbate 20
Amyl Cinnamal	3-diol
Benzyl Benzoate	2-bromo-2-nitropropane-1
Benzyl Sallicylate	Phenoxyethanol
Citronellol	Citronellol
Geraniol
Limonene	Limonene
Linalool	Linalool
	Hydroxymethylpentylcyclohexene carboxaldehyde

 

I’ve done my best to line up similar ingredients but it’s not easy. I checked both products’ websites, both a bit vague – Vaseline refer to “Pro derma” – Hmm, what is that and what the heck are the rest for?  I can see that some are propellants and I get that ‘The Law’ says that the perfumes even natural oils have to have their chemical names but it would be great if the websites said something like “Limonene – extracted from lemons, used for fragrance ——- if that’s the case; or Butane – propellant” etc. I would love the companies to add their ‘What the chemicals do’ comments.

Will I use Vaseline compact after the trial samples are used up?  Unlikely, unless I think I’m going somewhere where I’ll get very hot and don’t care if people can smell my perfume over the smell of the deodorant; plus I’m unconvinced by the ecology argument – better than a big spray possibly but not better than a roll-on.

Unilever are now advertising several compact deodorants on the TV – what do you think?

 

CheeseSmiles – Paneer

A short break in postcards from Italy to talk about my latest cheese adventure. Today I made paneer, a bland cheese, made at high temperature so produces a non melting cheese which is perfect for curries. Also as no rennet is used it is an excellent vegetarian cheese.  Today’s recipe used yogurt and white vinegar to make the curds,

then washing draining and tying in a knot before pressing lightly

- the end result is a springy mass which is easily cut into cubes for cooking.

As before the milk came from Calf at Foot Dairy, ethically produced raw milk – I’m looking forward to sag paneer (lovely fresh spinach from Roger at Framlingham Market) and a sweet paneer dish maybe using some nuts and rose syrup….