(Untitled)

[nannyo]

Easing back in gently. Due to "new austerity measures", alternately known as working part time in a recession, I have started planning menus. This is an effort to ONLY buy what is on the shopping list, yes ONLY (no half price wine Ms O, that means NO!). I think it probably has saved us some cash, but what it has definitely done is mean I am

Comments

[cabd]

I tend to think that 'recipes' are the wrong way to think about economical food. I go and look at the market and see whats good, maybe talk to the butcher, or as often as not scan the allotment, store cupboard and freezer to see what has to be used, and then I consider a kind of flavour palatte to go with it, and then I construct a meal around that. We have some 'quick food' in store of course (always pesto in the cupboard, and pasta!), but generally I think of recipe books as inspiration rather than instruction.

Bulk buying is also the way forward for good food on a budget. I've got a crock full of brine with random bits of pig in it, a cupboard with sausages curing, pork in the freezer, and more sausages to go in there... Its a hell of a lot cheaper buying a whole pig from a farmer (just cut in four) than buying pork anywhere, and the ham that'll be on our plates at Christmas alongside some turkey (change from goose!) will be better than any you can buy.

Potatoes, onions, cheap cuts of lamb, stewing cuts of beef, carrots... These are all so cheap they're basically free, and they're the foundation of the much celebrated 'peasant' cooking of Northern and Western Europe. And there is so much to be said for simple ingredients prepared with care to make a great dinner; I defy anyone to make anything tastier than really good Irish stew made with scrag end, onions and spuds. Or a good hot-pot. Or just colcannon of potato, cabbage and fatty bacon.

Sorry, I could drone on forever about cooking, about good ingredients bought cheaply, even about random things found growing in a field that are good to eat (and there will be blewits still sitting frozen in the fields up there). Its an effort not to witter on endlessly about this in my LJ posts!