FOOD STOCKPILE UP DATE

In February I wrote about my food stockpile. The pile had a theme – all those so called health foods that you hear about. I say ‘so called’ because they don’t make you any healthier lurking in the cupboard, and in fact make your wallet a lot less healthier.

Blueberries are a great example.

Yes they are healthy but not so great when they have travelled half way round the world and are 3 weeks old by the time we eat them out of their plastic punnet for £2.99 a go.

And ironically, here in Scotland you can grow blackcurrants very easily for nothing. You simply get a bit of branch off someone else who has blackcurrants and stick it in the ground. Hey presto, only a year later you will have your first abundant crop. They have just as many anti oxidants in them and are good in porridge, wine, jam, juice and so on.

Who has ever managed to grow enough blueberries to make wine, jam and juice and still have enough left to put on their porridge? We grow both, and the birds either don’t bother with the blackcurrants or there are so many that we don’t notice the difference. (NB the trick with blackcurrants is to prune back to the ground everything that has fruited right after you pick the fruit. It leaves hardly anything, but don‘t let that worry you. I treasure my handful of blueberries per bush, whilst struggling to pick about 20 kilos of blackcurrants off our 6 bushes...

Simply add some black currants to your porridge from the freezer. Put the £2-£3 you would have spent on the blueberries each week in a pot and treat yourself to a weekend away instead at the end of the year. And watch out for the marketing hype with any food, with the likely associated price hike.

some of our blackcurrant crop...

Anyway, back to the food stockpile.

I have had some successes using things up. The mung bean stew has been great. I have only four tubs left, and have been getting a tub or even half a tub out of the freezer and adding different flavourings, tins of tomatoes, curry powder, vegetables etc to give us a range of almost free meals. I have even tried it out on a number of visitors with very positive results, and even requests for the recipe.

NB I did, honestly, tell them the story of the wee black things (see Feb 10 blog entry!) and offer a menu choice. Not one person was bothered, and it led to some interesting conversations about food waste.

The Cajun powder goes well with the mung bean stew and it, too is diminished.

The dried onions, glutinous rice and dried shitake mushrooms have all gone.

The brown chick peas have almost gone. I thought they had gone but hubby re-organised the freezer after the door got left open and frosted it up. Behold! Another bag of pre-cooked brown chick peas. He thoughtfully thawed them out and they will no doubt go in the bin once no one eats them and they go off in the fridge.

I like the ordinary ones but not these. A friend suggested sprouting them, and guess what – they are yummy sprouted. So the dried ones have all been sprouted and eaten, and the ones from the freezer went to said friend who likes them fine.

I am ashamed to say that almost all of the rest is still there. I have remembered to take the glucosamine a few times, but not enough to use up a whole one. I am quite stuck with the pollen granules, red quinoa, almond butter and the miso. I ought to use them up but keep not doing so. I hereby resolve to do one thing a week to use something up…

I HAVE FOUND ANOTHER STOCK PILE!This one is art materials for children. I used to do one to one art work with kids who had problems and have a seemingly inexhaustible supply of poster paint, bubbles (about a litre of it but you dilute it with 80% water - HELP) PVA glue (500mls) and several of those glue sticks.

I have a grandchild who is working hard at using all this stuff up but reckon it could take her the rest of her life to get through all that paint despite her best efforts.

There is a wonderful book called ‘Material World A Global Family Portrait’, by P Menzel. He went to different parts of the world and got people to put all their belongings outside their home. These were catalogued and photographed and the photos are in the book. The book also details the food the family eats. It was striking how many of the families only get to eat once a day, or who just eat beans and rice all the time whatever time of day it is and are grateful to be able to eat at all.

The American family’s stuff took up half a block. There was a family in Ethiopia who had only the clothes they stood up in, some cooking pots and a pair of wellingtons.

That is why I cannot bear to just throw away all this food and stuff that I should never have bought and may still be able to use up.

Actual stuff such as furniture, books and clothes is much easier to let go of. The money is gone, and it is better to send it to the charity shop or sell it so that someone else can get the use of it.

But you cannot do that with old food, part used poster paints and glue sticks.

So my resolution is to not let these things into my life without careful consideration. That is where the problem lies. 
But how to remember when I am at the shops and I want something???

it all began with a jar of beans...

I am challenging myself to have zero food waste. We have been doing this for a while, and really don't waste much OR SO I THOUGHT.
well, it includes what is in the cupboard and does not get eaten too, and I have only been counting what actually goes in the bin.

Today, I decided to cook some of the large jar of mung beans that have been looking at me reproachfully from beside the cooker. I have a really good recipe for mung bean casserole. We try to eat beans once a week. Any more seems to interfere with my digestion and I get well, er, bunged up.
The lid of the large (10 litre/4pint) jar was stuck. We both tried to no avail and I resorted to pouring boiling water over the lid in the hope it would loosen. It loosened so much that water got inside before I realised.

MUNG BEAN COOKING MARATHON...This meant that some of the beans inside got wet so I decided to cook them all, and freeze the remaining bean casserole. (Goodness only knows when I will eat all that but never mind.)
I put the beans into 2 large pots and poured boiling water over them. WHAT WERE THE WEE BLACK THINGS???
I thought they were rougue seeds but closer inspection revealed they were some kind of insect. Very dead ones, but once I had given the pot a stir there were about 12 in all. Not weavils, but something insectivorous.

DECISION TIME
So now the question was this:
Do I chuck all the beans in the bin or not?
I decided not to, as the insects were well and truly dead and there were not that many (is that actually possible with insects, or were the rest just lurking...)

HOW MUCH OTHER STUFF IS HIDING IN THE CUPBOARDS?
I decided (in between cooking mung bean stew) to do a stock take - how much other food in there was too old, or was simply not being used?

Now we are veteran de-junkers and thought we were good at using things up, not buying things we don't need and so on. Not the case. Clutter, including the kitchen and bathroom kind, creeps back in the night, I swear it does, even when you have a 'one in one out' policy. Except that our one in one out policy has somehow managed to by-pass the kitchen.

So I spent the afternoon doing a stock take and made a list of all the things in the cupboards that have not been getting used up. See if you can spot a theme here...

JANET'S KITCHEN CUPBOARDS NOT-BEING-USED-UP LIST.

1.  Sprouted broccoli powder - unopened packet use by Nov 08

2. Pollen tablets use by Mar 08
3. Kelp powder - slowly going down but elderly - Date unknown
4. Cardamoms - very old.  Why do these come in such large quantities I 
     use about 12 pods a year, and do like them - but the famiy don't.
5. Cajun powder Bought in a large quantity but we don't use enough of it.
6. Fenugreek seeds smelled off, age unknown and don't like the way I 
    smell of them the next day! These went in the bin. The only thing to do 
    so so far.
7. Wine yeast. Oh dear. I chucked this out and then bought bread yeast.
8. Bread yeast - managed to use it up but the bread was a bit solid. Was
past its best.
I HAVE JUST FOUND THE ECHINACEA. I nearly bought more, but there it was under all the stuff I don't use.
9. Brown chick peas, large quantity. YUCK. I really do like most things,
incuding ordinary chick peas. These still have their coats on and I find them indigestible and the coats just won't come off. I have some in the
freezer all cooked and ready to use, too. Maybe I will make chick pea flour,
in my state of the art grinder/processor, or try sprouting them.

10. Xanthan gum. Apparently good for making non-gluten flour stick
together to make better cakes and bread. I don' eat cakes and bread often.
When I did try this it had a dramatic effect in the wind department...
11. Dried onions. Rescued from a holiday cottage. Now I know why they were
there. How can they taste so different to ordinary onions?
12. Carob powder. Why do I keep buying this? The last packet went in the
bin, and it is highly likely this one will too, but not today.
13. Cocoa. Probably bought when I made a birthday cake but nobody uses it
for anything else.
14. Shitaki mushrooms, dried. Best before Mar 2009
15. Pollen granules. Was going to use these on cereal but they make it go
all yellow and too sweet for me.
16. Almond butter, 3 jars. Best before 2004 (ouch) still fine, actually and
very tasty but also very fattening and I am never sure what to do with it.
17. Glutinous rice. (see later!)
18. Rice noodles half packet (got forgotten)  Half a packet is not enough for 2 of us. 
We used to use these a lot but somehow we forgot about them.
19. Sesame seeds. I used to put these in seed mixes as a snack but they are
impossible to eat without shoveling them directly into your mouth and always
end up at the bottom of the jar. I have ground some and added to a flour mix
for baking (except that I don't often bake)
20. Powdered Wasabi use best before 2003. (where does the time go?)
21. Aduki beans. Same story as the other beans, only these are even older.
22. Poppy seeds. What exactly are you supposed to do with these? You buy
half a pound (450g), sprinkle them on 2 loaves of bread and are stuck with them
for the rest of your life. My mother had some and I bet you've got some too...
23. Popping corn.
24. Red Quinoa. Never used this. Same as the white stuff with its skins on.
25. White quinoa. I do try and like this. Each time I cook some it
goes off in the fridge because no one else will eat it. And no, it doesn't make
a good alternative to porridge.
26. Various sprouting seeds. Actually I do sprout a lot, so I get to feel a
tiny bit smug here. These jumbo packets were a bit over-ambitious though.
27. Hatcha miso. Good intentions but packet never opened.
28. Brown rice miso in fridge, opened. forgot I had it when I bought the
above. Not sure how long its been there. Never seem to have the chives and
parsley cut to go with it.
29. Buckwheat. Must make this into flour too...I bought it to sprout but it
is a challenge. You have to soak it in water and rinse every half an hour for
4 hours before sprouting or it goes stinky. And no, it doesn't make a good
alternative to porridge either, even with cinammon.
30. Ground mixed seeds for porridge. Keep forgetting and, well it is nicer
without it. I prefer whole sunflower and pumpkin seeds, and DO use them.
31. Several half packets of rye bread in the freezer.
32. TEA: Green tea (wrong make) 4 packets, Blackcurrant tea bags 3 packets,
choco tea, lemon verbena tea Pau D'Arco tea (hunted long and hard for this).
All need using up.
33. 2 packets and half a jar of linseeds in the freezer.

DID YOU SPOT THE THEME?Yes, I have been reading those healthy eating books. All of these things are supposed to change our lives and make us healthier.
Well they don't make your wallet any healthier.
Here is my take on it:
Keep the money and you won't need to work so hard to pay for all those expensive promises. Then you can relax more and be less stressed. That is better for your health than anything else.

JANET'S HEALTH PLAN.
We all know how to eat healthily. Your mother tells you, you learn it at school, on TV, in books and newspapers. That doesn't make you do it, any more than buying expensive supplements and super foods does.
If you want to be healthier:
* Eat 5-9 fruit and veg a day. (not all fruit some green stuff too)
* Exercise half an hour 3 times a week
* Take time to relax.
* Simplicity leads to less stress, as we get out of debt and begin to exercise choices in spending and lifestyle.

Nothing new there then, huh? Bet your mum could have told you that.

JANET'S USE-UP-THE-FOOD PLAN
So now I have 2 vats of mung bean casserole (amazing how those beans swell up) with shitaki mushrooms and dulse. (Forgot about the dulse and several other kinds of seaweed I have.)

I have also cooked the glutinous rice.
Neglected to tell hubby what it was and he spent a while trying to rescue it and make it non-sticky by rinsing it through the sieve. The sieve may never recover, and we now have a large quantity of cooked glutinous rice. Amazing how that swells up too.
It was great when we had it in that Thai restaurant but what to do with it at home? Glutinous rice and mung bean casserole for a week could lead to plumbing problems...

Have also managed to:
Use up one blackcurrant tea bag.
Start lots of seeds sprouting.
Make a variation of peanut butter cookies (sugar free peanut and almond butter with gluten free flour that needs using up cookies). These have had a lukewarm reception.

PS: I also forgot about the 2 large jars of apricot kernals, one in the fridge and one in the freezer. I have doggedly eaten 2 seeds a week (ish) for the last 3 years and the jar is NOT going down...These may well end up in the bin. I feel guilty every time I open the fridge.