more on the price of fish

Well not strictly fish, although you could say the whelks and the scallops come into it but they aren't really fish. (We havent yet succeeded in locating local fish, which is probably one the biggest changes in our diet as we used to subsist on mackerel - cheap and healthy though probably endangered or something. But I digress.)

i said before that the price of food doesnt really impact on one;s budget but i did notice last time in Waitrose that we are paying more than double the price for milk from Prince Charle's estate than it costs for some equally beautifully packaged and unhomogenised milk with lots of cream on top that comes from just outside our range. The cheaper milk also comes in bigger cartons so it produces slightly less waste.

Even though this is a matter of 40 pence, I think it indicates how there can be quite dramatic differences in food prices for very similar items. I suppose people are paying the extra for the status symbol of having Duchy milk.

There we are back to status again.

I certainly don t think this diet is a blueprint for eco living. In fact its not a blueprint for much apart from a good way to confront and have to learn about how food gets from sun -earth-plant-animal-shop -home - plate. to me that is the most interesting thing.

Also please note: there is an apparently almost total separation between local and organic food. And in wholesome looking organic shops they often dont know where the food comes from and also, 'locally made' processed food is usually made with ingredients from wholesalers and the producers generally have really and truly no idea where it originates.

In waitrose the other day the guy at the meat counter said they have total traceability for the Aberdeen angus beef but not for the lamb. So even if you wanted to you couldnt find out which farm your lamb came from.

I think this concept of traceability is a most interesting one and is an area our society seems to value very little. This diet is basically forcing us to trace to the source everything we eat, and a lot of times (id say at least 50% maybe as much as 80%) we can't eat something not because its from too far away, but because there is no information on where it came from.

Contrast that with the near-obsessive amount of time and effort that goes into giving us information on the calories, nutritional values, and ingredients of food - and just as much that we spend on finding out these 'facts'.

I suppose I, and because this phenomenon is a current trend or craze, many others too, am seeking more of a sense of connection and even perhaps of identity, through tracing where the things we eat actually come from. Is that as important, or more important than what the chemical make-up of the food is? If you know where it comes from, well in a way, what does that really tell you? Its just a concept. yet I think that concepts, feelings and impressions of meaning are as important as 'real' facts. maybe that is a good thing or a bad thing, or neither, but I do think it is a much more important factor in people;s behaviour than objective recognition of the Facts. Anyway have you ever noticed how the Facts keep changing? It used to considered much better to feed babies on Formula milk from a factory than real milk from their mother. Now it is widely accepted that its usually healthier to feed a baby mother's milk. Who decides what these Facts are? And if they are so Factual, how come they keep going out of date?

I read in a glossy magazine recently that this back-to-the-earth trend was a collective response to 9-11. We all got nervous and started wanting to go to ground. maybe so. But my theory is that the various technological revolutions promised that life would become knowable and ordered, but of course it can't, and we are starting to realise it, and maybe we can evolve into something more organic and less obsessed with Knowing Facts and more into Experiencing Life.

Mammoth Reflections

We are now nearly three months in to the experiment and there is still an open question over whether to continue and in what form.

I would like to reflect on the experience so far.

I have noticed recently that the novelty and initial excitement has worn off and at times it has become a real drag. Its not a matter of craving things, which passed quite quickly and the new eating habits have been easy for me to adapt to and beneficial eg. herbal tea and low sugar.

However it is the amount of work involved that makes it difficult. For example, we have to go to a market every saturday and they all shut at one or two, thank god Richmond Farmer's market is open till three or we would have starved a few times. Some saturdays you really dont feel like going to the market so it makes saturdays into more of a workday because there is a routine and a deadline. Also actually shopping is hard because it is all scattered. You go to Waitrose for milk and flour and oil; the market for some greens and game; Freshers grocer over the bridge for different greens; then try to locate other sources of butter and treats or rarities. So it takes ages, and you must have cash, and if you are alone it is much easier with the car but then you risk parking fines or not finding a space at all, or getting stuck in saturday traffic.

Then there is the matter of cleaning all the earthy veg, and then processing it into something nice to eat.

I think one of the biggest changes is that there is no processed food. This is very healthy and I have definitely noticed the quality of food being very high, plus i get a huge sensual pleasure out of working with luscious piles of fressh leafy greens and earthy potatoes and juicy tomatoes and from boiling huge vats of burbling nutrition; but if you have two people not earning much and holding down jobs with complicated work patterns it can sometimes be really tedious to have to spend ages cooking.

Its all to do with economics. If we grew our own veg, and cooked and preserved it all ourselves, then we would need less money to live and therefore could do less hours at the office. I would rather spend my morning tending, digging, cooking and cleaning veg than going to the office as it happens, but in London the economics and the way things are set up is such that this isnt feasible. So instead of having land, we have cash, and we use it to buy stuff that other people grew and made and then they buy stuff off us, like the legal contracts they need to run their business. and in a big city you get lots of people concentrated together doing more abstract things, like recording information, and they ship in all the earthier stuff and pay for it instead of doing it themselves. And they get cleaners in to do the chores for them, and so on.

But what have you really gained? You are just swapping one chore for another, and it seems to me that digging a garden is a nice chore than processing information at a screen all day. Plus its MUCH healthier on the mental, physical and spiritual levels, so why do so many people choose to get away from it and go and abstract themselves from the earth? Personally I think it is all down to a need for higher status, which seems to be a huge drive for humanity in general, and *maybe (*cod psychology alert) behind that is a desire to be loved more.

Anyway I have really enjoyed sensing the earth itself, I mean like when we went to Exmoor, you could taste that the food was richer, and I think its because the soil there is so rich and red and wonderful, and so the veg they grow and the animals that eat it, all taste better. The 'richness' means lots of minerals and nutrients, and less of the odd chemicals that go into food and the food chain. Look at the word 'richness'. it may seem that if you earn lots of money in Lond but you dont have to clean your veg, or you get exercise in a fancy gym instead of down the garden, then you are 'rich'. Well you may be, but how rich is your food? Your body? How enriched are your senses, when you jog on a running machine, compared to when you are digging the ground and feeling the cold crumbly soil and touching slimy worms and hearing robins and little rustling noises and breathing in the amazing cacophony of scents of each leaf and earth and air, and tasting the veg to see if its ready, or just because its nice to graze on the freshest food you can ever get? Its a rare shop can give you food fresh from the ground, and in my experience, that is a very different and much RICHER experience than a beautifully packaged, elegant, delicate, but faded, jaded, alienated, blanded, processed thing. Some expensive delicacies are good of course, but on a day to day level, its more nourishing and richer to engage with the living earth than to have it all pre-packaged in long-shelf-life boxes, however pretty.

But trying to have both ways is not easy. Trying to live in the pre-packaged system we have now in London, but trying to get a few threads into theses more nourishing experiences as well, is Really Hard Work.

I was sent a link this week to a story about a New York couple who are trying to live a No Impact life in Manhatten. They have a baby daughter too, and this is extreme- they are generating no waste, for example. Ie no disposable nappies, or apparently, even loo roll.

However there is one key point I want to make about their plan. The guy has a book deal and also a documentary film deal. in other words, he is making his living just doing this lifestyle. He doesn't have to live like that AND have a regular job. So he has all day to clean vegetables and look for butter and walk to the shops and cook and then write about it. That is a crucial difference. It is POSSIBLE to live a low impact and healthy life in a city, BUT it takes more time. If your salary just covers the bills then you pay the price in terms of being more tired or seeing less friends.

The only thing for it is to head for the hills and build a house out of mud and spin our own cotton.

Exmoor Adventure

We had a long weekend in Exmoor which is over 100 miles away. What a conundrum! We took the opportunity to see what produce they have in the area and went to the local farmers market in Minehead. We also stayed on an organic B&B farm (Hindon), where they serve huge breakfasts made from the pigs and lambs and cattle that you meet as you head off up the hill afterwards for your walk across the moor.

This makes a good change as most local food is not organic. If we tried to live on local organic food we would be in intensive care by now.

We brought back some goodies and I would like to mention that the taste of the cucumber, potatoes and eggs that we brought back from Exmoor were all fabulous. I think it must be the rich red soil. I am serious - I noticed the difference in quality and will miss the eggs - that was one of the best omelettes ever! - and the sweet, fluffy, rich potatoes. I never knew potatoes were anything more than general Filler food.

More holidays in Exmoor Please!

a Plea for Butter

The one item we are struggling to locate a regular supply for within 100 miles, is butter.
Please help!

The butter we found so far is either made from the cream on the top of the Duchy Milk or else from a tiny place in sussex that we cant go back to for a while.

An argument is raging or, at the least, negotiations are taking place, into just how long this diet of discovery should continue before I am pushed, through despair and repression, into an illicit, clandestine affair with a forbidden toffee apple or am found by Sarah in an uncompromising menage a trois with a cadbury's whirl and a kinder surprise.

In short, if I don't get some proper chocolate soon I'm going to kill some bastard.

keep on truckin

Here are some more pictures to show you what we have found recently.

First let me tell you - its very exciting - lettuce is now available..since about two weeks actually, say late february. Apparently tomatoes are being sold in Twickenham but our grocer says two more weeks.

Here is some pigeon breast being cooked. It is absolutely exquisitely delicious. Its really tender and has a good strong flavour. Its almost like liver actually.


here is some nice people on the Roman Road in the east end, selling whelks and cockles from Whitstable. Also delicious.


We got a cup of whelks for £3.80. I cooked them in the following way, adapted from the Mendip Snails "Court Bouillon" recipe in 'A Taste of the West Country' by Theodora Fitzgibbon, an old book i picked up at the delightful Lloyds of Kew bookshop.


This is the whelks at the back. The foreground is mussels, not sure where they are from.

Whelk Recipe

First mix some chopped herbs ( i used thyme, a bay leaf, and garlic)
with water, white wine, some chopped shallots (the shallots are wonderful - more later) and a pinch of Maldon salt, in a small pan, and bring to the boil.

In the meantime I threw a big lump of butter and a generous amount of grated cheddar cheese into another pan, with chopped cress and mustard sprouts which I've been growing on the windowsill. This is gently heated up.

Once the first pan was boiling i added the whelks and let them simmer for a bit. When it was time to eat them ( i guess i waited till i felt like any bacteria were probably dead)
that was when I added the cheesy stuff and mixed it all together.

Here is Rob enjoying it with a baked potato.



Rob said it was very nice. I thought it was ok but I must say the whelks were a bit rubbery and too reminiscent for me of a bad experience I had in the Amazon. But lashings of butter and cheese can make anything taste good. I think thats the secret really. If you like eating chewy molluscs then this recipe is by far the most interesting one I could find in my odd assortment of old fashioned english cookery books.

Anyway back to the photos.

Reasonable english table wine although Surrey Gold is much better.




Waitrose has some interesting cheeses although they seem to get a lot of produce from Somerset which is too far away for us.

This is Sussex Slipcote:


and this is Moody's Rosary Ash. It is incredibly delicious - sweet and creamy and very delicate.


The packaging is interesting because they have a series of cheeses with a map of the country its made in featured on the packet, with a big circle on the region its from. So its really easy to see where its from. This one actually looks a bit borderline but heck, its probably just in.

I keep buying goats milk but not drinking it so i don't know what it tastes like yet. I am trying to make yoghurt out of it but it isn't working.


We've been totally dependent on this apple juice throughout the diet. Its one of the few soft drinks we can have apart from the lovely Hammersmith Tap. It comes in a very wide range of flavours from sharp bramley to sweet braeburn. It's available at the local corner shop which helps a lot.

And Finally...



The nice people at Pertwood Porridge oats found Rob's blog about the oats and sent us a whole box full of them.

They are really good and we are investigating new recipes since there are now so many oats in the kitchen. Bread with oats in is next up I think. Oat recipes will appear here soon.

xx
s

a note of the cost of food

I would like to comment on the fact that often people wonder whether the food we are buying "costs more".

Sometimes yes it is more expensive than if you just went to Tesco all the time.

However, I never did and rob only sometimes and when he was skint.

but the thing is, how much does even really expensive food cost?

Like if I am really going overboard, I might pay, I don't know, a pound for a pint of milk instead of 36p.

That's 64p more than normal.

I mean come on. That is not really going to make any difference to my life. We get through about three-four pints a week, thats about £2,40. Thats less than a glass of wine one evening down the pub.

A week. Between us. For one drink.

I really dont think that buying Expensive Food makes much difference. Running an Expensive Car, that makes a difference. Going on Expensive Holidays, makes a difference. Buying Expensive Clothes makes a difference.

Paying 64p more for a pint of milk, that doesnt make a difference.

And anyhow, for everything we buy that costs more, there are three things that are much cheaper (eg home grown mint) - or someone sends us a box of oats - so in the end it doesnt matter.

Thankyou. Lesson for the day has now ended.