inner pickle

25 days... and out.

 

Yesterday at about 4pm when I ducked into a supermarket to buy extra white chocolate for a batch of Choccy Choc Chocs destined for the Gerringong Markets this weekend, I decided to abandon the challenge. 

To be honest, Vanessa was out of the game after a week. But after a week we were just getting going, so we stuck with it. I had kind of hoped we might go 30 days, but as I headed for the checkout with a stack of white chocolate in my arms, I stopped in my tracks and thought: who for? The kids have been spectacular throughout, we're at the end of the school holidays and they have had no bought treats or anything, and so I picked up a bag of chips for them. Then I back tracked and picked up a bottle of dishwasher detergent and weetbix and a small bag of disposable nappies (Ivy's daycare centre won't use cloth and we were nearly at the end of our supply) and coffee. Yes, we do grow it here. And we're out of it. A bad crop this last summer. That's it. I didn't even buy dinner. But that little shop ended this particular challenge. 

We made it through Easter. Through various visitors. And we've made it through the school holidays. Adam took the kids out for an icecream today. Hooray.

And you know what? 

I didn't even go shopping today. 

Because this whole challenge has completely changed the way I think about groceries. 

 

 

You totally do not have to shop every week.

And my BIGGEST tip: 

Do not go to the supermarket.

Because you quite possibly don't need to. 

Can you make do with what you have? Can you barter something you have/ you've made/ grown with someone? Can you stay out of the crazy marketing machine that is the flourescent lit supermarket aisle? 

Obviously we need to shop. As much as I love self-sustainability, I'm not in a position to grow, thresh and grind my own wheat for flour. Or grow rice. 

Adam prepared the first of a series of big garden beds today (thank you piglets for doing the digging!) and the potatoes and garlic go in tomorrow. We are aiming to grow as many of our own vegies as possible and will be planting fruit trees with the same aim for a few years time. Can you grow your own food? We did this whole challenge with hardly any garden, and traded and bartered with friends who grew stuff. Worked beautifully. Would this work for you? 

We can't imagine going back to shop-bought milk. We love our twice-weekly trip to the dairy. But if you need to buy milk at the supermarket, can you possibly buy a fortnight's worth at a time? 

We need to think like pioneers. Or bushies. Shop once a month for staples. Flour, sugar, yeast, rice, oats: these are the things I could not have gotten by without. Preserve food: we expect fresh fresh fresh but of course if you're really thinking seasonally and locally we might not always have fresh, but we could organise ourselves to always have fruit, dried or in jars. We have to think creatively, because if someone brings you a fish, we value the life the fish gave best if we make the best use of it. You make stock, right? You'd never toss a picked over chicken carcass in the bin before roasting off the bones and making stock which then makes your pumpkin soup the next night?

 

 

So yes, we're out of the challenge because I wanted to buy these three excellent children of mine potato chips. And so I did. And they deserved an icecream at the end of the school holidays. 

But if I thought frugally and economically before, that was nothing compared to my new outlook!

Thanks for following along here. I hope you're not disappointed we didn't make the 30 day mark.

How 'bout we do something together? A month-from-scratch? And I mean everything. Could you do it? Would you?!

xxx

 

stuff we know

I don't know very much. 

But I know that custard makes me feel better if I have a scratchy throat; her too.

 

 

I know this new magazine is gorgeous and one day I'd love to be able to contribute to it.

 

I know that the gift of a few old loaves of white bread not used up for holiday camp (thanks Michelle!) might not seem like much, but if you're making do, and are shopping-free, you can do a lot with those loaves. 

Mince toasties for tea.

Crunchy croutons for salad.

Crispy toasts to spread homemade hummus on. 

Breadcrumbs for the pantry. 

And some to coat leftover rice squeezed together with cream cheese, some grated cheese, herbs and an egg or two. 

Some baked in the oven.

Some fried in oil.

The fried ones were much better. (I knew it.)

And the leftover bread popped into the freezer with bread and butter pudding in mind for Friday night dessert night this week, and maybe this savoury mushroom bread pudding if I can execute a fungi trade. 

What about you? What do you know?

xxx

the toilet paper question

 

Because I don't have a photo of toilet paper to illustrate this post with, I'm going with sourdough starter instead.

 

 

BUBBLY! There's more interest in sourdough than I thought, so I'll come back to it, I promise. And I think it'd make sense to be able to see the starter and maybe the sponge and process on a video clip, some things just don't translate to still photography. I'm on it. 

Meanwhile: toilet paper.

No alternative?

Of all the hot spots people have about this challenge, this would have to be number one. I started out with only a handful of rolls and was canvassing our options when my friend Fi showed up with many, many rolls. Adam was very relieved.

But meanwhile our stash is dwindling and if we can stretch the food, can't we stretch this too? 

My thinking gets confused here, because it's easy to go off on a tangent thinking about the ridiculous number of litres of drinkable water we/I flush down the toilet every day. I'm embarrassed by it. We don't have a grey water system or a fabulous composting toilet and talking about the unsustainability of toilet paper loses a bit of it's sting in comparison to depleting our water supply this way.

Yet you don't have to travel far to find people doing without toilet paper very nicely. While the most "European" (read: palatable) alternative tends to be, you guessed it, water, people all over the globe are using fabric, wool, banana leaves, corn cobs, sand and stones. 

So I reckon there probably is an alternative.

While this is not a lovely tight paid up freelance article outlining my experiences trialling the alternatives, this is a blog. And we make it up as we go along, right? 

My Dad has already rung from the centre of Australia to remind me of the very very old sewerage system under this very very old house and not to put anything funny down the toilet. 

So no corn cobs down the loo Dad? OK then.

Our barter system down here is going strong. My beautiful friend Heather today traded onions and carrots for a couple of bags of our chook and cow manure for her garden. Awesome trade! 

Dinner tonight was salad leaves (thanks Mark) with olives and sliced boiled egg and crunchy croutons (buttered, day-old bread cubed and baked in a moderate oven for about 15 mins). The beetroot was a trade from Karina last week, boiled up on the stove and stored in a container with white vinegar. Best way to eat beetroot!

 

 

Almost at three weeks. And tonight I scrawled a list of possible dinners from food in the fridge and pantry. Not at the end yet.

We've got guests this weekend and we'll see how low we are on loo roll on Monday.

Of course, this may be the point at which Adam, endlessly energetic and imaginative about this challenge, chucks it in. A man has a limit. Adam's may be cloths next to the loo. 

Might start on good old phone books first if I can find any (free) old ones with the paper paper, not the shiny paper, remember those? 

My Grandma had newspaper neatly cut up, punched with a hole in the corner and tied with string in the outside loo. (Although I wonder if she ever used it - there was an inside toilet too - the outside one was likely for the menfolk in their gumboots.)

What do you reckon?

Corn cob, anyone?

xxx

Thank you, Rooster.

 

Day 18 and if I ever pretend I got to Day 19 on my own ingenuity, feel free to snort. Our friends Mark and Amy are responsible for us not chucking it in today. Friends that grow stuff. Who sent us home with enormous, crisp, juicy watermelons and delicious pumpkins. A bag of fresh salad makings and tamarillos and strawberry guavas. 

And roosters! The deal was if we helped process four excess roosters, we could keep two. I've always wanted to learn - because our meat chickens are sold commercially, I have to take them up to a local abattoir. I'd never killed a chicken before, or even plucked one. 

It was a good day to learn! 

 

 

Mark has done this a few times before but still we referred to the master of chicken evisceration, Joel Salatin (specifically, Pastured Poultry Profits.) What we must have looked like, Mark at the killing cone, Adam on the knives, me calling out the step by steps according to Joel. It felt like the first one took an hour and then next three about five minutes each. 

I love learning new things. Even if it's how to detatch a bird's windpipe (my least favourite bit.) It was done respectfully and quickly and was mechanically pretty efficient, once we got going. 

We used a heated urn as a dunker, and the plucking was pretty quick. 

Thank you, rooster, for feeding us (tomorrow.)

Another reason to celebrate today was I made my first batch of sourdough with my new starter. 

If you've been around here for a while you'll know I got into sourdough last year. Except I killed my starter a couple of times, and then finally gave up and tossed it out. 

When I started this challenge without much yeast left in the jar, I immediately put together a new starter and got it going. Goes like this: 1 big tablespoon of flour and mix with filtered water to a sloppy paste. Next day, toss out half and "feed" again, flour + water. Keep paste consistency. Do this for about 5 or 6 days, tossing out and building up until it's actively bubbling and smells yeasty and frankly looks like a living thing. I'll photograph mine tomorrow to give you the idea. 

I then followed Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall's sourdough recipe and kabam! What a loaf!

Chewy, crusty, flavoursome. 

And almost only flour and water. THAT is magic.

 

My next big question is: how do I make chicken soup without any onions or carrots?! Hmmm.

Ever killed your own food?

There is something weirdly deeply wholesome about it. (With apologies to vegetarian friends.)

xxx

 

You can do this

 

Day 17 of the challenge. Dinner tonight: leek and potato soup and homemade bread. (Above, pulled pork on buns, on the weekend with my sister Suzie.)

I am, I'll admit, spending more time than ever thinking about food. Voting in my mind about what to do with the very last onion. Whether the leftover pulled pork is better in a pie or in homemade pita pockets or what's going to happen when we run out of sugar. 

We are now officially out of fresh veg. We were out of fruit before my glorious friend Linda exchanged milk and an enormous bag of pears in exchange for looking after her two smallies. 

I'm a bit amazed at how fluid the barter economy is. As long as you have something to swap, in our case it tends to be eggs, sometimes bread or biscuits, you could much stay out of a supermarket indefinitely.

I was giving Adam a bit of a stocktake tonight as we're making dinner for friends tomorrow night and we have guests coming for the weekend. I wondered if it was time to chuck it in.

But actually, we still have food. Probably like you do. There's dried lentils and borlotti beans and polenta and cous cous and there's still flour and rice. I reckon we keep on until we lose our sense of humour about it. 

Tonight, after the kids had gone to bed and Adam had gone to Rural Fire Service training, I roasted off a big cup of peanuts and made them into yummy peanut butter. I made a vanilla rice pudding in little cups as treats for the kids tomorrow. I made toasted meusli. I made yoghurt. I turned my sourdough sponge (stage one) into sourdough (stage two) and left it to rise until tomorrow. It's time consuming. But I love this stuff. I'm so happy to be back in the swing of breadmaking. I didn't realise how much I missed it. 

Milk is my main issue, and there's a wonderful local farmer putting her gorgeously cared-for Jerseys up for auction in July. We're going to be there. (Of course I can't buy a cow without my Dad, and he's not back until June.) In the meantime, I ran out of milk over Easter and went up to the dairy I've been trading with, and there was a relief milker there. I'd never jeopardise the confidentiality of my arrangement, so I didn't even drive in. Hmmm. Another family might have just trained themselves off milk. Not this family. Particularly not my under-two-year-old. I drove over to a friend's place who trades milk for veggies from a different dairy, and asked if I could borrow a cup. They gave me three litres. 

I feel differently about leftovers now. When there's less, it means more. And time is valuable.

When a kid asks for jam on toast, and then abandons it, it's a hand-kneaded and baked loaf with homemade butter and hand-picked homemade jam for heaven sakes. That's 'expensive' chooks scraps. 

 

 

We're making everything stretch! The pulled pork re-appeared as a meat and vegetable pie. Delicious.

And with the leftover pie pastry and egg wash, the last of Karina's spinach and Leanne's leeks went, with my homemade cream cheese, into a pasty. Quick and easy. Fresh and yummy. No waste.

 

Melanie nailed it when she described her son looking at the pantry and saying there was nothing to eat. When she brought home the shopping bags there was no space to put the food. Exactly!

We're looking for instant. Convenient. 

And that's why although I'm not sure how much longer we can go without apples or fresh vegies, we'll keep going for a bit longer. It's good for us. And heck it's cheap. I bet we all have a good collection of dried beans in our pantries. I found a little box of papadums in a corner on the weekend and they inspired me to make a tasty green curry with pork and rice and papadums! (I had the curry paste already - no fresh ginger or lemongrass here at the moment! It was quick and delicious. Perfect fast food.)

Take away food isn't always that expensive, but it is extremely expensive if we're eating it while there is good food in fridge, freezer and pantry. Particularly if it's taking the place of something perishable. 

You could do this. 

If it wasn't arbitrarily dropped on you, like this challenge was, and you could be a bit prepared, I wonder if you could go a whole month without shopping at all. 

Could you?

xxx

from there to here

Thanks for your kind comments about Miss Ivy, she's still a wheezeball but seems to be feeling better. Fever's still spiking at night but comes back down with panadol. Hopefully tomorrow she'll shake the virus and whether or not the asthma sticks around, we'll be waiting and seeing with her on that one.

We took a picnic down to Currarong today and met up with friends camping down there. What a gorgeous April day. Throwing together last minute food is getting harder without supplies, but there still looks to me to be quite a bit of food in the pantry and even the fridge, made more luscious by a basket delivered by my friend Karina going away and clearing out, hooray! Home grown toms! Greens! Cheese!

I've never been so happy to see a lettuce in my life.

 

 

You've heard it before, but we have to grow more of our own food. And if you're city-bound and can't, we have to find ways to step outside the vulnerable industrial system and create networks that can. 

I'm not wrapping up the challenge, but I've already figured out a few things. 

:: Coping with Armageddon is time consuming. And it makes a lot of dishes. It's a fun game but virtually impossible if you're working full time. (Hard enough finding the bread-making time while working part time.)

:: It would be much easier if we had a flourishing vegie garden. If all services really did stop and we couldn't shop, the first thing I'll run out of is apples. I need an apple tree.

:: If you're a milk-drinking family like we are, and you're not prepared to stock up on the UHT or powdered stuff, you kinda need access to a dairy, which is a bit unrealistic for lots of people. A sensible person would say, do without milk. I tell you, I'd create a war to get milk for a baby who needed it. Nine meals from anarchy? I think hunger will create chaos but the impulse to feed our children will make fiercely crazy bandits out of us. Well, me. You too, I think.

And meanwhile, I've been making cream cheese.

You know, yoghurt tied up in muslin for a couple of days to drain out the whey. Like the yoghurt maple ball idea without the extras. I used homemade plain yoghurt and the cream cheese is quite tart, and lighter than the bought stuff, but very fresh and very good. 

 

 

On the way home from Currarong we stopped into our friends' family farm, and organic dairy in Greenwell Point. It's the dairy that supplies South Coast Dairy with their organic milk - it's pretty rare these days to be able to see the cows who make your milk, unless you have a clandestine and totally illegal relationship with a dairy supplying you directly. 

I tried to fit a calf in the boot of the car. 

Foiled by the pram.

 

I have a very soft spot for Holsteins. 

We don't really need that pram do we?

 

 

Moo.

xxx

I think you would've cheated too

 

Just  small cheat, about the size of this small and very beloved person. 

Who started wheezing yesterday, a wheeze that turned into a dreadful barking cough, a cough then accompanied by more and more difficult breathing. 

I made the soonest doctor appointment I could, and when he said he didn't think it was a recurrence of the pneumonia but that it sounded like asthma which could be treated with ventolin, I went as fast as my legs could carry me to the pharmacy and bought not only the ventolin but the spacer and the face mask. Take that, zero purchase challenge.

Because if you have the ability and resources to help your baby, you'll obviously always do it. It made me grateful for my silly First World challenge, as if I have the ability to stave off disaster by choosing to cease all consumption. As if by drawing this imaginary (and temporary) line in the sand I'm protected from ever having to cease buying anything by real necessity.

We had a moment tonight when the bag was packed and the big kids were taken sleeping to the car, and we were ready to flee to our nearest hospital because her breathing was so bad it frightened us. 

And then Adam managed to get some of the ventolin in her, and she's sleeping, and breathing peacefully.

What if there was no ventolin? 

What if I had no money to buy it?

What if my baby wasn't breathing properly and there was no petrol in the car to take her to hospital, or no car, or no hospital?

It was a small cheat in the big picture. (We also cheated and bought ourselves one takeaway coffee each this afternoon, after a night of terrible sleep and a day of working, running around, a big scary important meeting and constantly peering anxiously at the baby.)

And we're through day 10. 

Feels longer.

xxx

day 8

 

It has occasionally, in the last week, struck me as ridiculous; this game of buying nothing and making do, when so many many many people just do it because they have to. 

But I'm keeping on, because it's interesting to me what we can do without.

We're not doing without much, just yet, having been kept afloat on the weekend by my sister Suzie who had us over for dinner and then minded the kids the next day while Adam and I drove down to Mudgee for Milkwood's field day (AMAZING - let me sort through the photos and come down to earth and report back on that tomorrow!) 

We're almost out of fresh fruit which will be hard on the kids and I can stretch the fresh veggies out for another day or two - thanks to my gorgeous friend Leanne who waylaid me in the street today and handed me a bag of four fresh leeks! We had leek and zucchini frittata for dinner with the last of the lettuce. Delicious. 

I didn't realise how central bread and milk were to our diet - might sound obvious but I'm out of the habit of making bread now that I don't actually have a kitchen in my house (I'm using Mum's kitchen next door) and I also can't just duck out for milk. It's time consuming, Armageddon. I realised tonight that I don't have enough milk to send a bottle to daycare tomorrow with Ivy, and the tanker would have already been to the dairy to collect tonight's milk. I have one carton of UHT milk in the pantry which was a gift from a friend last year (so I would never run out.) Bonanza.  And I can get to the dairy after the morning's milking (with the last of the eggs!)

I took the second-last homegrown chook out of the freezer today so we'll have chicken and steamed carrot and broccoli tomorrow night, and we still have potatoes to roast. (And olive oil and rock salt and rosemary in the garden!)

Every day Adam and I wonder why we hadn't got around to putting in a garden here yet and are dreaming of lush peppery rocket and salads of brassicas.

When you're eating like this you do not crave processed food at all. I don't long for chips or chocolate like I do for a smooth creamy avocado or fresh asparagus.

We are down to our second last dishwasher tablet Adam solemnly reported tonight, cheek pale and brow furrowed. Yep, that's serious.

And the kids' lunchboxes were harder today, but I still had apples and grapes to add to a vegemite sandwich, the end of the rice crackers, some sultanas and a homemade bikkie. Tomorrow might be harder. 

But grandparents and godparents have all sent handfuls of Easter eggs so the kids won't go without, and we still have, I think, a few weeks worth of food here. 

I'd really like to see if we can make 30 days.

Which means I need to learn how to forage wild greens. 

Why not.

xxx

 

the forever friend

 

Day 6 of the Game On Challenge, and I've learnt a few things. I'm cataloguing the end of the fresh food. Cursing the chickens who nibbled all my baby lettuces (I NEED those lettuces!!). And I'm learning that if we ever hit Armageddon, what you need even more than a stockpile, a generator and matches, is friends. 

Of course, if everyone was doing the challenge, it might change the dynamic a bit. But I'm not sure. Friends are trading what they have with me, left, right and centre. I'm out of tradable eggs (rest have to go to the food co-op contract), but right now I can trade lemons, bread or biscuits baked at home.

And some friends don't even want to trade, they're just helping out. Greg, the best sourdough maker I've ever met bar none, arrived yesterday with this loaf. Fresh fresh fresh. Perfect crust, a perfect loaf. I'd had an afternoon of rushing around to things, I was very late home, and as I drove past the take away fish and chip place (doing a roaring trade) I felt the pull. But I got home to this bread and also found a packet of spaghetti in the pantry. Hooray. I had roasted cherry tomatoes in the fridge and basil in the garden. Spaghetti went on while I swizzled the tomatoes in a pan with some herbs and a splash of cream and dinner was on the table in 15 minutes. With a splodge of home made sour cream and some grated parmesan cheese, it was super delicious. Accompanied by Greg's bread and our homemade butter. This is eating. 

 

 

Another friend, Fi, has offered cheese (oh my goodness that's like gold!) and the real boon is going to be Amy's garden, with excess produce she's happy to share. FRESH GARDEN PRODUCE!! I never thought I'd get quite so excited. 

In the rules of the game, so you know, my business is exempt - so I'm baking this week for the Bikkies, but nothing is allowed to come home. We're buying petrol, we'd have to drop out earlier if we couldn't, and of course we have running water and electricity, something I'm doubly grateful for since we had to do without water all of Wednesday morning (something I suspected Vanessa had arranged, she's pretty talented, but the whole town? That's a stretch.)

I'm allowed to use the produce from my Mum's garden, which means we have spinach and lemons and rhubarb.

 

Vegies growing in the garden have never looked so good to me. 

I dug out a big bag of rice that I bought to do craft with - we were going to make door snakes - and we're going to eat it instead. Put a jumper on, kids.

 

Also in the pantry I was thrilled to find baking powder (the big bag of flour I have is plain/all-purpose) and popcorn and strangely, bought curry paste. Excellent. Because I don't have the raw ingredients to make it. And far out I have a lot of pork that I need to think of different things to do with before the family stages a mutiny.

 

Thanks for all your support, it's a bit nuts this, but nice to know you're following along!

(If you drop in for a cuppa, could you bring the tea?!)

xxx

 

P.S. Adam and I will be at the Milkwood field day tomorrow, really looking forward to it! Any chance we'll meet you there?

guests

 

 

How much do you have to love a person in order to give them your last ration of goat's fetta? 

In the case of our friends Linda and Matt, here for lunch today, it was a cinch. Goodbye goat's fetta.

 

 

I still have a lot of flour (like, 25kgs) and a good stock of olives and lots of fresh herbs. I thought pizzas were a good use for this awesome hunk of pumpkin given to me by my other Vanessa, the amazing permaculture gardener.

 

 

I have about eight bottles of wine, tampons to last at least three months and lots of dried beans - which you are bound to hear about in the coming days.

But this morning, as I rushed to fetch milk for Ivy, I drained my last bottle. I looked at it in my hand and thought for a second, screw this idea - the baby needs milk. 

Then I picked up a dozen eggs and drove to my nearest dairy. Actually not my nearest. But a friendly dairy somewhere in the area. And traded eggs for milk. 

 

 

Hooray. 

Apart from anything, Adam and I have been reading The Untold Story of Milk and we're dead set on getting some into the kids, particularly Henry. Bring on the raw milk revolution. I want to be part of it. (And if I ever actually am part of it, you can bet I won't be publishing about it here.) But I digress.

Linda and Matt asked if they could bring anything for lunch and while I insisted on nothing, they insisted on something, and Adam suggested bread. I leapt on the idea. I admit, for all my posturing on homemade bread around here, it's been many weeks since we had a homemade loaf. (Like at least 4, since we moved.) We have an awesome sourdough bakery here locally which has solved my problem but it's no good to me now! 

I dug my yeast out of the fridge to make the pizzas, and I have only about three loaves-worth left. Eek. My sourdough starter has died. It takes five days. Better get started. 

Anyway, Adam suggested they bring bread, which they did.

 

 

I don't believe I have ever photographed a loaf of bread I didn't make myself. There you go. How good does it look?! 

I've been worrying a bit about toilet paper, just quietly. I'm sure we can figure out an alternative but I don't want it to knock us out if this challenge early. 

Anyway Linda and Matt needed to borrow a car tomorrow, so we offered ours: in exchange for toilet paper!

Perfect.

I'm eyeing off the last hunk of cheddar tonight - how much do I wish I could make cheese?! We don't have a shopping list anymore, but a wish list, and rennet is on it. And yeast.

We're at the end of day four. 

Reckon we'll make it to Easter?

xxx