The February NO-SHOP challenge - Eating from the Larder for a Month.

Can I feed us for a month from the food we have in the cupbards, freezer, and fridge?

I have set myself a February challenge.  The garden is still producing a generous quantity of winter vegetables – parsnips, celeriac, kale, cabbages, sprouting broccoli Swiss Chard, leeks, celery, turnips, and assorted mustard and oriental greens.  The garden had also stocked the cupboards with a few kilos of dried peas, beans, and tomatoes, and the freezer still has a supply of green beans, beetroot, ratatouille, blackberries, stewed apples, and plenty of assorted frozen meats.  I have half a dozen pumpkins still ‘sunning’ themselves on  the dining room doorsill, and garlic plaits hanging in the kitchen.

In addition to this bounty there is the usual assortment of baking items (flour, rolled oats, sugar, dried fruits, nuts), and a small supply of butter, cheese and eggs in the fridge.

Plenty of herbs, spices, and essences hang out in small shelves beside the boiler, and I cleared out the dry stores cupboard and found tins of fruit, tomatoes, corn, and tuna, and loads of rice, noodles cornmeal, pasta, couscous, and bulghar wheat. (Unfortunately – for my challenge - we are trying to reduce consumption of ‘beige’ processed carbs.  It just means that I will have to be more creative with everything else.)

My makeshift larder (on top of the cupboards) has jam, chutney, and jars and jars of pickled beetroot.  We still have about 10kg of unsold honey from our bees too.

“So,” I told myself, “I wonder if it is possible to make meals for a month without going food shopping.  February is a short month so it seemed a good candidate and on Saturday morning my project got under way.

Now to complicate this – I am only at home 2 days a week.  5 days a week I live a makeshift life-style on a small yacht (moored close to my work) so as to avoid the drag of commuting.  It does mean however that I really need to plan the meals ahead and make things that are transportable – and easily reheated in the microwave.

This week’s meals are 2 or more repeats and combinations of the following:

Breakfasts are porridge or porridge (and maybe some porridge for a change)….

Lunch and dinner could be:
- portions from the leftovers of a huge chilli con carne which we had for dinner on Saturday night, with roasted celeriac and steamed kale;
- parsnip, roasted garlic, and ginger soup, accompanied by polenta baked with Swiss chard, dried tomatoes and grated cheese
- Succotash, and a salad based on Chinese mustard greens,
- fresh turnips (which I love to eat raw, savouring their crisp winter sweetness)
- a supply of individual steamed puddings from my ‘Easy Steamed Pudding’ recipe.

Mr B has by now discovered the handwritten list of ‘contents’ stuck to the fridge door indicating what I have left behind.  He isn’t compelled to participate in my February challenge and can jolly well buy whatever he wants to feed himself on, but as February is a low point in his financial year (the off-season of his employment) he quite welcomes a fridge stocked with ‘heat and eat’ meals.  He likes eggs more than I do so he has also got some mini ham and veg quiches to add variety to his menus.

What am I going to miss?  Fresh carrots definitely.  I love fresh raw carrots at this time of year.  I cannot grow carrots to save myself so you will not have seen them in the garden list at the start of this spiel.

Onions will run out and that is a real concern.  I use them in everything savoury.  The ones I grew were used up weeks ago, so we have only one bin full (maybe 2 kg) of bought ones between us and very challenging (boring?)  meals…..

What else?  I don’t eat them but I suspect eggs will run out within a week or so, and that will put the cobblers on a few things that have an egg in them as binder – and Mr B’s mini quiches.

Cheese will have to be rationed, but I think I can make 1 kg of that last a month.

What will be left over? 

- Pork.  We put a whole pig in the freezer last Summer and still have several roasting joints left.  We could eat pork every weekend, and cold pork in every possible way during the weeks but the word ‘BORING’ comes quickly to mind.
- Pumpkins and garlic
- Jams, Chutneys, and mustards (there really is jam for England in the larder)
- Beige food (rice, noodles, pasta, in particular)
- Vinegar, olive oil, and honey
- Teabags (I hope.  If teabags run out the challenge is forfeit, we will just have to go to the shops then)..

Weight Loss Season

Blogging has gone on hold because baking and puddings have gone on hold.  This seems to be the season when all weight loss resolves are played out and it seems unkind to introduce a regular supply of cake and biscuits into the lives of those struggling with the battle between determination and desire - and plagued by a sweet tooth.

Instead I have been making vegetable soups, and Morrocan chicken tajines, and trying to find interesting ways to eat salsify, celeriac and parsnips (with which my veg garden abounds this year).

Parsnip patties perhaps - parsnips peeled, steamed and pureed (or mashed it you prefer texture as I do) with some egg to bind it and some salt, pepper and curry powder (or fresh grated ginger), formed into patties and shallow fried in light oil.....

Personally I prefer my parsnips coated in oil then baked in the oven for a nice brown caramelized outer layer over sweet soft parsnipy centre.

Apple Surprise Pudding

Possibly the simplest cooked pudding in my repertoire, the surprise in this pudding is that it starts at the bottom of a brew that looks like gravy and floats to the top while it is cooking.

Today's surprise was in fact that I used bananas instead of apple and it worked just as well.

Apple Surprise Pudding
1 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
large cup chopped apple (or two sliced bananas for the banana version)
1/2 cup milk

Mix all that and put it in a generous sized greased oven dish.

Mix up sauce: 
1 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice (or essence)
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 cups boiling water

Pour this over the dough, sprinkle some cinnamon on top, and bake in a moderate oven for 20-25 minutes.



BEFORE

 

AFTER

Easy Steamed Pudding

There are two things one needs to make steamed pudding - pudding basin, and pot large enough to boil it in.  (Three, if you count the TIME you need to steam the pudding.)

Devotees of steamed puddings might regard this as heresy, but I cut the process short by having a pudding basin which gets heat to the centre of the pudding straight away ...

and a pressure cooker....

...the combined effect of which is to cut steaming time to less than half the recipe time.

Whatever your choice of equipment, here is the easiest steamed pudding recipe I know.  This came from Mum and was possibly the ONLY steamed pudding recipe she used.  You can very easily make you own variations on it.  You make it in the basin you intend to steam the pudding in, and it doesn't seem to be a problem that the basin wasn't greased (because you were using it as a mixing bowl).

Hints on the recipe below:
- for tablespoon read "one of those large spoons that often accompany a cutlery set and are used for serving". 
- Heaped in this case means as much flour as you can get on the spoon. 
- Use any jam you like.  Mum always used raspberry.  Below I used Oregon Grape jam.  It is very black stuff and the uncooked pudding mix becomes a particularly unappetizing shade of grey - which is why there are no pictures of the uncooked pudding mix. (Photo of cooked pudding to follow.)

Easy Steamed Pudding.

Melt together 1 tablespoon each of butter, sugar, and jam
Add 3 heaped TB flour,

1/2 tsp soda dissolved in 1/2 cup milk, and
a handful of dried fruit

Cover and steam 1 and half hours (or 40 minutes in a pressure cooker)

Easy Christmas Cake

I have already posted this recipe along with a slightly more complicated one near the start of this blog.

I made my Christmas cake a bit late this year a couple of weeks ago so I went for the easy recipe. 

Now we are 'feeding' it - a shot glass of brandy every couple of weeks.  It doesn't need it. and never got this treatment when my Mum made it, but then we don't have any youngsters around our Christmas table.
 Easy Christmas Cake


Put 3 lb mixed dried fruit in a pot with

8 oz brown sugar,
8 oz butter,
1 Tb glycerine and
1 cup water.
Boil 10 minutes and leave to cool.

Separate 4 eggs and beat the white and yolk separately. Add the beaten egg components time about with

1 lb flour
1 tsp Baking Soda
2 tsp pMixed Spice

Bake in a lined 9" deep tin in a slow oven (about 130C) for 3.5 hours

 

Post on icing it coming soon.

Cold Tea Fruit Punch

Wrong time of year I know but you might want a no-alcohol punch recipe for the Xmas party.  I needed one for a very large birthday party a couple of years ago and after hours of careful research found and adapted up with this 'cold tea' punch.  The recipe (like so many I adapt) was lost immediately after but I work on the assumption that it shouldn't be beyond the wit of  man  this woman to do again what she has managed to do once already.

Fortunately for those who commented that they had enjoyed that particular combination of flavours, I did eventually find the advertising postcard on which I had written the shopping list for ingredients. So here goes:

Cold Tea Fruit Punch

2.5 litres cold tea & 450 grams sugar  (I added a mint tea teabag to the brew)
2.5 litres grapefruit juice
1 litre pineapple juice
1 litre orange juice
4.5 litres ginger ale
Juice of 12 lemons

Add fruit, mint leaves, ice etc ..... serve in a very large bowl.

In imperial measurements it is something like 1/2 gallon of tea, 1 lb sugar, 1/2 gallon of grapefruit juice, 1/4 gallon each of pineapple and orange juice, 1 gallon of ginger ale and juice of 12 lemons.

No. 50 - Hummingbird Cake

Hummingbird cake was a dessert standard in a place I where worked over 20 years ago.  I looked up Hummingbird Cake on the internet recently and discovered there is loads of variety in the combinations of fruit used, and speculation about the name.  I suspect the name is some sort of nod to the range of tropical fruit that appears in these recipes ...that people (rightly or wrongly) associate hummingbirds and tropics.

This one uses mashed banana and crushed pineapple in the cake mix and sliced kiwifruit with the cream cheese filling between the layers.

Hummingbird Cake

3 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
3 beaten eggs
1.5 cups oil
2 tsp vanilla
1 x 250 gram tin of crushed pineapple & juice
2 cups mashed banana (about 6 average bananas)

Mix the dry ingredients, beat the eggs and oil together and add them to the dry stuff, add the vanilla and fruit.  Do not beat this mixture, blend is gently by hand until just mixed.

Divide the mix between 3 greased and papered 9" (23cm) round baking tins, and bake 20-25 minutes at 170-180 degrees C.  Cool a few minutes in the tins before turning these out on to racks to cool completely.

Icing and Filling

100 grams soft butter, 200 grams cream cheese, about 12 heaped tablespoons of fine icing sugar - beat all together well, spread 1/3 on each cake, put fine slices of peeled kiwifruit (or mango, or even tinned peaches if you like) on each and then stack them up.

Voila - hummingbird cake.   You might need a fork to eat this cake - it's not one to eat with one hand, wielding your coffee cup in the other, while contemplating the latest office emails.

Plum Sauce

The garlic sauce is good but this is my all time favourite homemade sauce.  In fact this is my all time favourite sauce - sausages, fritters, barbeque, baked potatoes, cheese toasties...

Plum Sauce

3 kg plums (small tart, dark red ones scrumped from trees that hang out of hedgerows are best)
2 large onions
1.5 kg sugar
6 cups malt vinegar
3 cloves garlic
2 Tb salt
1 tsp cayenne
2 tsp ground cloves
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground black pepper

Count the plums so that you know how many stones to extract from the stewed plums before you add the rest of the ingredients.  Either that or laboriously cut all the plums and remove the stones before you start. 

Add all the other ingredients and cook gently for about an hour.  I then whizz it up with the blender to make a nice smooth sauce.  Make sure it is close to boiling when you pour it into hot clean bottles and seal them up.

Let it mature for a couple of months before you use it.  It improves with age (the vinegar and spices mellow together and the flavour goes from raw to rich) so don't be afraid to leave it 6 months before you start to use it.

Recipe Book

This is the recipe book of the 10 year old me.  It has not been retired from service, and over 50% of the baking recipes in it are in my 10 year old handwriting.

 

It is a ring-binder covered in the sort of brown paper my mother used to use to line the Christmas Cake tin - sturdy, very sturdy - and decorated with pictures cut out of birthday cards. 

Mostly they seem to have been from my maternal Grandmother gave me - two pictures top right are actually from recycled vintage ones she had been given for birthdays as a child.  Perhaps I should have taken better care of them, but they have never been off display in that last 40 years or so.  You can possibly tell my maternal grandmother loved roses.  In fact she was well known locally for her roses and had won a trophy rose bowl in a local competition so many times they eventually awarded it to her to keep.

Strangely, despite the internet being a wonderful resource, I still work from recipes scrawled on paper.  I find it so much easier than refering to a computer screen set up in the next room - and quicker too for getting to that favourite recipe.   In recent years I have inserted some of the more worn pages into plastic slip covers

No. 49 - Steamed Loaf Take 2 - Fruit Tea Loaf

Now I have produced a firm (very firm) dense loaf which cuts easily and tidily into slices and can be buttered without falling to pieces and sticking to the butter-loaded knife.

Much better – possibly even too far the other way.    The recipe calls for self-raising flour and the only SR flour I had was wholemeal.  Too much bran.  On review I think that I would recommend 50/50 plain/wholemeal SR flour.

This amount made my three little tins and a 1 lb loaf tin which I baked in a tray of water in the oven.

 

Fruit Tea Loaf

500 g mixed fruit

1.5 cups of strong tea (use more if you are going for the full bran experience of wholemeal flour)
250 g caster sugar

Soak all this together for a few hours (preferably overnight)

1 egg

500 g self-raising flour  (or half/half wholemeal/plain self raising flour)
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp grated nutmeg

Stir the egg into the soaked fruit and sift in the dry ingredients.  Mix well and spoon it into your prepared baking (or steaming) tins.  Steam for 1 hour.

You will need a 2lb loaf tin if you are baking it (1 hour at 170 degrees C – fan oven).  I suggest that you stand the loaf tin in a roasting dish with an inch of so of water in it.