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[carrie]

Saw an article in home farmer mag this month and thought this would be a good goal for this year.

 

If I count eggs I am already doing this but I am going to try for 1 meal a week not an egg dish. I have a vegetable garden but will have to put a bit more effort in to it if this is going to work and provide a meal to feed the five of us.

 

Will have to start looking for lots of good veggie recipes.

 

Does anyone want to join me on this or have suggestions for making this work.

[Guest]

we have a lottie, a veg garden and do a bit of foraging so a lot of what we eat is subsidised but I'm not organised enough for your plan but best of luck with it

[Saronne]

Saw an article in home farmer mag this month and thought this would be a good goal for this year.

 

If I count eggs I am already doing this but I am going to try for 1 meal a week not an egg dish. I have a vegetable garden but will have to put a bit more effort in to it if this is going to work and provide a meal to feed the five of us.

 

Will have to start looking for lots of good veggie recipes.

 

Does anyone want to join me on this or have suggestions for making this work.

 

I love this idea, but...

 

does this mean that ALL food in the meal has to be produced by you, e.g. wheat for the bread and pasta, home grown pulses, etc. or does it include locally produced flour that you buy and make into bread, etc.?

 

Not sure how the allotment producer (myself included) can do more than eggs, fruit and veg - though like Poet, we forage a bit (mushrooms and berries, mainly).

 

Saronne x

[Daphne]

following on from Saronne's question - could you use shop-bought pasta or would it only count if you made the pasta (presumably from shop-bought flour as few of us are growing durum wheat)?

[Egluntyne]

The same would apply for bread I suppose.

 

A challenging idea and one that takes my fancy. Trouble is I'm not organised enough to pull it off either.

[Guest]

found some more info...

 

http://fifty-twomeals.blogspot.com/

[Lesley]

You'd probably not find it as challenging as you think - especially during the summer. I used to tell Lauren and Jake that they could make a meal out of whatever they could find in the garden and they loved ferretting around to see how much they could find......it usually included eggs though

 

(this was mostly before we moved to the farm - I have visions of Jake coming back now with a sheep in the wheelbarrow!!)

[Lewis]

(this was mostly before we moved to the farm - I have visions of Jake coming back now with a sheep in the wheelbarrow!!)

 

You could do something like a chicken salad + new potatoes ... still counts

I think it would be very hard to do if the whole pasta + bread thing does have to be self sufficient

[Saronne]

found some more info...

 

http://fifty-twomeals.blogspot.com/

 

 

Thanks, Poet. I read it. I'm all for it and am interpreting Peacock's message as, 'as much of the meal as is possible', e.g. potatoes, veg, fruit, eggs 'home made' bread, etc.

 

I think we're probably achieving that now; for lunch, we had a fritatta made with home produced eggs, kale, onions, and potatoes (cheese on top was bought, but local; i.e. red Leicester and Stilton!) and home made bread made from locally milled wheat. The butter on the bread was store bought, though I understand it is easy to make. Sadly, I have no room to keep a goat or cow for milk.

 

 

Saronne x

[Redwing]

We are very nearly there with our roast meals now but I'd really struggle with gravy and lots of our potatoes were lost to blight so later in the winter we wont have any left

 

Two meals we have had this week - chicken and vegetable soup and chicken bake were completely our own home grown things

[Guest]

as i say, we subsidise a lot already with what we grow and forage but we're always looking to make improvements.

 

I made a microwave sponge the other day which consisted of some jam i made (elderberry and apple) the fruit in the jam was foraged for by us and the sponge contained an egg from our girls. I was rather pleased about it anyway

[Lesley]

We are very nearly there with our roast meals now but I'd really struggle with gravy

 

Tash, try gravy made a la Jamie Oliver. He roasts meat on a bed of veggies, removes the meat when it's cooked and then mashes the veg, adds water and sieves all the bits out. The caramelised veg add colour and flavour. We make extra when cooking roast meat and then freeze some to use for things like toad in the hole......toads don't make very good gravy

 

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/other-recipes/consistently-good-gravy

[Redwing]

That sounds lovely Lesley, I will give that a try thanks

 

Poet - that sponge sounds good, at the end of the day every one less ingredient we have to buy makes us more self sufficient so its all good

[Guest]

just polished off the remains of an apple pie I made on new year's eve too. The apples were again foraged ones and I made the pastry and glazed it with our eggs. We had it with free range egg custard from the co-op. I'm rubbish at making custard unfortunately, doesn't matter what i seem to do, it always curdles/splits but the FR one from the co-op is divine!

[BarbaraJ]

We are very nearly there with our roast meals now but I'd really struggle with gravy

 

Tash, try gravy made a la Jamie Oliver. He roasts meat on a bed of veggies, removes the meat when it's cooked and then mashes the veg, adds water and sieves all the bits out. The caramelised veg add colour and flavour. We make extra when cooking roast meat and then freeze some to use for things like toad in the hole......toads don't make very good gravy

 

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/other-recipes/consistently-good-gravy

 

thats the gravy i make now after seeing jamie do it xmas 2008 , its very yummy

[carrie]

I think I would be being very unrealistic if I did not include some bought basics eg rice pasta and flour etc. I will definately make more of an effort to make my own bread. At the moment I make jams and chutneys and grow mainly summer stuff like green beans, potatoes, cucumber, onions, lettuce, tomatoes, courgettes, spinach and fruit-rhubarb, rasps, strawbs, red/blackcurrants and gooseberries but all of that is not going to see me through the year.

 

perhaps I would be more realistic trying for 2 meals during the summer as they work out that 1 meal a week is 5%. I would like to try for 5% plus eggs.

 

Has anyone tried growing beans to dry for later in the year?

[Saronne]

My allotment neighbour has. Last year he grew an Italian bean with a speckled pod (can't remember the variety). He left some semi-dry and used them in autumnal soups and the rest he left to dry longer before harvesting. I think in total, he had about a kilo, which was enough for him and his wife.

 

Have you tried making your own pasta? It's easy but time consuming, but you can do batches and freeze it.

 

Saronne x

[Redwing]

The speckled pod bean is called Boroltti (though not sure if I have spelt it correctly!)

 

I grew some Egyptian Pea Beans this year and dried them but didnt get that many and have used them all up now, I have saved a few to plant again next year

[Lesley]

I grew beans to dry this....ooops!!....last year, borlotti and Ying Yang.

 

I've used some in Chilli and I've made a large batch of Baked Beans which are in the freezer in 1lb jars. I have 3 jars of beautiful beans in the kitchen ready for soups and stews.

[docsquid]

I grew borlotti beans to dry one year but DH decided he didn't like them

 

This year I'm concentrating on things he likes and trying to be as self-sufficient as possible. We are lucky in that we also have shooting rights on a piece of land, so can hunt wild game at appropriate times of year. This year we were self sufficient in potatoes, onions, garlic, runner beans, tomatoes, peas, blackberries and other fruit for quite a fair proportion of the year. We still have some garlic left over.

 

We hope to add to this during the coming year with a permaculture forest garden, some wild food foraging and new orchard and cob-nut trees coming on stream. It is very exciting to feed yourself from your own resources! The new greenhouse will help too, as we can grow squashes protected from the bunnies, and hopefully a grapevine for us and the chickens!

 

I think it would be hard to do a whole self-sufficient meal though.

[TAJ]

Allotment veg keeps us going all year as we have something all year round growing, plus fill the freezer over the summer months, plus we made 50 bottles of red wine this year, OH even has an old grinder to grind his own flour - I do not got that far! Home grown chickens, veg & eggs means quite a few meals are 100% homegrown.

 

Tracy

[Saronne]

Sounds excellent!

 

 

Saronne x

[TAJ]

Great coc-au-vin, chicken from the garden, red wine, garlic & red onions & herbs from the allotment, pots & french beans eaten with it from the allotment. The only non own stuff was the cream with the allotment gooseberry fool - so I think I must need a cow for milk!

 

Tracy

[Lesley]

You'd better come and marry Carl then - he wants a house cow

 

We had cold lamb leftovers and roasted vegetables, all our own.

[chickencam]

We have eggs and home and allotment grown veg, so we already manage a few meals, mostly in the summer months.

 

We grow all of our own potatoes, carrots, and onions, and most of the rest of our veg, we also have several aple and pear trees along with soft fruit in the summer and autumn. We make all of our own bread, cakes etc and occasionaly pasta too.

 

I would love to be able to at least keep meat birds, but we only have a small garden and it is full already