The true cost of your Christmas turkey and other meat

There's a discussion on a Facebook group I am a member of about how the cost of meat this year seems to be higher than ever. Various options have been given as to where you can buy the cheapest turkey or other meats. One person said they saw a bird (she wasn't sure what) on sale for 61€ whilst another lady said she was really pleased to have bought a supermarket turkey for 18€.

The fact is, over several decades now, we have been conditioned into thinking that meat is not especially expensive when the true cost, on all levels, is actually much higher. The 61€ bird is more than likely the correct price where the bird will have had free range (not crammed in an over-crowded barn) whilst not being pumped full of growth hormones and antibiotics etc in life and once dead will  not have been injected with water to plump up its size and where everyone involved in its life, slaughter and processing will have been paid a decent wage. To produce a turkey (of any size) at just 18€ means some serious corners will have been cut. How many thousands of birds will have been stuffed into a small area, how many underpaid worker, will have toiled over their short lives earning only just enough money that they themselves can only afford to buy factory farmed meat? And what is the environmental impact of the large amounts of manure produced by such a concentration of birds in one place?

 

 

Intensive chicken farming, Finland
Image credit - Oikeutta eläimille on Flickr

 

The intensive factory farming of animals, which reduces them to purely a mass of financial units, is the only way you can get an 18€ turkey or a £2 chicken or how ever little you pay for a cheap burger or sausage.  Yet I believe many people don't chose to ignore these facts, they simply are unaware of how their meat is produced and this fact makes me both sad and angry. How can people have no idea of what type of life the animals lead in order to put cheap meat on their plates?  Someone elsewhere on Facebook got really huffy with me recently when I showed a picture of mass cattle pens and told me they couldn't possibly be raised like that and it must have been an auction site. I told this person to look up how cattle are raised in places like the Americas but I have no idea if they went and looked. It is just so wrong that we live in a world where factory farming is allowed and people are not taught about it at all. It's all pictures of straw chewing farmers and rural idylls on the packaging which could not be further from the truth.

I didn't reply to the lady who bought the cheap turkey, although I did have to sit very hard on my hands not to.  Part of me thought I should help people realise the true cost of producing (decent) meat and what happens when we demand cheap meat but part of me said let it go, it's Christmas and who knows what other stuff the person buying the 18€ turkey has going in in their life at the moment. I am also painfully aware that if only free range meat with high welfare standards were sold it would be at a price that many people could not afford. No doubt those who are vegetarian or vegan feel this is what should happen so that we are priced out of eating meat but I am looking at the here and now with families trying to feed themselves as food prices rise and we are not going to see a mass shift away from eating meat in the immediate future.

This blog is not about whether we should or should not eat meat I do not want it turning into a be vegan battle cry so I will not publish any comments of that nature. Maybe in the future we will live in a world where we don't eat meat and food poverty will only known about through history lessons but in the meantime many people do eat meat and many are pleased to be able to buy it as cheaply as possible without a second thought for the welfare of the animal or the livelihoods of those who work in the meat industry. How do you make people see the true picture and when you do, how do you make then care when all they want is to eat a fast food burger, a turkey at Christmas or a bacon sandwich?

I did reply to the lady who thought a 61€ bird was too expensive saying that it probably represented a realistic price but neither she, nor anyone else, replied. Do you think I should have said something to the lady who was so pleased to have bought the cheap turkey? What would you have done? 

 

35 Uses for Old Muslin Cloths

My boys are now older teenagers but I still have a number of the muslin cloths I used when they were babies because they are just so useful for so many things.  They are lint free, super soft, strong, absorbent and natural - don't get rid of them after your baby grows up and  re-purpose them into something new.

35 uses for old muslin cloths

Around the house:

1. Make into a duster
2. Use as a washable cleaning cloth
3. Shoe shining cloth/buffer
4. Make into pot pourri drawer freshening sachets.
5. Use as gift wrap (include a link to this blog so your friends will know what to use their cloth for afterwards!)
6. Hang insect repelling herbs in a muslin bag by windows and doors
7. Put cotton wool soaked in peppermint oil in a muslin bag and hang in your wardrobe to deter moths and others insects.

In the kitchen:

8. Make into a jelly bag to sieve fruit when jam/jelly making
9. Make DIY tea bags
10. Squeeze lemons through them
11. Drain yoghurt through them when making thicker Greek yoghurt
12. In cheese making use them to separate the curds and whey
13. Store/dry cheeses in them
14. Strain nut milks through them
15. When making chutneys tie spices in a muslin bag
16. Make into a bread storing bag
17. Use to squeeze moisture from vegetables
18. Make into a beeswax food cover
19. Use as a jar cover when sprouting seeds
20. Make into storage bags both for bought and home grown vegetables/fruit
21. Use to make a bouquet garni

In the bathroom: 

22. Make in to a bandanna to protect your hair when applying face masks etc
23. Make into a soap saver bag
24. Use to gently exfoliate skin and lips
25. Use as reusable cloths for make up removal

Out and about:

26. Make into a light and fold-able drawstring bag
27. Cut down into reusable travel wipes
28. Make into lightweight reusable produce bags
29. Make into a wrap-up case for reusable cutlery
30. Use as a small lightweight towel
31. Make them in to small travel blankets
32. Use as sun shades in the car

Miscellaneous

33. Makes clothes for your children's toys
34. Make clothes for your children such as super soft PJs
35. Use them as a backdrop in photography

Muslin cloths are amazingly useful when you have babies ... and just as useful afterwards. Do you have any more uses for old baby muslin cloths?

Baking ideas for when you are missing key ingredients

If Facebook is anything to go by a lot of people are baking at the moment. As a mother of 2 teenage boys with hollow legs I know I am. But what happens when you realise you are missing a key ingredient and you can't just pop to the local shop to buy it?

The main ingredients for cakes, biscuits, pastries etc are flour, eggs, butter and sugar which will make you umpteen different sweet treats either on their own or with other extras.  However do not panic if you're missing on or more of these key ingredients as I've put together this list of cakes and other sweet treats you can still make.  Please note for ease of being able to write this blog I am going to use the word cake as a general term for any sweet treat be it cake, biscuit, loaf, pastry etc etc.

Baking without flour

First of all remember you can use different types of flour in recipes and you can make self raising flour by the addition of baking powder  Wholemeal flour can be used instead of plain although the result will be a slightly heavier cake.   Likewise spelt, rye, bread, oat, gram (chickpea), rice etc flours can all be added to a recipe to top up a lack of the flour stated in the recipe as well as rolled oats and ground almonds/other ground nuts. The result may be a but different but it will still taste good.

Cakes etc that use no flour:

• Meringues
• Chocolate Krispie Cakes
• Flapjacks
• Coconut pyramids
• Macaroons
• Oat biscuits/cookies

Baking without eggs

You can still cook a cake that requires eggs by adding cider or distilled vinegar and bicarbonate of soda to give the equivalent raising effect of eggs. One tablespoon of vinegar and  one teaspoon of bicarb. This will work best for recipes that only include one egg or you only use this to reduce the egg number by one. 

For totally egg-free recipes go for:

• Jam tarts
• Fruit tarts
• Scones (choose recipes that don't use eggs or simply bulk up the liquid with milk)
• All sorts of biscuits and cookies
• Shortbread
• Some fruit breads don't need eggs.

Baking without butter

You can just as easily use margarine/spread although you will of course notice a less buttery taste.  I have been known to add a percentage of oil or lard to recipes without anyone being any the wiser. Muffins use oil as their form of fat.  However if you are completely without any form of fat you can still bake.

Totally fat free cakes

• Weetabix cake
• Fatless sponge
• Swiss roll
• Meringues
• Peanut butter brownies

A lot of online peanut butter recipes have some butter in them but this is one I have found in a cookbook that has none:

Recipe for peanut butter brownies

225g peanut butter (ideally crunchy but smooth will work too)
200g dark chocolate broken into pieces
300g soft brown sugar
3 medium eggs, beaten (and you could always substitute vinegar/bicarb for one egg)
100g self raising flour

• Heat the even to 180°C/160°C (fan oven)/gas mark 4.
• Set aside 50g of the peanut butter and chocolate for the topping.
• Line a 20cm square baking tin
• Gently melt the remaining peanut butter, chocolate and sugar, stirring to prevent it burning.
• Once melted beat in the eggs and fold in the flour
• Place in the lined tin
• Melt the remaining peanut butter either gently on the stove on is a microwave on high for around 45seconds until runny
• Cot over the brownie mixture
• Bake for 30-35 mins until it has a rust but the middle still appears slightly under-done. Do NOT over cook it!
• Melt the remaining chocolate in a water bath and drizzle over.
• Leave to cool in the baking tin
• When cold cut into pieces.

Baking without sugar

As cakes are by their very definition sweet this can prove to be the most challenging ingredient to be missing. Let's first talk substitutes for sugar.

• Use other types of sugar than specified in the recipe - they are all sweet and you can still make a sponge cake with dark brown sugar, it just won't be quite as light and airy.
• Golden Syrup
• Treacle
• Banana
• Peanut butter
• Honey
• Dates
• Malt extract
• Sweetener (Personally I am uncomfortable with these but I feel they do warrant being mentioned here)

All these can be used to bulk out as sugar supplies run low and in many cases can be used as the only source of sweetener.  I really love the sound of this chocolate cake which has no added sugar.

However, if you want to go totally sweetness free you can bake both normal and potato scones without sugar and serve them with jam for sweetness.  Adding dried fruit will also give them more sweetness.   I may have a go making English muffins and malt loaf .  I have a sugar free recipe for both but you recipes contain some sugar you could always add honey or golden syrup or simply have a slightly less sweet version missing out the extra sweetness altogether. Your waistline will probably thank you!

Finally you could also hone your bread baking skills and make bread to be served with your favourite jam, golden syrup or other sweet spread.   And crumpets only use about a teaspoon of sugar.

So what will you bake today?  Please do let me know your favourite things to bake in a comment as I am happy to try and adapt it if I am missing any ingredients.

Happy baking everyone!

How Sustainable is your Christmas Dinner?

We are probably all aware how unsustainable a "Typical" Christmas is and I've seen plenty of posts on social media begging us to cut back on how much we buy, suggesting eco-friendly wrapping ideas,  how to make natural decorations and whether to have a real or fake tree etc.  But what about your Christmas Dinner? How sustainable ... or not .. is that?  A Daily Mail article from 2009 suggested that our Christmas meal could have travelled nearly 90,000 miles before it got to your plate ... and that's just one aspect to consider.

For a meal to be sustainable we need to consider many factors - does it include meat and if so how was it raised and where, how far have all the ingredients travelled (food miles), how processed is it and how much packaging did it involve? Are the ingredients fair trade or organic and does any part of it contain palm oil? Is it from local producers or a big multi-national? It's a lot so I thought I'd try and break down our main course and see if it is "sustainable".

Vegetarian Winter Salads Made Easy

Eating locally grown foods is one of the most sustainable ways you can feed yourself and you get bonus points if the ingredients don't need to be cooked.  In the summer it is easy to make salads but this may seem more challenging in the winter and with supermarkets supplying all type of fruit and veg all year round it can also be difficult to know what is is season and what has flown halfway round the world to grace your dinner plate.  Help is at hand.  Below is a list of salad friendly vegetables and fruits that are in season in winter and with so many great winter veggies to choose from you won't miss tomatoes, avocado and cucumber etc.  One point of note though, even if you are buying from this list do check where the produce is from as supermarkets will still often import from far away if it best suits them.

20 Brilliant Rhubarb Recipes

I love rhubarb and we grow loads at Eco-Gites of Lenault.  Crumble is a perennial favourite but each year I try to find some new ways to serve this vegetable we always think of as a fruit.  In case you are in need of some inspiration I have put together a range of ideas you might like to try.

20 Brilliant Rhubarb Recipes

- Puddings and Cakes -

1. Strawberry rhubarb crumble from Erin at Oregon Girl around the World is a crumble variation pairing strawberries with rhubarb.

E471 - the hidden palm oil in peanut butter

As a treat and as a change from all the jam I make, we do like the odd jar of peanut butter yet trying to find some we are happy to buy has been an interesting journey.

First of all so many varieties are sold in plastic jars - no thank you.

Then a read of the ingredients shows many contain palm oil.  No thanks again.

Enter Sun-Pat peanut butter.  Glass jar (albeit with a plastic lid) and no palm oil.  Happy enough with that, or so I thought. On Instagram @BusyGreenMum posted a picture recently saying she hoped she had finally found a peanut butter that was palm oil free and she hoped it wasn't hiding under an E number or something.  The ingredient list she also posted showed it contained E471: 

E471 is a synthetic fat, produced mainly from plant origins but in some cases also from animal fats.  The most commonly used fat/oil to make E471 is palm oil.

Why going vegan won't save the world ...

... but not wasting food, changing what meat we eat and altering our lifestyles will certainly help.

Some proponents of a vegan lifestyle state that if the world's population were to turn vegan we would save the world from climate change and cite the following reasons why they believe this is the case:

1. Livestock farming (especially for beef) produces methane (a greenhouse gas) via the natural digestive process of the animals ie cow farts. Methane is 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO₂.

2. Areas of rainforest are being felled at an alarming rate with the cleared land used for cattle farming.  The forests previously would have absorbed CO₂ and when the soil is cultivated before being turned to pasture, it releases nitrous oxide and methane that are both stored in the soil. Nitrous oxide is 300 times more potent than CO₂ as a greenhouse gas.

3. A hectare of land can feed many more people if it produces plants as opposed to animals.

Sounds convincing but there is another side to these arguments.

Cooking up a way to help the world

Food is life but is our current way of feeding ourselves killing the planet?

Wander through the aisles of any supermarket and you are spoilt for choice for food and a lot of it is ready prepared food - from breakfast cereals to microwave dinners, from fresh fruit already peeled and chopped to snacks galore.  It is now entirely possibly to eat without ever having to cook a single meal from scratch and whilst this may be amazingly convenient it comes at a price ... and not just the inflated cost of the food itself.  Convenient foods may be just that - convenient - but they also come with a negative impact on the environment.

Green or GreenWash?

I picked this loaf of organic bread up at our local supermarket recently.  I don't normally buy what my boys call "Plastic bread" but this was in the reduced to sell basket and with an excess of eggs and milk I knew I could make it into a bread and butter pudding. But I also wanted to pose the question to you as to whether this was a good green choice or a fine example of greenwashing?

Skills the world needs us to know

I wrote in a recent blog that when we lose so many of the skills our predecessors knew then we place our lives in the hands of others ... and with just a few large companies holding the greater part of the market share we are left to buy what we need from a small number of super-corporations and they can produce theses goods however they want. These large companies care more for profit than sustainability.  They can use as many pesticides as they see fit, grow GMO crops, use child labour, transport goods all around the world, wrap them in plastic etc etc ... and as consumers our choice to have anything different is lost with the skills to produce these items ourselves.

What skills, therefore, do we need for the sake of saving our planet from further environmental damage?

Skills we must not lose

This image turned up on my Facebook timeline this morning.  I am sure it brought a smile to a good few people, especially if they had managed to rush to the shops before the bad weather hit and stocked up of loads of bread.  However when a friend posted on Facebook that they were baking bread, he wondered how many people were also doing this and how many do not know how to bake bread.

Image from Leamington Spa Courier

What fruit and veg is in season when

I am sure a lot of you may well have made eating more fruit and veg one of your goals for 2018.  I wonder, though, if you have thought about how it is best for you (and the environment) if you are eating fresh seasonal produce.

What is seasonal produce? 

If you are eating "Seasonal Produce" it means you will be eating fruit and veg that is naturally at its best.   It will have grown outside and generally not too far from where you live.  For this reason it will taste great and have the highest possible nutritional value.  Also, if you are eating out of season produce it will have either been grown abroad (racking up food miles) or in heated greenhouses (racking up energy costs).

Why buy your meat from an independent butcher/farm shop/farmer's market

FACT - there are a lot more meat eaters in the UK than vegetarians or vegans (studies suggest there are around 5% vegetarians in the UK).

FACT - the number of vegetarians is growing in the UK

It is known that producing meat, especially lamb and beef, produces greenhouse gases and that large amounts of meat for sale in the UK comes from abroad (stacking up food miles) and/or from factory farms with questionable animal welfare standards (both for animals and workers).  Eating too much meat is also be linked to health issues.

BUT, many of those who eat meat will not become vegetarian in the foreseeable future.  Meat is an integral part of their diet and despite an ongoing reduction in overall meat consumption in the UK over the last 40 years, the negative points above will not stop many from eating meat.

FACT - that makes for a lot of meat eaters. 

But where is the best place to buy your meat?  In my view this would be a local butcher or farm shop/farmer's market.   

Image attribution - wikimedia

My kitchen table - my life

This was my kitchen table yesterday and I realised that it summed up my life so well and what I hope to achieve on a daily basis.  Let me take you on a journey round my kitchen table/life ...

Starting top left and going clockwise:

Bowl of bread dough rising - this one is pumpkin bread and it turned out really tasty.  The sharp eyed among you may notice the dough is covered with plastic and you would be right.  It is a bag that had tortilla wraps in it and after being used several times to freeze things it split so got downgraded to a bread cover.

My 13 year old Nokia phone - yup, I really do have an original Nokia and it is at least 13 years old.  Dare I ask how many phone upgrades you have had in 13 years?

2 tea towels - these came from my Mum's house after we cleared it out.  We tried to salvage as much as possible of things that could not be given to charity or sold on/recycled.

When Organic food may not be the best choice

"Buy Organic and save the Planet" could well be the logo of a company selling organic products and in many ways it rings true.  With a world of only organic agriculture we could be rid of so many harmful chemicals that kill more than the pests and weeds they are designed to wipe out and the world's soil would be in a much better state.  But is organic always the right choice?  Are there actually times when you would be better off not choosing the organic option?  Was this "Simply Good and Organic" muesli I bought really a good environmental choice?

My Green Summer

I pretty much took a break from blogging this summer - partly I was too busy and something had to give and partly my internet connection was playing silly whatsits and was often so slow (or even dead) that it made working online almost impossible.  I am keeping everything crossed that will behave itself from now on.

So I though I would take this opportunity to share with you some of my green moments from the summer of 2017.  I'd love to hear what you have been up to too.

Family Time

The boys and Simon went camping in the UK for a while and when they were here we had some great times playing games such as Settlers of Catan and Molkky (Finnish skittles made from wood), visiting local landmarks including our favourite castle at Falaise (birthplace of William the Conqueror) and taking some lovely walks around the Normandy countryside.

Playing Molkky

Veg, Fruit and Foraged Foods in Season in March

What is seasonal food? 

If you grow your own vegetables the packet will tell you when you can expect to harvest the crop and this is when it is in season.  If you see vegetables for sale outside of this time then they are not in season and may well have been imported or grown under heat in a greenhouse.

Why eat seasonal food?

Food that is in season has many advantages over imported food or that grown under cover:

• It will have the best and freshest taste.
• It will have a higher nutritional value.
• It is good for the environment as it will have low food low miles and less energy will have been used than glass-grown plants to produce it.
• As a result it will be cheaper.
• Finally, as a consumer, you will get seasonal variety and the excitement of the first taste of a just in-season food is hard to beat.  A strawberry in winter may look appetising but it has minimal taste compared to a summer one.

Weekly Green Tips #44 - Why Cook from Scratch (Part 2)

Week 44 - 7 Green Reasons to Cook from Scratch (Part 2)

As promised here are 7 more green reasons you should be cooking from scratch and not buying ready meals or takeaways.  The first 7 reasons can be found here.

Weekly Green Tips #43 - Why Cook from Scratch (Part 1)

Week 43 - 7 Green Reasons to Cook from Scratch (Part 1)

When I started to write this blog post I thought I might struggle to get to 7 reasons why cooking from scratch is good for the environment ... turns out I came up with far more reasons so once you've read these 7 reasons to head to Reasons to Cook from Scratch (Part 2).