Food as Fuel

[jacey]

bluehairsue just posted thoughts in response to the food meme that many of my flist did last week and she set me thinking about the ethics and otherwise of food.

I am not a fancy foodie though I could tick some of the boxes on the food meme accidentally. Yes, I've eaten alligator (tastes like fishy chicken) and funnel cake (tastes like hot Blackpool doughnuts) but I've never gone out of my way to eat strange stuff for the sake of it. I'm just as happy with fish and chipsbecause someone was paying me to be at a food and folk festival. Add blooming onions, pit-beef and pulled pork to that list which seem exotic to a Yorkshire girl... but I've never gone out of my way to eat strange stuff for the sake of it. I'm just as happy with fish and chips.

Best Beloved is a 'food as fuel' type and I am a 'food as comfort' type and since comfort-food tends to be fuel-food we largely get on just fine at the dinner table. I'm not ethical for the sake of it, but reducing food miles is just common sense. Our local farm shop mostly sells home grown seasonal veg. I bought five huge cauliflowers for a pound last week because all their caulis are ready at once and they were encouraging people to buy them. (Home-frozen cauli makes decent cauli-cheese and is fine in Thai-green-anything.) At the same time as the Great-Cauli-Grab I bought a bunch of mucky carrots with their tops on. I saw the farmer walk down the field and into the shop with them, baught the carrots five minutes later and two hours after that they were on my plate. Beautiful.

I'm an old fashioned cook and in many ways what our mothers taught us makes sense. Eat seasonal stuff when it's cheap; don't throw away anything that's fit to be turned into a meal. I know how to boil a chicken carcass (or any old bones) for stock. I can make soup. I can bake a cake or (if pushed) make a pie. I can make a tasty meal out of  the contents of my store cupboard (rice, tuna, Campbell's condensed mushroom soup) of the leftovers in my fridge (cabbage, leek, apple, Campbell's condensed chicken soup) And I know how to bake bread without a machine, though I confess I use the machine my daughter gave me because it makes so much sense NOT to heat a whole oven for one loaf. (I very rarely buy ready made bread there days.) I can trim and joint a half hindquarter of beef without passing out at bloody hunks of flesh in a big box and I can turn the scrap bits into something tasty.

Christmas dinner for fourteen holds no fears for me.

Being able to deal with fresh food just makes so much sense. Why pay someone to make a ready meal for you when the meal you get ready yourself is tastier and you can control what goes into it?

Of course, I'm not a fancy cook. I don't even really like cooking most of the time and I spend as little time as possible in the kitchen because I've got a life. (I actually seem to have many lives at the moment and would like a break from some of them.) The range of what I am prepared to stand and fuss over is limited. Note I don't say my skill is limited because - hey - I can read a recipe book. I mostly work on the principle of: take food; apply heat until it looks/smells right; eat.

It comes down to Richard Adams who said that evolution had changed Man's essential question from 'What shall we eat?' to 'Where shall we do lunch?'

Comments

[ferlonda.livejournal.com]

I was just going to say check the charity shops because if they're anything like the thrift stores in the US you can often find your choice of bread makers, many of them in like-new condition and for much less than new... but if you don't have room, you don't have room.

[julesjones]

The safety regs here mean that most charity shops no longer sell second-hand electrical goods, as they would need to have them checked by a qualified electrician before putting them on sale. (This is the land of 240V, so there is a good reason for those regs.) I could check eBay, but the postage costs would probably be enough that I might as well buy new and get exactly the right model.

But right now, one of the reasons I miss that little $30 bread machine I left behind is that it was *little*.

[ferlonda.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, you guys have serious electricity over there. Well, at least you won't get electrocuted by a second hand appliance. Over here, anything with a cord can get sold second hand and the only caveat is try it before you buy it and that's only to make sure it turns on.

I'm surprised, though, that the UK doesn't have smaller machines, given the smallness of most other kitchen appliances, such as fridges. It would make a lot of sense. Hm.

[julesjones]

You can probably find small machines, but I am very impressed with the bread this one turns out, and it has some useful features for making fancy breads that I would probably use. So I'd been putting off buying a bread maker, as this flat is supposed to be temporary accommodation until we find somewhere we want to buy. It's just taking rather longer to do that than originally anticipated.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

There's a law about selling secondhand electrical goods here that probably prevents charity shops from taking and reselling stuff like that.

[julesjones]

That's the problem. The stuff has to be properly certified as safe before being put on sale by a commercial enterprise, and that's going to cost more for a random assortment of second-hand goods than is justified by the price they'd get for it. I remember when the law first came in -- there was a good reason for it (to whit, several very nasty incidents and I think one or two fatalities), but it meant that a couple of friends on low incomes could no longer easily get cheap electrical goods to see them through while they saved up for new ones.