If you are what you eat, then I don't want to live in a package

If you are what you eat, then I don't want to live in a package

I try to cook enough to have leftovers for lunch so we're eating healthy lunches and avoiding canned soups, beans and cheese toasties. Canned foods aren't terrible, they have their uses, but they are processed salty foods, not as healthy as fresh foods, and though their packaging is recyclable, our veges usually have no packaging at all. There is also some evidence to suggest that toxins from the plastic lining in cans leaches into the food (ick!). Cheese toasties also are not terrible, especially if you make them like us with home made wholemeal bread and fresh onion, garlic, basil, parsley and/or mushrooms (yum!), but they use a lot of cheese, and dairying is quite polluting, even in NZ where the cows are pasture fed and (by international standards) generally well cared-for.

We've also been on a mission to eat less chocolate and biscuits. Lets face it, they're tasty, but unhealthy and their origin and packaging usually isn't very eco. This has probably been our simplest change of all. We put a bowl of pre-washed and dried fruit on the coffee table in the lounge. Now, when we start to get peckish between meals, the closest, easiest thing to eat is a piece of fruit, and not the chocolate or biscuits that are all the way in the kitchen. I usually find that a piece of fruit will satisfy or delay most chocolate or biscuit cravings, and if I do still want some I usually eat less. Our chocolate and biscuit consumption has plummeted, and we're eating 3-6 pieces of healthy, fresh fruit per day. Incidentally, it's still winter, but our winter sniffles have gone...

Not everyone has the time or space for a large garden. If you're limited in either I recommend growing rocket, silverbeet, mint and italian parsley. These three will grow all winter with no fuss (mine didn't mind being snowed under), and can be made into salad, soup, frittata or pesto (see below). In the early autumn I sprinkled rocket, radish, lettuce mix and spring onion seeds on a patch of dirt, watered them, and left them alone. Don't weed your veggies unless the weeds are out-competing your food; the weeds act as a living mulch, keep the soil moist, and add organic matter when they die. I've only weeded my garden once this year, and it's been supplying us with fresh greens all winter. The plants are big enough now that they're shading out the weeds, though only the rocket and radishes survived the cold. I'll let them go to seed and replant themselves for next year since I see no need to interfere in the process. My garden may not look pretty, but I spend all of 20 minutes per week tending to it, and it keeps on feeding us. We are currently growing rocket, silverbeet, mint, italian parsley, garlic, aloe, feverfew, sage, beetroot, lettuce, lavender, thai basil, radishes, leeks, beans, micro-greens, and a few other seeds I planted but I can't remember and will figure them out when they sprout :). A few weeks ago we planted a garden for my mother-in-law with the easy-to-grow four above and lettuce. She says they're growing like mad and she hasn't had to water or weed them yet.

As you might have guessed, we have a glut of fresh produce, so now we're back to the point of this blog – waste not. We often buy cans of soup and beans for quick lunches, but last week they were $2 per can. I'd spent the past week trying to fit as many veges into our dinners as possible so we could eat them all before they went off, then it clicked that I could make large quantities of soups and freeze them for lunches. I'm not sure why I didn't do it before! I'll put the recipes in the next post for any who would like to follow-suit.

As promised, here the recipes we made in order to eat less canned food and more fresh produce (with ingredient origins in brackets). This project was inspired by an excellent book about eating local produce called Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver (www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/). I highly recommend it.

Soup broth

It's worth making a broth first to add richness to your soups. It seems such a waste to me to make broth with veges that could be used for another purpose, so I make mine with bits and pieces that have a nice flavour but are tough or stringy and normally discarded. While you're making dinner put the items below into a container. Store it in the freezer until you have enough to make a broth.

In a crock pot combine any of the following:

• dark, outer celery leaves

• dark tops of leeks

• inner onion peel (the layer that's partly juicy, partly brown – the brown bits add colour)

• broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage stalks

• parsley stems

• herbs from your garden or foraging missions

• carrot tops

• apple and pear cores (got this from a book about the middle ages-they add a nice sweetness)

• lemon rinds (wakes up the broth)

• pumpkin peel and seeds

• parsnip peel

• inner garlic peel with the oils on it

• capsicum seeds

• meat bones, cut open to expose the marrow if possible (butchers will do it, or (carefully!) cut well cooked chicken bones with a large, sharp knife)

• salt, pepper

Add just enough water to cover the veges, cook on low overnight, cool, strain through a colander, and save for future use. Congratulations, you've just made something useful (and tasty!) for free.

Pumpkin soup

Main ingredients

2 onions (foraged)

3 cloves garlic (co-op)

1 pumpkin (foraged)

2 stalks celery (foraged)

1 cup beans (soaked overnight) or lentils (Binn Inn)

minced ginger (foraged)

parsley (garden)

rosemary (community garden)

salt

pepper

nutmeg

enough broth to cover veges

Thai option

1 tbsp green curry paste (supermarket)

1 can coconut cream (supermarket)

Western option

1-2 cups something creamy (i.e. cream, sour cream, yoghurt, milk of any variety) (supermarket)

½ cup white wine (supermarket)

1. Fry onion until clear, add garlic for a minute, then dump in crock-pot.

2. Pour some broth into the frying pan and scrub with your spoon to de-glaze the pan. Dump broth into crock pot.

3. Add the rest of the main ingredients, pour in rest of broth, and cook until pumpkin is soft.

4. Cool, then blend until smooth

5. Add either the Thai or Western option ingredients, reheat and serve or freeze in portions

Carrot Ginger Soup

This is pretty much the same as my pumpkin soup, but with carrots instead of pumpkin. Add more ginger and use the “western” option.

Beef Stew

The protein in this comes mostly from the beans. The beef is just there for flavour – omit for a vege option.

3 onions (foraged)

5 cloves garlic (co-op)

½ cabbage (foraged)

2 carrots (co-op)

1 parsnip (co-op)

rosemary (community garden)

parsley (garden)

sage (garden)

silverbeet (neighbour's garden)

1 head broccoli (co-op)

¼ pumpkin (co-op)

tomato (foraged)

2 potatoes (co-op)

2 cups beans (soaked overnight) (Binn Inn)

200 g beef mince (supermarket)

1 cup barley (normally from Binn Inn, but this was from the supermarket)

nutmeg, cloves, peppercorns, turmeric, oregano, salt, pepper (Binn Inn)

broth

1. Fry onion until clear, add garlic for a minute, then dump in crock-pot.

2. Pour some broth into the frying pan and scrub with your spoon to de-glaze the pan. Dump broth into crock pot.

3. Add the rest of the main ingredients, cover with broth, and cook until beans are tender.

4. Cool and freeze in portions.

frittata

1 onion (foraged)

3 cloves garlic (co-op)

parsley (garden)

rosemary (community garden)

silverbeet (neighbour's garden)

rocket (garden)

5 free range eggs (supermarket)

a bit of milk (supermarket)

a few slices feta cheese (optional; supermarket)

salt and pepper (Binn Inn)

1. chop onion, mince garlic, mince parsley, roughly chop silverbeet and rocket

2. In a cast iron frying pan fry onion until clear, add garlic for a minute.

3. Beat eggs and milk, add salt and pepper

4. Add parsley, rosemary, silverbeet and rocket to frying pan, pour in eggs.

5. Cook until edges set, then sprinkle with feta, remove handle (if necessary), and put pan in oven on grill until top turns golden.

6. We served it with a foraged and garden salad, and foraged oven chips.

Pesto

We loved Jan's pesto recipe, so we modified it to suit what we have available. The result is a yummy, super healthy raw pasta sauce rich in iron and vitamin C that we can whip up in less time than it takes to cook the pasta. This is now our favourite meal when we come home late.

1 handful silverbeet leaves (neighbour's garden)

1 handful rocket (garden)

1 handful parsley leaves (garden)

3 cloves garlic (co-op)

¼ cup olive oil (supermarket)

¼ cup mixes seeds and nuts (whatever we have on hand) (foraged or Binn Inn)

juice half a lemon (co-op or foraged)

1. Throw it in a food processor

2. turn it on...

3. serve over wholemeal pasta with a bit of cheese

Enjoy!

Laura