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Friday, October 28th, 2011
Frugal cooking: How to save money in the kitchen
We advise readers how to save money in the kitchen through frugal cooking tips and tricks.
One of Fiona Nevile’s most astute purchases has been a five-litre Twenties Thermos flask that she bought for one pound at a church fete. “I imagine it was used to take soup to shooting parties”, says Fiona, a passionate gardener and cook. Fiona, however, doesn’t attend shooting parties – she cooks in her Thermos, radically reducing th e energy required in conventional cooking.
Based on the traditional “hay box” idea, that food heated to simmering point will lose heat much more slowly in an insulated container, the Thermos works even more efficiently due to the vacuum surrounding the inner container. “I’ve cooked bread, cakes and even a cockerel that we had to kill because it was annoying the neighbours,” says Fiona. “I had to quit my job due to illness two years ago, and although my partner still works, our income was severely diminished and we needed to reduce our bills quickly. The Thermos really helps.”
Her other great purchase, she says, is a food dehydrator. “When we have a glut of vegetables or supermarkets do a three-for-one offer, we can dehydrate them and store them in a plastic bag for several months. Vegetables come out looking like they should be doll’s house food.”
Financial experts concluded earlier this month that British families are experiencing “an unprecedented collapse in living standards” due to a combination of pay freezes, inflation and fuel bill increases. Reducing energy use is now not just about carbon emissions – it’s about helping make your money stretch further.
I have written much about reducing heating costs in the home. But what about the next biggest energy guzzler – the kitchen? Our family has already turned to stews and casseroles, slow-cooked on a low heat for six hours. The children, brought up, I am ashamed to admit, on the modern child’s predilection for everything to be dry and sauce-less, at first looked askance at the rich deeply-flavoured gravy that everything now comes with. The slow cooker not only reduces my oven fuel bill but enables me to buy cheaper cuts of meat. Even a scrawny piece of mutton melts off the bone after several hours.
Slow cooking doesn’t mean a diet of stews, though. Aly Hodge, a mother of three who lives in Wiltshire, cooks lasagne, chutney, rice pudding, corn bread – pretty much everything – in her two slow cookers. “I blog about family life and a lot of mums report switching to slow cooking – for the convenience, but also to save on fuel bills,” she says.
Chef Arthur Potts Dawson, the brains behind the People’s Supermarket movement, says that as well as using a slow cooker, he now tries to have two or three days in the week when his family eat raw food. “It’s healthy and saves money.” When he do es cook, he makes sure he leaves not a scrap of waste. “Our record is using a chicken for six different meals: roast first; then, with the leftover roast potatoes, squashed in a patty with peas and fried; chicken salad, chicken stir fry with rice; with bacon and eggs for breakfast and using the stock for soup.”
While slow cookers can save around one third of the electricity a conventional oven uses, a thermal cooker – the commercial version of Fiona’s Thermos – can save 80–90 per cent. Dave Knowles is a thermal cooker fanatic and commissioned a factory in China to make him one. “We use ours most days,” says Dave, who runs a chandlery near Southampton and originally devised his thermal cooker for people living on boats and in caravans. “For stew, you have to get food up to simmering point, cook for 10 minutes, then seal and leave it, meaning 10 minutes of cooking fuel for something that would take three hours in a conventional oven.”
He says that last Christmas, he even made a Christmas cake in it, with the cake tin in an outer “bath” simmering for 35 minutes before being sealed. “It came out beautifully moist and at a fraction of the cooking costs of a normal seven-hour-Christmas-cake-baking time.”
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Thursday, October 27th, 2011
Raising a glass to the joys of the sloe life
The first frosts of the year have arrived, but there is compensation. It’s a sign, not just that the car windscreen will need scraping and central heating bills are about to go through the roof, but that sloes, the last fruit of the British autumn, are ready for picking.
The tiny fruits look like miniature black plums with a soft, white bloom, some no bigger than a pea. They are inedible raw, but once cooked or macerated in alcohol, have an intense flavour, most famously in sweet, fragrant, carmine-tinged sloe gin. And making it at home is a piece of cake – once you have your sloes.
Your best bet is to recruit a country-loving friend, ideally a dog walker, as these always seem to know when and where the best forage is to be had. On a chilly morning last week, I press-ganged my friend Luke and his dogs, wrapped up warm and headed for the Somerset countryside.
Fifteen minutes’ tramp through silvery fields brought us to the booty. Although related to plums, sloes are the fruit of the blackthorn bush, Prunus spinosa. The bushes or small trees (which grow to 13ft) are often found in hedgerows, where their inch-long thorns make them an effective barrier. Picking takes time and gloves – not just because of the thorns but because the fruit is fiddly for cold-numbed hands.
The chief concern for most gatherers is whether they have genuine sloes or bullaces, a relative of the damson. The two look very similar, although bullaces are larger. A good bet is to look at the leaves: sloe leaves are at least twice as long as they are wide, while bullace leaves are rounded. In addition, bullace trees have few, if any, prickles.
This sounds straightforward. But, in fact, as Miles Irving, author of The Forager Handbook (Ebury House, £30) and supplier of wild foods to many of London’s top restaurants, points out, natural hybridisation between the two plants has blurred the distinction. According to Brian Doonan of the sloe website www.sloe.biz, the best way to be sure is to taste one. A raw bullace will be sour, but a sloe will be lip-curlingly, mouth-dryingly tannic.
Everyone agrees that they are best picked after the first frosts. To some, the fruit will not be truly ripe until now. But to sloe experts like Julia Medforth, who makes sloe gin, sloe port and sloe sherry at her Yorkshire Wolds estate, Raisthorpe Manor, the frost breaks down the skin so they macerate in alcohol more readily. She’s been picking from her 20 miles of hedgerows since September and replicates the frost by freezing them before popping them into the gin bottles.
“It’s been a good year, with a hard winter followed by an early, warm spring,” Medforth says. “We’ve had a good wind, too, which blows the leaves from the bushes and makes the fruit easier to see and pick. The older bushes, 50 or 60 years old, are the best.”
If you make your sloe gin now, you can drink it for Christmas, but as Irving says, it is better to leave until next year. “Most of the flavour comes from the kernel, a gently almondy note, which takes months to develop.”
Sloes are worth using in other recipes. I’ve added a handful to an apple crumble, which turns the fruit the prettiest pink and enrichens the flavour. Irving prefers to use them as a sauce for game, cooking a handful with red wine and sugar. Rub it through a sieve and add any juices from the roast meat, plus salt and pepper to taste. While you are waiting for the gin, this will give you the sloe fix, quick.
Sloe recipes
Sloe gin/sherry
Empty a bottle of gin into a jug. Prick a mugful of sloes with a fork, then drop them into the bottle, stopping when the bottle is half full. Add 5oz/140g sugar. Fill the bottle with gin and close it tightly. Shake the bottle every day for a week, then once a week or so for a couple of months. You could drink the gin at Christmas but it will be better left until next year or even longer. Or fill the bottle with sherry, adding a little sugar. Shake and store as for gin.
Sloe “butter”
Decant the sloes from the sherry and put in a pan with barely enough water to cover. Simmer until the fruit is really soft and the liquid has reduced to three or four tablespoonfuls. Rub the sloes through a sieve or use a mouli-legumes, aka a vegetable mill. Either way, the little stones make this a tiresome job but persevere. Weigh the pulp and add half its weight in sugar. Heat gently until the sugar dissolves, then boil for three to four minutes until thick. Scrape into a jar and leave to set. Store in the fridge. Eat on bread or with cheese.
Sloe truffles
Mix the sloe “butter” with an equal weight of melted chocolate. Spread into an oblong about little-finger deep. Allow to set in a cool place, then cut into squares and dust with cocoa powder.
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Wednesday, October 26th, 2011
Top 10: pumpkin carving tips
However you choose to celebrate 31st October, there is one tradition that will generally precede all festivities. The self-carved Jack o’lantern is something of a Halloween pin-up, but how will you make yours stand out from the crowd? Our simple four-step guide will get you started, but here are our top 10 tips for giving your pumpkin a touch of magic…
1. Choose your pumpkin wisely. The lines on the skin could be a witch’s wrinkles while a misshapen squash could provide a devilishly different canvas.
2. Use a template to perfect your spooky design. Create your own or find inspiration from the many websites dedicated to pumpkin prettying. Secure your chosen style to the front of your pumpkin and carefully trace the image by poking holes along the lines. Once finished remove the template and gently carve. Voilà!
3. Create some eerie shadows by carving another pattern into the back of your pumpkin. Place next to a wall, light from the inside and watch your design come to life.
4. Put some flame-retardant coloured tissue paper just behind the front face of your pumpkin to create a coloured filter. Make sure you’re lighting your pumpkin with a torch rather than a naked flame though!
5. Try shaving parts of your pumpkin rather than cutting all the way through. This will give your design a two-tone effect and add depth.
6. Use everyday items from around the house to bring your pumpkin to life. Create a face from nuts and bolts, use white reflective tape as bandages or simply chop off the top and add flowers for your own spooky vase!
7. Painting your pumpkin can work wonderfully, especially if you want to keep little hands away from sharp objects. They’ll also look great in the daytime. Either paint on a design or use to add accents to an already carved squash.
8. Shun the traditional orange pumpkin for a ghoulish green variety… or why not try your hand at transforming a watermelon? The process is the same but it will certainly make your neighbours look twice!
9. Make your pumpkin shine from the inside out. Use multicoloured Christmas lights to add a new dimension to simple styles or try a red bicycle light, set to flash, for a really sinister touch.
10. Funny faces and ghoulish grins not your thing? Try making simple shapes like stars or spooky creatures with cookie cutters or use an apple corer or drill bits to add polka dots for a more grown-up pumpkin.
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Monday, October 24th, 2011
Are those supermarket ‘bargains’ just a big con? Shops routinely exaggerate discounts, says Which? report
Supermarkets routinely exaggerate ‘bargain’ offers to dupe shoppers into thinking they are getting a better deal, experts have claimed.
Some stores were found to inflate prices for just a few days, before promoting their products as being half-price or better for weeks afterwards.
Consumer group Which? said a number of chains were exploiting loopholes in fair-trading legislation to offer ‘dubious’ offers on items such as fruit and wine ‘that might mislead you into thinking you are getting an extra-special bargain when you are not’.
Many families, facing the biggest cost of living squeeze for 60 years, have taken to buying only items that are on offer – but Which? said stores appear to be taking advantage of cash-strapped consumers.
Products should be sold at an original price for 28 days before shops can then use this as a benchmark for any advertised reductions.
In addition, the items should not be on offer for any longer than they were on sale at their original price.
However, Which? said these rules do not apply if stores display a sign explaining the offer, or a product is going out of date.
The organisation looked at deals at Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Waitrose and Marks & Spencer over three months.
It found that fruit prices ‘had the greatest potential’ to ‘baffle consumers’, with one example involving cherries sold at Sainsbury’s at one price for 15 days, before being advertised as half-price for eight weeks.
Elsewhere, M&S had blueberries on offer for 13 weeks out of 14.
Deals on wine were similarly confusing. Tesco sold Hardys Crest Cabernet Shiraz Merlot for £10.99 for just two weeks; it was then ‘half-price’ at £5.49 for ten weeks, and £7.99 for the next two.
Rival chain Asda promoted another bottle as reduced from £5.28 to £3, but Which? said the highest price it ever saw for the wine was £4.98.
Which? executive director Richard Lloyd said: ‘Just because something is on offer doesn’t necessarily mean it’s cheap or good value. Unfortunately, some “special offers” aren’t so special.
‘Supermarkets must take a more responsible approach. We want to see clear and transparent offers that don’t cause confusion.’
The six chains in the report insisted that they had no intention to mislead customers.
Tesco said it has strict price rules and mistakes are rare, while Waitrose said it is conducting research to ensure its offers meet legal requirements.
Asda and Sainsbury’s blamed human error for pricing mistakes, but both Morrisons and M&S insisted that their deals complied with industry rules.
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Thursday, October 20th, 2011
Charity finds Scottish pets being fed junk food
Scotland is facing an epidemic of fat pets that are being fed a diet of junk food according to a leading animal charity.
Up to 12 million cats, dogs and rabbits across the UK are being given “treats” of takeaways, crisps, cheese and cakes on a daily basis which are a diet disaster for the animals, according to a massive survey of 11,000 pet owners by the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA).
The charity found that pets are at risk of developing obesity-related, life-threatening illnesses if their diets do not improve.
The survey found dogs are fed the greatest amount of junk food, with 90% of dog owners admitting that cheese, toast, crisps, biscuits, takeaways, cakes and other fatty treats form part of their dog’s diet.
Cats have the second worst meal plans, with 43% being given fatty treats while 26% of rabbits are also fed junk food
In Scotland 855 pet owners were questioned and dogs were found to get the most fatty treats, with 89% of owners admitting to feeding them inappropriate food. For cats the rate is 42%, while rabbits get the least amount of junk food at 21%.
Commonly fed fatty treats for dogs and rabbits in Scotland is toast, while for cats it is cheese.
Bailey, a five-year-old Border Collie who weighs 40kg but has an “ideal weight” of 25-27kg, is receiving help from PDSA to slim.
Owner Pauline Connor, 48, from Wishaw in North Lanarkshire, said she used to give in to his “puppy-dog eyes”.
She said: “We always made sure Bailey had lots of exercise but the titbits we used to give him meant he gradually started piling on the pounds. It was habit to pass him a piece of biscuit whilst watching TV together, and at mealtimes all he had to do was look at us with those puppy-dog eyes.
“But now we have him on weight-loss food and have cut out all the sweet treats and his absolute favourite pasta treat which he loves. It is early days but with PDSA’s help I’m sure Bailey will be a slimline pooch in no time.”
The PDSA Animal Wellbeing (PAW) Report is the largest of its kind ever to assess and measure the health and welfare standards of dogs, cats and rabbits, according to the charity.
Sean Wensley, PDSA Senior Vet, said: “With so many pets being fed inappropriate diets, the effect on their health is devastating.
“Many owners may think that their favourite treats are harmless to pets. This is not the case.
“As in humans, unsuitable diets containing lots of unhealthy food items are linked to medical conditions including diabetes, arthritis and heart disease.”
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Wednesday, October 19th, 2011
Healthy diet can boost male fertility
Men who enjoy a healthy diet high in fruit and vegetables are less likely to be infertile, according to new research.
New studies from Harvard University and the University of Murcia have revealed that poor nutrition can have a negative effect on sperm movement.
Male volunteers who stuck to a healthy diet were found to have higher sperm movement while the sperm of men on poor diets was found to be less mobile.
Audrey Gaskins of Harvard School of Public Health’s department of nutrition and lead author of the study, said: ‘The main overall finding of our work is that a healthy diet seems to be beneficial for semen quality.’
‘Specifically, a healthy diet composed of a higher intake of fish, fresh fruit, whole grains, legumes and vegetables seems to improve sperm motility… which means a higher number of sperm actually move around, rather than sit still.’
A second study led by Dr Jorge Chavarro of the Harvard School of Public Health showed those who enjoyed a diet rich in trans fat[s] had lower sperm concentration levels.
The findings of the reports were presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
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Monday, October 17th, 2011
IT HAPPENED a long time ago, but I still remember the feeling I had after selling a wagon-load of Majestic seed potatoes.
As was the custom in those days, the potato merchant had called in on a route that took him round his customers. My father was not at home and I thought the offer of £23 per ton for ten tons –as they were in those days – was a fair price.
Imparting the news that night, dad informed me I was £5 a ton off the pace. There had been a lift in the trade for Majestics. He asked if I had agreed the deal and when I answered in the affirmative, he said: “Well that is that then.” And the potatoes were duly delivered.
Ever since that day, whenever I sell anything, I have this doubt. Too much? Too little? Was the handshake too quick and eager on the other side? Sometimes I get it right, mostly I do not.
I am unlike a certain well-known Perthshire farmer who sells all his crops at the top of the market. As the locals remark, the eggs his hens lay are all double-yokers. I believe he has relations or others of his ilk in all parts of the country.
There is no doubt that selling is a skill not given to all and so I marvelled this past week at the various salesmen of the big Scottish red meat exporting companies went about their business at the Anuga food fair in Cologne.
There was a buzz in the air. There is no doubt there is an increasing demand for beef and lamb and new faces kept coming on to the Quality Meat Scotland stand that provides the umbrella base for the selling operation.
As one trader remarked, all the new faces are welcome but in the financial turmoil going on in the world, stringent credit checks are essential.
In looking to open new markets, it is no wonder that one of the factors that influenced QMS to target Germany and the Scandinavian countries is rule one in selling: follow the money. When told that Bord Bia, the Irish export body, had that day announced that it was aiming to double its exports to Germany, one QMS staffer commented that it confirmed its strategy.
Looking into the longer term, QMS has eyes on the Canadian and Russian markets. In the latter, there may be many poor people, but there is a small percentage of very, very rich and they are the targeted market. Canada, meanwhile, has a stable economy and in 2011 not many countries can make that claim.
The QMS stand is but a small island in a sea of other meat traders at the fair. There are some 650 exhibitors in the meat halls and they range from the big international companies such as ABP, Vestey and Vion, to the smaller ones such as the Falkland Island Lamb Export company and a firm from Mumbai that specialises in halal water buffalo meat.
The buzz on the Scottish stand was echoed all around the halls as traders discussed prices for strip loins, steaks, hams, gigots, tendons, ducks’ feet, pigs’ tails and every other animal part considered fit for human consumption.
And the selling buzz was picked up by UK farm minister Jim Paice, on his first ever visit to the fair. It provided this MP from a rural constituency in England an ideal platform to beat the Westminster government drum on reducing farm subsidies and getting more from the market.
And yet within 24 hours any focus politicians in the European agricultural world had on food production and sales swung towards Brussels, with the official publication of the commission’s proposals on the common agricultural policy.
There may be claims that this version of the CAP will be simpler but, frankly, I just do not believe it. Some parts will help such as the giving small-scale farmers a set sum of cash without a great deal of paperwork. But many other parts can do nothing other than complicate an already complex set of policies.
Remember, the process still has to go out to all member states and each will have their own take on it before returning it with their preferences.
Anyone who doubts my interpretation of the proposals would only have had to listen to the commissioner’s press spokesman fielding questions from all parts of the European Union. Everything from what happens to the olive oil acreage in Italy to the future rights of countries such as Turkey coming into the EU and many in between were answered
There are I believe only 114 miles between where the food fair was held in Cologne and Brussels. They are, however, a million miles apart in policy. Farming does not benefit from complex schemes where the winners are those who work the system, with all-too little thought of the food produced
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Sunday, October 16th, 2011
Published on Sunday 16 October 2011 00:03
THE organic food boom which promised to deliver healthier food and save the environment is over.
Half the land certified as suitable for organic production of food a decade ago in Scotland has now reverted to conventional farming methods, according to a new report on the once-burgeoning industry.
In addition, the main organisation representing Scottish organic producers has seen its numbers almost halve over the same period.
In 2000, there were more than 700 members of the Scottish Organic Producers Association (Sopa), but the numbers have now dropped to around 400 with the organisation expecting more members to leave this year.
A failure to prove the health benefits of organic produce and a perception that it was expensive at a time when households are cutting back is believed to be behind the reversal.
But it also suffered a bit of a backlash as it was seen as overly trendy and hip.
Organic producers also claim that the lack of government support for farmers to switch to and maintain organic production is also partially to blame.
Organic production in Scotland rose throughout the 1990s because of fears over the effects of mass production on farmland, aided by widespread use of potentially hazardous fertilisers and a series of food scares, such as the BSE crisis in cattle, and the spread of E coli food poisoning, blamed in part on conventional intensive farming methods.
However, according to a report by the Scottish Agricultural College, the area of certified organic land in Scotland is down from a peak of 424,618 hectares in 2002 to less than 200,000ha last year. The current organic “estate” in Scotland is believed to be near 180,000ha.
In contrast, the Scottish Government published data last week showing that the non-organic cereal and oilseed rape harvest for 2011 was expected to be the biggest in 20 years.
Separate figures revealed that one in ten organic producers had given up in the past year, a much higher total than in England (3.7 per cent) where organic produce still has a healthy market, and prices.
Sopa claimed that if the Scottish Government and consumers did not improve their support for the sector, then the amount of organic acreage might continue to decline.
Deborah Roberts, Sopa’s development manager, said: “I expect more organic farmers to leave.
“Poultry and lamb producers are especially finding it hard at the moment.
“I think we need a boost from the Scottish Government and from the consumer.
“But I do think we will be left with a broad base of determined people in Scotland who find organic farming suits them and their farms.
“But some are losing confidence. We need a boost.”
Roberts, who farms cattle and cereals in Perthshire, said that a lot of the loss of membership over the past decade had been caused by hill farmers switching back to conventional methods.
She appealed for a “broader and quicker” assessment process of organic farmers applying for subsidies to take into account their contribution to the wider environment, including species biodiversity and the whole food chain.
“We know that the downward pattern is continuing into 2011. People are struggling,” she said.
The Soil Association, which represents organic producers, attributed the fall in producers to the recession, “with many consumers reviewing their food baskets”.
But Scotland’s leading food scientist, Professor Hugh Pennington, said: ”The fall in organic production in Scotland does not surprise me one bit. There is no evidence that organic food is intrinsically better and it is generally pricer.
“People have become more informed over the supposed health benefits of organic food and have voted at the tills. It is hard to show any health benefits.”
He added: “I think there will be always be an organic sector in Scotland, but many farmers and consumers have deserted it and it will never return to its former peak size.”
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Thursday, October 13th, 2011
Fruit and vegetable-rich diet ‘may modify genetic heart disease risk’
People who carry a certain gene associated with an increased risk of heart disease may benefit from increasing the amount of fruit and vegetables in their diet, new research suggests.
Canadian scientists studied the effects of increased fruit and vegetable consumption in people with genetic changes in the chromosome 9p21 region.
They found that a diet rich in raw fruits and vegetables appeared to decrease the genetic risk for cardiovascular disease.
Publishing their findings in the journal PLoS Medicine, the study authors suggested that a healthy diet may therefore be capable of mediating the effects of genetic risk factors.
Judy O’Sullivan, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, commented on the findings.
She said: ‘This piece of research is certainly an interesting and useful insight into how our risk of developing heart disease is influenced by a number of factors.
‘It should serve as a reminder that while our lifestyle and genes can increase our risk, the way they interact with each other is also very important.’
Ms O’Sullivan noted that while scientists do not fully understand the relationship between lifestyle and genetic risk factors, eating plenty of fruit and vegetables is ‘great news’ for heart health.
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Wednesday, October 12th, 2011
Aisle be damned! We spend 64 days of our lives walking round supermarkets (that’s a total of 22,000 miles)
Doing the shopping can often feel like a real trek, and no wonder.
The average Briton covers 22,784 miles travelling to and from the supermarket and traipsing around the aisles over the course of their lifetime, a study claims.
That is almost the equivalent of a trip around the globe.
The study claims that we spend an average of 1,539 hours – 64 days – of our life walking around supermarkets.
It also revealed that one in 20 Britons spends up to 30 minutes looking for deals on price comparison websites before heading to their chosen supermarket.
Nearly half of us – 47 per cent – visit at least two supermarkets each week in our quest to find the best deals.
Independent financial expert Alvin Hall points out that this may not necessarily be cost-effective, saying: ‘Driving or taking public transport from one supermarket to another to look for the best deal increases the cost of the goods, even if you get them at the lowest price.’
Despite putting so much effort into shopping, 55 per cent of those surveyed said the chore left them frustrated.
The poll by Sainsbury’s coincides with the launch of Brand Match, the supermarket’s promise to match rivals Tesco and Asda on more than 12,000 branded grocery lines.
It found that the top range on which we look for savings is household goods such as toilet rolls, with 76 per cent of those surveyed saying this was a priority.
Meat and poultry was second (66 per cent), followed by fresh fruit and veg (64 per cent).
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