Food waste

Quite often on Fridays, I participate in the Food Waste Friday series hosted by the Frugal Girl, in which people blog and/or comment about what food they have wasted and had to throw out during that week.  Lots of people find it helps to keep them accountable.  I remember telling my brother about it and he actually got kind of angry about the idea that people needed to feel the need to shame themselves - it wasn't the reaction I was expecting because I know he tries never to waste food and hates food waste.  But at the same time I could see his point.  He has far less difficulty than I do in not succumbing to a lot of the 'normal' behaviour that is 'expected' of good little girls and boys and follows you in to adulthood.

For myself, I find it interesting to make a point of checking my fridge every single week, when before I would maybe only do it every month or so.  I'm more likely to use something up before it goes off because I am checking more frequently what's in there.

The thing that has really surprised me though is what some people consider to be gone off.  I noticed this when I visited a friend a while back as well.  I was completely shocked to watch her go to her fruitbowl and just start turfing stuff onto the counter to go into the bin.  Now, I don't generally eat supermarket fruit and veg but when visiting friends I don't turn my nose up at their choices for feeding themselves either so although it was really annoying to see the amount of packaging still attached to some of what she wanted to throw out, I didn't comment on it.  But I had to say something about the waste of fruit because even from where I was sitting across the table, none of it really looked bad. 

I stopped her getting rid of two bananas, which were just about to start getting brown spots.  Okay, I know bananas are a bit of a divisive topic and there are lots of people who won't eat them once they've gone past green.  But when I got her to show me the apples, they were absolutely fine.  They hadn't even begun to go even a little bit soft or wrinkly.  There were a few nectarines as well so although it felt very strange to be eating a nectarine in February, we both sat and ate one there and then and I had an apple as well.  Her reasons for wanting to throw the apples out?  'They've been there for at least two weeks I'm sure'.  How on earth are we at the point of just not knowing that apples can keep for months and months in the right conditions?  I've always known I was weird for not minding eating wrinkly apples but to not even look at them and just arbitratily decide to throw them out because they were bought a certain amount of time ago kind of blew my mind.  And we're not talking about a townie like me, this is someone who grew up on a farm.

Reading the blogs of other people talking about their food waste continues to astonish me with what people consider to be waste.  From those who won't keep or eat yoghurt or milk if it has been allowed to reach room temperature, to the green banana brigade, those terrified of eating chicken that has been out of the fridge for a short while (okay, terrified might be an exagerration and chicken, especially raw chicken, does need to be treated with care but overreaction seems to be very common) and those who think that if a potato has started to grow 'eyes' it has gone off (the fact that most potato peelers come especially equipped with a bit at the top designed especially to dig out the eyes should be a clue, folks).

It would be easy to just think that there are lots of stupid people out there but I know that's not the reason for most of this.  We're talking about mostly very intelligent people who just don't know.  I know when I was a young adult I was fairly slavish about best before dates and it's possible I still would be now - I just don't buy an awful lot of stuff that comes with a date on it.  And I know I can keep stuff fresh for ages by keeping it in tupperware but sometimes it just feels so wrong that something sitting in my fridge for a week still smells and looks okay that I might throw it out without needing to.

But learning how to tell if an egg is still fresh was one of the best things I ever learned.  Realising that chopping the bad bits off something solid is okay and that not everything that is mouldy will be mouldy all the way through was important too, as was finding out that this may not be a good idea for less solid foods, like jam, since the spores are likely to be all the way through and not just resting on top.  Knowing that if I did ingest a tiny bit of something that might be slightly gone off, it probably won't kill me is important (and I don't believe I'm the only person who has on occasion been so hungry they've taken a bite from a slice of bread before bothering to butter it and only when they do so look at it properly and realise it's growing something!).  I still have lots to learn and I'm very happy that I'm open to it.  Of course the biggest lesson to learn in dealing with food waste is to not buy so much.  I grew up in a very big family but I live alone now and I still struggle with figuring out how much to buy/not buy purely because I have all of these fixed ideas in my head from childhood of how much space the weekly shopping should take up.  Like so many other things, it's time and more to let go of the past - but very difficult.

Service costs refund

Arrived home from choir practice to find a letter waiting for me with the details of the annual reckoning for service costs in my apartment.  Every month I pay rent (called 'cold rent') plus service charges (cold rent plus service charges is called 'warm rent').  These service charges or Nebenkosten (literally 'side costs') don't always include heating but mine do.  You pay up every month and then once a year everything is tallied up, divided by either the number of people living in the building, the number of apartments or the square meters occupied, depending on how the costs are allocated, and then they figure out if you have overpaid or underpaid.  I didn't think I would have overpaid as much this year as I had my lodger living with me for three months at the beginning of last year and was fairly sure that would have had an impact, not least because he was very fond of using the heating.  But I'm actually going to get a refund of a bit more than last year.  So there should be just over 360 euro winging its way to my bank account next month.  Fantastic!

Spending for calendar week 14

For as long as I manage to keep up daily tracking, I'm just going to go ahead and post a summary each week. But without reasons or justifications or excuses. Sometimes I'll spend money I shouldn't on things I don't need and I'm not looking for comments on on silly that is, believe me, I already know.

I have several different categories set up on my spreadsheet - I've looked back through the last couple of years and I've changed it a bit but not much. Mostly I just haven't used this part (although around March I seem to come back to it each year - takes the new year vibe a bit longer to kick in for me apparently). I'll see how things go over the next while and consider whether to add or change any categories.

I have food divided into three separate categories: food necessities, food luxuries and canteen food. When my brother lived with me for a while years ago after losing his job I would bring him with me when I went shopping. But I was kind of strict with him most of the time (how is it that it's always much easier to do something to or for someone else than for yourself?) and, for example, wouldn't buy him coke (of the coca cola variety, not the powdery sort obviously!) - I insisted that I would feed him but any luxuries he had to buy himself. And I still think of it that way - any chocolate, fizzy drinks (apart from water, which is about the only fizzy drink I ever do buy), cakes or exotic things that are above and beyond the basics needed to get three meals a day into me are considered luxuries.

Canteen food is if I don't bring lunch to work and eat either in the canteen, at a restaurant or order something to be delivered (including if I work very late unexpectedly and need something to keep me going)

Transport is anything above and beyond my monthly ticket.

• Transport - 20.50
• Food necessities - 7.17
• Food luxuries - 10.21
• Canteen food - 24.07
• Toiletries - 1.65
• Gifts (incl. postage) - 3.00
• Clothes - 0.00
• House/garden - 3.80
• Medical - 10.00
• Other - 0.00

Total spend this week: 80.40
Total spend this month to date: 112.37

I also finally got confirmation that the 345 euro refund from the health insurance will be hitting my bank account next week so that's good.

Food Waste Friday - the too ashamed to post edition

I had to throw out the inedible cake experiment, bread I just didn't bother eating (this week I ended up working 15, 11, 11 and 12 hour days - all after just being sick, it was too much) as well as most of the lentil stew I made last Monday.  I ate some of it then, some for lunch on Tuesday but forgot to put it into the fridge, didn't even go into the kitchen on Wednesday and by Thursday evening it was already mouldy - yes, the hot and humid weather is here to stay it seems.  I do like winter when the kitchen is nearly as cold as the fridge and you don't need to be worried if you forget to put something away but it can lead to bad habits.  I'm also getting rid of the hazelnuts and walnuts I never did get around to using.  Or probably anyway - they've been there since September/October and I suspect they may be somewhat rancid by now, at least the walnuts.  Oh, and there's about two glasses worth of milk still in the fridge that also need to go but I'm considering using to make something that usually uses buttermilk - need to read up on that a bit more.  After last week's disaster I'm not really feeling up to experimenting but I'm fairly sure I read somewhere along the way that slightly sour milk can be a replacement for buttermilk and I know you can add vinegar to milk to get a good substitute for buttermilk for baking purposes and it would be nice to rescue it.

Food Waste Friday is hosted by the Frugal Girl

Peat

Excellent post from Otter Farm on peat: http://www.otterfarmblog.co.uk/2011/04/yawn.html

Raspberry buttermilk cake - maybe

Back to work tomorrow.  I do feel better although yesterday morning it seemed like a bad throat was going to come back in force.  Not too many problems today though so back to the office for me tomorrow.  Having said that, I have very little energy, if possible even less than I had last week.  I'm just not sure how much of that is down to my general unwillingness to go back.

So, despite not having gotten up and done lots of things today in preparation for going back (small things like ironing clothes to wear, cleaning the floors, changing bedclothes) I have stirred myself to make some lentil stew (just had a taste and it is very underwhelming - disappointed at that), made some whole wheat muffins (as per this recipe although I got 15 bun size and 24 mini ones out of this amount, don't know how big they should have been to only get 12) and have just but a raspberry buttermilk cake in the oven.  Except I changed it quite a bit from the Smitten Kitchen recipe I was supposed to be following so I have no idea how or if it's going to turn out at all.

First of all, it is April so fresh raspberries aren't exactly something you are likely to have on hand.  But I do have all those pureed and semi-pureed strawberries in the freezer so I thought I could use some of them.  Knowing that there's quite a bit of liquid in the defrosted berries I rounded up the flour a little bit (the conversions from cups to grams are always difficult to follow anyway as I don't have a digital scales and non-digital scales show increments of 25 - which makes measuring 130g of flour difficult) and I added a couple of teaspoons of cocoa powder, thinking that might help to also satisfy my chocolate cravings during the week.  And as usual I just added a whole sachet of baking powder - I've heard lots of Americans complaining that the baking powder here just never works the way it does at home and so far, using an entire sachet (about 10g) works for me, even if the amount called for is less.

So we're all set, the dry ingredients are measured and mixed and waiting.  So I turn to the butter.  Only to realise that I used almost all of it up making the muffins and what I have left is barely enough to register on the scales.  I remember reading that lots of people substitute apple sauce for the fat in recipes these days and although a quick google tells me that's usually for recipes involving oil and that it's the beating of the butter and sugar which will make my cake light and fluffy, I have no more butter so what else am I going to do?  I 've opened a jar of my apple pureé from last autumn anyway to use in the muffin recipe and the rest of it needs to be used up.  I spoon some of that into the weighing scales with the butter to reach a bit more than the required amount, which from my quick google would seem to be approximately right.  Maybe.  This cake is straying ever further from the original recipe.

So I decide to beat the butter (and apple) with the sugar, which I'm supposed to do until it's pale and fluffy.  Hmmm, between the apple and the fact that I rarely have white sugar to hand and am using unrefined raw cane sugar, I don't think pale was every going to happen.  Finish off the batter and just before pouring into the cake pan pour what juice has come off the strawberries already into it and mix that in too.  It certainly smells nice at this stage.  Scatter the mostly defrosted strawberries over the cake and realise just as I finish that I never actually measured them.  Oh well, it wasn't much more than a cup I'm sure.

Put cake into oven and decide to quickly write this post as it's baking.  Halfway through remember that I forgot to sprinkle the sugar over the top of the whole thing at the end.  Dash into the kitchen and nearly burn my finger taking the still not quite baked cake out and throwing a bit of sugar over the top.  Where it will undoubtedly burn.  It was very liquidy feeling still (I have a silicon pan), despite having already been baking for the 20 minutes it seems to have taken most people.  I'll give it another five before checking properly.  My hope is that no matter what it looks like, it'll at least taste sweet.  No-one else but me will be eating it but it's supposed to be stopping me from buying any chocolate I can't afford this week.  Here's hoping it's one of those fiascos that turns out well.

Updated to add: EPIC FAIL!  Not even edible.  Very disappointing.

Another month, another payment

Well, made it through March.  Having been sick at home the last week has probably actually helped since there's been no temptation to impulse shop for something I didn't really need.  Sleeping most of the day has a way of really cutting down on your outgoings. 

April will be tight as well but May should hopefully be a little easier and then by June I will be finishing paying for the dental work and coming to the end of my loan.  So the end is in sight but I am very apprehensive about any unexpected expenses cropping up between now and then.  If my old dentist, for example, decides to play silly buggers and doesn't want to replace the crown that has broken, I don't know what I'll do.  But time enough to deal with that if it happens, I suppose.

As of today, here's where I stand:

• Loan: 1,475.27
• Credit card: 3,880
• Overdraft: 2,440
• Outstanding dental payments:  366.15

After paying all the other bills I have to pay this month, I have just over 100 euro for the rest of the month.  I have already put aside 20 euro to pay for dinner out with book club at the end of the month and I do have plenty of food at home already so should be more or less able to eat from the cupboard and freezer.  I'm going to give myself 10 euro to pick up a few things I'm running low on or have run out of completely this week (I did already pick up one or two things on the way home from the doctor yesterday - I got some frozen stuff and some beef to add to the rest of the leftover chickpea curry - 20 euro doesn't last long with that kind of shopping).  It won't cover all of it but whatever I don't get can wait.  This is the list I've been writing over the couple of weeks for things I kept forgetting to get or as they have run out/low:

1. Tea tree oil (I use this for cleaning - have bought it once since moving here so although it can be pricey a bottle every couple of years isn't too extravagant)
2. Sunflower oil (can buy local sunflower oil from the market)
3. White wine vinegar (not very urgent, just want to have some on hand for the summer so I can make tomato ketchup)
4. Cider vinegar (use lots of this, both in making things like chutney and for rinsing my hair - my stock finally ran out)
5. Washing soda (use this with soapnuts for washing clothes as the water here is extremely hard - am down to the last one, time to stock up again)
6. Popcorn (have been craving this recently and discovered what I had on hand was very old and definitely gone funny - but for a cheap, relatively healthy snack it can't be beaten)
7. Eggs
8. Spices (garam masala, amchoor, cumin seeds)

I'll probably just get the eggs, popcorn and cider vinegar this week and plan to get some of the rest of it towards the end of the month.  My aim will be to have a 'no money to spend this week' attitude for the next two weeks so that the last two weeks of the month will be a bit easier.  We'll see how that goes.