Lettuces for Less

Not sure if this should go in the Austerity Cook blog or here, but given it is about growing food rather than cooking, and concerns saving money, here it shall be.

We have a friend to thank for this tip. Thanks Louise.

Supermarkets sell cartons of 'living salad' for (in the case of Sainsbury's at least) £1. Buy one, harden the plants off with a few days outside and nights inside, then separate and plant them. We got 19 plants from one such container, all of which have proven healthy, and about half of which have been eaten already - they give you a quick start while your own seed-grown stuff is still on the way.

Another money saver that some gardeners won't be aware of: when you harvest a lettuce like this, leave a few of the outer leaves on the root, water it, and with luck you'll get a second plant in a few weeks.

Lettuce forms the basis of so many great things other than salads, so it's one of the must-haves in the garden. Cook peas fresh or frozen with a few leaves of green lettuce, some butter, and scraps of bacon fried till crisp and you have an approximation of petit pois a la francaise, a vegetable course in itself. They braise well in the oven too, again with a bit of bacon plus some stock to moisten things.

When you pay £1 a piece for decent lettuces in store such things can seem a bit extravagant; but when you have effectively paid about 5p for the growing salad jobbies they're a bargain. And if they are grown from seed we're talking a lot less than 1p each. Get growing.

Waste Not

I just spent a happy half hour digging three barrowfuls of compost out of our kitchen-waste compost bin. The main driver for this was there being so little room at the top that something had to come out of the bottom.

Some of the goodness has doubtless leached out in the several months the stuff had to rot down, but it looks good and smells ok - I love the way gardeners talk about how good compost smells 'sweet'. It was dumped on one of the raised beds in which we grow (in the main) salad stuff, heavier duty crops being reserved for the allotment.

There is something immensely pleasing about how the bits of veg peelings, fruit skins, and the odd dose of chicken poo (great accelerator) can turn into such useful and free material for future crops. It was full of worms too, some of them now being turned into eggs in the innards of our hens who were out when I was doing this.

A fiver for that Jamie?

Sainsbury's ads with Jamie Oliver cooking dull food for a fiver starting to get up my nose. Twee, simplistic, condescending. Which is a pity as his heart is in the right place.

Just had a meal for about £3.50 I'd guess. 89p for 250g of mushroom, onion from allotment, £1 for 6 eggs from a guy who rescues battery hens, free salad from plot too - red mustard, rocket, lettuce, and pea tips from the greenhouse. Bacon bits for 60p from Lidl on the salad, a pepper say 45p, dressing home-made, bread with rosemary home-made, and the second strawberry granita of the year from allotment strawberries and a 20p lemon.

What it comes down to is taking time to cook. Even if you know nothing but take some time, make the effort, you can cook. I listened to a local radio show recently where they were interrogating mothers (sexist gits) about cooking, and one had me screaming, saying she never made fresh, she was too busy. Does the concept of busy legitimately include bingo, the pub, and Coronation Street?

I love nosing at other people's shopping trolleys, and you get some doozies, like one woman with about twenty chicken curry boxes. Maybe it was a party, maybe an event. But for a quarter of the price fresh she could have done a better meal. She was doubtless too busy, too busy also to care about the crap she was going to present to her guests, throwing money at it not time. 'Let's have a bloody awful meal together' is not an attractive invitation.

How can you be too busy to live well? It reminds me of an obituary I read years ago for a guy who died from overwork, aged 40 killed by exhaustion. The paper, though, sang his praises, saying he built up a huge fortune in a short time.So not only did he die with the most toys, but he beat everyone else to it. Brilliant.

Real luxury comes out of time not money. People appreciate it if you take time. Food tastes better, the digestion is better, and your health is better. But you'll miss bingo.