Food hacks to save money - and the planet

We learned a lot about our relationship with food during the Covid-19 lockdowns.

Deprived of many products during the early stages of the crisis, we had to act and think like our resourceful predecessors whose diet was far healthier – and cheaper - than ours.

Baking our own bread wasn’t just about sourdough starters – it was a primal urge to go back to the basic ingredient that enabled humans to survive  for millennia. 

Flour is the cheapest, most nourishing and versatile ingredient there is. 

A couple of sacks would feed a family – and feed it with well, with warm, fresh, filling and delicious food – for months. 

But don’t just use it for fancy baking because you are bored in the lockdown. Keep baking in the way that sustains societies across the globe – by making flatbreads.

Making your own relish, bread and sauces can mean paying ten times less for substantially more food that is not crammed with unhealthy ingredients, like sugar and/or salt.

A tin of tomatoes , for example, costs 29c per 400g can, while a 310g jar of branded relish mostly made of tomatoes, is €3.19 - and will be one third sugar.

The principal here is basic foods are cheap and usually healthy. But when processed, they become costly and often unhealthy branded products in meagre containers or packaging we have to pay to dispose of.  

They are generally bad for the planet, your pocket and your health.

Go wild for garlic

Ever run out of mint, garlic, rosemary, spinach or bay leaves?

All those plants  – or alternatives – and many more are literally lying around waiting to be picked by those in the know. I found them all - on my suburban estate.

Later in the season there will also be berries aplenty. 

Welcome to foraging –  the new shopping.

When we ran out of garlic for weeks early in the lockdown, I was astonished that the wild - and tastier - version was actually growing wild literally outside the door.

 I also picked huge bundles of on a walk in Howth last week.

It’s a long green stem with a small white (edible) flower that can also spruce up a salad.

Free spinach - everywhere

We also ran out of  spinach and I came up with a handy, if somewhat controversial, alternative.

Don gloves, cut off nettle tops and pop them promptly into boiling water.  Do not leave them lying round the kitchen!

I was amazed to discover that the sting in nettles is an acid that is easily and immediately neutralized by boiling water. 

After that process, it is similar to spinach. 

The main problem is that eating the things that literally scarred our childhoods is hard to get our  heads around.  Think of it as sweet revenge – the biter bit, the stinger stung, or in this case eaten.

However,  I am meeting stiff resistance to the concept. It’s best not to make ‘a thing’ out of it and slip them quietly into curries, stews and casseroles for flavor and high, fresh nutritional value without telling anyone what they’re eating - even afterwards.  Or they will make a face like…well, like someone eating a bunch of nettles (uncooked).

Flatten the curve

The latest series of Narcos on Netflix features a recurring scene involving El Chapo, a real life drug lord, as a young man, helping his mammy in the kitchen making flatbread – Mexican style tortillas.

 He chats away with her as he makes one after another, taking literally seconds on each.

Flatbreads – wraps, pitta bread, naan bread – are the mainstay diet of  societies everywhere because they are soooo easy to make. 

I discovered this in the lockdown because we couldn’t get the processed version. And now I am glad because they are the biggest con job in the kitchen cupboard.

Mexicans, Asians and Middle Eastern people must think we are mad paying nearly €3 for two tired pieces of flatbread left in a packet for months.

They are just flour and water – add egg for nice naan bread. 

Mix these ingredients together with a little salt and roll out the dough. Use a wine bottle if you don’t have a rolling pin. 

You get fresh, tasty and piping hot bread in minutes for a few cents. 

Pak in the Pak Choi

Stir fry recipes usually feature exotic Asian food – e.g. pak choi, bamboo shoots and water chestnuts. 

Now, the next time you order a Chinese takeaway look at it carefully. There may be the odd waterchest or bamboo shoot but the bulk of it will be local ingredients like carrots, broccoli and white cabbage.

Chinese restaurants don’t pay high prices for fancy foodstuff from the other side of the planet. They use local produce.

The point of a stir fry is that it contains any kind of crunchy vegetable. And as I learned in the lockdown – they taste just as good.

DIY your seeds supply

During the lockdown gardening craze supplies of seeds ran out.

Well, our ancestors didn’t starve because the local garden centre ran out of seed packets!

If your onion, garlic, celery and potatoes start to grow little sprouts, don’t throw them in the bin. Stick them in the ground and you’ll have a plentiful, fresh new supply. (Check out tips on how to grow each veg online.) The easiest of all are potatoes. I found a bag of roosters at the back of the press with eight inch tubers sprouting everywhere. They grew like wildfire.

Relish this tip

We ran out of Ballymaloe relish during the height of the lockdown when much of the stuff we ordered wasn’t delivered.

So I looked at the ingredients and realized that half of it was tomato.

If I added the rest of the ingredients - vinegar, sugar and pepper, spices, onions – could I make a serviceable substitute?

Kind of. It wasn’t as nice as the original – I don’t have Rachel Allen’s secret formula or her magic touch. And it went off sooner than we’d like because I didn’t sterilise the jar (do make sure to do that carefully). 

But it far less sugary than Ballymaloe Relish (33% sugar like most relishes) and was a serviceable emergency alternative.