Tightwad tip- eat more cabbage

We're big on eating mainly seasonal produce. It just makes sense: it's healthier, cheaper and has less of an environmental impact. However, when I tell people about this, the main response is that they don't really have an issue with eating summer produce, but don't really like eating cabbage all the time. Now we don't eat cabbage all the time during the winter (other local in season produce includes turnips, fennel, parsnips, chard, carrots, etc), but it is something we do eat a lot. Cabbage is very nutritious- it belongs to the cruciferous vegetables, and is often referred to as a superfood. The word 'superfoods' might turn some people off, because of its price and the fad around them, but the great thing is- this particular superfood is super affordable! I know that fresh produce is expensive and makes up the bulk of the grocery costs of many people these days, so it's actually nice to know there are options that are a bit more affordable and just as healthy. 

When it comes to taste, it really is a matter of preference obviously.  We do like cabbage, but to each their own. I can't say that cabbage is my absolute favourite vegetable of all though, but it does rank quite high on my list. I like that it's just so so versatile so there's probably always a way in which people that don't prefer cabbage still like it. You can: ferment, fry, steam, stuff, bake, boil (and probably a lot of other things...) this lovely vegetable. And it's even nice for making winter salads. I find it hard to think of a dish to which you can't add some sort of cabbage. It can bulk up meals very nicely. That's how I use it a lot: as a "filler" for meals that lack enough vegetables. 

Even though most in season produce here is quite affordable, the thing is that most vegetables are sold by the weight (per kg). Some other vegetables, such as carrots and turnips are being sold in bunches. At times, you can get big bunches, and there are times the bunches are as tiny as three not very big turnips, which obviously make them more expensive. The thing with cabbage is that they usually aren't sold by the weight, but per piece, which typically make them even more affordable than other in season produce. Also, unlike most vegetables, cabbage is kind of 'what you see is what you get': there's no need to peel anything, nor does it shrink. And cutting cabbage is done in a few minutes, unlike some other vegetables, which comes in handy for those days when you're short on time. 

So, all in all, I believe that eating cabbage is a really is a good strategy when wanting or needing to cut back on groceries. 

Nose to tail

On monday, DH and I decided to do some shopping at the souk, the north African equivalent of a wet market. I love going there every so often. Everything is divided by category- vegetables, fish, etc. There's also a large meat section. We wanted to see what the butchers sold that day- as they don't always sell the same meats everyday. We were all craving an organ meat dish, which I'll go to in a minute. I also wanted to see if they had some fat to render. 

Coming from Europe, it's quite interesting how it all works here when it comes to meat. First off, meat is very expensive here, hence, it's not something that's eaten a lot. Most people here won't eat meat on a daily basis, especially red meat. And we are no exception to that. Since meat is so expensive, people are in general not very picky, so they won't just eat only certain cuts of meat. They don't shy away from eating the "weird" parts - or which is considered weird in western societies, anyhow. Everything of the animal is appreciated equally, it seems. Since I was raised as a vegetarian, I think this is why it's not that big of a deal to me. I wasn't used to eating only chicken breasts and mince, like many Europeans, rather all meat was foreign to me anyway. So when I did start to eat meat, because of that, I didn't differentiate between a chicken breast and sheep lungs. It's not to say that people here eat the "weird" parts just because it's more economical. In fact, some parts are truly considered a delicacy. 

I wanted to make douara (a stew with offal meat), something which we realized we didn't have in a long time and is one of our favourite dishes. There is absolutely no reason to look down upon organ meat; organ meats are super nutritious, and delicious. If the picky eaters would only get over their initial hesitation! The fun thing is, that even if it's not insanely cheap, the "regular" meat is 5 times as expensive, or 3 times as expensive when it comes to very old meat that requires a long cooking time. It's interesting that organ meat is becoming more and more popular in certain circles, especially those that focus on eating a nourishing tradition kind of diet, also known as ancestral diets. 

Honouring the whole animal and being appreciative for the nutrients that all of the animal has to offer, is also known as 'nose to tail eating'. Where we live, one can take that quite literally! When we walked by some of the butchers (there are a lot to choose from) there were several butchers selling heads: goat, sheep and cow's heads. I was amazed by how massive that cows head was though! I must probably be integrated quite well, because I don't have a problem seeing this. I do eat meat, so I have no problem to see that it actually came from an real animal. I would have a problem eating meat from a factory, but I know these animals were raised at the countryside, which is probably also why they're expensive. 

Hopefully I'll be posting my douara recipe soon. 

Package free grocery shopping: pros and cons

As I mentioned before, our groceries are partially purchased at a refill store. Meaning, they're package free. I'll try to elaborate a bit more on this way of shopping in this post. Depending on which store we'll shop at, they have shelf stable goods in huge baskets or more tidy containers. From what I've noticed, the tidier the containers and the shops, the more expensive they are. Usually it's not self service, but an employee will measure/weigh the goods. You could bring your own container,  but usually they put it in a baggie, similar to a sandwich baggie. It's then labelled with the product/price on it. 

What kind of foods do we buy there? Legumes, some grains (such as whole wheat flour, sorghum flour, and oats), spices, nuts and seeds, cocoa powder, cornstarch, as well as some "candy". Traditional healthy treats such as frankincense (this is like natural chewing gum), corn for making popcorn, and carob. This obviously doesn't cover all our needs from the store, and there's certainly items that we don't buy there. If it were me, I'd buy everything there, but unfortunately not everything is available at the refill store. I really hope these stores will expand their assortment one day and that about everything would be available there. 

Its obvious that this kind of shopping does reduce the amount of plastic going into the landfill, which is the foremost reason why we shop like this. Seeing nature sites getting more and more cluttered with rubbish is so heartbreaking. It's frustrating when you realise that the world's plastic pollution is not inevitable, if people would just put a little more effort in how they shop. Other than environmental reasons, which are obvious, what I especially like about these kind of shops is the simplicity! You've probably seen pictures (if not in real life) of colourful markets with heaps of different coloured spices. Well, apart from the fact that it's not just spices there, it still looks quite similar. The more modern refill stores will sell their goods in a bit more neat containers, which has a bit more of the aesthetic look. It's both very simplistic in their own way. I also really appreciate that this way we're cutting back on our plastic use. Living in a country where there's a garbage problem in some areas, it's clear how much plastic is being wasted. I cringe at every disposable plastic item that I can easily avoid using. Yes, they do use sandwich baggies in those shops, but I make sure to simply reuse those. So that's not too big of an issue (to me), and otherwise I can still bring my own containers. Another benefit of these shops is that they're usually just so much cheaper! Just to compare; oats are about double the price here if you'd buy them in the supermarket. And at the refill store, they already are quite expensive. You'll get the exact same product, which means you're paying all that money just for a cardboard box. Not even a firm reusable box with a lid or something. That's just throwing money into the trash, in my opinion. What I also like is that with package free shopping, you're not dependent on the package sizes that you find in the supermarket. When you have a small household or only want to buy a certain (small) amount for whatever reason, this is possible- you can buy just however much you want (this is the case where we buy our goods anyhow). This is a good way to avoid wasting foods. 

Of course, as with everything, there are cons - or others may consider them to be cons, anyhow. I only see benefits in shopping this way but I'd thought of including them anyway. Since it's package free, there's obviously no "use by" date. To me, that's no issue at all - I think that putting dates on shelf stable foods is just a way to encourage wasting foods. If it looks and smells good, I'll just eat it.                                                            With foods not being "properly" packed, you do need suitable containers. Yes, this may cost a bit initially, but it doesn't necessarily mean very trendy and expensive ones with the "zero waste aesthetics", you can just buy the cheapest plastic containers you can find, or simply reuse food containers. With smaller kitchens, this does take up a bit more space at times, but I'm willing to sacrifice that space (I have no idea what else to store in my cupboards anyway). We have a lot of smaller buckets, I think they're 5L buckets, not completely sure - there fits about 3.5 kg of flour in a bucket. I also have smaller containers for the foods that we don't buy in bigger quantities, such as sorghum flour. Yes, this does take up space but I don't think it takes up much more space than stocking the average pantry with packaged items. The reason why we need a lot of space is due to the fact that we're buying in bulk, not so because of the lack of packaging. As long as you're using suitable containers, it's not that much of a space they're occupying. 

All in all I like the way we shop- the way people have been doing this before supermarkets were there. You may find it too costly, which unfortunately is the case in some countries, unfortunately, and I can totally understand that especially in these times, people look at the prices solely. Some may find it too time consuming, which I can understand too. I'm privileged with a refill store in our street, even though we usually go to another one in a different neighbourhood, but it's still very accessible.

Still, despite people's general reluctance of returning to the old ways of shopping, I am very enthusiastic about it. It just may take some planning and making shopping lists and investing in containers. 

How and why we (don't) meal plan

Confession: I must be the most terrible housewife/mum out there, or even the most terrible cook, because I don't meal plan. Yep, there I said it. Well, saying I don't meal plan at all isn't correct technically, but meal planning in the traditional sense doesn't happen at our house. We don't sit down at the table with a piece of paper and pencil (or anything screen, but I'm more into old fashioned ways) and write down what we're going to be eating that week, and then buy every item that's on the list. Here's some whys as to why we don't: 

First of all, we're living with/very close to my in laws. While we don't live in the exact same house, we basically live in my MIL's backyard, which is great as it enables us to take care of her. The thing is, as with most Mediterranean/African/Arabic countries, people are generally so spontaneous and planning in general usually doesn't really work. Even when it comes to appointments, it's better to expect that people won't probably be on time. If they are on time, that's a plus, but should not really be an expectation. Anyway, since my MIL doesn't/can't cook anymore, we usually bring her supper, but the thing is that relatives and neighbours might just pop in unexpectedly and bring food with them for her. Every single time I did try to plan somewhat in advance, that's what happened. Of course, I don't blame them at all, they're sincerely doing something good, but if your plan messes up it's sometimes a bit frustrating. Of course, at times I didn't plan anything at all, no one showed up to unexpectedly bring her food 😉

Secondly, since our way of shopping is a bit different (which I did a post about), we can't plan before we do our shopping. We just buy what's being sold and is most affordable at the market. For example, some weeks parsley is very cheap, whereas the next week it's five times as expensive, so it wouldn't make sense to make a lot of parsley based dishes then. So generally we buy what's available and it's always a bit different. This week, we had a LOT of aubergine, which is defenitely going to be on our plates quite a few times. And so instead of buying what's on the menu, I just make do with whatever's available at the market. We just estimate what we'll be using that particular week. And when there's still veg leftover, that's what will be used first the next week. Etc. I love that it makes me more creative that way. If I'd have to sit down an write a week worth of meals in advance, it's probably going to be a boring menu. When I'm forced to cook with whatever we have in the house and to come up with ideas instantly, my creativity thrives. 

I deal with chronic pain issues, and I never know when I have a good day or a bad day. Usually I have a few bad days in a row followed by a few good days, but it's not quite predictable. When I don't feel well, I do still cook, albeit simpler meals that don't involve a lot of standing. This is also one of the reasons why I batch cook. 

This might be a bit weird, but we never know what we'll crave when. If I, say, am supposed to make a pasta dish on a particular day when we crave rice, I don't see the need to still go for the pasta just because it was written on a list and therefore can't be changed. Others might call it stubborn, but for me it's just common sense. 

It's interesting how meal planning is always mentioned as *the* way to avoid food waste. That you're very wasteful when you don't meal plan as you're essentially heading without any direction and you'll just buy perishable foods recklessly and that way, waste tons of foods. But here I am, practically not wasting any food AND not meal planning. Yes, that is possible. Saying that meal planning avoids wasted food is a bold statement, in my opinion. In fact, I believe it can even be the other way around: if you're sticking to a particular meal planned for that day, you might neglect other produce that's about to go bad. Avoiding food waste is actually a very reason why I cannot really meal plan; I might have to rescue certain items from the fridge on some days or finish leftovers (sometimes there's enough leftovers for all of us). Yes, even if we crave something else- avoiding waste comes first at our house. 

I can't recall my grandmother or even other women from their generation ever had a menu plan. And especially my oldest grandmother, who was born in 1910, would never ever throw away any foods. So it's quite a new phenomenon actually. Which isn't bad in and of itself, although I do value a lot of the old fashioned skills and way of living people had. 

We do kind of vary by rotating dishes that we like. The meals are usually centred around the starch. Not around the meat, as we eat more vegetarian meals than meat based meals. So for example, one day it's pasta, the other day it's bread or couscous. Today, we had a vegetable stew with freshly homemade bread. Since I batch cook, we usually have the same meals every other day. Probably it's a bit less varied than most people would do, but this is what we like and it saves time, cooking fuel and energy. I might do a different side dish with the meals so that it makes it still a bit varied. For example, yesterday we had pasta, with a salad on the side. The next time we'll probably have the pasta with a different side, such as stir fried vegetables. The days that I'm not cooking (or just making a quick side) I can focus on other household tasks a bit more, such as keeping up with folding the laundry, cleaning the bathroom/kitchen/floors, etc. 

Use what you buy

There's this phrase "buy what you use, use what you buy". And I think that's one of my main "rules" when it comes to cooking and grocery shopping. Many people have a somewhat weird way to do groceries- they supplement their supermarket hauls by a few ingredients that they found in the cupboard, when it should be the other way around, in my opinion. This makes people just so dependent on grocery stores and takes away all the creativity. Creativity is one of the most undervalued yet important skills any home cook should have, and frugal cooks in particular. Frugal cooking is inherently important, as we're all faced with fluctuating prices, off season produce, or just very expensive items in general. Or even food shortages (which we're having to deal with for the past few years). Even though we have a corner shop right in front of our house, I still try not to go there for every single item. I must admit that I have quite a large stockpile of various foods, but if I want to use something that isn't at the house, I try to find a solution before I run across the street. 

Using what you buy usually means coming up with certain alternatives, or simply making do without. It might seem a bit intimidating at first, but using replacement is easier than one thinks. Since I've been doing this for so long, it doesn't really feel like I'm using "an alternative" anymore (I did a post on cheaper ingredient/alternatives, in which I offer a few suggestions, but ofcourse it's not limited to that list if you use your creativity.) Doing without is also something I'm big on - some ingredients I just refuse to buy as they're outrageously expensive. I refuse to buy mushrooms, for example: they cost about 4 euros a kg, which is very expensive here, and they're only sold in small packets of 250 grams. Add to that that I've also heard that they aren't tasty at all when you're used to western European mushrooms. So I just do without. It's quite funny how you're getting used to not using certain ingredients anymore- in the past, I used them a lot, whereas now I can't really think of a recipe in which mushrooms are irreplaceable (except for mushroom soup, maybe?). A year ago or so a relative brought some tinned mushrooms, and to be honest, apart from one tin, they're still sitting in the cupboard... Now honestly, tinned mushrooms are less tasty than fresh ones, but it's more because of the fact that we're just used to doing without. Another example is minced beef: that's just so expensive here and while we sometimes do buy red meat (lamb or goat), mince I just found too expensive and not quite worth it. If I'm making meatballs or mixing in some mince in the pasta, it's not noticeable at all if you replace it by a cheaper kind of meat. This eid ul fitr, however, my kids requested me to make lasagna, specifically with minced beef. So it was the first time in 5 years (!) that we bought half a kg of mince. Was it good? Absolutely! But I still don't find it worth it to buy that often, for that price. Very recently, I've heard that apparently they want to raise the price of lamb and beef to 20 euro per kg, which is just very ridiculously high. It probably all comes down to what's important for you. For us, meat isn't on top of our list, but I can see that for other people it is. If we'd eat meat every day, we'd probably be in debt, and I'd rather spend my money on more important things. So far the "buy what you use" part. 

As for "use what you buy", this can be a bit tricky, and this is the very reason that I'm not very fond of recipe books by most famous chefs. People want to try out specific recipes (not even knowing whether they're going to like them or not), that require specific ingredients that they otherwise would never use. Of course, from that bought ingredient only a small amount is being used. What I don't understand is how those famous chefs, with all their culinary knowledge, don't even consider mentioning decent replacements of those recipes. That would surely avoid so much wasted money and wasted food. This is something I refuse to do. I won't buy specific ingredients that otherwise wouldn't be used. Instead, I'll look for replacements, or reconsider making that specific dish altogether. This is how I make sure to "use what I buy". I can't recall how often others gave me half used packages of spices, grains etc "because that's what the recipe called for and I don't know what else to use them for". Yes, I'm well known as someone who can use up little bits of this and that because she hates wasting foods. 😉I even got a big bag of soy flour from a friend once, which I made lovely pakoras with, among other things. I think being able to think in solutions when it comes to ingredients is not something everyone can do easily, so I won't judge people who can't do this, but I guess that's also why my blog is here. It's not impossible to learn these skills. 

I know people will say, 'it's just one bag of thrown away food', or just a few cents/euros being wasted... While I think it's very important to avoid waste altogether, I think it's not always about the waste in and of itself. It's also about knowing what you do when a calamity occurs: when you don't have as much resources (which can happen all of a sudden), what to do when prices skyrocket/when there are shortages. There can be all sorts of crises in which you need your creativity. As I mentioned, we do have to deal with shortages, which honestly is much more difficult than one would expect. In such a situation, I feel so privileged to be able to come up with solutions to problems which shouldn't be problems if the food system wouldn't be so corrupt. 

My way of grocery shopping

Isn't it a bit ironic that supermarkets have been around only for the past hundred years -in most countries even less than that-, yet, if you tell people that you rarely go to a supermarket, they wonder how on earth you are able to get your groceries? I can understand that, but it's also a bit concerning to me, honestly, that the old ways are slowly fading away. My other problem is that the food system we're relying on is so broken and not trustworthy at all. All it takes for empty supermarket shelves is a a transportation strike, storm or disaster of some sort. Or even personal financial crises, as a lot of people live paycheck to paycheck, or have little savings that leave no room for big emergency expenses. This is why I'll always be advocating to have at least a reasonable stockpile at home. Perhaps it's due to my anxious personality, but I'm amazed at some people's attitudes who consider the supermarket shelves as their pantry, people who go to stores everyday to buy their foods for just that particular day, etc. With all this in mind, we aim to be more self sufficient. We've certainly not arrived, but we're trying to do our best to be at least a bit less relying on the bigger food chain system. The less links in the chain, the better. This is also why I don't like supermarkets: if you can buy your potatoes from the farmer, why would you pay for someone transporting those potatoes to the supermarket? I can't say we buy all our goods directly from farmers, but at least we buy it from our local market where many vendors sell their fresh produce. It's fresher than you'd ever find at our supermarket here, not to mention way more affordable! Just for comparison: at the supermarket, courgettes were 3 times the price of what you'd pay at the market. 

So where do we get our groceries? Like I mentioned, our produce is bought at the market. We have a big weekly produce market and are fortunate that this happens to be near our house. But there's also a less big market at walking distance which is opened daily. If I don't bake bread myself, we get our bread from the bakery. There are two bakeries in our neighbourhood that sell only baguettes and round breads, so if we crave something different I have to bake it myself. As for meat and fish, we go to the butcher/fish sellers. Our grains, legumes, spices and things like that we buy at refill shops. These shops aren't comparable with the trendy "zero waste style shops" in Europe; it's more simple. There's just baskets with all their goods with a price tag attached on the baskets and you then tell the vendor what and how much you want. I really like the simplicity of these kind of shops. It's probably due to this simplicity that it's cheaper than buying at the supermarket. While we try to limit our use of processed/packaged foods, we still do buy some, which we usually do at the smaller corner shops. This includes certain cleaning supplies/detergents. There's so many of these kind of shops in every neighbourhood! In fact, we have one right in front of our house. 

Some people will argue that this way of doing your shopping might take a lot of time. Which can be true, but I think that's one of the nice things where we live; people tend to be not hasty or lacking in time. They just don't panic about time so much. We, too, try to apply simple and un-hurried living, which is such a relief when you were used to always have too hurry up, so I don't really care if something might take a bit longer. That being said, in our neighbourhood we have quite a few shops. In our street, for example, there are: 3 corner shops, one bakery, one butcher, one greengrocer, two small hardware stores, and one refill shop. So many of our groceries can be done just on the go, and when we need to go to another shop that's farther away from our house we usually go there when we're in the area anyway. I think another reason why I don't think this way of shopping isn't hard is because everyone is doing this here. It's just their normal. 

Do we never go to supermarkets? We do, but not very often. In fact, a few weeks ago was the first time this year I went to a supermarket- the visit previous before that was in August when we were on a short vacation. There's a few things we buy at supermarkets as we can't find them at the corner stores, so like many people here, we leave the supermarket with just a few items (I have NEVER seen someone with a full shopping cart!). And does my system of shopping "protect" our family from the flaws of the food system? Probably not really, but I think there's a lot of benefits for us in the way we shop: we're supporting small businesses, saving a lot of money, have interaction with the shopkeepers instead of being an "anonymous" shopper, we are environmentally friendlier when buying package free. And I think, perhaps best of all, are really getting the north African experience of doing our groceries, which I personally find so valuable. People here have so much feeling for their food and value it so much, whereas in my own background eating is something just done quickly out of necessity really. They put so much time, effort and love in eating and cooking which is something I absolutely admire.