Hello and welcome to The Compost Bin. I'm Compostwoman and I live with my family in rural Herefordshire. We have nearly four acres of garden and woodland, all managed organically and to Permaculture principles, which we share with Chickens, Cats and assorted wildlife. We also grow a lot of our own food, run courses in all sorts of things and make a lot of compost!

I am a Master Composter and have spent more than a decade as a volunteer Community Compost adviser with Garden Organic and my local Council.
I'm a self employed Environmental Educator so I run workshops and events where I talk about compost, veg growing, chicken keeping, cooking, preserving and sustainable living. I also run crafts workshops and Forest School/outdoor play sessions in our wood.

We try to live a more self sufficient lifestyle here, as best we can, while still having a comfortable life and lots of fun.


To learn more about us click on the About Compostwoman tab and remember to click on the photos to make them full size!


Showing posts with label Frugal food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Frugal food. Show all posts

Thursday, 6 February 2014

Flour free pancakes - yummy!



I just made some banana pancakes - over ripe bananas, eggs, and a tiny bit of baking powder - yummy! No flour at all. I will be adding them to my Love Food Hate Waste demo recipe list!

Compostgirl and Compostman liked them as well
 


How to make them

 













Mash up peeled ripe bananas until very smooth




 



 








whisk eggs in another bowl (two eggs to every large banana) Mix together the banana and eggs (optionally add a pinch of baking powder) and then 




drop a tbs or two ( no more for each pancake)  into a medium fry pan with a small amount of oil already heated.  Dry frying WILL NOT WORK with this even in a non stick pan. 


Gently cook until pancake is set and you can flip the pancake over without it falling to bits (!)



When other side is golden brown serve 
 

and eat - Honey, Golden Syrup etc are lovely additions but these are seriously yum as they are.


 





This recipe needs to have starchy veg/fruit to substitute for the flour so I am going to try with pumpkin, tomorrow :)

I know mashed potato works and from reading on line, Plantain also works as a substitute for Banana.
 
 A good result I think:)




Recipe here






Friday, 15 February 2013

Remember those organic bananas...

They dried down from 22 fresh bananas to 370 g of dried bananas. The cost of the 22 fruit was £2.20 ( reduced in the Co- op)

Drying took 30 hours and used 5 kW/hrs of electricity - a total of £0.75 from our suppliers Good Energy if paid for but at least half the time our pv's were providing the electricity for the dehydrator, for free - so let us say £0.40 cost for the electricity purchased ( from Good Energy so carbon neutral) and I am being generous with this estimate!

So 370g of dried organic bananas cost me £2.80 in total to buy and dehydrate and an hour ish to prepare, and monitor ( turning regularly etc)

Looking online a bag of dried organic bananas weighing 125g costs £.1.35 (the very cheapest I could find).

So my efforts if I had bought it would have cost me £4.00, or possibly more. And actually cost me £2.60. Or possibly less.

I could have done another two trays in the dehydrator which would have bought the overall cost down even more. But I foolishly did not buy all the bananas on offer ( was worried about looking greedy - rolls eyes - will not do that again!)  If I had done so it would have reduced the overall cost even more.

Ok I have not costed my time but how long does it take to slice up some bananas, while drinking tea, eating breakfast and listening to the "Today" programme?  ( and eating a few slices :-) ) It took me about 20 mins in total to do all of this - and very enjoyable it was too.

I think I win, with this one! And at least I know EXACTLY what went into my food - which in the current times is actually very important, I think.

BUT I only managed to do this without a cost penalty, because the bananas were really discounted?

How on earth do the suppliers of dried banana chips manage - who gets less, so as to provide the discount?
I am guessing the grower?

Makes me think hard about the economics of things when I actually make them myself.

Monday, 5 November 2012

Frugal soup


One of the things I did manage to make this week was a big batch of veg and lentil soup.

Peppers from the polytunnel featured in this soup, as I used up the mis shapen or slightly damaged ones from the big basket I harvested..




I used a couple of onions and some tomatos - the last from the polytunnel -  a few very limp bits of celery , a courgette which I had left on the plant and it got nibbled,  I also used up some slightly stringy beans, which I stringed using my magic bean stringer thinamajig, cut up very finely and simmered first until tender - so I could check there were no stringy bits in them BEFORE I added them to the soup - I HATE bean strings!

They were not stringy :-)    so in they went to the pan, cooking water and all.




I then added a couple of handfuls of red lentils, and a tub of stock made from the last chicken we had roasted for dinner. All this was boiled up and then left to simmer and turn to delishousness



We ate 3 huge bowlfuls between the three of us, with home made bread, we had 3 more portions for lunch the next day AND I froze 12 portions.



I calculated that the ingredients cost me less than two pounds, maximum - and that is at organic veg prices! but I did allow for them being in the "reduced" section of a shop - rather than at full price - because that is where they would have been.

18 BIG portions of organic lentil and vegetable soup for less than two pounds

I love home made soup :-) I could happily eat it every day I think
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