The quid-a-day nosh challenge: Anyone fancy this fungus I found? The sun has risen on day three of the El Reg Quid-a-Day Nosh Posse's Live Below the Line challenge, and the team's in generally good shape. I say generally, because we've haven't heard from Toby Sibley since Monday, when he expressed concern that he simply didn't have enough calories stockpiled to make it through the week. We …
Lester,
Given your diet this week, it wouldn't be bacon in particular I was craving. It would have to be potatoes and fresh veg. There are plenty of things I can go without for quite a while before I start pining for them, even bacon or beer. But eggs, cheese, nice bread and particularly tatties are too nice for that.
I don't think I could survive the Atkins diet...
Yesterday I went foraging in the fridge - an infinity pocket for other peoples after-pub leftovers
I came up with a selection of plastic containers of unknown date as weekends can get a bit hazy.
So far I've survived but there are some really big prawns . . .
The culinary question though, is should cold pizza be reheated as it might it lose that unique flavour?
I'm sure that there is a way to channel company expense account funds into Vodafone (double Dutch with an Irish twist and a side of Bahama bananas) and then to staff handsets to pay for a 20oz steak, rare with trimmings, so they can take one bite and leave the rest ;-)
Now that the weather here in Blighty seems to be warming up I have taken the bold step of discarding my winter long johns.
Cast ne'er a clout till May is out. Ha! I laugh in the face of your aphorisms mother.
Coincident to this casting off of clouts, I too have found a fungus. I only regret that I am not near enough to enable you to share in this bounty.
Someone near where I live is a forager... He's regularly seen walking round the village with a bag and determined expression. I'm not kidding when I say his kids begged him to stop serving rabbit for dinner (which are regularly found on the roads around). Be warned, Lester... that could be you...
I have to recommend instant noodles and cup-a-soup:
Buy the cheapest noodles from any supermarkets (Asda I believe sell them for about 20p per packet) along with some cheap cup-a-soups of your preferred flavours.
Add a soup sachet to the noodles, cover with boiling water and microwave for a couple of minutes.
Provides a quick, easy and relatively tasty & filling meal for around 50p
.. I use Wai Yee Hong's in Bristol (near Ikea) and they do packet noodles for 25p but with powdered seasoning, separate chilli sachet, sachet of soy sauce, little sachet of dried onions and a sachet of flavouring oil. Loads more flavoursome than Adsa ones and lots more flavours to choose from.
Does the recipe above (noodles in cup-a-soup) remind anyone else of the lifestyle recipe tips from Lee and Herring's Fist of Fun?
Stop eating carbs and tip your body into ketosis as quickly as you can. You more than likely have a few pounds of fat you could spare, and your hunger should fade once you start using it for energy. Devote your money to finding protein sources - carton of 24 battery eggs is pretty cheap, and perhaps a butcher will do you a deal at the end of the day on some stewing meat he'd otherwise have to toss.
"The classic foraging guide to over 200 types of food that can be gathered and picked in the wild, Food for Free returns in its 40th year as a sumptuous, beautifully illustrated and fully updated anniversary edition".
Should cover stuff in your corner of the world.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Food-Free-Richard-Mabey/dp/0007438478
By the biblio-botanically prolific and well cool Richard Mabey (his Flora Brittanica rocks, if you like that kind of thing)
I'm glad this article was writ partly because the theme of a "quid a day" might be better realised as asset management.
For example getting a fresh perch, pike, troot or even salmon in some parts of UK costs mere time and in other parts costs a lot of dosh - it depends on local assets and whether the salmon nets broke last night.
Same with vegetables or herbs. At the moment in this garden there are armloads of fresh rosemary, sage, thymes, chives, oregano, ... that would cost much dosh for similar quality were a delicatessen nearby.
So:
Sweat off some onions in olive oil (add wild garlic or garlic if you want but add it later so it does not scorch)
Add some slivers of chorizo or other meaty sosij
Heat up tinned baked beans in microwave and add to the onions/chorizo
Heat up tinned tomatoes in microwave and add to beans/onions/chorizo
Scrounge some nice non-supermarket bread and make the cooked stuff last for 2 meals
like all those hollywood types trying to "raise awareness" by "living" in some poor village for a week, or somebody trying to sell their "save money on food/power/gasoline/etc" system...
First, spend a whole lot of money buying enough land or supplies. Buy an expensive solar installation, get your job to allow telecommute for two weeks, whatever angle you're into.
Then start a garden, charge your batteries, stock away your supplies in your TV crew caravan. Then, for the purposes of the "experiment", start the cost counter at zero.
then live off of your "inexpensive" and "free" food or spend nothing on supplies. Claim "Great Success!" or "Mission Accomplished!" before supplies run out. And bask in the glory that you "spent nothing" (this week) on gas or electricity, and "survived" in a poor village before running back to your high roller expensive consumption lifestyle.
But actually starting from scratch without undeclared upfront preparatory investment? What do you think you're doing? You'll set an actual "standard" here...if this gets out of control, advocates and celebrities might have to make actual sacrifices like those they claim to be representing or aiding!
(Now what's your agent's number? Im thinking we sell your challenge as a new fad diet...we'll make millions of your real money! We can even skim a percentage off the net for your cause, I got Jolie and Clooney's people on standby...) :)
DDT was indeed and still is nasty stuff.
It wasn't just bird eggs but ALL avians that would be affected, including chickens and ducks.
wiping out malaria would never have worked, the amount of DDT needed would have caused a mass avian extinction rivalling the K-T and probably resulted in many bee species also being wiped out.
Its bad enough now with neonicotinoids and CCD, in fact this could yet send the honeybee the way of the dinosaur by about 2040 because of accumulated damage to hives worldwide.
Hate to say it but Carson might have been on the right track, if this book had been "lost" then we would likely have experienced a mass extinction.
"Hate to say it but Carson might have been on the right track, "
A fair point. But can I have some household fly spray that actually works? The smelly, weak permethrin rubbish masquerading as fly killer in British supermarkets is no more effective than hair spray. It would be more effective to us a cigarette lighter James Bond style to kill the 'orrible little blighters.
What I'd give for a tin of good old fashioned organophosphorus based stuff.
Two words. Cillit Bang.
Byebye fly. It really hated that AND plus no nasty chemical smell.
Apparently you used to be able to get a solvent (Trich maybe?) that upon contacting said fly/etc resulted in an insta-kill as its exoskeleton dissolved.
Modern equivalents are isopropanol, this also works though not as well.
You have to be a bit careful with 'puffball' fungus, whilst it is not poisonous directly, excessive consumption can result in a toxic reaction.
Used to collect them as kids, on a good day you could find pure white 24" specimens.
Now in HK. bananas and tarro grow wild, that and 4 foot catfish living in the sewers.
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