local bean stew
While this challenge hasn’t been as difficult as I has anticipated, it does require quite a bit of thought. I have worked out the following costs:
Overall cost for week one £20.35: I had animal protein for five meals during week one, costing me £5.91 – I did find myself eating smaller portions than usual (not a bad thing healthwise or from the point of view of greenhouse gas emissions). Three local free-range eggs cost me 81p; a portion of CamCattle local liver 70p, 2 portions of local free-range chicken £3.20 and a very small bit of (non-local) fish around 1.20. I had seven meals where the protein came from beans or lentils – this was incredibly cheap: it can’t have cost me more than £2. (The organic red lentils, which I used as a thickener for winter vegetable soup, came from Arjuna and cost £1.25 per 500g. The non-organic (local) spring beans (a kind of fava bean – brown) cost me 50p per kilo, but that is cheating a bit, as I was sold them at a super-low price by the supplier in order to try them, so a more realistic price would be with imported organic cannellini beans from Arjuna (£1.69 per 500g).
Breakfast cost me £5.60 for the whole week (and would probably have been cheaper if I didn’t need to buy gluten-free) – this was locally-grown porridge (made with water and then local honey added – this is quite expensive at £4.50 per pot, so I only had a small amount). I had a (local) apple a day as my fruit – these cost 12p each and came from my big box of them which I bought months ago to store in the coldest (non-fridge!) part of the house I could find. The local vegetables cost me £5 (see my last blog post).
A note on cooking dried beans
All the beans and lentils I use are dried rather than tinned, which are both more expensive and higher in greenhouse gases. The lentils don’t need soaking but beans always do. I soaked the spring beans for two days, as the skins are quite tough – thanks for the tip of adding bicarbonate of soda to the soaking water, Sally! That does indeed soften the skins! You then need to cook beans without salt, as salt makes them tougher. I agree it is more convenient to use tinned beans, but, once you get used to planning ahead (because of the soaking), it isn’t difficult. I used the spring beans to make a spicy bean stew with carrots, onions, celeriac and lots of garlic and dried chilli, then later I mashed the leftovers and spiced them up a bit more and turned them into refried beans, Mexican-style. They were really nice! These beans happened to be local, but I wouldn’t be bothered even if they weren’t, as imported beans come slowly in big container ships, so their transport emissions are a lot lower than methane emissions associated with eating, say, local beef.
Posted by Bev