CHALLENGE: Best of British – The Frugality of Eating Local

Firstly, a big thank you to Pamela over at Frugal Homemaking, who wrote about my challenge in her blog. She mentioned that even meat has seasons, which is something I hadn't considered before. Meat eaters could have a problem trying to find British lamb before spring is sprung, whilst many species of fish can only be caught at specific times of year. Just more difficulties to add to the list!


The Frugality of Eating Local
Onto my thoughts for today. You may think I've been paying over the odds for foods just to ensure they are British. Whilst that may be the case for some foods (HONEY = £3.99 for a jar from Devon, 99p for Tesco Value honey jar of the same size!!), I've found that in general it is actually enabling me to save money!

Meal planning

This challenge is very restrictive, especially as a vegetarian, so it is important I have in my head an idea of what I will eat for the day. A typical day's worth of food has been:

  - Porridge for breakfast (Scottish oats and Cornish milk) – 23p (~5p for the porridge, 18p for the milk)

  - Spinach, leek and cheese omelette with a salad for lunch (fried in British butter to avoid the unclear origins of vegetable oil) – 99p (~20p for the spinach, 9p for the leek, 25p for the cheese, 35p for the eggs, 10p for the lettuce)

  - Apple for a snack (from Kent) - ~9p

  - A big bowl of vegetable stew for dinner (carrots, potatoes, parsnips, swede – no salt as Cornish sea salt is bloody expensive, although Pamela mentioned a book about eating locally where the authors made their own salt from seawater) - ~40p (~5p for carrot, 10p for potato, 10p for parsnip, 15p for swede)

  - Yogurt and honey for a snack – 65p (~40p for yogurt, 25p for spoonful of honey)

To be honest, most days have had very similar menus! It is hard to be creative on the narrow scope of this challenge, especially when I was fitting food in around two jobs! An entire day's food for £2.36 can't be bad though!

Seasonal eating

Whilst eating locally, you have to eat seasonally. Whatever's in season is cheapest. We all know this, yet I for one have rarely paid it any attention. A simple rule is that if you can find it in your local farmer's market, you'll know that it is seasonal, fresh and cheap. If you eat winter vegetables now, and stock up on British strawberries in the summer, you'll save yourself a bundle over the year. (If you have your own vegetable patch you're already miles ahead – FREE seasonal food!!)

No junk food!

Pretty much NO junk food snacks are 100% British, so I've not been wasting any money on that! Walkers crisps are made with British potatoes, but the oil and flavourings are likely to be imported. Chocolate is made from cocoa beans, which grow in Africa. Lots of cakes are made using palm oil from Africa or Asia, something which I will not be returning to after this week is over because of its devastating effect on the environment. 

For those who want to make an entirely British sugary snack, why not make biscuits from 250g butter, 140g Silverspoon sugar (the only company I've found to use British sugar beet rather than imported sugar cane to make sugar), 1 egg yolk and 300g plain flour. Bake at 180°C or gas mark 4 for 12-15 minutes.

Savings of the Past

We could learn a lot by revisiting old recipes from World War II, when imported fruit and veg was almost non-existent and people had to make do with what they had. It can be very cheap to survive on a diet of local meats and seasonal vegetables. If you had to survive entirely on your own country's food, what would you need to change to do it? Start a vegetable plot? Preserve food? Raise animals? What do you already do to eat local?