Selfsufficientish.com

Over here in the Basque country, people quite literally pray for forgiveness if they throw away any food, in particular bread. There are plenty of people here who don't remember rationing, they remember NO RATIONS at all. In Britain things were grim, there can be no doubt about that, but there were no refugee columns or people fleeing into the hills for safe haven with fascists on their heels. My mum remembers being a refugee in England almost with fondness.

The Basques are great foragers, the wide variety of mushrooms here in the forests in autumn and spring is staggering. But I was told of a grandfather who almost uniquely does not like Hongos (that's "fungi porcini" in euro speak, retail £20 a pound), turns out that in the Spanish civil war he was eating them raw or toasted on a stick if they got a fire going, where as the 'nice' way to eat them is with some garlic, olive oil and maybe a dash of white wine, and of course cooked!!

Sure there is an over reaction by people who have had less and then get more, but for those who can remember eating bread picked up from the street, they have a tendency not to forget. We have a lot to learn from people who have seen real hardship. Imagine being forced to be self sufficient in one day flat.

If one of my sprogs does not finish their food, the whole plate goes in the fridge ASAP, so I can have it for breakfast. But then I am piss poor... you might say why do I have an Internet connection... well because it is the only way I have of earning the odd shilling... any one need a website, design etc. ?

Places hat on pavement and prays!!

LoL

Ina, that article was eye-rollingly annoying, but this bit particularly irked me:

In Burnt Toast, her self-help-book-cum-memoir, actress Teri Hatcher warns against living on leftovers: "Maybe you didn't want to be wasteful, but if you go ahead and eat that blackened square of bread, then what you're really saying is that the piece of bread is worth more than your own satisfaction." Darn right. I feel like a human waste disposal unit. Let's face it: leftovers are either wrinkled or clammy and suspiciously wet. That's why no-one ate them in the first place.

I can't help feeling that in some ways the piece of bread is more important than your own satisfaction - not in and of itself, but sometimes there are things that are more important than just having everything you want all the time. There's no virtue in going through life being wasteful and not caring about the ramifications, or in ignoring the fact that your choices have consequences for the environment and other people.

I don't want to sound like some self-flagellating guilty liberal, because I fully understand that sometimes you get home from work and just want a greasy take-away and a vat of wine and to sit on the sofa in a stupour all evening, and I eat the way I eat 95% because it is healthier, tastier, easier and cheaper and maybe 5% out of liberal guilt, but to routinely allow so much food to go to waste or to think on a whim, 'Ooh, no, don't want that, I had that yesterday, I'm bored of it, I'd rather have something else,' is frankly quite selfish and irresponsible.

/rant

Pip Tiddlepip wrote: ... got a load of reduced sausages the other day and made a sausage casserole so tasty my fiancee is demanding I make it again soon!

Toad in the hole, that's a great and oft forgotten sausage goodun!!

hamster wrote: but to routinely allow so much food to go to waste or to think on a whim, 'Ooh, no, don't want that, I had that yesterday, I'm bored of it, I'd rather have something else,' is frankly quite selfish and irresponsible.

Hear, hear!