it's the season of..... MUSHROOMING!

 And a lovely weather, too!

If not maybe even a little too warm? +23 and sunny.

A bagfull of black chanterelles. I didn't have much time, so this is only 3,5 to 4 litres of mushrooms (all picked so close to our home, that I was able to see our house the whole time I was picking them). I'm going to dehydrate them, and then grind, so I'll have a small jar of black dust 😂

We've been eating fresh mushrooms every day the last month, and if everythign goes as planned, we will eat them until the beginning of December. After that I have to rely on dried or frozen mushrooms. Which we will have...to much?

Batch of outcasts

Every now and then I get a message "There's leftover food". It's not every week, sometimes it's twice a week!

Usually there's a lot of bread and other bakery goods. Buns, baguettes, loafs, toast. One that's typical for this area is sourdough rye breads. They are very dark, dense fullgrain breads, some of them are soft, some of them are very tough. We eat it with soups, stews, casseroles... Not with pizza 🤣 It is still customary to eat bread with food here, so it is not just us.

There's usually some vegetables, like onions, carrots, zucchinis, apples. Sometimes bags of mixed salad. For some reason, there's been a lot of mushrooms (Champignons) and aubergines lately. Which is a good thing, because I love aubergines and my children really like mushrooms.

There might be some ready meals, condiments, I've even got a box of fresh yeast (they are 50g per piece, and I can freeze them for years) and pouches of dried sourdough starter! Half a dozen of taco seasoning, fresh herbs, pickled herring, sausages, veggie meat, yoghurts or other sour milk produce, flour, semolina...

As I'm not picky, I'm able to use things other people have already decided to give up. It doesn't mean I'll used spoiled produce or food -no, not at all! It means I just make an extra effort, for example, I prepare vegetables for the freezer by removing spoiled or otherwise suspicious parts. I slice bread before I freeze it, so it is easy to use (most breads are sold unsliced).

I am VERY thankful I have this opportunity, it really helps to strech our food budget.

Cauliflower curry and (bil)berry pie

I have a LOT of cauli, I need to do something with it. First thing to come to my mind is of course cauliflower curry.

A LOT of cauliflower! Used my biggest frying pan.

Cauliflower - 0,10€, tin of tomatoes 0,33€, oil+spices 0,30€, coconut cream*? milk?  0,20€, rice 0,60€, all together 1,60€. I used those small zucchinies that stop developing and rot or fall off the vine, handful of green beans and spinach (leaves and stalks). I don't have any garlic left, so I use garlic chives. It was a bit runny to my liking, because I accidentally added water before I added coconut milk.

There's at least two portions left with extra rice for something else, maybe fried rice next week? I was a bit shocked when I saw how much the boys ate this, I thought I could have this as my lunches next week! So - a nice sunday dinner less than a 0,30€ per portion!

Okei, hb and boys had chicken, that adds up more than 5€ for the meal, or 1,40€ per portion. But still, 1,70€ per portion!

I have three more caulis to use up! (actually I have four, because I bought one regular cauli just before I got these outcasts)

I quite often bake something on Sundays, today I made bilberry pie. Didn't have enough bilberries, so I used some black currants from the freezer.

Here the standard pie is open one, this one is my go to berry pie:

(very poor picture even in my standards, sorry)

The bottom is very easy (100g butter/margarine/oil, 1/2 dl sugar, 3 dl flour (I used 2,5 all purpose flour and 0,5 dl oats, 1tsp baking powder, vanilla sugar - I used meadow sweet sugar) and the filling is quite simple, too. Berries, 4dl yoghurt (or any other "sour" milk product), 1/2 dl sugar, 1 egg and 1tsp vanilla sugar. I used vanilla yoghurt so  didn't use sugar or vanilla. This was less than 1,50€ the whole pie. And as you can see, it is very good - I wasn't fast enought to have a picture before someones already helped themselves!

*I bought this huge tin of coconut cream some time ago, if I remember right it was 1,99€ for a 2,9 l tin! It could have been 2,99€ - it was dirty cheap anyway. I had to divide it into smaller portions. I made a nice mess when I had the bright idea to put it into small ziploc bags... But now they are in the freezer, easy to use when needed.

When no-one else wants to have

Every now and then I'm able to pick up food from ... well, it is not technically a food bank. This local lady collects out of date- food and unsellable produce from several shops. Then she gives it to people in need. Sometimes there is too much food (like on the beginning of May, when the local baker went bonkers and baked 4 times more bread than ever sold and muffins about 10 times more - he's now retired, it wasn't a good thing) or there is food nobody wants. The the lady sends me a message "there is this an that, would you like to have some?" And usually I grab my bag and go to see if there's something we can use.

So things I get are outcasts of oucasts, no-one is left without food if I get that food. (I pay her few euros for gas or give her a roll of plastic bags).

Yesterday she sent me a message "There is a ton of cauliflower and peas". Ok,  I can use some cauliflower.

As you can see, they are NOT superfresh and top quality. No, they are not, they are on their way to feed horses and chicken and compost. For normal people. For me, they are ok, I can cut away dark spots, I can peel carrots before using.

That's not all I got, I just didn't take photos of everything, and some of the priduce went to my parents and to my sister. There were:

- 8 caulifowers (3 purple, 3 yellow, 1 green and 1 white)

- 3 aubergines

- 5 zucchinies (courgettes)

- about 20 tomatoes

- a bunch of spring onions

- two kilos of carrots

- one packet of soup veggies (piece of leek, swede, carrot)

- 5 litres of field peas

- 15 mushrooms

- 4 sweet buns (with jam filling and sticky sugar coating)

- 2 bags of buns

- one loaf of sourdough bread

- few small peppers (didn't count)

- three jars of salsa

- one plum

- two bananas

I paid 4 euros (that's the coins I had in my car).

The bread and buns went all to the freezer. Some of the tomatoes were firm and nice, I sorted them out and others I roasted in the oven with some garlic chives and salt and oil. Aubergines, zucchinies and peppers went on to another casserole dish - I couldn't fit them all to one pan.

Tomatoes cut in half. Only two of the tomatoes went to compost, quite good considering those were already throw aways.

I added some dried parsley and oregano (from my polytunnel) and garlic chives to season the veggies.

They were lovely. Now I have enough prepared veggies for the next three days. Peas are shelled and I will pour some boiling water on them to prepare them for the freezer.

But then, I need to do something with the caulies and carrots. 

There were some brown spots on zucchinies, few tomatoes were a bit bad, so I used only half of those few. Peas were not sweet anymore, but they'll do nicely in soups and stews. I think I'll eat bananas and plum as they are, I've made a lot of fruit salad lately (from outcasts of outcasts), I'm not in the fruit salad mood now.

Like this one:

Strawberries were from my veggie plot, apples and pears were outcasts, watermelon was on sale 0,99€/kg. I made some sugar syrup with lemon juice and almond juice (I have no idea what it is, I got it from Italy, it gives a nice maraschino cherry taste ) AND I added watermelon rind preserve made by myself!

Prepairing for the winter...

The tarp on top of that mountain is 3x2m. We don't have a wood shed big enough. At the end of last winter our smaller wood shack was crushed by two huge spruces. And because they were huge, we have even MORE firewood to stack - but nowhere to stack.

And - of course - our biggest and oldest fireplace, the huge several ton heat reserving fireplace is out of order. It has crumbled inside, the smoke channels which distribute the heat in to the huge mass are finally given up.  There is no fix, it needs to be demolished. I knew it will come to this eventually, but I was hoping it could hold on for few more years (it's 43 years old, so it really has done all it could).

Se do have two other fireplaces in the old part of the house, so it is not a disaster as such. But it is very expensive job to demolish and replace. And VERY dirty job!!!

But, the new part of the house has only one fireplace. Some day there will be kitchen, and I need to get a wood burning stove for the kitchen. Price range is 900-9000€. I might want to aim to the lower end of the price range... It's NOT going to be an AGA!

And for the wood shed? The timber for the size of the shed we'd need would cost around 2000€. Pre-cut timber would cost around 3500€. And fot that price you still need to buy roofing.

Where is my lottery win?

It is hot - now

A week or three later than rest of Europe, we are having a heatwave. It's been +30 few days now. Quite a change from last weeks +14 degrees...

As it IS hot, I can't take 'Suma to walks during the day, we try to get going in the morning. But we also need to wait for Aunt E to finish her porridge before she can join us... I can't do anything in the garden/yard during the day, because 'Suma wants to join me and because she's a dim and a black dog, she would het a heathstroke - because she wants lo lay in the sun! I mean she's my darling, but sometimes I wish she would have few more brain cells.

I can't imagine how insufferable the heat has been in southern Europe (way over +30 several weeks). We have AC machine to cool down upstairs and heat pump to cool down middle floor. 

Meals are very simple - I cooked a big fat piece of pork to make pulled pork. We have been eating it in several ways: hotdogs, hamburgers, tortillas (or burritos? never remember which they are), in salad, in sandwiches. In fwe days I'll get my first tomatoes and maybe - if I'm lucky- a cucumber! I've already got few tiny bellpeppers, and now spinach, chard and new zealand spinach are big enought to be picked occasionally. My veggies look so much better than I was hoping for!

Aunt E is getting old

Here in my village there's quite a lot of my family/relatives. Of course there's my mother and old man, my sister with her family and my cousin. Then there's my uncle and two of my aunts with their s.o. It is very nice to have a lot of my kind here.

But we all age. My oldest aunt E is really getting old, it seems. Last summer she complained about her feet, and her eyesight is getting worse. She has real physical problems with her eyes, and she had had two operations, now there's a lot of scarring which makes her vision blurred. But it is not the problem. I think (and my yongest aunt, who doesn't live here and my sister) that she's getting some memory chellenges.

She can handle most things, but in last few months she's been saying it's very difficult for her to start doing things. When she can make herself to start something, there's no problem. And she says it's the most difficult in the morning, in the afternoon everything is easier. Hmmm.

No this week she got a change in medication (her previous one 2x4mg tablets were replaced by 1x8mg tablet) and for some reason this was something she couldn't get grasp to it. She had written down the notes from her nurse several times (and they were ok, nothing amiss there) but she was so unsure if she was going to have the right dose. (she worked over 40 years in accounting, she know he numbers). She had written and calculated everything right, but just couldn't understand.

She had called my yongest aunt a couple of times already. She lives three hours away, so of course she couldn't do anything. She called my sister, who was stuck with number three who's teething... And she called me.

One thing I also noted was her handwriting is deteriorating. She's had one of the most neat handwriting I've ever seen (another is my mother - I've not inherited it). Of course you can blame her poor sight for that, but...

I filled her medicin dispenser with the right pills, wrote down EVERY pill she needs to take for the next week and she put a mark on her dispenser what date each weekday is. She showed me a cabbage she had bought in order to cook a cabbage stew. This was yesterday.

Today I went for a 'Sumawalk and took my time to greet my aunt, too. She had taken the right pills (yay!) bus asked if I was going to town to shops. She said she needs some ready meals, because she can't just get going with her cooking. Oh dear. I asked if she wanted me to help her to chop the cabbage?

So in the end, we chopped the cabbage, then she wanted to check her blood pressure and I finished cooking the stew. I even chopped a whole onion! with gloves, of course (I can't touch raw onions). Tomorrow I'll go and check her fridge if there's any old spoiled food. I'm NOT going to fill her fridge, but I can help her do things.

Yes, she's getting older and having troubles with several issues. She lives alone, in a big bungalow, she has a swimming pool in her yard, a VERY nice garden with VERY neat flower beds, she still drives (her eye problem doesn't affect her driving, doctor has confirmed that) but everything is going to be too much for her eventually.