Struggle meals

I don't go movies often, and nowadays less and less. A cheap movie ticket (monday nights) is now over 10€, and standard is 15€. Fifteen euros. When we get gift cards for movies, I usually give them to my offspring, I can watch any film later from the telly.

But, this time sys was SO hyped about this film, he wanted the book as a christmas gift and wanted to see the film as soon as possible. He's usually not so enthusiastic on anything, so I went along - after all, it is a scifi movie. I don't remember when was the last time I've enjoyed a movie so much. If you haven't seen Project Hail Mary, go and give it a chance. There wasn't a single moment I would've grimaced and thought no, no that is not how it is... Yes, I read the book right afterwards in four days (four nights) and I loved the book too. They are different, yes, because one is a book and another is a movie, things that work in a book don't work as well in a movie.

And yes, I lost a tooth, it's healing nicely. Ys hurt his pinky toe yesterday and we ended up in hospital emergency room. Yes, because of hurt pinky toe! He got is glued back one piece.

So life hasn't gone as planned.

It's the first of May, and these two days (yesterday and today) are big celebrations here - yesterday was also 80th birthday of the king of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf, the longest-reigning monarch In Sweden. So there has been all kinds of things going on.

It seems I'm running out of money even faster space than usually, I had to fill up gas in my car (2,19€/l) and yesterday the handle of our sauna stove broke! I looked for a replacement, 135€!!! Ok, that stove is 46 years old so no wonder something gets broken. We will fix it basically for free, but that fix will NOT last for another 46 years!

But this takes us to the thing mentioned in the title of this post. Struggle meal, poor man's meals, what ever you call them. I saw some videos on youtube, and  oh bugger! the meals I usually cook are mostly considered as struggle meals or something like that, meals that are cheap and made only when you are desperate, when you really have to stretch your pennies. Am I so out of touch to reality of most people? Things normal to me are considered as cheap/poor/struggle...

I cook most foods from scratch. I buy chicken nuggets and fish fingers and sausages/hot dogs, I don't make those by myself, and I don't make pasta myself, I buy spaghetti and macaroni and even lasagne sheets. I buy cheap meats, we don't eat steaks (or beef) because they are not worth the money. I use a lot of root vegetables, cabbage, potatoes. I forage as much I can (now it is too early to forage stinging nettle, we don't have wild garlic here - and it is not garlic, it is related to onions and I can't eat or touch it anyway, but we do have ground elder which I can use in things like soup or pancake batter). I try to grow as much as I can, I forage mushrooms and berries so much they actually save us significant amount of money every year.

Today we will be eating pork, I haven't decided yet how I will cook it. Yesterday I made donuts. I used flour, butter, eggs, yeast, milk (could've used water) and salt, and for frying ancient coconut fat I had bought for pennies. All things I had already at home, I calculated that the price of a single donut was about 6 eurocents, the price of the whole set of 48 was 2.70€ (price of the coconut oil included). I took some to my sister, and no-one complained they were "cheap", they were very happy!

Tooth Ouch!

We had a storm this week, it ripped off my polytunnel plastic sheets from the tunnel - but they still stayed on ground with all soil bags I had put to keep them in place. So a small win. Surprisingly the frame is ok, I thought it would bent or break. And nothing inside the tunnel flew away. I have no idea why, but everything is there, even the rubbish.

I'm not putting it back yet. We'll having another storm coming with snow and sleet so there might be actual damage with that. Winds are from different direction than usually, therefore the plastic sheet got loose. I was sure they will get torn to pieces!

And I'm not supposed to do anything heavy lifting or getting my head downwards.

My tooth broke, one of the molars, a big one. It had filling, that broke off and after that the hole tooth shattered (so there was a new hole underneath the filling - which was about 40 years old! no wonder it got off, I don't recall it's ever been x-rayed, so the new cavity wasn't found). I was only chewing gum. Bummer.

I didn't get an appointment on any private dentists (many of them are on vacation now because next week is first of May and people get drunk and get into accidents and dentists are needed). So I called on the emergency dental care and got an appointment on the same day - I was actually able to choose on few "Would you be able to come at ten o'clock or do you need a later one?".

The dentist was considering several options, but I asked if there's any use of trying to do root canal work if there's no tooth left to put filling in, can you just pull it out? She seemed relieved, I bet most people would like to have their tooth repaired, but I was thinking as an engineer - there's nothing to put the filler, they would have needed to build the whole tooth from the scratch and that wouldn't keep.

So, one tooth poorer now, and adviced not to do anything physical few days. Oh there will be bill later, I estimate it will be something around 150€. The bill won't hurt nearly as much as the tooth hurt!

But now I need to figure out what to do next, an implant? bridge? leave as it is and hope the last molar on the back that has had too little space finally gets some room and align itself with the others?

Implant will be around 2000€ (my co-worker said he'll need one and asked for the price).

But I'm starving (not really), I can't eat any hard or crumbly or chewy food yet, and for some reason I really really crave for popcorn and crisps and meat..,.

Dates on food

Note to all readers: I'm not a microbiologist, things I write in this post are my OPINIONS and EXPERIENCES, not necessarily legally or scientifically confirmed facts. I have NEVER had a food poisoning in my life, never. Neither have my children.

 Here in the outer rim of Europe, we have only three types of dates in our food/products.

One that is very rarely used is date of manufacture/packaging/harvesting. It is used on for example on strawberries on summer or wild fish (harvested 28/06/2026; fished on 27/03/2026) or on something, that is usually eaten on the very same day it is bought (and cooked). (you know strawberries can go bad very fast, so it is up to buyer to see how long they are edible)

More common is expiration date. It is a date after which something should no longer be used, either by operation of law or by exceeding the anticipated shelf life for perishable goods. To be honest, I rarely think expiration date as the the last date I will use that product. However, I want to strongly emphasize that I do not recommend anyone to use food after the expiration date! It requires knowledge and accuracy to be able to determine whether something is still usable - and this is greatly depended on how the product has been stored. Usually, the food ingredients that I use after the expiration date are, for example, dairy products, whose shelf life is already several weeks before that expiration date. And then there are products that are often spoiled BEFORE that expiration date, minced meat and especially minced chicken is one of them. So DO NOT USE food after it's expiration date, if you do not know what you are doing. However, the food does not spoil microbiologically in the freezer, its quality may suffer from long freezing, but it is microbiologically just as edible as it was when it was put in the freezer. And if it was spoiled before freezing, it will be spoiled after freezing too.

The best before date is exactly what it says. The product is at its best before that date (it’s often a month/year, not a day/month), but it’s still edible after that date. Depending on the product, it can be edible for years after the best before date. Who has ever noticed salt gone moldy? I use eggs several WEEKS after they best before- dates. And I store eggs on top of our dishwasher, at room temperature. Here eggs are not washed so they keep longer (here if eggs are washed, they can't be sold to consumers, only to food industry or bakeries). I'm not going to list here all products and how they must be stored and how long they will keep - internet is full of information on that. Some of which is total bullshit, pardon my french.

Then there's loose fruits and vegetables, and they have no date on them. It is up to me, you/whoever is buying and eating them to see if they are good or not.

What to do with free food...

I'm preparing communal coffee meeting tomorrow. I had to fetch coffee machine (a big one, like they have in those roadside service station shops in the US tv-series and movies). While I was there, I was asked whether I wanted to have some free food (kind of a food pantry, again). Well yes please!

I got salmon fillet! It was on it's last legs, so no use to put it into freezer, it would've been spoiled while thawing. Carrots, cabbage, courgettes and a lonely wrinkly red bell pepper.

So, what do you make out of those?

I usually bake salmon in the oven, but this one was a bit on the smaller side, so it wouldn't feed us all. And all the veggies... Well, you can ALWAYS make stir fry, can't you?

Ok, veggies vere a bit overcooked, I miscalculated timing with these. I cut the salmon into small strips/pieces, marinated it with soy and teriyaki sauce and then quickly fried, cut all veggies and fried them with garlic and some spices, and cooked noodles. I have sesame seeds and used those to garnish the dish. Very nice indeed.

It was so good, that ys ate rest of the veggie stir fry with noodles today. He doesn't eat fish, it makes him feel odd (his own words, not sick, but odd) but he said salmon was very good anyway, he tasted it!

Noodles and spices were not free, but I tried to calculate costs: soy sauce and teriyaki maybe 0,20€, noodles 1,25€, oils and other spices 0,25€? So for less than two euros we had very tasty dinner (and some lunch, too) for all.

I'm very thankful.

Baking with 6 year old yeast

 I'm going through my pantries and freezers. I know I have some oldies but goldies in there - and then some which are not so... perfect things.

So, the yeast. I thought I've used all of the ancient ones, but I found one more lonely OLD packet of block yeast (I have a whole box of block/fresh yeast from last autunm from the rejected foods I got for free/with little money). Me being me I didn't put it in the compost bucket, no. I put it in a little bowl with warm(ish) water and some sugar. And then I waited. And waited, and waited some more.

And then, after five or six hours I saw some bubbles! Next morning (about 14 hours after I took it out of the freezer) I saw this:

IT'S ALIVE!!!!!!!!

I gave it a little more sugar and a spoonful of rye flour. After few more hours it was bubbling very happily, so I made a dough. And me being me I just didn't make standard bread dough. No, because I have several carrot-rice casseroles  in my freezer (also from the rejects). It's a common christmas dish here, and we like it, but like 10 containers is just too much in one christmas. So...

My five grain and carrot bread dough! Five grain: rice, rye, wheat, barley and oat. At this point rice looked a bit funny on the surface.

We eat more buns than loaves, so:

This picture doesn't tell the truth, they we very orange. Sometimes the colour fades in baking, but not this time!

So butter, a nice cup of tea and all was well. You really can't tell there's rice. But you absolutely can see there's carrots.

Maybe I should tell the yeast producer how resilient product they have 😃

Wet

 Did I just brag about nice winter?

Well, not it's wet. It rains. It's miserable.

And I had to empty our small freezer to take Pretty Boy in. He's been outside (wrapped in a pretty blanket, put in to a sturdy box and put on a shelf next to a door) - ground is deeply frozen so we still can't dig a grave for him.

No I can't fit a small ice cream scone to other freezers, they are totally, completely, utterly filled to the brim.

But this is ok. We are lucky to have two freezers filled with food, we are content to have a place for Pretty Boy until spring. It it what it is.

Still winter

 Life has been as it usually is. The big organizational change at work hasn't gone smoothly. Not that I expected there wouldn't be any problems. My new boss is about 500km away, and I probably only get to see him once a year, if that. Well, the previous bosses were 100km away, so the change isn't that big. A lot of other things will be trouble, I know already. I'm hoping I can cope with all that, but unfortunately some of my colleages are already really stressed out and having hard time to cope.

The winter has been cold. The day Pretty Boy died, it started snowing and it was freezing. Since then it's been cold, but there hasn't been any snow at all. There's about 20cm of it now. That means the ground is frozen really deep, and it takes a long time to thaw in the spring.

The cats (Big Boy and Little Brother) have been staying indoors for the most part. For some reason, they don't want to go out in the cold. At its worst, it's been almost -30 degrees (C), and most of the time between -15C and -10C. So, nothing exceptionally cold, but it's been a good winter for a long time. Many winters have been when the temperature has been below zero degrees, and everywhere has been slippery and icy and gloomy. The pure white snow brings so much light, even though the shortest day length was less than six hours! Now we're already fast approaching the spring equinox, the day length is over 9 hours and there are almost 11 hours of daylight. This means that in the north it doesn't get dark as soon as the sun goes down, but the light and twilight lasts for a long time.

I haven't even started planning the vegetable garden for next summer. Last summer, most of it was covered with tarpaulins because it was overrun with thistles. Well, snails thrived under the tarpaulins, and they've been a problem anyway. The only way to get rid of them is with geese, and I don't have the means to get or keep geese. Although, there's a small pond in the neighbor's forest plot, and it's only a couple of hundred meters from there to the yard, so if you wanted to play goose herder every day, you could go splash around in the pond with the geese (with the neighbor's permission, of course) and then herd them back to pop snails. Yes, those snails would be edible if you fed them flour for a while, so their intestines could be cleaned... But I don't eat mollusks, mussels, or snails. Nope.