Food, veggies, mushrooms...

 I'm trying to get my budget on track before winter's high costs. This month (August) is usually the most expensive summer month - not only because kids go back to school, but our insurance and property tax bills are due on August. Hb's car needed repairs (and some are still coming) and it isn't cheap. My car is due MOT on October and I need to fix it before that, and I know it will be another expensive one. Our cars suffer because we live in the end of long gravel road, and no matter how slowly and carefully you drive, something WILL broke during the year. There is always a lot of bumps and potholes and sharp gravel to kill your tires if nothing else.

On the food front I have been relying heavily on my garden and forest produce. We have been eating mushrooms every day last six weeks, and I'm digging potatoes three times a week (kids don't want to eat potatoes every day). But there's berries, zucchinies, kale, beans, peas, carrots, nasturtium, garlic...

The cheapest dinner is boiled potatoes, butter-fried mushrooms and fried zucchini with garlic and honey (because I get honey from my brother). Only salt and butter are shop bought!

Some mushrooms:

Chanterelles usually yield the highest harvest - and they grow from end of July to the end of November (if there's no snow). They are easy to find - they grow in our backyard (which is a forest).

Porchini. Little piglet.  This was a good year for them, and we ate many meals with porchinies. I'm really REALLY particular about that there's no wormholes in my porchini - if I accepted some holes, we would be eating tons of porchinies. but nope, I don't want to eat worms.

I would guess porchini and chanterelles.

We did have some sunny days then.

I don't pick many white mushrooms, but sometimes I can't resist - champignons are quite rare in my woods and this one didn't have any maggots.

(and I do know the difference between amanita virosa and champignons)

And it REALLY was champignon.

Agaricus sylvicola (wood mushroom)

There's only that much one can eat mushrooms. Bilberry pie!

Of course you can't only eat forest food. You have to use garden produce also! I've made several stews or soups or sauces with a lot of veggies.

For this I'm happy I don't have a picture of the green one I made - it looked like sheep's diarrhea😂

 But everything is edible. This is beetroot and sundried tomato houmous. Very yummy! The green one was pesto with wild and garden greens (sorrel, kale, nasturtium leaves, beetroot leaves, carrot tops etc). I made about 4dl or each, but in this picture is only the remants I scooped from my blender.

I use both houmous and pesto as a spread on my bread.

For houmous I use 1 tin of chickpeas, 2dl of cooked root vegetables (carrot, parsnip, beetroot, swede; either one or all mixed), 2-3 cloves of garlic - they are my own grown and huge! olive oil, some lemon juice from bottle, roasted sesame oil (because I forgot to buy tahini and tried with sesame oil and found out it was fine), salt, chili, some leftover pickles like nasturtium seeds, pickled chili or olives or pickled radish seed pods... some pepper, some salt and jeera or garam masala or curry powder - whatever I have. This is my winter spread.

For pesto I use greens, again some leftover pickles from fridge, some lemon juice, few cloves of garlic, any nuts or seeds I have, olive oil, salt, pepper and chili. I don't use parmesan or any other cheese in my pesto - I didn't have any when I made my first ever batch and it was fine. So this is vegan, too. Pesto is my summer spread.

I don't know how they compare to shop bought or ordinary houmous and pesto, because I've never eaten one - they usually have some onion and I can't eat (or touch) any onions.

Some nettle pancakes/crepes. They are delicious and cheap. And they take forever to fry, because I use 1l milk on the batter...

These are zucchini fritters. Also very good.

And zucchinies.

This is best potato year in long time. Potatoes don't like hot or dry weather, and we had coldest and wettest July in decades.

Gooseberries have goosebumbs!

(here they are called hairy berries for obvious reasons)

Chili sin carne with one tiny tiny beetroot. Beetroot really dyes everything.

Basic soup with minced meat. All vegetables from my own garden.

Peasoup - it's like split pea soup but dried peas are whole. Some minced meat, oregano (or majoram, I have no idea which it is, for me they are the same) and salt. One of the cheapest meals you can cook if you use shop bought items (British dried peas are 0,49€/500g). And believe or not, our children eat this - os usually have seconds.