Not Just a Man's World » Cheap

Blog-watch: grow your own vegetables

Ammi — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 20:00:38 +0000

I had my first vegetable plot when I was about six or seven. I had been given a vegetable seed kit with lettuce, carrot, radish seeds and a few other bits as a present. My Dad separated off a small section of his enormous vegetable plot where I’d previously pottered about helping (or hindering) him, showed me how to do the complete planting process from start to end, including preparing the soil, creating drills and tending my seedlings, and then left me in charge of my own plot. The responsibility of my own vegetable patch was wonderful at that age and, unlike flowers, the expectation of a plate of food at the end ensured I retained interest through the whole cycle.

In the few years after that I expanded my repertoire to cabbages, swiss chard, sweetcorn (which never grew properly), potatoes, brussel sprouts and learning to be patient. By year three I had just about learned to leave the carrots in the ground until they reached a sensible size, rather than excitedly pulling them up when they reached finger-length at which point (to the child’s eye) they were clearly ready to eat!

When I was eleven we moved and I never really got back to vegetable gardening, other than a brief flirtation with it when I lived in London in my first house. However, I have often hankered to return to growing my own vegetables and I’m currently trying to get an allotment plot. Apart from everything else there is something therapeutic and relaxing about vegetable gardening. I’m also well aware that in these cash-strapped times many other people are turning to growing their own vegetables for the first time and I’ve noticed a particular surge in posts about growing herbs and vegetables on the various Paleo blogs which I follow where the current trend is knowing where your food has come from.

The vegetable garden at Ham House (creative commons image from Geograph)

I’ve decided to pull together a few of the posts I’ve seen, plus a few other useful articles which have “cropped up” (excuse the pun) on other self-sufficiency and grower’s sites which I frequent. There’s not too much explanation of each article, since they are mostly self-explanatory in title.

Before getting into the nitty-gritty I thought it might be inspiring to read an article about the joys of vegetable gardening from someone recalling their first steps in home-grown vegetables.
An excellent summary starting point in How to Grow Your First Garden from Jane Sanders.
There’s also some summary advice on setting up a new vegetable garden from the BBC, thanks to the Gardener’s World team. The index on the right gives additional links to this “productive garden” section of the site.
If you want to start with a simple herb garden then you can always learn from other people’s first attempts. One of Mark Sisson’s Worker Bees had a go at planting up a container-based herb garden and, if you are new to it, the article and the comments afterwards should give you some good tips.
As well as containers, you may be thinking about having raised beds. It’s certainly something I considered putting into our garden at home where the soil is particularly poor quality and nothing will grow. The Vegetable Patch site has done a complete guide on things to consider when building raised beds.
If you are starting your own produce garden to save some money then you might want to consider these money-saving tips for vegetable gardening.
Robb Wolf’s blog is running a new series called The Liberty Garden. It has so far got articles covering subjects as diverse as how to set about composting and how to grow sweet potatoes. Definitely a page worth keeping an eye on.
The Cottage Smallholder is a lovely self-sufficiency blog which I follow. I find it particularly useful for me since the author is based in the UK, so the timing of articles is relevant to me. There is a whole section of posts about vegetable and herb growing, although there are some specific posts I’d like to draw attention to: Egyptian Walking Onions (a brilliant onion to consider growing), how to prepare your own tomato seeds (rather than buying them) and a bit more advice on growing tomatoes.

That is just a taste of a few sites to get you started. It is always worth deciding what sorts of vegetables and herbs you would like to grow and search specifically online for “how to grow [insert preferred plant here]” since that will get you some advice relevant to that particular plant. However, in getting to that stage there is plenty to do in deciding on your site, what sort of garden you’ll have (beds, raised beds or containers) and preparing the soil. Hopefully there is advice above to help everyone who is in those really early days of vegetable gardening.

Happy planting and best of luck! If you know of other useful sites for the beginner produce gardener, please feel free to share them in the comments.

Why do I diet?

Ammi — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 20:00:14 +0000

Do you ever have one of those “aha!” moments? Those moments when you suddenly realise the reason why you are doing something.

As an example, I might spend weeks working on a new exercise in the gym because it’s good for some part of your range of motion and all of a sudden I’ll try the move I’m trying to assist and realise that it’s working and I haven’t wasted my time. Or I’ll be working on face pulls and suddenly I’ll get my shoulders and back muscles into the right place and everything suddenly works.

This is, unfortunately, not a cheery post about such a great moment. Instead I had a crisis of confidence about my diet in June. A sort of reverse aha moment.

Why do I have to deny myself cream cakes?

My reverse aha moment

I’d been a bit off-diet for a couple of weeks due to the holiday and general lack of willpower. Working late and driving all over the country I was starting to struggle to resist coming home via the shops and picking up a trifle, or a cream bun, or (when I could persuade myself to be a bit better) some hot ready-cooked chicken, or prawn cocktail. However, the cream buns were cheaper, so they featured more.

On one of these occasions I pulled into the car park, turned off the car engine and thought long and hard. I watched a few people coming out of the supermarket. One was eating an ice-cream. Another was carrying a few paper bags of doughnuts. Yet another person came out with a big box of beer and a pile of ready-to-bake pizzas – presumably getting ready for a night in front of the football.

It suddenly struck me – why was I doing this to myself? Why was I denying myself what I wanted and suffering from guilt-pangs when I did get a “treat”?

Yes, my figure is better than it was, but before I started down this path my figure was more petite (if less lean) and I didn’t care about how I looked. These days I’m endlessly worrying about my figure.

Yes, I’m ill less often but how sick was I before? Maybe a couple of times each year.

Here were all these other people eating what they want, when they want. They may worry about their body fat, but probably not obsessively. I was crazy to try to be any different.

It even started to affect my training. I suddenly couldn’t understand why I was putting myself through all this pain in the gym each week. I went into workouts in a demotivated state. I just couldn’t find any fun in it anymore.

Pulling out of the rut

After a couple of weeks of this I got ill. Unlike my bout of flu in January when I was better within a couple of days, this time I felt exhausted, demotivated and miserable and it took me a week to get back on my feet.

Being ill gave me time to think.

I hadn’t taken my Vitamin D for a couple of weeks, due to holidays and forgetfulness. That could be a cause for getting ill in such superb style. But I started to think that poor diet was also instrumental in my slow recovery.

Then I had a read through my own blog. The articles about diet. The articles about why I do what I do. Articles about motivation, bone density, long lasting health. It was like being hit over the head with a mallet. Repeatedly.

Why do I diet? Why do I deny myself the things I crave? Why do I sometimes struggle but not give in?

Because I care about myself and I care about being able to do the things I want to do with my life.

Am I back on track?

I’m definitely getting there. A benefit of being ill was that my appetite reduced and I didn’t leave the house. That was enough to break the addictive habit so that I no longer craved the wrong foods. There really is something in the “addictive carbs” argument.

I’ve not been off-diet since I was ill and I’ve taken some time to think about what really caused this crisis of confidence. My biggest problems revolve around the availability of paleo snacks and the cost of food in the UK. It’s easy to “treat” yourself to something that is completely outside the realm of the paleo diet when you go into a shop, but unless you have plenty of spare cash or a stove in the back of the car it’s almost impossible to treat yourself to a snack that is paleo. A definite problem since the easiest solution is pure willpower.

Yes, I definitely think I’m back on track.

Have you ever had one of those moments when you wonder why you’re doing something like this, whether diet or training-related?

Omegas 3 and 6 – getting the correct ratio

Ammi — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:00:40 +0000

As promised last week, this week I will be doing a series of three posts to provide some more in depth information about three key nutrition areas that I have tried to target in the improvements to Chris’s diet:

Omega 3 and 6 ratio
Acid-base balance
Different carbohydrate sources

I’ll be explaining why these are areas to look at when planning your diet and why, in particular, they matter to Chris with his muscle and strength gaining goals.

I’ll kick off today with the omega 3 to 6 ratio.

What are omegas 3 and 6?

These are polyunsaturated fats that are essential to maintaining good health. To briefly delve into the chemistry, the key difference between each of the fatty acids is the position in the chain of the first double bond from the methyl (or omega) end – omega 3 has this located at the 3^rd bond and omega 6 has it at the 6^th bond.

A really good summary of the different components of the omega fatty acids as well as a bit more of the technical detail (written in an easy to read style) can be found on the Mind 1^st website. Omegas 3 and 6 are both essential fatty acids as they cannot be created by our bodies and we therefore have to find ways to introduce them to our bodies from an external source.

Numerous sources suggest that the original evolutionary ratio of omega 3 to 6 was believed to be 1:2, whereas the common omega 3 to 6 ratio in the UK today is believed to be 1:8. The most common source of omega 3 is fish though other good sources include liver, walnuts, macadamia nuts and leafy green vegetables. In comparison omega 6 can be found in most meat and nuts, dairy, eggs and seeds.

Sardines - an excellent source of omega 3

Why are omega 6 fatty acids a problem?

Excess omega 6 fatty acids interfere with omega 3 fatty acids, partly because they are competing for the same rate-limiting enzymes. This means that you won’t get the same level of anti-inflammatory benefits from the omega 3. Research by Simopoulos has suggested that if the omega 3 to 6 ratio is too high then the physiological state in tissues will be pushed towards prothrombotic, proinflammatory and proconstrictive diseases.

None of that sounds good for someone who is working hard in the gym, stressing and tearing down muscles and stressing the cardiovascular and nervous system in order to build muscle.

How to improve the omega 3 to 6 ratio

Part of the problem for our modern omega ratio is that our cattle are often fed on corn and wheat, rather than grass, so the omega ratio within the meat we are eating is skewed towards omega 6. Changing the meat source from grain-fed to grass-fed will improve the omega 3 to 6 ratio by a noticeable amount immediately.

Unfortunately grass-fed meat is prohibitively expensive for many people. If this is the case for you, as it is for us, then an alternative way to start to improve the omega fatty acids profile is to take a two-stage approach: reduce the omega 6 intake where possible and simultaneously increase the omega 3 intake.

Reducing omega 6 intake

A key source of omega 6 for a lot of people is the fatty acids in meat. An easy way to reduce this is to choose leaner cuts of meat, whether this is lean beef mince or even leaner meats such as pork loins.

Often this means that an alternative fat source needs to be consumed so it is important to find fat sources that are lower in omega 6, such as plant oils like olive and avocado, or even to use fat sources that are, themselves, good omega 3 sources (see later).

When I was putting together Chris’s new diet I was also trying to increase the amount of fruit and vegetables in his diet so I decided to try using avocados as a fat source. On checking the profile of avocados on FitDay I was stunned by the amount of fat they contain, so this really does become a viable option for many people (a little avocado can go a long way).

Increasing omega 3

Good sources of omega 3 include fish oils, organ meats and leafy green vegetables. While organ meats contain both omega 3 and omega 6, they are significantly higher in omega 3 and therefore get you closer to the ratio you are trying to reach.

Liver - another source of omega 3 and a filling dinner

If you are looking to find alternative fat sources to lighten the omega 6 load then using macadamia nuts and walnuts is also a good option since these are the two nuts that are high in omega 3 rather than omega 6 fatty acids.

Increasing omega-3 levels can also be a good idea since there seems to be support through various studies that there is a decreased risk of heart problems if you have an omega-3 index (levels of omega-3 levels in the red blood cells) in excess of 10%.

Summary

So to put it all together, we should be aiming to increase our omega 3 intake and decrease our omega 6 intake from the ratio found in a standard Western diet. That way our bodies can store more of the beneficial omega 3 fatty acids, with their anti-inflammatory properties.

Easy ways to do this include:

swapping to grass-fed meat from grain-fed meat;
consuming leaner cuts of meat;
finding fat sources that contain less omega 6 than fatty cuts of grain-fed meat, such as avocados and olives; and
increasing omega 3 intake by consuming more oily fish, organ meats and leafy green vegetables.

I think our biggest constraint in trying to make these improvements is our budget. Do you have other cost-effective ways to improve your omega 3 to 6 ratio?

Improving nutrition for muscle gain

Ammi — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:00:59 +0000

One of my responsibilities at home is to continually research and improve our own diets to enable both me and Chris to achieve our goals.

Recently I’ve done quite well at meeting my own nutritional goals. However, while I have been cutting, Chris has been working on turning into the Incredible Hulk and has some serious training goals in his sights. Despite training hard his progress has been slowing and I think this is mostly diet related so I’ve been doing some detailed research to help him reach the next level.

What is he eating at the moment?

A standard day for Chris at the moment has the following:

Breakfast: 5 eggs and broccoli.
Early morning snack: Homemade shake (30g whey protein, 30g egg yolk powder and 10g flaxseed).
Mid-morning snack: Tuna coleslaw (made with 1 can tuna, 1 cup raw cabbage and 1 tbsp mayo).
Lunch: Celery, cucumber, corned beef, peppered salami, 2 boiled eggs, 50g cheddar cheese.
Mid-afternoon snack: Homemade shake (as before).
Dinner: Beef Bolognese (or chilli or curry) with broccoli and cottage cheese.
Supplements: 6g fish oil, glucosamine condroitin, 2,000iu Vitamin D.

Fitday analysis:
Total calories: 2,904
Protein: 277.4g
Net carbs: 39.5g
Fat: 170.1g

Pre-workout snack on weights days: 250g yoghurt, stewed fruit (3.5 apples and 3 plums) all mixed together, plus a banana and a spoonful of honey. He also has a protein shake mid-workout.

Fitday analysis of workout food:
Total calories: 694
Protein: 38.2g
Net carbs: 118.3g
Fat: 6.2g

What are the likely problems?

There aren’t enough calories going in. He’s gained noticeable muscle in the last few months and the extra muscle needs more calories to maintain, yet we’ve hardly changed his diet in the last 4 months.
He’s getting some tuna, which is a good source of omega 3, but he also has a lot of meat, eggs and dairy so his omega 6 to 3 ratio is almost certainly too high.
I’m concerned that he’s got a very high acid-base – he struggles to eat enough vegetables and fruit since these fill him up a lot and limit the space for bulking up on calories.
His pre-workout snack is fairly low protein and the majority of the carbs in it come from fructose (the stewed fruit was my previous attempt to improve his acid-base balance).

There are probably other issues, but these seem like the big ones to start with.

Next week I will do a detailed series of three posts explaining the technicalities behind the omega ratio, acid-base balance and fructose. In the meantime, I have outlined below what would need to change in his diet to resolve the problems.

Omega 6 and omega 3 balance

I’ve tried to reduce the omega 6 sources, stripping out the corned beef and salami as a start and have instead replaced this with lean meat, such as pork loins, and avocado to replace the fats in his diet. I’m also going to increase his fish a bit to increase the omega 3 in his diet.

Since it is possible to cook lunch at the weekends, Chris is also going to be finding himself facing liver and onions for weekend meals. Organ meats are an excellent source of omega 3 and this should therefore help to redress any imbalance that may occur during the week.

Wish me luck with this – Chris hates liver!

Acid-base balance

Foods present themselves to the kidneys as either acid or alkaline base, but the cells in the body function optimally within a certain pH range which is not particularly acidic. Therefore if you let the body get too acidic it will make adjustments internally to rectify the imbalance.

As a general rule meat, fish, dairy, grains and eggs are all acidic, while fruit and vegetables are alkaline and it is therefore crucial to make sure there is plenty of vegetation included in your diet. It’s also worth avoiding the worst of the acidic foods, such as hard cheeses.

To address this I’ll be stripping the cheese out of Chris’s lunches, trying to get some more alkaline veg into his meals and I’ll be swapping one of his shakes to a shake based on coconut milk and avocado, as inspired by Mark Sisson.

Time to increase the alkaline foods

Carbohydrate source

Currently, Chris’s pre-workout snack sources much of it’s carbohydrate from fruit but fruit is processed by the body in a very different way to other glycogen sources so I’m going to swap the fruit for sweet potatoes in the hope that he gets a better effect from the carbohydrate.

The diet going forward – putting it all together

Trying to rectify these problems results in the following amended menu:

Breakfast: 5 eggs and broccoli.
Early morning snack: Coconut and avocado shake (2 cups coconut milk, ½ avocado, 30g protein shake).
Mid-morning snack: Tuna coleslaw (made with 2 cans tuna, 1 cup raw cabbage and 1 tbsp mayo).
Lunch: Celery, cucumber, 2 grilled pork loins, ½ avocado, 2 boiled eggs, ½ pot cottage cheese.
Mid-afternoon snack: Homemade shake (30g whey protein, 30g egg yolk powder and 10g flaxseed).
Dinner: Beef Bolognese (or chilli or curry) with broccoli and ½ pot cottage cheese.
Supplements: 6g fish oil, glucosamine condroitin, 2,000iu Vitamin D.

Fitday analysis:
Total calories: 3,102
Protein: 275.4g
Net carbs: 49.6g
Fat: 183.4g

Coconut and avocado shake

Pre-workout snack:
3 medium sweet potatoes
1 tub cottage cheese
1 scoop whey powder

Post workout snack:
1 cup blackberries
125g quark

Fitday analysis of workout food:
Total calories: 766
Protein: 77.9g
Net carbs: 84.7g
Fat: 4.3g

This increases his daily calories a little but should also fix some of the things that may have been negatively impacting on his performance and results. We’ll see how it works out for him. Do you have any other suggestions of things I might try?

Paleo recipes: chicken stock

Ammi — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:00:31 +0000

By accident, chicken soup has become something we eat with frightening regularity. It’s easy to make and hugely nutritious. The best bit though is that it’s also great for leftovers. You just use whatever happens to be in the house and get a different soup every time.

It’s not necessarily quick to make (if you’re making soup and starting with a chicken), but with sensible planning you can do the stock stage whenever you happen to have a chicken, since that’s the time-consuming bit, freeze your stock and then soup itself takes about 45 minutes to whip up whenever you want it.

Over the next two recipe posts I’m going to explain how to make stock and then how to use your stock to make a delicious chicken soup.

Chicken stock

So many people are frightened of making stock but it’s really not difficult. The best bit is that you can apply this same method to any pile of bones you happen to have lying about the place. You’ll find you become a hoarder of leftover bones. Over Christmas I came home from my parents and Chris’s parents with a bag of bones each time and then converted these into stock. The time I boiled up a beef bone with a pork bone we ended up with the most delicious and rich stock imaginable!

If you don’t have a carcass, I’m told that you can boil the bones with the meat still on them, effectively cooking the meat at the same time. I’ve not had a chance to try this because I tend to be making this with leftovers. Instead I just try to retain a small portion of the meat from whatever I was having beforehand to provide me with meat if I’m intending to make soup with the stock, rather than freeze the stock for later use.

So here’s chicken (or any other meat) stock in a few simple steps.

Place your carcass, or bits of chicken on the bone, into a large pan that has a lid.
Cover with water until the water comes about an inch above the bones.
If you’re feeling in an expansive mood, add an onion (cut in half), a carrot or two (roughly chopped) and a bit of fresh parsley. If, like I usually do, you’re making poor-man’s stock then you don’t need these. After all, you’ll most likely be adding vegetables, herbs and other flavours to whatever you’re making with the stock later on.
Cover the pan with the lid, bring to the boil and then reduce to a simmer.
Leave for a few hours (I usually reckon 3 hours – 2 hours as a minimum). It’s ready when the water has turned a creamy colour and any bones you fish out are clean (or meat is falling off the bones leaving them spotless if you started with fresh pieces of chicken on the bone). I generally stop it when even the pieces of gristle are coming out squeaky-clean.
Using a colander or large sieve pour off the stock into a large bowl.
Take your time picking over the pile of bones and gristle, retrieving any remaining scraps of meat you can find (but careful to avoid the really tiny bones and pieces of gristle that you will previously never have known existed – this is a perfect way to learn chicken anatomy). These bits of chicken can be eaten or saved to go into the soup.

Leftover gristle and bone

That’s it! How simple was that? Unless I’m making soup straight away, I bottle this up in some old jars and store it in the fridge. If I’m not going to use it within the week then I wait until it is cool and pour it into some old yoghurt pots. These go into the freezer to make large blocks of frozen stock which will keep for ages and be ready to use. Beware though – it expands considerably when frozen!

A good chicken stock, once cooled, should gain a jelly-like consistency and may also have a layer of fat on the top.

Many people recommend that you skim the fat off and discard it but I’m a fan of the fats so I’ve never done this. As long as there isn’t too much (beef stock sometimes needs a bit of the fet removed) the fat adds depth to your final product (whatever it is you may do with the stock).

If your stock hasn’t gained a jelly-like consistency then your stock is still useable but be warned that it won’t be as rich in flavours. Watery stock occurs when too much water was used so this suggests that you need a lower water to bones ratio the next time.

Next week, I’ll move onto making the soup!

Paleo kitchen experiments: perfect pot roast

Ammi — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:00:29 +0000

I finally got pot roast to work this weekend. It was amazing.

Pot roasted brisket and veg with some pieces of open roasted pumpkin, roasted in the their skins with some spices sprinkled over them

The brisket (one of the cheapest beef cuts available) dissolved in a buttery way on the tongue. The pumpkin pieces in the pot actually tasted of something (a miracle!). The sauce from the pot made an excellent gravy. The leftover brisket, which was put into our lunch salads for the week, is as moist and tender cold as it was when first cooked.

My previous attempts at this have been hindered by problems like the lid not fitting tightly enough on the pan (we ended up with a small lump of carbon welded onto the bottom of the pan). Here’s how to get it right.

Find a good pot to cook it in which has a close-fitting lid and can be placed on a direct heat source as well as in the oven. I use a Le Creuset casserole pot.
Heat some oil in the bottom of the pot and then add your joint of meat, turning it so that it is sealed and browned over the whole surface (you may need help with this to keep moving it about since it might stick at times).
Remove the meat and place to one side for a moment.
Place the vegetables that you want to cook with the joint into the pot and brown them. I used shallots, carrots (each cut into 6 big pieces), and some big chunks of pumpkin.
Once the vegetables are browned, return the meat to the pot and arrange the vegetables around it.
Add 10 fl oz (275ml) of hot stock (I use an Oxo Beef stock cube, which isn’t very paleo but some things are worth cheating on) and some fresh herbs (a few sprigs of fresh oregano or thyme are good). You’ll want to scale up of down the quantity of stock slightly if necessary – the liquid should be about halfway up the meat and vegetables.
Cover the pot with foil (this is the crucial step I missed when it burnt dry – the foil is a good way to ensure your pot is resistant to steam escaping) and then fit the lid over the foil.
Leave the pot over a gentle heat until you can hear the liquid simmering. Ok, I cheated. I watched it until it simmered and then put the foil and lid on the pan.
Place the pot into an oven pre-heated to 140C and leave until tender. Some people put it in overnight on a very low oven setting, but what use is a roast dinner that is just cooked in the morning? Actually, that would make a lovely breakfast… I worked on a timing of 3 hours for 1.1 kg (2.5 lb) that I got from a recipe book, so my joint ended up in the oven for nearly 4 hours.
When tender, place the joint and vegetables on a warmed serving dish. The sauce in the pot can then be turned into gravy. I cheated again and did this with a teaspoon of Bisto, though I suspect that you could use arrowroot or, if left long enough, you could probably thicken it by reducing it (though your joint may get cold in the meantime. Mark Sisson provides good advice on thickening sauces the paleo way.

If you want to roast some less-robust vegetables then general advice seems to be to add them to the pot a couple of hours before it is ready, rather than leaving them in for the whole cooking time. The pumpkin was certainly falling apart by the end of 4 hours!

Apparently silverside is also good for pot roasting, but it is a fraction more expensive here.

Armed with this successful experience I am now planning a follow up pot roast for the weekend we get back from our holiday. Delicious!

Getting meat cheaply (in the UK)

Ammi — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:00:29 +0000

As a weight trainer living in the UK, I find myself constantly frustrated by articles written in the US or Canada that advocate eating plenty of red meat. Don’t get me wrong, I love eating red meat and I think that there is lots of evidence to suggest that it’s a lot better for you than most people think. The problem is how much it costs.

Why red meat is good for you

Red meat is a good source of complete protein, including all of the essential amino acids, and it contains loads of vitamins and minerals. A 10 oz steak and a cup of steamed broccoli is my idea of a perfect meal, providing:

816 calories, with 82g of protein and just 13g of carbs (of which 6g are fibre so don’t really count)
138% RDA of vitamin B6
187% RDA of vitamin B12
132% RDA of vitamin C and
132% RDA of zinc

(Note: RDAs are based on those provided in America by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council.)

So why the frustration?

So why does it frustrate me to see articles advocating that I eat more red meat? Well, a 10 oz steak in my local Co-operative store costs about £3.40 for the value version (would you trust it?) and quite a lot more for the premium brand. If the two of us each ate a 10 oz steak every day for a month I’d probably be bankrupt by the end of it.

Ok, so perhaps eating that much steak everyday is an exaggeration but it is true that trying to eat red meat daily is an expensive business. And while meat can sometimes be available cheaper at some of the bigger supermarkets, the horror stories about how cheap meat is reared can be enough to turn you into a vegetarian.

So how can we find cheaper meat?

1. Find your local butcher…

You may think that buying from the butcher will cost more because of the quality, but this is wrong for two reasons:

At the supermarket you have to buy the quantities they sell in, even if they aren’t what you want or need. For a long time I prepared meals for which I really wanted 800g (1¾ lbs) of beef mince, but the supermarket only sold the meat in 500g portions (just over 1lb). At the butcher I could ask for mince to be bagged in 800g portions.
Surprisingly, our butcher is cheaper than our local supermarket. This may not be the case for your own butcher, but don’t assume. Try buying a single portion and making a comparison.

2. …and buy wholesale

Once I knew my butcher I started buying in bulk, agreeing the quantity and the collection date a month in advance. He bags the mince in portions and I can just throw these in the freezer and take out a portion whenever I need it. When he could see that I was placing regular wholesale orders with him, he started to give me a 10% discount. How many supermarkets would do that?

3. Experiment

Offal – I still have nightmares of being made to eat floury liver and chewy kidneys as a child, but I recently tried my hand at cooking liver and discovered that it doesn’t need to be like that. And not only is liver hugely beneficial in the nutrient department, it is also incredibly cheap. 450g (1lb), which is all you need to feed two people, cost me £1.30 last week. Mark’s Daily Apple has an excellent article that takes you through all the offal meats. I think heart might be on my list to try next.
Cheaper cuts – if offal doesn’t get you excited, then there are cheaper cuts of muscle meat. It is possible to pick up a big piece of beef brisket for bargain prices. Whilst it can be tougher, long and slow cooking methods such as pot-roasting can leave it moist and tender.

4. Go wild!

Another option is to find your own. I have recently purchased a catapult for shooting rabbits and wood pigeons in our local wood. There are plenty of resources available to teach you what to do with your fresh kill, including wikiHow, though you need to find a good location – try asking a local farmer if you can shoot rabbits on their land.

I also recommend the book The Wild Gourmets by Guy Grieve and Thomasina Miers which has very readable sections on how to hunt and fish as well as sections on how to then prepare the resulting kill. I’m even tempted to try eating garden snails after reading their book!

5. Find it yourself

Finally, a method I’ve not tried myself but have heard a lot about is collecting fresh roadkill. Though it may be less relevant to those of you who live in big cities, roadkill is apparently very edible if you know what you are looking for when you pick it up. If you have experience of this, please let me know how you have got on with it.

These are just a few methods I have found to deal with the ever-increasing cost of meat. What methods have you found?

Omegas 3 and 6 – getting the correct ratio