Simple Living!

After the chaos and excess of yesterday, my brain craves peace! Time for some simple living!

When you live in the middle of Bodmin Moor (turn right just past Purgatory) you need simple living! Our water is supplied by a borehole. No street lighting. The central heating and cooking is sporadically run by the Aga. It’s a 40 minute round trek to the nearest shop so you’d better not have too many “necessities”! For at least 4 months of the year that trek includes a mile of deep rutted, muddy off road skidpan. That’s when the river hasn’t burst it’s banks and flooded the road making a canoe the necessary mode of transport! Busses? A 3.5 mile walk to the nearest hamlet. It’ll be by drekly at least once a day to the nearest town!

In recent months we’ve been days without electric and weeks without water, heating or both! But in all fairness, you don’t need much to survive. A lifetime ago I walked out of my house with car keys, phone, charger and a spare set of underwear. I survived. We really don’t need much to get by!

Maybe I’m weird, but by 3pm Christmas Day I’m craving simple food!

The food in the pretty cover photo all contains 3 ingredients or less! (Ok not the mulled wine – I was feeling festive!) Oh, and the tomatoes are homegrown (see below)! When you live on your own, simple living and simple cooking is the way to go! As for the homegrown produce – a girl gotta have a hobby!

I’ve blogged specifically about my diet in the past. Simply because it’s become a bit of a special interest since learning I have an eating disorder. I guess this is about my diet, as it’s about what I eat, but it’s not about dieting! It’s about simple living and simple food!

The Aga, nicknamed Kirsty (the Cast Iron C) runs through The Long Dark because she provides our heating. We have a real love/hate relationship! She’s a fussy eater and runs on anthracite only! But not that much… because she’s also a filthy madam. Every 4-5 weeks she chokes herself out and I have to get up close and dirty with her. To be honest, she’s a simple bit of kit, but she is temperamental! Twice daily feeding, emptying, riddling. Oh and she needs just the right amount of air or she runs too hot or too cold! But in terms of technology, she’s about the most simple cooker there is aside from a fire pit! Now I do like a fire pit!

I’m not anal about my food. Eew – that was the wrong phrase to use! But about 8 years ago I read “The Daniel Plan”. It’s co written by someone I know better now as a brain scan expert on YouTube: Dr Amen. All I remember from it, in all honesty, was a general rule of thumb. It’s not a rule I live by, although I don’t buy a lot of packet or fast food. But if I fancy a quick meal it stops me from buying junk! I fact, the last time I bought a “Tesco Finest Lamb Moussaka” it tasted like school cottage pie! The last (smallest %) ingredient was the lamb. Wasn’t even lamb. It was “lamb derivatives” whatever that is!

For the last 12 months I’ve hardly eaten any shop made bread type stuff at all. When I have a sandwich what I really want is the meat! So I’ve been eating sourdough pancakes instead. Fresh every time! 3 ingredients: flour, water, egg! (And if you’re after high protein, sourdough likes high protein flour!)

This is all I need. And only every 2-3 days (cold in here!) I pour most from the small jar into the big jar. Big jar back in fridge (unless I’m making pancakes!) Leave about 40g starter in the small jar. (I use the spare coffee jar to zero the scale.)

Add equal weight of flour and water. (So 40g of each.) If I want to cook or I left it a bit long I increase the flour and water. So maybe 40g starter, 50 g water and flour.

Simple living, simple cooking!

I less than £1 a month on a bag of flour. I’d probably spend £1+ a week on shop bought bread and waste most of it! As a bonus I know exactly what I’m eating!

Apparently (DYOR) because the flour is fermented in the sourdough starter, the nutrients are more readily available to your body. Whoop for that high protein flour! I also read that sourdough contains a bacteria that is only otherwise found in colostrum. That’s the mother’s first milk. The one that provides newborn with the growth and bug fighting nutrients it needs to survive! (Yes I’m a geek – and I reared sheep as a teenager! Orphan lambs always die without colostrum. Suddenly, weeks or months later!)

I’ll be completely honest. I experimented with my sourdough since summer and only just ventured beyond pancakes and dumplings! (See below!)

Feeling festive I guess made me more adventurous. The 2 ingredient sourdough crackers and small batch sourdough loaf came from here. Not the cinamon rolls, but her recipe looks easier, quicker and nicer than the one I used! If I’m hoenst, I’ve linked her because I don’t want to lose the site!

I’m bragging now, but I’ve been trying to grow my own food since the Long Isolation! This year I’ve managed to neglect carrots, garlic, potatoes and tomatoes.

Today (21st December, time of writing) I harvested the last of my tomatoes. Over 20 from one tomato that I planted! Thanks Insta Doom Scrolling! I still have one tiny green pepper hanging on! It might be ready for harvesting by summer 2025!

Final brag! Inset photo is the stew I made with my veg, topped with a sourdough suet crust. Truth – it was dumplings but they were massive and steamed themselves together! Either way it was lush!

I wanna be real. It’s not an easy life, living in the middle of nowhere, for all it’s perks! And it’s time consuming, cooking from scratch. Not to mention the fact that Aga cooking wasn’t designed for my ADHD time loss! I’m not pretending to be a homestead-housewife-goddess!

Eating “clean” isn’t massively cheap when you crave a high protein diet. I say clean because I can’t be doing with all the “Ultra High Processed Food” rules. Roughly 5 ingredients, or raw ingredients suits my cooking style and lifestyle.

As a single person with a neurospicy brain I have to batch cook. If I don’t then I don’t eat or I waste food. Salad soup and ultra blue cheese is often lurking in my fridge. Out of site, out of mind!

But batch cooking is a pro overall. I have ready meals frozen in me size portions (thank you silicone bun case). And I know exactly what’s in it. It’s the only way to cook if you’re consuming large amounts of meat!

And cooking from scratch is strangely satisfying, when it goes right. Even more so when it’s ingredient’s you’ve grown from long forgotten potatoes, or otherwise a single other food item!