A posher potage!

Since my last post seems to have aroused a certain enthusiasm for old fashioned, simple food, here's some more!

Ingredients: one onion, 2 chicken breaststroke (cubed), 2 parsnips, one carrot,and a handful each of green lentils and barley. Mix them all together with a tin of chopped tomatoes, plus another tin full of water and a stock cube in a slow cooker/crockpot or a casserole in the oven and cook slowly for at least 8 hours.  This batch also included the remains of some creamed vegetable soup (puree of carrot, parsnip & sweet potato with seasoning and a dollop of creme fraiche)

Serve in a bowl with crusty home made bread and butter,  and maybe some cheese for a contrast of flavours. This made enough for our dinner tonight,and 3 more bowls worth to freeze and take down to have as lunch with Aunt Barbara. 5 meals for less than £5.

Healthy eating, old style

Just had one if my favourite meals for lunch - fruity porridge and a mug of green tea. Anyone who's ever actually read the Bible will know the word "potage", which was what the cast majority of human kind lived on for millenia - a kind of cross between porridge and veggie soup/stew. We eat quite alot of it, actually,  it's cheap, satisfying and good for you! Oats are great for both your digestion and your blood - lots of soluble fibre. If you don't want to be a vegetarian, you can chuck a small quantity of meat of your choice in, or you can have a bowl of it with home made bread and some cheese or cold meat - but you need to cook it from scratch!

Too often what you buy even part prepared is stuffed with the products of companies like Monsanto - preservatives,colours, emulsifiers, flavours and fats that have been so processed that the body cannot do anything useful with them, so just deposits them as potential energy stores for future use - that it cannot then find a way to use.

I have been teaching my extremely undomesticated husband to make bread. It is actually so easy, given modern strong wheat flours and modern 'fast action' yeast, that his very first attempt was really good! Vastly more enjoyable (and good for us) than the papery stuff that you buy in most supermarkets, and quite as good as some I've paid a packet for from some artisan bakery.

Learn to cook the old way.  You'll save a bundle and get healthier!