Our Frugal Summer In Charente

Preface - What is this book about?

Our Frugal Summer in Charente: An Expat’s Kitchen Garden Journal.

Preface - What is this book about?

This book details our journey through the summer of 2013 in the Charente, South West France. After relocating from Australia to France in September 2012, we soon found ourselves enduring desperate times. We realised that the only way we could continue our new life in France was if we lived in a frugal, more conservative manner. Our plan was to save money by any means possible, to enable us to invest any money we could earn into renovating the house. There were prolonged periods when Nigel was unable to find regular work and we were living in a house that needed upgrading into some degree of habitability. Our savings or renovation fund was evaporating fast into the proverbial money pit, which is an expat term for a renovation project. On a practical level my contribution to our situation was by utilising every inch of our garden, in true ‘Good Life’ style. I would achieve this by keeping some chickens, ducks and growing enough vegetables to feed ourselves and the animals. The learning curve to ensure that we made the most of everything we produced in our garden was huge. We also utilised foraged foods from the hedgerows for making teas, jams and nutty delights. I can say with all honesty, without meaning to sound as if I am bragging that we have had some delicious food and drink as a result of our efforts and resourcefulness.

The idea for this book came from reviewing some of the recipes in my journal that I adapted over this thrifty period living in our new French home. We were surviving on a minimal budget, trying to feed ourselves from our vegetable garden, five chickens and two ducks. A cookbook written in wartime inspired some of my frugal adaptations of family friendly recipes. The ‘Come into the garden cookbook’ by Constance Spry gives the feeling of extravagant recipes while adhering to and speaking of, wartime rations and availability. Some of the content for this book comes from my journals, just like my two travel memoirs Glass Half Full: Our Australian Adventure and Two dogs and suitcase: Clueless in Charente. Therefore, it is probably no surprise that this has turned into the story of my kitchen garden and other animals rather than a recipe book. The feedback received while preparing this book made me realise that some of the recipes I added had funny anecdotes and stories behind them and so I have shared some of those with you too.

Our ‘potager’ week one –

Grass cut ready to start our Good Life project

The French tradition of using produce from their ‘potager’, or kitchen garden, is renowned for enabling French families to create meals that are healthy, cost effective and simple. They select the plants they grow with skill and precision based on years of knowledge passed down through the generations. The result is a variety of fruits and vegetables that can provide year round nutritious meals for their families. In my last book I shared with you recipes for; wild boar marinade, green tomato chutney, Chirac cheesy scones, pizza dough, radish relish and courgette cake. The interest in the recipes and our garden activities led me to change the layout of this book. Therefore, I decided to arrange this book in a month by month format to incorporate some of the practicalities of our kitchen garden setup. As promised in my last book I have included the recipes for chestnut loaf, pumpkin curry, pumpkin pie and pumpkin dumplings together with luxury fish pie and fig biscuits. I have also added others that  I hope you will enjoy.

I have no formal catering expertise, other than that learned in my school and adult life, and this is purely my guide. It details how we grew, foraged and cooked with home-grown fresh fruits and vegetables over the spring and summer of 2013. It describes how in our small ‘potager’ we produced enough food to survive in France, while still eating a healthy nutritious diet.

I learned new skills in bread making, cooking and preserving, which in turn reduced our expenditure in the supermarket. It also had an environmental impact as we produced less packaging waste for the fortnightly recycle truck. I think at one point they thought we had moved away! The art of enjoying the simple things in life like family, friends, and a home-grown and home-cooked meal is very rewarding.

Therefore, I hope that if you bought this book for the recipes, that you enjoy making them. If you are curious about how an English woman in France made a very small food budget go a long way, then I hope you find it informative and at times amusing. If you just like reading about anything and, everything to do with France then enjoy the ride. As a longstanding fan of the 1970’s television show ‘The Good Life’ we have often tried to create our version of the good life in small ways in various locations. However, it was not until we moved to live in rural outback Queensland, Australia that I had my first large scale attempt. Here in France this is my second full blown attempt at a more organic, self-sufficient lifestyle. We have eaten organic produce, whenever possible, since our vegetarian and vegan days in Australia. Once you experience organically produced crops the differentiation in flavour is hard to ignore, especially when you return to eating mass produced vegetables in particular. Therefore to be able to grow our own near organic produce was an exciting challenge.

Nigel and I attempted a degree of self-sufficiency armed with a vegetable patch reclaimed from a garden that resembled a meadow and measured just 50 feet in length. There was also an area of the garden, unsuitable for vegetables because the ground housed the roots of the trees that lined the brook that runs along the perimeter. Another patch had the remains of an outhouse that had long since crumbled to the ground. This area we converted into a duck and chicken enclosure. We started with a small chest freezer and about sixty jars collected from friends and neighbours. Our aim was to ensure that our freezer would be full of produce for winter. We also wanted there to be plenty of jams, pickles, preserves together with cold store vegetables such as onions, garlic, potatoes and pumpkins in the barn. ‘Enough to feed a small army’ as Nigel would say.

The word ‘frugal’ became our buzzword over this period of our lives. We applied it not only to the purchase or production of the ingredients, but also to the use of them to maintain a healthy diet. We set out to ensure that we made the most of everything we bought, grew or raised. The art of learning to use every edible part of our garden produce has been a delicious experiment as well as an education. The discovery that we could make a drastic reduction in our food bill without compromising on variety, taste or nutrition was like learning a new language. A language that you always admired, but never had the confidence to try. As a novice cook that was my take on how I would approach the task in hand.

I hope to share some of the lessons we learned, the mistakes we made and some of the tips that we picked up from experimenting and sharing the knowledge acquired from my new friends and neighbours. As I look back on the food, both produced and cooked, that we enjoyed over the summer of 2013 I believe that the success of achieving a frugal or thrifty use of food comes down to mindfulness. We live in a throwaway society relying, for the most part, on convenience in some form. Waste is increasing because of over buying, poor storage, short shelf life and lack of education. In relation to food, it doesn’t need to be that way. In my teenage years in our home economics class we learned not only about food and cooking methods but how to buy while checking for ripeness and quality, how to store and preserve. We are more capable of utilizing food to its maximum than we sometimes believe or acknowledge. However, time plays a big part in that and as, we can all perceive ourselves as time poor at certain times, organisation is the key to success in reducing your food bill while enjoying some tasty food. The ability to use food in its totality, recycling leftovers and being creative enables you to make the most of your food budget. It doesn’t have to be a chore; it is a craft. As with any craft it takes time and practice to perfect it, but once learned you can apply it to many areas and create wonderful things.

As with most things in life today we feel the need to label things. The downside of labelling is that whatever label you apply someone will object or question it. To avoid that, I suggest that we do not call this a cookbook. By definition, a cookbook is “a kitchen reference publication that typically contains a collection of recipes” and as I am not a cook that doesn’t seem an appropriate label or reference point. I prefer to call it an expat journey into gardening and cooking on a budget in rural South West France. It is our story of experimenting, learning and enjoying one long hot summer in our French cottage garden.

Enter the garden, explore, enjoy and eat well.