Cheap and Simple Cleaning

If you were to do what manufacturers would have you believe, you would be buying a different cleaning product for every different task.  A quick search on a DIY superstore’s website brought up 180 different cleaning products.  I mean, how many different types of dirt do we have?

I say spend your money on something that gives you pleasure and don’t waste it on stuff you don’t need, particularly stuff that contains dubious chemicals that affect your health and end up in the environment for ever.

Apart from washing up liquid and laundry soap, 99% of my cleaning is done with just three products:

Vinegar

Pierre d’argent cleaner

Soda crystals

White vinegar – magic stuff.  Buy the cheap distilled white or pickling vinegar from the supermarket.  In France it costs me less than 1 euro a litre.  It’s one of the most versatile and economical products you can buy.

For example:

Add a cupful to pail of water for mopping the floors

It’s great for descaling - around taps, shower heads, etc.  Soak a piece of kitchen paper in vinegar and wrap it around the scale and leave overnight.  Or leave it in the kettle overnight to descale it.  Pour into the toilet and leave overnight to get rid of scale.

Use it diluted in water to wash mirrors and glass

See my previous post for a quick way to clean your microwave and disinfect your sponge at the same time.

It’s an excellent disinfectant for cleaning toilets.

Take a look at the multitude of uses listed on Vinegar Tips.  I learned a few more myself.

The next product I use a lot of for all those cleaning jobs that vinegar doesn’t cover, is Pierre d’argent.  This is a clay and soap-based product with a lovely lemony scent.  It’s a natural and biodegradable cleaner and is extremely effective.  Here in France I buy it from DIY shops, garden centres and healthfood stores, but after a quick search on the Net I found several places in the UK where you can buy it such as Lemonburst and The Natural Store .  I’d really recommend it, so look out for it in your local shops – ask your supermarket, your local DIY shop or the healthfood store.  It may seem expensive at £4.95 a tub but it will last you for months – or probably years if you’re a grubby student!

I use it for everything you would use a scouring cream for.  Cleaning sinks, bathroom porcelain or plastic, silverware, tiles and grouting, pvc furniture, silver, copper...  It even takes off the soot from our wood burning stove door.  And it’s safe for your skin.

If you can’t find Pierre d’argent near you, and don’t like buying online, I saw in Vinegar Tips that you can make a scouring cream yourself using vinegar and bicarbonate of soda.  That’s another useful product, by the way.  And you have already bought it for my soda bread recipe, haven’t you?

Another versatile and economical product is soda crystals (not to be confused with caustic soda!).  An excellent water softener and degreaser.   I mainly use it for flooring – tiles and sticky lino (hello, student flats).  But not on wood floors.  It’s also excellent for washing down paintwork, either for a quick clean or in preparation for repainting.  As I use biodegradable laundry products, I also put in a bit of soda crystals in the machine now and then to soften the water and whiten whites.

It’s also a good product for clearing a blocked toilet or drains.  Take a look at The Green Store Online for many more uses. 

These three products will probably set you back all of, say £7.  And you can clean everything with them.  Kind on your purse, kind on you, kind on the environment.  Win, win, win. Nice.

Easy Soda Bread Recipe

This is my quick way of making bread.  It is based on the Irish soda bread, and doesn’t contain yeast, so no waiting for it to rise, nor kneading.

It’ll take you 5-10 minutes to prepare the mixture, and another 45 to cook it.

Heat your oven to 230°C, and make sure it reaches that temperature before you put the dough in the oven.

I tend not to measure out anything – it’s much more fun - so my weights are approximate.  I did weigh how much flour I used the other day, and it was around 450g, but, woops, I forgot to weigh the milk. Basically you add enough milk to your dry ingredients until you have the right consistency.  It depends on the size of your cake tin too.

You will need:

Around 450g flour – this can be any flour, or combination of flours you like.  At the moment I’m using a mix of rye, millet, spelt and brown rice flours.  Experiment, play, until you find something you like.

Good pinch of salt

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

A good handful of seeds and nuts – I use sunflower, pumpkin and poppy seeds.

Some milk – Irish soda bread uses buttermilk but I can’t buy that in France so I use soya milk, or ordinary milk.

Get a large bowl, put in your flour(s).  Add the salt, bicarb and nuts and mix it all up.  Then pour in your milk and mix until you have a nice sloppy mixture.  Sometimes I don’t have enough milk so I just add water to top up and I’ve never noticed the difference.  Once it’s well mixed, stop stirring.  No need to over mix it.

Pour your nice sloppy, slightly sticky mix into a cake tin/mould and put it in the hot oven (230°C remember).  After 15 minutes, turn the oven down to 180°C and leave it another half an hour.

It’s good to eat straight from the oven, but also keeps well for a few days, which is great news if you are cooking for one.  Wrap it up or put it in a bread bin though.

Once you’ve sorted the basic recipe, have fun playing with it and try different variations.  For example, you could use chestnut flour, chickpea flour, even lentil flour.

You could also make a sweet version by adding some dried fruit and spices like cinnamon or nutmeg.

Or a savoury one with bacon bits, olives, chopped sun-dried tomatoes, herbes de Provence, chopped chorizo....

I'd love to know how you get on and do share your favourite combinations via the Comments section below.

Yay for Right-Brainers!

Dear Daughter.  Do you remember that left-brain right-brain test we did on-line a while ago?  And how hard it was for you to fit in to the left-brain school system? Well, guess what, turns out that right-brainers are going to rule the future!

Seriously, I’m not saying that because I’m an artist too, it’s because I’ve just finished reading this amazing book by Daniel Pink called A Whole New Mind which confirms so much of what I have been ranting about.  Here’s the summary of the book from his website.

“Lawyers. Accountants. Computer programmers. That’s what our parents encouraged us to become when we grew up. But Mom and Dad were wrong. The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind. The era of “left brain” dominance, and the Information Age that it engendered, are giving way to a new world in which “right brain” qualities - inventiveness, empathy, meaning - predominate. That’s the argument at the center of this provocative and original book, which uses the two sides of our brains as a metaphor for understanding the contours of our times.

In this insightful and entertaining book, which has been translated into 20 languages, Daniel H. Pink offers a fresh look at what it takes to excel. A Whole New Mind reveals the six essential aptitudes on which professional success and personal fulfillment now depend, and includes a series of hands-on exercises culled from experts around the world to help readers sharpen the necessary abilities. This book will change not only how we see the world but how we experience it as well.”

Thank you, thank you, Mr Pink (fab name!).

So, good news for you, my darling.  You’re in the right field, and you’ve got a head start! 

All is not lost for left-brainers, though.  There are plenty of things you can do to develop right-brain aptitudes.  Mr Pink's book gives plenty of ideas, and his website is full of interesting stuff.

My personal recommendation, even if you have no desire to draw, is to get a book called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards.  Excellent exercises for shutting up that control-freak left brain, and giving the right brain a turn for once.  Put it on your Christmas list.

Another must your Christmas list is also by Daniel Pink. It’s in manga format, and it's called Johnny Bunko. The last career guide you'll ever need.  Brilliant stuff.

Are you wondering why I used the image of a walnut for this post?  Well, have you ever noticed how the brain with its two hemispheres looks rather like a walnut?  That's right-brain thinking for you!  Besides, you try finding a copyright-free photo of a brain on the internet.

The fastest, easiest, bestest chocolate cake

So, we’ve done the store cupboard basics, covered kitchen hygiene.  The next fundamental is how to party.  You won’t need much help with that, except in the cake department.

This one is so easy and luxurious and great for any occasion.  It is not especially cheap, except when compared to a bottle of whiskey.

It also happens to be wheat and gluten-free.

You will need:

200g pack of dark chocolate (the higher the cocoa content, the better)

100g butter (I prefer salted butter)

150g sugar

200g ground almonds (that’s the expensive bit)

4 organic eggs*

Heat the oven to 170°C.

Melt the chocolate and butter in a small bowl and mix well (use can use the microwave, but go easy - do it in increments of 30 secs -  you don’t want to cook the chocolate).

Whisk the eggs in a large bowl, add the sugar and almonds and mix well.

Then add the melted chocolate/butter mixture and combine gently.

Pour in a round cake tin or mould and cook for 20 mins.

It shouldn’t rise, nor sink, but be nice and squidgy in the middle.  Mmm.

*Do you know how to check what type of egg you are buying? Every egg should have a code printed on it.  The first number, 0, 1, 2, or 3, indicates the conditions the method of production.

0 = organic (they have plenty of space, can run around and be happy chickens, are fed on organically grown grain)

1 = free range (they actually get to use their legs, but not organic feed)

2 = barn raised (running around in their own shit, artificial lighting to induce egg laying, heavily vaccinated and medicated, etc.)

3 = raised in a cage about the size of an A4 sheet of paper.  Can’t begin to describe the horror. Should be banned!

Kitchen Hygiene - boring but necessary

While this subject doesn’t make for an exciting blog post, it is one of those things you really need to know.  You may already know all this, but since nobody actually spelled it out to me and I had to find out for myself, I think it’s worth writing this one down.

If you get into the right habits at the beginning, then you don’t have to remember them later. And, believe me, if you get food poisoning you’ll think you are dying.

I’m just going to outline the principles.  If you want to know all the ins and outs of bacteria and pathogens, read your old school books, ask a chemistry student, or look them up on the web.

Before you do anything, wash your hands.

Clean your worktop before you start cooking.  You’re bound to have flat mates with disgusting dodgy habits and you might not want to be cleaning up after them every time you want to prepare a bite to eat.  Now I’m not a believer of anti-bacterial products and obsessive sterilization, so I suggest you keep your own chopping board in your cupboard and make sure you thoroughly clean it before you put it away.

Any utensil or chopping boards or recipients, ANYTHING, that has been in contact with raw meat, especially chicken should never be used on anything else without being thoroughly washed.  That means if you are chopping up pieces of chicken for your curry, don’t use the same knife and chopping board to prepare the rest of the ingredients without washing them first.  You could have a separate chopping board for meat, but it might make you lazy about washing it.  Dishwashers clean at a hot enough temperature to kill bacteria, but if you don’t have one, then very hot tap water and washing up liquid is good.  If your tap water isn't very hot, just pour on some boiling water from the kettle.  A general rule of thumb is to keep raw and cooked ingredients separate.

Dishcloths and sponges can get pretty manky, and why is that other people’s dirt seems much dirtier than your own?  When I want to disinfect mine, I put them in a microwaveable bowl with some water and vinegar, then pop it in the microwave for couple of minutes.  When you open the door, the cloth should be very hot (like the ones they give you at the Chinese restaurant).  Also, the inside walls of the microwave should be covered with steam.  This loosens the dirt, so it’s an excellent time to give it a quick wipe.

Tea towels.  If you can, leave your washing-up to air dry. It’s less work and less risk of transferring bacteria from a dirty tea towel to your clean stuff.  You could also buy a gorgeous and expensive tea towel and then you won’t want to see it dirty and stained!

Fridge – make sure the temperature stays below 5°C.

Usually raw food should be kept on the lower shelves and cooked food kept up above, to avoid drips from the raw stuff contaminating the cooked.  But you probably allocate shelves per flat mate, so just make sure everything is well covered (stops it drying out too).  Try and give it a clean now and then…..

Freezer – the temperature should be -18°C.

Never refreeze foods that have been thawed.

If you defrost raw meat in the microwave, cook it straight away.  Otherwise leave things to defrost in the fridge.

Sell by Dates.  The sell by dates you need to pay attention to are the products you keep in the fridge – dairy, ready meals, etc.  The other dates on tinned food, or dry goods like pasta or flour, are optimal dates, which means it’s a “best by” date.  You can go over these dates with no problem.  In fact, it’s a good way of getting these foods at a discounted rate.  Here’s a lovely rant by Clarissa Dickson Wright about sell by dates.

Here We Go - Store Cupboard Basics

painting by Elizabeth Destouches
Your accommodation is sorted.  You're in now.  First things first, you're hungry.

E (my daughter) wants to cook for herself, and my aim is not to just give her a pile of recipes, but to teach her how to cook.  So this is my list of store cupboard basics, things I always make sure I have, because I know I can make something interesting out of the most basic and cheap ingredients.

Spices and condiments:

• Olive oil for frying and salad dressings
• Salt and black pepper
• Balsamic vinegar
• Sweet chilli sauce
• Jars of minced garlic and ginger
• Cumin
• Stock cubes (MSG-free)
• Passatta (blended tomatoes)
• Soy sauce
• Thai fish sauce
• Mayonnaise
• Curry paste

And the other usual basics:

Brown sugar

Teabags

Milk

butter

Flour

Rolled oats for a quick and cheap breakfast

Plus some fruit, veggies and a bit of meat to get started on her first meals.

I'll cover how to spend less on cleaning products in another post.