Zambolis apartments

Zambolis apartments
For your holidays in Chania

Sunday 28 July 2013

The good life (Η καλή ζωή)

The BBC4 Food Programme on Frugal Food is to be aired today (12.32 GMT, 14.32 Greek time), for which I was recently interviewed. I'm not quite sure how it will use the ideas that came up in the discussion, as I notice that the web page does not link to my blog, only to the other (UK) bloggers who were also interviewed for the same programme (see comment). We shall find out soon enough...

If I were to pick one photograph from my vast collection (due to my blogging) that summarises the economic crisis, in food terms and on a personal basis, it would be this one:
The wood-fired heater would never have come into our home if the Greek recession had not turned into an economic crisis. As soon as we installed it in December 2011, we stopped pushing a button to heat the house, and got used to hoarding wood and fire starter material, carrying logs up one floor, clearing the ashes from the previous evening, sweeping away the remains, building a pyramid out of branches, twigs and paper, and having everyone sitting in the same room to keep ourselves warm until it was bedtime. Eventually, as the main cook in the house, I got acquainted with the flames from the wood fire, and I knew when the embers had cooled down just enough so that I could cook a meal in the oven compartment of the heater, and I quickly learnt to synchronise my food preparation with that moment. We rarely use liquid heating fuel now, like 85% of the population in Crete (being one of the warmest regions in Greece) who have switched to another form of heating in the winter.

During the very heavy cold winter of 2011-2012, when the effects of the economic crisis and the consequences of the enforced higher taxation of Greek citizens drove families to an unprecedented form of deprivation ever seen in modern times due to a lack of cash-flow, I began a Cheap'n'Greek'n'Frugal  series of posts that featured every Friday on my blog, to highlight how I try to overcome the problem of keeping my family well fed on high quality food that costs as little as possible. 
Thoroughly sickened by the derisive treatment that Greece and the Greek people were being given by the mass media abroad, who understood very little of what was going in Greece at the time, despite Greece being in the news - and actually, the centre of it - on a daily basis, I began a 'beat the crisis' frugal food' album from June 2011 in my facebook page, featuring home-made meals that cost me very little to make, whose quality could not compare with the daily meals of people living in the so-called richer Northern European countries, as a way to remind myself that Greece was being purposely misrepresented on a global scale.

The series of Cheap'n'Greek'n'Frugal posts began in January 2012 and ended in June 2012. This should not be viewed as a complete coincidence - our summer garden then started to provide us with so much food after that, that my (still cheap 'n' Greek 'n' frugal) food lost its economical appearance. But that is the advantage of living in a rural environment. Frugal living does not mean you live in a hovel like a hermit - it means you search for ways to curb your costs, prioritise your needs, and stretch the resources available to you. Urban frugal living involves the same principles, but they come in a different form. The media is biased by selectively covering and emphasizing the negative welfare effects of high food prices on urban consumers, because their rural counterparts supposedly 'have' food:
"The groups who usually respond politically with strikes, protests or riots to the negative income effects of food price changes are urban consumers, not rural farmers; it is easier to mobilize the urban populations who are already concentrated in the cities." (Yuksel, H. Mass Media and Food Crisis, MAICh research currently being studied)
The photo was taken in a highly urban area of Hania in mid-March 2013. It shows what looks like a messy garden with a lemon tree in the middle. Look more closely: behind the garden is a chicken coop - the chickens are barely visible, but one is sitting on top of a rabbit pen. The area where the animals are kept will be covered by a shady leafy grapevine by the middls of summer (that's what the dry branches are: a vine about to start growing leaves). Next to the garden on the right are the remains of a wood-chopping session. The house looks unkempt and rather poorly; I believe economic migrants are living here, and not the Greek owner. But that makes no difference to what the photo depicts: it illustrates the frugal urban life in times of adversity.
But no one is self-sufficient in the world we live in. Rural consumers buy food too, while their income is generally lower than urban consumers. The media (which is generally biased to start with) prefer to cover more negative than positive news because the 'bad news hypothesis' is more catchy.

Vegan eggplant pie with home-made filo (approximate cost: 1.50 euro)
I can create virtually any meal I want at very low cost, using the resources around me.
Taiwanese dumplings with home-made filo (approximate cost: 1 euro for 12 pieces; recipe forthcoming)
It sounds really easy to be frugal, when you have your own garden, doesn't it? You grow this and that, so you cook and eat it. But few people realise how small the variety range is when you eat what you grow. In summer, for example, we grow tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, zucchini, corn, beans and vlita greens (which is English are called amaranth). So those are our vegetables throughout summer - we eat from that range for approximately a quarter of the year. Since I rarely buy vegetables from the stores, that means that I am prepareing meals from a very limited range of items. To make this diet palatable, that means that I must cleverly cook these vegetables in many different ways.

That's what being frugal is all about: using the resources around you as wisely as possible. For this reason, you rarely see recipes on my blog that involved expensive unusual fruit or vegetables - it's not really a frgual way to cook. But my recipes still bring out a wide variety of food types - I just invent different ways to use the same ingredients, so that the recipes rarely resemble each other, even though they are oftne made of the same things.
Ways with zucchini: you will find them in all the above dishes - with boiled greens, as the main ingreident in burger patties, as a dip and as cupcakes. Below is the king of Cretan zucchini dishes - boureki (with potato and cheese).
boureki
Below I list some of my articles about frugal food (and by extension, frugal living) that readers may find useful, to understand my own ideas about frugal food:
  • Frugal living - take a peek inside my fridge to see what I stock
  • Price comparisons of imported and local food in Hania
  • Imam baldi - a dish I make in summer using 99% home-grown produce
  • Tomato sauce - this is prepared to last me throughout the year until the next tomato season
  • Yiros - the Greek version of a Happy Meal
  • Lentil stew - a very Greek, very frugal and very much loved meal throughout Greece
  • Some photos taken at a private subsistence farm whose owners spend little money on food, other than to buy fresh fish, bread, staples like beans, rice and pasta, sugar, salt and coffee
If I were to forecast the economic situation, I would say that for most Greeks, 2013 was not much different from 2012, and 2014 looks set to continue in the same way. I will still continue to act like an ant, hoarding for the winter. But I can still sing like a cicada, even if it means waiting to do this in the winter; at least I do not have to compete with them. Even if the situation suddenly changed and things began to look brighter, I don't think my own lifestyle will change: once you start being frugal, it's difficult to shake it off. 

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13 comments:

  1. rather than write a new blog post by way of explanation, i have decided to comment on this post instead:

    i was informed by the BBC that they would be speaking to three UK frugal food bloggers, and myself, as an exception, given that i live in a country facing severe austerity
    but i notice that my blog is not linked up to the BBC web page, whereas the other bloggers' sites are

    my recent email to the BBC, after seeing the Frugal Food title of this Sunday's show:
    hello XXX
    sorry to bother you
    is this the programme that i have been interviewed for?
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b037gnxk
    (just checking, so that i can spread the word)
    cheers, maria

    their reply:
    Hi Maria, Yes that’s the one!
    I can send you an mp3 of the programme after the broadcast - just remind me next week!
    Many thanks,
    XXX

    i also sent an email to one of the other bloggers as a way of introducing myself in order to network, but i never got a reply

    but now, i notice that the title of the program has changed: from Frugal Food, it has become Skint Foodies, and the description given is:
    "Sheila Dillon meets the cooks specialising in great food on small budgets, part of a world of food blogging influenced by life of benefits, periods of homelessness and shopping budgets that can be as little as ten pounds a week."
    this implies that the other food bloggers are regarded as "very poor" - i could never be described in this way (i am very frugal, not very poor), so i do not think that the ideas that arose from my own interview will be included - the focus of the programme seems to have changed from 'frugal food' to 'urban poor UK', a category which of course does not describe me, who is something like 'rural comfortable GR'

    being misled (something i am very conscious of as a blogger) or not receiving a reply to an email are both signs of the times we live in, but neither should be completely surprising when dealing with bigger, more powerful bodies, something i mention in today's blog post, which was written before - but published after - i realised that my blog is not linked to the program that i was interviewed for; of course, the programme has not aired yet, but somehow it has already lost its flavour for me

    not being the kind of person who promotes my blog among colleagues, friends and relatives, i feel i have misled people; next time (if there is one, of course, as these are really a chance in a lifetime to get more noticed on a global scale, and i think i've had mine), i'll simply remember to be more wary

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  2. It's BBC Radio 4, not BBC4. BBC4 is the television channel. Will have a listen to it later.

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    1. thanks for the clarification - a colleague asked me if i was interviewed for the radio or tv; when she heard it was for the radio, she said, 'so you didn tneed to go to the hairdressers' - so glad i was spared fo the expense!

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  3. Hi again,

    I used to work for Radio 4, and in the department that made this programme, and you are right to be wary. Just because you were interviewed doesn't mean the interview will be aired. Did they pay you? You should have received a contributor fee. I follow the Skint Foodie blog, I discovered him as he is local to my area. Perhaps the producer found it easier to nick his blog name.

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    1. paid?! i've never received any money for blogging, and i certainly didn't receive anything this time! thanks rachel for cheering me up

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  4. The 'rules' at the BBC are usually that if someone is publicizing something, like an author their book, then no fee is payable. If someone is speaking as an 'expert' on a topic then they should be paid. If you were contacted by them, then you should be paid. No doubt there will be some producers/researchers/reporters who will think that if someone is given any publicity for their blog or whatever then they shouldn't be paid. But yours isn't run as a commercial enterprise, so you should be paid. I would contact them again and ask for a contributor's fee.

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    1. what i resent most is being misinformed - i also did not record the interview for the fruitful ideas that came out of the discussion, hence i have no record of it - i am good at remembering a lot of details about many things, so i have actually included these in my blog since the days after the interview, but i did believe that i would have some kind of record of some of the things i mentioned, but now, i dont think that will be the case

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    2. I hope you contact the producer and ask a) why you weren't informed that your would not be used, it would have been the correct thing to do and b) where is your interview fee.

      I remember having to phone many people to say that there interview wasn't going to be used. They were all disappointed, but when you are given a reason, time constraints, change in direction etc. everyone understood.

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    3. gosh, that is a challenge i havent taken up yet - taking on a giant!

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    4. I hope that you contact the producer and ask a) why you weren't used and b) when to expect your interview/contributor fee.

      I spent lots of time on the phone ringing people we had interviewed to tell them that their contribution wasn't going to be included; they were all disappointed but when given an explanation such as time constraints, change of direction etc. they all understood. Sometimes interviews are held over and run at another time.

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  5. For me that's the whole point of the art of cooking. Transforming humble ingredients like vegetables into delicious dishes. If I have expensive meat protein I just grill it and enjoy it as it is.

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  6. Sorry for that Maria! I just listened to the program waiting and waiting for you and pretty soon realized that there was not enough time in 26 minutes for 4 speakers instead of the 3 they mentioned at the beginning. It was not your fault.
    Maybe they will use your thoughts in a later show?

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    1. hmm, maybe, when they do a show on frugal food by happy content people (!) - i was speaking with a friend of mine on this issue and she said: "You were on a different tangent, Maria, you never sound Dickensian - you sound content with your lot, and that's just not sensational." (!!) i think i've had my 15 minutes of fame!!!

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