How to combat empty supermarket shelves
Forget the whinge about empty shelves and panic buying, let’s talk about what to do in these crazy times.
What we need now is an enlightened society that:
1. Does not panic buy and probably end up throwing away unused food
2. Knows how to make simple but delicious food from limited, often cheaper, ingredients
3. Grows food at home, or locally, to use in healthy meals as well as to trade with local people
4. Encourages local food production by buying local food
To get to this ‘perfect enlightened food society’ here are BigBarn’s top tips:
1. Cut down on meat and completely reject factory farmed meat (Previous blog about this here)
Your Local Food Map, with Crop for the shop Carrot flag
3. Grow food and home or join your local allotment or Community Growing scheme
4. Once you have some home grown food join our Crop for the Shop scheme and trade your produce with friends, your local farm shop or perhaps pub for payment in beer or wine.
5. Count how many of the processed foods you buy can be made at home using better ingredients: salad dressing, humus, chutney, jam, pies, pate
6. Bake your own bread using quality flour. Learn from the hundreds of videos on the internet, make better, healthier bread and save money. 1 loaf should take less than 15 minutes once you have a system.
7. Use the BigBarn Local food map to find and buy from your local producers and trade with those flagged with a Crop for the Shop Carrot
8. Watch out for our Cook/share initiative where you can run a cookery demo for local people or join one.
9. Ask your local school to get food Growing, cooking and nutrition on the Curriculum. More here
10. Ask your local farm shop to run seasonal Food Celebrations like Asparagus day, Open Farm Sunday or Apple day
We wish you a very happy and foodie 2021