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Self-Sufficiency in Style 

the dustbin challenge - the answer

Let's face it, in The Dustbin Challenge, I implied that you were a bit of a pig.

Aided by the unscrupulous efforts of the mega-global  food companies you were poisoning yourself and the world.

It is time for a story.

Like all the best stories, it is true enough and it happened to me, or even more pertinently to Mrs P.

Who, like all the girls, can show an unexpected side to her nature.

Like all good stories it has its dark side, an unexpected twist and a happy ending

Quite a few years had passed, three children had arrived, she was as slim, glamorous and the food as palatable as ever.

We lived a very full life, with me busy at work and she, most commonly, at home, although she had started to very occasionally help me in the office.

To my surprise, we got on alright at work and many of the staff were quite happy to tell her things, that they did not want to reach my ears.

Life was good.

Then disaster struck. She found a lump.

"My wife was a very pretty girl when I married her," and as all husbands will know, that is a very provocative statement.

Just in case, she should come across this site, and utter the quite inevitable, "WAS!"

"What do you mean 'WAS!"

I hasten to construct my alibi...and immediately add that I still find her absolutely devastating...

Phew!

It is hard now to remember what the 1970s were like.

So many things were never talked about; so much hidden.

We were on holiday on Kintyre when she found it. It was the year of the famous song.

Unusual in a woman of 34 and something that was never spoken about in public then.

It was misdiagnosed as harmless, then the National Health Service went on strike, so panic arrangements were made to get her to Holland, eventually a private operation was arranged locally.

Debilitating radio-therapy followed.

My ears were burnt.

"I'm not having people thinking I'm having an abortion! I've done nothing to be ashamed of!"

After the operation, I got her away to Tenerife where to the amusement of the entire hotel, I taught her to swim.

It was her insistence that swimming was "obviously scientifically impossible" that entertained the other guests.

Some of the gentlemen might well have been entranced by a swimsuit that had taken a trip to London to acquire.

She was as good as her word about being open about her illness. Looking as trim and elegant as ever, she was back in the office the next week.

On the side, she was pounding the hospital to pieces insisting on proper facilities and support for fellow sufferers. She got her way.

She was visiting the many older women who were often in great distress, very carefully dressing to her very best and holding back the information that she too had suffered a similar operation, before eventually owning up late in the chat.

She did some modelling.

She interviewed the local press, it should have been the other way round, but she was a gal on a mission.

A full page spread with photos followed, to my misgivings.

What do we tell people?

During this period, female relatives, two of my secretaries and several friends died of the same disease.

We seemed surrounded.

Anxious phone calls  from worried women. 

Even more anxious phone calls came to me from worried husbands, many were friends and acquaintances, "My wife has found a lump, she is going crackers. What shall I do?"

I would often reply, "Don't ask me, I'm no expert."

Even those whose wives had been diagnosed and had surgery were unconvinced.

"Well you must know something. Look at your wife. Mine won't leave the house."

"That's enough!"

"You have done your bit to re-educate the world," I insisted, "You have enough to do with yourself, me and three children to look after. It is time for someone else to take over."

To my surprise, she agreed readily enough to make a break and leave an unpleasant experience behind her.

What they could not see 

was the toll helping others was taking on her,

and me.

I was concerned to encourage a new interest.

"Why don't you so some cooking?"

She did. With the aid of a new Kenwood, the house was filled with the smell of baking.

Although it was before the time of bread makers, she baked fresh bread every day. I got some wheat from somewhere and we ground this to make her own flour.

Very little came into the house in packets or tins. She went back to basics, buying the ingredients, filling the shiny new storage jars with the fruits of the soil and working up from there.

The next part of this tale was quite unexpected.

I can still remember it well.

The Autumn, October, we drove from Suffolk down to Sussex - Forest Row to be exact. On the Weald, with all the beauty of the English fall.

I was concerned that my hard-working wife should have a real holiday too.

In the car, when the kids were out of the way, I laid down the law.

"I want you to have a real holiday - no cooking. We will stop at a supermarket, get shop bread, tinned soup, ready meals. We are going to do this the easy way. The kids will love getting some things they don't normally get at home."

We stayed in a lovely old farm cottage, all to ourselves, with wildly sloping floors.

We took long walks through the sandy woods, just being touched by the first chill of the year and came home in the shortening days to a real log fire, something of a change to our efficient gas fired central heating.

We took a holiday.

As we all know, 

hide something, even from ourselves, and the kids will uncover it with the most refreshing honesty.

The emperor's clothes!

"This food tastes disgusting Mum! What have you done to it?"

A cry that was repeated all week. Whatever she produced, surreptitiously  from packets and tins, produced the same justified comments.

When we were on the way home;

"I'm glad that's over. Can we have proper food now?"

There was no arguing with them. They were right.

It is called "value added."

You pay more for cheap  ingredients to be mixed to a budget and wrecked in search of long shelf-life. 

The ease of packing, eye appeal, end-user convenience, quick cooking, cost or some other form of market research dominated recipe prevails.

...over common-sense and good taste.

You can go back and look over The Dustbin Challenge or, if I have your attention, we can take More from the Dustbin.

...and that is what you brought from your dustbin... VALUE ADDED.

...and we don't allow value added at

- the historically named Hangman's Cottage, just to the south of Misery Corner.