Underground, Overground, Wombling Free, The Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we.
Making good use of the things that we find, Things that the everyday
folks leave behind.
Photo by Mags_cat
It has been a bad couple of weeks with trouble even preparing a meal a day. I have more burns & cuts on my hands which are a bugger to keep clean and many dropped items have been lost. But in comparison that is a small issue. I would like to begin a part on how we manage through loss of income and financial budgeting, as even now we are still hoping to find a home that we can bring a wheelchair inside, and even has a bathroom that allows regular bathing. Even a place that did not flood regularly, (sometimes with sewage), would be a plus. So the essential part of managing a recent significant disability is juggling finances. Key to that is unavoidable short, medium and long term planning. Which in turn needs to be broken down to what you need to do to get by week on week.
I remember when I was around 10 in a childhood girl guide brownies night the leader wanted to demonstrate emergency evacuation, and refugee survival needs. She asked the following of our group "If you could only take 5 things from your home with you when being evacuated what would they be?". The leader expected most the kids to focus on their toys, clothes and items of materialism. I was one of the very few more focused on survival. First I made sure I would take with me my pet cats, companions who had been with me since I was born. With baby photos cuddling them and living with them as deep friends; in no way would they ever be abandoned or considered less than members of the family. Then I thought of what I would need to feed them and myself, the basics, large bottled water, pull tab canned fish, pellets. As a kid I would not be as adverse to also eating the cat pellets in an emergency, although I would be able to fast and go without food just so cat food was more available for the kitties for as long into the future as possible. Humans & adults can understand rationing far more than children & many animals. I read Hatchet as a kid and also a lot about WWII so the concept was not alien.
However I was very naive and at that time did not consider other humans to be a danger needing protection from, something the leader left out completely in her story which is a large factor for anyone in that position. For when resources are limited it is more likely to drive humans to steal and attack others, often those in the same or worse position to themselves. Less able to fight back. In the second part of the exercise the leader singled me out. Took my scraps of paper which I had written my 5 things and said they had all been lost and destroyed. I was very uncaring about the food and water being lost, alternatives can be scrounged up somewhere but as a child could not bare losing my cat friends. I tried bargaining and arguing but the leader would not let me have them back.
We may feel tied to material goods, needs, certain items for base survival, but the grief from the loss of friends and family has a significant emotional loss that can never be replaced. If you were considering the base elements for survival, your family comes first and the necessities to keep the family alive and healthy. Food, water and medication. I do not handle grief well and as much as I like to think I can do without many material items, the cost of functional replacement can be significant. So the loss is annoying and replacement financially unachievable. Being robbed multiple times is a hard set back to come back from. Insurance, low debt, a good credit score for loans, secondhand and wombling inorganic items people throw away can be far more important once you lose everything a few times and need to build back up on just the functional level. More personal items may be lost forever though; like the memory of a loved one, I lost the token of their memory and felt I had lost some part of them as well. I wish I had those photos back or the items which would spark those memories I thought I had lost...
As with the above story I am going to start from the point of the necessities to live. Being disabled you often have to make hard choices on even those. Without enough money for food, water, electricity, a roof for over your head and a bathroom to use which of the above can you choose to ensure you survive to the next week? Which can you reduce down to the bare minimum to be able to keep things ticking along? Which do you have the most control and the most influence over?
As water and power may have a flat rate network charge in NZ you are limited on how much you can save without an increased outlay on materials for full service replacement (going off the grid and water capture with treatment & filtering). Using power or water even once a month you will still have to pay line and network charges in NZ for the availability to be there. Unfortunately public water fountains and night time heated public indoor spaces are unfashionable these days, far more investment goes into removing safe places and public services in favour of commercial budgets, so many have been ripped out or left unmaintained for decades. Public wifi or phone booths are unheard of in most areas in NZ. Even a physical bank branch may be going the way of the dodo due to expectations for everyone to have cellphones and large data plans. In one of the coldest cities, Dunedin, (although thankfully warmer than many northern hemisphere countries still), there is a well known tradition of couch burning, aka burning old broken furniture to keep warm when the water pipes have frozen and there are icicles inside. Often the burning will happen with a communal group party & bonfire so resources and warmth can be shared between households. Preparing wood for the next winter months ahead is vital, even when there are no nearby forests, and the business of dry wood collection is popular.
QV's measure of average dwelling values. Chart by CoreLogic with labels by Lynn Grieveson.
Housing is and will often always be the largest financial outlay and often the one you may have the least control over. The bare minimum might be a bus shelter but when you are disabled you often cannot access options like that (as standing from the ground or public seating usually requires nursing assistance & a hoist), even caravanning or tenting is out of reach without physical assistance & monetary outlay. Garage and couch surfing are closer to accessible options. In a booming real estate market where a state home built in the 50s for families to rent to own up to $5k, or one built and sold for $50k in the 80s now costs over 1 and a half million in mortgage debt, (an increase of over 30 times not mirrored in wage growth). So garage and couch surfing are quite heavily booked out. At least work sites have a toilet, soap & kitchenette. So let's begin with one option people generally have the most control over, need the most to survive and can more easily swing finances around. Food and cooking.
So much food grown is thrown out before it even makes it to a plate. Hundreds of millions of dollars of food a year in NZ alone. Before it even gets to the store shelves it is critically compared against an artificial ideal of plant beauty and those that do not make the grade do not progress, (something humans even do to other humans with the ideals being more and more unachievable with genetic diversity). At this point the ugly ones may make it to a secondary processor such as making stocks, or soups, made into animal feed or compost but often equally these batches will and can just end up in landfill. For those with a passing grade they have a limited time on store shelves, as many stores do not wish to go beyond a fixed time on the shelf, or even a fixed discount to the price so the minimum margin is not lost. Beyond this time and when faced needing to discount the stock further a store will often just throw out the batch into the trash. Much of it is still edible, much of it has no quality issues. But applying further discount to move the stock or storing it may cost more than they are willing to get back in the margin. Cheaper to trash it then store.
This also occurs often even with the food that has been purchased and taken to people's homes. That brocolli may have cost $4 but once it gets a couple of spots of discolouration many people will just toss it rather than cut around the spots or vary the meal preparation. Once cooked even any excess often gets thrown out. Some restaurants can even keep a separate trash for unused food but often it is still trashed. Prepared, cooked and seasoned but if no one buys it at $30 a plate even staff may be unable to access it. Unfortunately we could probably eliminate world hunger, or even just local starvation in our corner of the world if we had the logistics sorted. But for many the ease of trashing food beats depositing it with food dispensaries.
Many a time starving mothers at a food bank wait with desperation, being unable to buy enough food for their families. The food banks often cannot even get enough fresh fruit and vegetables to go around so those with nowhere else to turn to lose out. Many resort to dumpster diving. There is such a demand for this in a low wage economy where food has become unaffordable that many supermarkets around my area have put large locks & security on their rubbish bins so that the stock, (that still would be ok to sell, absolutely brilliant to donate), is kept out of reach of the poor. They need to protect their margins. Yet food banks would gladly accept even fruit, vegetables and bread too far gone to sell. Many struggling families have learnt to make do with anything they can find. Often this is also built into our cultural cuisines; the ability to use food and plants slightly past it to be made into something new and delicious. Banana bread, stocks, preserves, pickles, jams and chutneys certainly don't taste rotten or unfit to eat but the original fruit and vege often would have been considered too far gone or ugly to allow any person to have without paying closer to full price.
A FODMAP & Gluten Free Diet is Popular for Those With IBS or IBD
Even bone broths & offal are now expensive. The reject parts of meat that used to be more affordable are sold at rates too expensive to buy. Having meat, fruit and vegetables itself may be a luxury and for someone anaemic with iron & vitamin deficiency forgoing these things can be severely medically detrimental. In no way will soy, rice & wheat cover for the loss of necessary amino acids & minerals. The first thing to address is the base level amounts of these items you need medically. For that a dietitian can provide advice and for many with ME & auto immune issues there are recommended diets to help with IBS, food allergies, intolerances, medical imbalances and often also correct salt & iodine levels. It is more than aiming for a normal BMI, it is ensuring the balance of minerals, vitamins, fats and proteins are consumed in nutritionally available forms. You often cannot supplement your way out of not being able to afford food; supplements being even less affordable and often not absorbed in the same degree by the body.
For hubby he has a low salt, (and low sugar) diet but for me I have been instructed by medical professionals to go wild with the salt intake. My blood pressure prior was well below normal to the point many doctors would think there was a fault with the equipment then question if I was like this normally. My diet is an amended celiac's paleo allergen restricted one (no gluten, no lactose, no processed food, several families of fruit and vegetables excluded due to allergies etc). Eating out is incredibly difficult as most restaurants, cafes and stores have nothing I can eat, to the point I am even unable to eat the salads due to allergens contained in the core ingredients. I also miss figs & garlic. I really miss them, not the anaphylaxis I now get when I eat them but it is tough when the smell of toast, a good pasta, or grandma's apple & rubarb pie sends you into a land of sensory nostalgia that you cannot partake of. You also cannot partake in shared meals, nights out or even pot lucks. BYO is not accepted in restaurants & cafes and everyone tends to expect you to eat the food they brought regardless of whether you can, (so they are put off when you don't). More's the pity. But once you get around the exclusionary bit of a fixed diet, then actually sticking to it is easier and finding the minimums you need medically is rather straightforward. Cooking however being another skill that hubby is far better at though so I am sticking to the stew/soup curry type cuisine, a 'stoup' with enough decongestants, minerals, vegetables, protein and fibre. Using an amended mirepoix & soffrito as a base for every meal, (unfortunately onions were also an allergen to avoid so they are replaced).
Given the largest costs may be the necessary base vegetables, proteins, fats & meats, work on how much you need for a week including if you can stretch out and save them. Then look for extremely cheap and discounted sources for them. Often gardening & home growing may be good for an occasional source but does not provide enough to live off long term and can be wiped out by bad weather. A few bad storms killed an entire couple seasons worth of food this year so finding a exterior source not affected by poor weather, insects, was vital. Even supermarket stocks were down & out. For instance there was a lack of local potatoes, & lettuce to the point even burger joints put up notices apologising for the reduction & lack thereof. It is not a good season when not just you lose all the stock you grow but when the professional large scale local growers cannot supply the supermarkets enough. Then there are serious concerns for fruit and vegetable supplies long term, especially for a rapidly growing population & export market. Luckily pickling, preserving and freezing is such a big part of our cultural cuisine. A good season one year can be saved and held back for winter or even to the next few years. Something that can be done so that not only does the diet vary in seasonal vegetables but the bad years are amortised by extra stock from the good ones.
Seconds and waste stock are normally good ways to get excess amount of perfectly edible fruit and vegetables that are much cheaper to source than otherwise. With luck some stores may donate their seconds and waste stock to food dispensaries... but unfortunately that is not really commonly done as stores are far more likely to only slightly discount what they would more often throw out as waste. It takes a lot of searching. Some weeks we only had $5 for food a week, the equivalent to cover that small vegetable and maybe a loaf of bread for hubby so while it may take effort looking for food it is certainly worth the search and may be your only option to source it. Canned beans, cheap canned fish, eggs, bones, offal (like hearts & livers), tahini, & nuts, may be the better & cheaper options for protein.
Mmm cooked livers & hearts make a good source of vitamins & minerals.
Having a freezer is great for mass meat storage where nightly portions can be separated from a discount bulk buy and then ready for the off months when cheap meat is not in season. Bones can be saved up so a bone soup can be made later on. Mince meat is an expensive luxury which we may be able to afford a night every couple months, (we buy a kg which can be split into 4-5 nights so it could last half a year to a year). Likewise fresh fish which is even more expensive than mince meat can be separated into batches and then frozen. Something you might not expect from an economically agricultural based island in the centre of a massive fishing area but most that is caught & produced goes to export with very little held back for the locals to eat.
Hence when you have a disability and your income is in question it is a real luxury to eat lean meat or fresh fish at all, and people often throw most of it away even when it is perfectly edible. A literal crying shame and has many questioning the economic benefits of shipping most the stock away for export and the low wage staff not even being able to afford meat and vegetables at home. Certainly a select few can afford the houses but it is not the predominant number of families in this country any more. At best they may be able to afford some of the food they need but now most families need additional supplementary benefits to pay for the basics of food and rental housing. It is tough times and the disabled & elderly with reduced job opportunities will be the most affected.
Hence it is good we enjoy cooking and reading classic recipes because just to survive we may be resorting to much of the cooking practices of medieval times with pottages & stews to get through much of the year. Where nothing is too old or too far gone to be put into the week long cooking of stoup. Sorry bit maudlin there, but as I said it was a bad year for the major growers with storms taking out much of the produce. We can expect increased storms and with a disability little to no ability to maintain a home garden, (even an indoor garden or herb garden may be physically out of our reach). Some companies use rosemary & parsley as hedging so when we go to those companies I make sure to help prune the overgrown edges off a wee bit for them so their gardener does not have to. Sometimes you have to resort to dumpster diving, extensive food preparation months ahead, & wombling.
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