Competitive Thrift

My chores for the day are all done and while the rest of the house sleeps and I await the midnight feed (not mine, the small person's) I have some time to think. My 'chores' today were not too taxing, a nice walk out through the fields with my two favourite people and my two favourite dogs cannot be called a chore. What can be called a chore is the long overdue clean out of the fish tank, long overdue for exactly the reason that it is no-one's idea of a fun task. It always takes longer than you think it will, it's messy, and the holder of the shortest straw (there's only two possible candidates and I'm one so the odds are never great) has to suck the syphon to pump out the dirty water. Today I held that straw and today, therefore, did suck. Still, as I watched the fish darting happily about in their fresh, shiny tank, I like to think I saw gratitude in the glints of their eyes and the flash of colourful fins.

Anyway, what I have been thinking about over the last couple of days is thrift. An old-fashioned word that seems very much back in vogue. To be honest in our house, the concept has never been out of vogue but now so many others seem to be jumping on the bandwagon. Every magazine I look at in the supermarket (I don't buy them, obviously!) has suggestions for budget recipes, bargain-buys and nifty DIY ideas. As a family, even before we were a family when we were just a twosome, we embrace thrift...e-Bay is my first port of call for nearly all non-food purchases, charity shops are my favourite retailers and if me or him can do it ourselves then we do, often with hilarious consequences but what the hell.

One of the things on my to-do list is to eat more healthily and to eat more ethically. Well, healthily is one thing since fruit and veg are not hard to come by and we do in fact have an allotment (that's another to-do story!). 'Ethically' is the tricky part. We are happy meat-eaters, him with more gusto and variety than me but we do munch our way through a chicken every week, pizza night means bacon to go with the mushroom, and who can say no to a good sausage? However, more and more our thoughts have been turning to the plight of the critters who provide our tasty repasts and finally we have reached the conclusion that even if it means paying more and eating less we should put our money where our mouths, quite literally are. In with the free range chicken and out with the previous hypocrisy of buying a cheap chicken but free range eggs. The fact is that free range, organic anything is more expensive but surely we can make a bit of a sacrifice in return for the hard work and commitment shown by the ingredients!

So, how far can we make our free range chicken go? Well, now it's been expertly carved by him into it's constituent parts, quite a long way; one breast was last night's stir fry, the other will be rolled in a slice of ethical bacon and roasted mid-week, the legs are waiting in the freezer to become a coq-au-vin, and the carcass was boiled for stock and stripped of all the last bits of decent meat for a tasty moroccan inspired couscous dish tonight. Oh yes, and all the other less decent bits went into Monty's bowl. Not Ted's since he already gets high grade special diet for health reasons. I think that ticks off thrift, ethics and health all in one fowl swoop. Sorry couldn't resist!