Winter menu, step by step
Interactive lesson: how to feed the family from December to February from the cellar, the crock, the jars and the pig, and make the stores last until spring.
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The whole lesson as text
1. What winter gives
In winter you eat what you put by in summer and autumn.
- Winter is a sum — From December to February you eat from the cellar, the crock, the pantry, the freezer and the pig. The menu starts with a question: how much of everything you have and how many weeks it has to last.
- Cellar, crock, pantry — The cellar gives potatoes, cabbage, roots and apples. The crock gives sauerkraut, and the pantry preserves, beans, flour, honey and walnuts.
- Freezer and smokehouse — December is pig-killing time: fresh meat, sausages, cracklings and lard. From January bacon and ham hang in the smokehouse and dry.
- Polytunnel and barn — Leeks and kale stand in the garden, spinach and lettuce grow under plastic. Eggs are fewest, and the milk comes from the cow; goats and sheep are dry.
Why: The garden sleeps, the hens barely lay and the goats are dry. Winter lasts roughly 13 weeks, and the stores must last another 8–10 weeks, until the first greens and vegetables.
- In lowland UK and Ireland the mild winter helps: leeks, kale, sprouts, parsnips and winter cabbage stand in the garden all winter.
- In the uplands, Scotland, US zones 3–5 and Canada, winter lasts 4–6 weeks longer, so the stores must last longer too.
2. Pacing the stores
The most common winter mistake is not too few stores but the wrong pace.
- 1st of the month — Count and weigh all the stores. Write them in the inventory: the difference between two months is your real use.
- Weeks until spring — Count the weeks until the end of April. Weekly ration = quantity divided by the number of weeks.
- Example on 1 January — Potatoes 90 kg over 17 weeks is 5.3 kg a week. Ajvar 22 jars is 1.3 jars, and flour 85 kg until harvest, over 30 weeks, 2.8 kg.
- Each store its deadline — Reckon sauerkraut at 13 weeks, because it goes soft by April. Apples last 12 weeks, to the end of March. Write the menu to the rations.
Why: In December there is ajvar every day, and by February it has gone. If you work out the weekly ration on the 1st of every month, you see a shortfall in January, not in March.
- If the ration is too small, cut it, swap (sauerkraut instead of ajvar) or plan to buy.
- If the ration is too large, eat that store more often, because the new one arrives in summer.
3. The pig in the kitchen · Locked
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5. Vitamins in winter · Locked
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6. The range all day · Locked
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