Free food in Ireland

BogMonkey

I'm facing some minor financial difficulties right now so I've been looking into how to obtain free food. My friend told me how he obtained pigs heads for free from the butcher shop, so thats the first thing I checked out but my local butchers don't seem to wanna hand over the pigs heads, so I checked the fish shop and had a whole lot more luck there. They told me they bring the "waste" to the harbour and dump it back in the sea, so I can get all the fishheads I want from them. I researched it and it turns out fish heads are actually highly nutritious. In Korea they use them to make soup, but every part of them is edible, including the bones. I thought supermarkets would be a good place to check since I heard they throw out anything thats past its shelf display date, but I checked SuperValu and they said they send it all to a recycling plant (for compost I suppose). There are probably other supermarkets that still bin the not yet expired food.

I live near the beach, so I'm looking into what I can find there when the tide is out. I don't know how to identify the different types of seaweed yet, but I know thats a gold mine in terms of nutritional value if you know what to look for. Theres barnacles, periwinkles and razor clams about. As for plants, Ireland has no shortage of nettles.

What other viable methods of obtaining free food do you know of?

seannash

Did you try bakeries?
Any large veg growers,they sometimes cant get rid of mishapen veg.
Get yourself a fishing rod and a fishing licence.

Pat Mustard

BogMonkey wrote: »

What other viable methods of obtaining free food do you know of?

Sorry to hear of the current difficulties.

First, if you live by the beach, have you considered fishing?

Secondly, if you contact your Community Welfare Officer, he/she may be able to help you out in some way, whether with food or financial assistance.

Thirdly, I am not sure about what Social Welfare entitlements that you may have, but you should consider trying the State Benefits forum in that regard.

There must other ways also.

Stovepipe

Look up Food Banks, Vincent de Paul, Simon Community.They do food packs for people in tough straits....apart from that, depending on what kind of space you live in, you can try indoor growing of herbs and small plants. If you can, look up the Men's Shed network. Join your nearest one. The least you'll get is tea and more useful, contacts.

regards
Stovepipe

BogMonkey

seannash wrote: »

Did you try bakeries?
Any large veg growers,they sometimes cant get rid of mishapen veg.
Get yourself a fishing rod and a fishing licence.

Haven't tried bakeries yet. Veg growers, they actually dump misshapen vegetables? I'll definitely look into that, thanks! Things like that are ideal, because food thats past the shelf display date in supermarkets and bakeries might be edible, but food gradually loses its nutritional value overtime. It'll keep you alive, but not necessarily healthy. Fresh fishheads and misshapen vegetables on the other hand won't just keep you alive and healthy. I'm about to drop into the fishshop now, I'll see what other goodies they throw out. A fishing rod and license sounds good in theory, but in practice its unpredictable, could starve to death before catching anything. Gathering stuff when the tide is out on the other hand, at least theres always seaweed to be found, so its reliable.

The Mustard wrote: »

Sorry to hear of the current difficulties.

First, if you live by the beach, have you considered fishing?

Secondly, if you contact your Community Welfare Officer, he/she may be able to help you out in some way, whether with food or financial assistance.

Thirdly, I am not sure about what Social Welfare entitlements that you may have, but you should consider trying the State Benefits forum in that regard.

There must other ways also.

I appreciate your concern. When I said minor difficulties, I wasn't understating that, I'm not struggling too badly, its just I'm in college and can't work right now. I have family and friends who will help me if I need it, but I've learned not to take good people (the ones who I can always rely on to help me if I have no other options) for granted so I need to become self sufficient and learn to survive on my own. I have a place to stay rent free, so its only food I need to focus on. I've always been heavily interested in survivalism and self-sufficiency, so I'm glad I'm learning how to survive with no money.

As for fishing, thats a skill I'm gonna learn when I have the time. Used to catch crabs when I was a kid, I remember getting some big ones. When its warmer, the beaches will be full of washed up jellyfish too, I know the Japanese eat Namura jellyfish so thats something to look into in a couple of months or so.

EDIT: I got a couple of big salmon heads, as well as carcasses. This is a goldmine for urban survivalists because the heads, cartilage and bones are all edible and nutrient rich, and if I hadn't picked it up, they'd just throw it back in the sea which is wasteful and detrimental to the environment. Need to figure out how to prepare them now. The healthiest way would be to just boil the heads and make a soup/stew with them, but I need to make sure its enough to kill any parasites and pathogenic bacteria. Also , you have to be careful with what type of fish you use, I read that swordfish and some tuna heads accumulate more heavy metals than the average fish, and the Irish sea isn't the cleanest sea in terms of heavy metal pollution. As for the carcasses, theres plenty of bone with some cartilage and leftover meat. I'm thinking I'll crush the bones up enough so they're easy to swallow and digest, and boil it up with the heads.

laoch na mona

skip diving is always a good way to gather resources

BogMonkey

Stovepipe: Cheers, that mens shed network thing sounds interesting. I have a bit of space to grow things, got a big mint plant which grows in the summer, but I'll see what useful edibles I can grow indoors. Need to strike a balance between easy to grow, and nutrient dense plants. For outdoor growth, best to go for things that grow all year round, like nettles and thistles (loads of different species of thistle though, need to make sure they're edible). I've grown mushrooms indoors years ago, it can be tricky and requires time and effort, but definitely a good survival skill to have. I recommend Portobello mushrooms since they're easier (than ****akes and other things I tried) to grow.

laoch na mona: First time I hear the term skip diving. I'll look into that now. A friend from Australia told me about how one of his friends made a lot of money by going out on a boat, and diving into the sea to catch lobsters by hand. He says he had so much of it, he was feeding his dogs lobster. Apparently its so easy, its actually illegal in some countries. I think Irelands one of them unfortunately. Probably lots of other, less expensive (and thus, likely legal to catch) shellfish that can be obtained like that though.

EDIT: According to what I've researched so far, all bones are edible, and as far as I know butchers don't sell leftover bones. With bigger animals like cows, the bones have nutrient rich marrow, not too sure how you'd eat the actual bone itself though. Maybe crush it up into bonemeal and use it to make other things. I wouldn't eat it straight because you can overdose on calcium just like any other element. You'd want a good source of magnesium to go with it because these two elements kinda work in balance with each other, similar to the way sodium and potassium do. You'd wanna take the magnesium at the same time, because calcium enables the magnesium to be absorbed much more effectively. Phosphorus is the other primary element that makes up mammal bones, I don't know what role that has in the human body.

monkeynuz

Depending on the coastline you have there should be mussels growing on rocks and at very low tides look for scallops in the mud and queenies. Skip diving is where you go to the back if a supermarket and look in the bins where they throw the food out (not that I am condoning this practice merely explaining it) tesco should be a good place to start according to programmes I have seen on it.

wolfeye

Check out the aldi super six this week.
Potatoes,broccoli,carrots,parsnips ,tomatoes and tray apples all for 39 c each.
Great selection there to make up meals.
You could stock up on enough to last you a month.

https://www.aldi.ie/en/product-range/super-6/


Throw in some roadkill into that mix for a bit of protein:D

laoch na mona

by skip diving i meant dumpster diving lots of anarchists and hippy types do it, its diving into skips to get the food places throw out (as long as it is still edible )

monkeynuz

laoch na mona wrote: »

by skip diving i meant dumpster diving lots of anarchists and hippy types do it, its diving into skips to get the food places throw out (as long as it is still edible )

That's why I clarified it for you.

sheesh

periwinkles and limpets are found on rocks by the seashore and are edible.

Although you live in a first world nation so maybe you might just go up to St Vincent de Paul and ask for some help rather than making a survival situation out of it.

you might be better off using the fish heads for bait as you will not know what state they are in.

you can use a pressure cooker to soften bones and (make a nice stock)

Misty Moon

See if you can get a copy of the River Cottage Handbook: Edible Seashore from the library - that's pretty good.

For what to do with meat bones, here's one blog post I saw recently, including photos: http://down---to---earth.blogspot.de/2014/04/vegetable-soup-with-bone-marrow.html. But since it requires long, slow cooking whether or not you have free electricity/gas for cooking included in your free place to stay will make a difference.

You don't mention where you're based but if your college or any college near you has a catering faculty, find out if they sometimes sell stuff. For example, I went to Kevin Street and the people learning to be bakers used to sell off bread and cakes once or twice a week for really cheap (10p for a big loaf of bread and that kind of thing). That was the mid-90s though - no idea what part of DIT now does those courses.

Finally, don't forget the feeding yourself mostly or entirely for free takes a lot of time and effort. Make sure you don't neglect your studies either.