I learn to keep my eyes open for the best value to me at least cost all around.
For instance, this is yesterday's main meal, designed to be cheap, cheerful, tasty with least cost to the planet and maximum benefit to me and my partner.
He's been having problems with his knees, so I wanted to increase things like collagen and glucosamine and add turmeric to our diet. My son has found a place that will happily give him a bag of
aparas, ie whatever they have that no-one wants to buy, usually bones, pork skin and offcuts of pork belly or liver, sometimes bits of chicken carcass. He will buy a bit of meat for himself, just to keep the guy sweet, or pick up some chicken liver for me at €2 a kilo, because it has good nutrition that isn't easy for me to get anywhere else. I could buy pig's ears for the glucosamine but they are €5 a kilo because they are still considered a delicacy here, and anyway my other half can't stand the texture. But free bones and pork skin that would otherwise go to waste seems a perfect cost to me, and totally excellent value.
I make bone broth with bones, and then cook the rice in the broth, with added turmeric. I render the pork skin down for lard then the skin is cut up and frozen down on a tray so I can throw a handful in with the rice or any other meal as a collagen and protein boost. Also excellent flavour and a bit of fat for calories. Lambs quarters, parsley and spring onions from the garden (the lamb's quarters grows as a weed and is in full swing this time of year). I get a wonderfully economical meal which has great value to us. The environmental cost is pretty much the same as for 'rice and beans' because I'm tapping into waste streams.
Steak just isn't on the menu as there's so much flavour and nutrition in the cheap and free stuff I simply don't feel the need.
As for the value of the land next door, for ages here in Portugal there was a policy (I think it still exists) that land would be split between siblings when the parents died. Which meant that there are loads of silly, tiny bits of land now exist scattered all over the place that are little but a burden to their owners. A new-ish rule now means that any rural property has to be offered to any direct neighbour for the same price as anyone else might have offered for it. I'm trying hard not to buy any more as I can scarcely manage the land I have, but our neighbours are gradually buying up all the little odds and ends of tiny little bits of land, often around a tenth of an acre, which are adjacent to their land and re-amalgamating them into one bigger piece. Which at least means they can care for them all as one piece and keep the grass cut for fire season. Which gives them a bit of peace of mind that probably has more value to them than the cost of the land.
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