Adventures in Food

A quick update as nothing has been put up for about ten days: We started using some raisins I made from grapes in the summer, which were grown in Finsbury Park. Its a real treat and they have been used in Rob's ever-improving delicious bread. The secret seems to be to have a very gooey sticky dough. I thought it was meant to be quite dry but my loaves come out rather rock-like. Its easy to dry grapes if you have an Aga! I was ill and staying with parents who have one so as I got better I would lay out loads of grapes on a baking tray and put them on top of the aga. Then when they looked like raisins I put them in a bag and that was about six months ago and they are in perfect condition. They do have pips in - in my weakened condition i really couldnt face trying to remove them. But they dont really caus e aproblem either for taste or texture. They are very small and make the raisins crunchy. Actually they are very delicious added to foods. We dont get much acid flavours - so its ve

This is a quote from the Slowcoach at slowlondon . I like this site and it is relevant because going on a 100-mile diet is all about slowing down. There is plenty of food around, and a fair amount of variety but the thing is, you have to work for it. What is different about this way of eating as opposed to how i was eating before, is that we really have to spend a lot of time: researching where food items come from and how they are produced sourcing particular brands or products once they are "approved" for the diet going in turn to all the different suppliers eg local shop for apple juice and potatoes, farmers market for fruit & veg, butcher for meat, health food shop for porridge, waitrose for milk. Its all scattered around. turning raw ingredients into useful food eg flour into bread and cream into butter chopping, peeling, cleaning the foodetc finding out how to cook it eg celeriac, bread actually cooking By this time you understand, one is very hungry. This makes the

Today I went to Stroud on business. I asked Chris about farm shops. We went to one but it was shut at one and we were too late. But there was an egg place down the road. This is the first time I have seen an egg factory. It is free range. it was quite nice. They had many eggs in a shed and a scrap of paper with prices on and a tray to leave your money in. It was £2.40 for 30 eggs which seems quite good to me. here is apicture of the eggs and below is a picture of the shed where they are collected. The chickens lay in cages to the left and right and the eggs roll out into collecting trays. Then i presume people go along and put the eggs into trays. On the other side of the cage is the exit so the hens can go outside and run around the pen where they can scratch about for food and such. We saw that too. They had quite a lot of space. Its on a sort of plateau in the Cotswolds with old-fashioned dry stone walls around the fields. I liked it until the farm dog came up hysterically barking a

On friday last, the eve of my thirty-somethingth birthday, Sarah took me to Konstam's restaurant in Kings Cross, to both celebrate my rapid descent into middle age and to check out this rather unique eaterie on the border of London's West End. Konstam's prides itself on a principle of sourcing most of the ingredients it uses, not within a hundred mile radius, but within the M25, so we have long planned to go there and see what dishes they are creating. Sarah chose from the menu a recently shot Amersham pigeon with locally grown beetroot, stuffed cabbage with a swede and potato mash and a tarte tatin drizzled with lavender cream, though not all at the same time. She washed it down with a Kent rose that was, by all accounts, delicious and cheeky, fruity and summery, like drinking the darling Buds of May. My experience felt a little less balmy but was, none-the-less, a rattle bag of taste sensations that delighted, frighted and ignited in equal measure. The delight was obviou