Adventures in Food

Poetry Fruit Garden: Goblin Market

2011-12-12T11:44:00.000Z

I grew up on a diet of many delights, one of which was Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti. Living in Stroud some years ago, I felt a connection with this poem of my childhood far away, and this led me to make a film about the poem on Super8.

Now I have returned to Stroud, and at last, have a garden of my own. There is already growing a lovely cherry tree and an apple, some strawberries and the ubiquitous blackberries, and lots of herbs, and it came to me that this could become a fruit garden with a fruit fence strategically placed to screen the road at the back.

And then I heard about the Hampton Court Palace Show gardens designed for poems, and although I think these seem to be rather clumsy and literal attempts to represent poems, undaunted I thought I could set myself the task of growing all of the Goblins Delights from Rossetti's most luscious of poems.

Here is a list of all the fruits the Goblins tempt the two girls in the poem with:

Apples Russet and dun,
quinces,
Lemons
oranges,
cherries,
Melons
raspberries,
peaches,
mulberries,
cranberries,
Crab-apples,
dewberries,
Pine-apples,
blackberries,
Apricots,
strawberries; -
Pomegranates,
Dates
bullaces,
Rare pears
greengages,
Damsons
bilberries,
gooseberries,
barberries,
Figs,
Citrons,
plums
melons
grapes without one seed:
currants

There is also mention of:
mead,
lilies,
wormwood.

Some of these will present more of a challenge than others (dates???! - pineapples????!!!) but hey, lets give it a go. I already have a lemon tree and the previous owner left a rather nice grape vine in a pot so we are well on the way I reckon.

Whether I can do better than the hopefuls at Hampton Court remains to be seen - and it could take a few years to find out.

So wish me luck - and please - tell me how to grow melons!!

Farewell to all that

2011-10-30T22:29:00.000Z

The days of the weed growing are numbered as I am moving to Stroud (of Rupert Burdock fame) and I will have to abandon the anotment after three years of adventures (or is it four, I am useless at tracking time).

I have been so excited by working with the land and the girls that I am looking for ways to pursue the same interests in Stroud once I can get more settled there.

A Pensford Field committee member spoke to me after the recent work day and explained the plans for the back of the studio. I was sad to hear it will be lost in their plans to build a shed, but I am hopeful that some of the learning can be brought forward into the planned garden for the front of the space. He said it would likely be winter before anything actually happens. If this is so I am in contact with someone who may be able to continue monitoring the patch over the summer.

I had a lovely send off from the fantastic Girls Art Club, who threw me a leaving do recently. I have seen them learn a great deal through joining me in my own efforts to explore the plants as they grew up behind the studio of their own accord.

It was great to see how the girls changed through being at the club, the garden and the field - from being often quite timid with nature, to being very confident - from squealing and running away from worms to handling all kinds of bugs and wanting to look after them and 'put them in the bug hotel' which I built into the side of the garden. They started out very wary of the nettles and now they just grab their gloves and come out and get digging. They teach each other as well which is great.

What I have learnt from the experience is that working with wild plants or edible weeds, (with a few more familiar herbs thrown in) can be a very exciting way to bring kids into contact with nature and to help them build confidence in it. The girls developed a real sense of ownership and even have begun planting things they brought from home. They've made suggestions and it has been a great way for them to learn what various wild plants taste like and also about the relationships of wild plants with bugs and other wildlife. Its a way of seeing our links with nature rather than the separation, eg. how we and bees can both eat the same plants.

Parents have also got involved with tasting. One girls' father has offered to do some work there such as clearing space, digging, etc.

Working with weeds is very low maintenance. If kids trample them, they rebound easily; if they are neglected over the summer, they thrive; if there is a drought, fat hen keeps it looking green and if there is rain, an abundance of variety springs up. There are almost no costs - a pair of gardening gloves is handy, and a trowel - but no pots, no compost, no watering, is needed. It also benefits wildlife: in late winter and early spring, the bees can feed on the alkanet, providing honey for the beekeepers later on, and the unuusual flavours of the plants keep everyone entertained (if not always delighted) throughout the year. The diversity of plants provides a resource for wide range of creatures, without providing enough for any bug to take over. In short, this garden to me represents a great learning opportunity at the axis of human and wild life.

I must thank Pensford Field Environmental Trust for offering me this fantastic opportunity to explore edible wild plant gardening. Ive enjoyed it and learnt so much and I will be carrying on.

I hope the committee will consider doing some transplanting of plants and or soil, as there are quite an interesting mix of plants there now, including lavender, sage, several types of mint, fennel, as well as the wild things like Alexanders, burdock, woad, thistles, horseradish, oregano, poppies, fat hen, etc. I do hope that some of the life of the wild garden will continue around the studio, for the sake of the kids, the wildlife, and everyone.

Rupert Burdock, Wild Food Mogul

2010-10-12T11:27:00.000Z

Rupert Burdock and his Wild Things

A couple of weekends ago I was in lovely Stroud where I met Rupert Burdock. He sold me a bag of Milk thistle heads and invited me to join his afternoon wild food walk. Sadly I couldn't go that day but we had a very nice cup of tea instead with some poets and artists.

Next time!

Spot the Bugs

2010-09-03T12:37:00.001Z

Sometimes bugs are spotted: I liked these ones.

Eat Biodiversity

2010-07-30T09:54:00.000Z

Being as it is the Year of Biodiversity and I am making my own plot more biodiverse than it was, I thought this would be interesting for you biodiversityfoodiephiles.

Bem-me-quer is a vegetarian restaurant located in the centre of Lisbon (Portugal).

This vegetarian restaurant has launched a cuisine to show how a simple dish can contain millions of years of species evolution.

The project, titled “Biodiversidade à Mesa – como proteger Natureza com faca e garfo” (Biodiversity at the table – how to protect Nature with the fork and knife),aims to promote to diners the value and impact of people’s every-day food choices, and the important role that traditional agriculture has played over millennia to bring us crop varieties.

More information is here:

http://www.countdown2010.net/article/biodiversity-at-the-table

and the restaurant's website is here: http://www.bem-me-quer.pt/

If you are in Portugal you can visit it here:

View Larger Map

An Uncommon Day Out

2010-07-23T15:40:00.002Z

Last weekend I went on a family outing to Sussex to see where my brother works at www.commonwork.org as they had an open day.

It was fascinating and inspiring, I discovered:

- nettle tea goes clear when you add lemon drops
- how to bodge a rounders bat
- when to collect woad for dyeing
- a new drink called kefir - its fizzy yoghurt and its yummy. I have been craving it since trying the free sample
- that all the sheeps wool in the UK ends in a single processing plant, I think its in Huddersfield - but do correct me - and from there it gets auctioned once a week to highest bidders.
- how to make artists charcoal
- that buddleia makes a good yellow dye even after the flowers are dead

I also got some beeswax, a diblet, milk fresh from the cow, honey, sunshine, a delicious lunch of mutton, organic beetroots, a lesson in wood turning from a delightful man called Bob, some fresh willow charcoal, and a lift there and back from mum and dad.

Super nice man who swapped charcoal with me

Super super nice Bob who let me wreck several pieces of wood on his pole lathe...

It was really great and interesting. I wish I lived in a town like that. I am saving up so I can go on a course and make a shave horse next May. Will have to get a house to keep it in as well....

Bicycle Botanist Trailer

2010-07-23T15:07:00.000Z

More coming soon!

A Mid-Late Summer Update

2010-07-18T23:27:00.000Z

It's been a while but the plants have moved quickly. A month ago the plot was green and lush and new things seemed to be appearing every day, crowding each other out. Now it looks untidy and shrivelled but I have been collecting poppy seeds and heads for decoration, and some of the slower things are starting to look fat with promise.

So by way of an update here are some photos from June:

Looking lush in June

Opium Poppies

Common Poppy

Opium Poppy in July is covered in aphid. The green heads are where opium comes from so I wonder if that is the attraction for these black bugs.

Where the aphid do well, so do the ladybirds

Broad-leaved dock

I think these are red admiral caterpillars on the nettles in June. Now it's July, I have seen a lot of butterfilies but more in the nature reserve than on this plot.

Wild Rocket

Pam

The opium poppies look pretty but I am not convinced they will be so well used next year. The seeds are delicious and so are the leaves earlier in the season but they are very shabby when they go over and take up a lot of space. I may try to keep them in more around the edges, and eat most of the little ones as lettuce.

I'll Be Nice to Nettles if Nettles be Nice to Me

2010-05-17T18:47:00.001Z

Apparently it's Be Nice to Nettles Week here in the UK and I have juct been at the notment manhandling some of my own. Not that I really claim to own the nettles but I am allowed at the moment to interfere with them if I want to. They sting! I am quite used to it from working on this plot and today I decided to see if the adage was true that if you grab them quick they dont sting.

Also today Chris tells me on Facebook that he used to EAT them - raw - and that it doesnt sting either. And last week there were two kids at the art club and they said they ate the nettles raw and it didnt sting.

All this not stinging...its almost as if the whole thing was just a myth spread around to turn people against nettles, and now there is a Be Nice week to restore the soured relationship between the two species, and get us all to realise that actually nettles are really nice.

But let me tell you, they DO sting, even when you grab them, and I will be nice to them when they are nice to me!

Have you got a nettle experience to share? Do they sting you??

DISCLAIMER I can't quite say 'no nettles were harmed in the making of this post' but actually I am very nice to the nettles in my care and let lots of them stay where they are with only occasional shoves when they are completely smothering my rocket or fennel or what not. I even wrote a Pamphlet about them. Although I do eat them (cooked) and I suppose they would consider that not to be very nice of me at all.

Blewitts Again

2010-05-13T15:48:00.000Z

One nice thing about this project is learning slowly and developing a deepening relationship with the natural processes. Last year I found wood blewitts growing on the plot and this year they came back. They seem to be rather out of season but I am still fairly sure that's what they are! I ate them and enjoyed it a lot, in fact more than last time. And its very satisfying to see that they came back again. Unless they are different bnut its still interesting.

This time the recipe involved frying onions and Alexanders with the mushrooms in rapeseed oil from the local shop (Squire's) and at the end, stirring in the wild garlic pesto my brother and his wife made.

And here are the pictures:

Baby Blewitts among the baby alexanders

Ready to eat - I left about half in to reseed for the next crop

Rapeseed oil, wild pesto and alexanders ready

Chop everything up and fry with the oil and a squeeze of grapefruit juice. Mix with noodles, top with yoghurt and paprika and settle down for lunch with a good book.

The Truth About Wildlife Gardening...in Sheffield

2010-04-21T19:45:00.004Z

I just picked up a little book in a charity shop the other day because it mentioned wildlife gardening and I wanted some wholesome retail therapy.

I didn't expect much, I thought it would be very light and fanciful. But it turned out it was a fab piece of popular science writing, about a study done in Sheffield on the wildlife in ordinary gardens. It's charmingly written but I especially like it because it's based on scientific research and it declares the limitations of its own statistics.

In summary it says that they found out that using 'native' plants in Britain has no effect on the amount of wildlife. Including nettles - which have a mythological status when it comes to wildlife gardening but apparently this is bunkum.

Native is a very slippery concept anyway. But there are some things which make a huge difference, consistently in different locations.

In summary, these are the top ways to maximise your garden biodiversity:

1. Grow trees (or at least shrubs, if you can)

2. Have a compost heap

3. Have a pond (this can actually just be a window box or tub with water in it)

4. Don't use pesticides

5. Leave dead wood and leaves, etc, on the ground

6. Let the grass grow long (so butterflies can lay their eggs)

These are the ways to boost the biodiversity to the max in your garden.

I recommend buying the book if you would like to find out more details on improving your garden's biodiversity, either from Amazon or the reused books shop Greenmetropolis.com.

Ah! You might ask...but why should I increase biodiversity?

Well I will expound upon that topic in a later post...you will just have to sign up for emails if you want to find out some reasons....or visit the NHM website about biodiversity. (Did you know 2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity?)

Capital Growth Member 0423

2010-04-20T17:26:00.002Z

The Pensford ecosystem/wild/edible garden has been officially accepted onto the Capital Growth scheme member number 0423.

This scheme, run by the London Mayor's office and various social and environmental organisations, means I get some free advice and they also sent some chive seeds and an outdoor sign.

In the pack I also got a gardening catalogue and some ads for gardening services of various kinds. They are, to be fair, highly relevant and usually discounted, however it does look a bit like a marketing scheme as well as a positive endeavour.

My mission is to try to get wildlife and biodiversity up the list of priorities when it comes to growing. Alot of times there may be good wildlife areas being destroyed in order to grow veg and this is not something I would want to happen too much.

It would be best to see veg being grown in places where nothing is growing already, so come on London, dig up those car parks and pavements, restore your front garden to earth and life. And stick a green roof on your house or shed, add living walls and make the place green again.

Plants recorded in TW9

2010-04-19T17:21:00.001Z

The Natural History Museum has this interesting list of plants recorded in the local area. You can use it anywhere in the UK - just type in your postcode

Lots is going on this spring at the anotment and will be making several posts in the next few days... including:

- Wood blewit and alexanders pasta with wild garlic pesto
- Capital Growth scheme numer 0423
- Kids Art and Nature club starts - saturday mornings at 11 ages 7 and up
- lots of planting and rapid growth
- making a honeysuckle fence
- Bicycle Botanist video series to be launched

Life Returns to Notment - and my soul

2010-03-07T20:35:00.002Z

It has been such a long time, we had so much cold and rain and snow this winter that I have hardly been down to the notment at all. A couple of weeks ago I did go, and collected some baby Alexanders, which went down very well with the family. They are very herbal, like fennel, aniseed or celery but stronger and with a distinct flavour. They work very well chopped up with mashed potato or in an omelette.

Then yesterday I went back for a propoer look at the spring life. Many of the fragile little seedlings planted last year in their fleece-poo blankets are still alive if not exactly thriving - including a sage, some fennel cuttings, a feverfew and calamint.

Sadly though, the huge ants nest has gone since the breeze blocks were sold to alocal builder who has been able to reuse them. I had been hoping to provide a new home for the ants, but failed to act in time and so now just have to wait and see if they managed to survive or not.

I am fairly ignorant about the habits of ants, but I believe the ants on the breeze blocks were the common black garden ant Lasius niger. Ants hibernate in winter, so who knows whether any could have survived the disturbance. I hope they have because I think ants add enormous value to the ecosystem in my little plot. They are amazing - and had made a big impact on an area of earth about two foot square. Apparently "they have quite a large brain in proportion to overall body size, at about 6%."

I found the soil under where the breeze blocks had been, is of a thick clay type, but in the part where the ants had nested, the soil is fine and crumbly and soft and almost looks good enough to eat. It is full of tiny woodchips and seems to me to be very clean and clear of debris and seeds and stuff. There is loads of it, and I think it will make a very good seedling compost if I go down that route. I spread some around and then scattered fennel seeds onto the area. It remains to be seen whether the seeds will get eaten by hungry creatures but perhaps a couple will make it.You can see in the picture the square where the soil is a different colour because the ants made it.

I met Pam at the field and was trying to explain the philosophy I am developing on this project. I can illustrate with the ants quite well. I have noticed a number of websites saying ants are pests and they can be killed in such-and-such a way, but I would like to propose another view. The ants are making fresh compostable soil - in fact one of the pest websites actually said that the soil they make 'encourages weeds' which illustrates the point that the soil is great for germinating seedlings - and the ants do it in the natural course of their business, and produce large volumes.

This fresh, clean soil that the baby plants love so much, is a valuable resource to any plants that are suited to using it. So, my concept is, not to say that the ants are a nuisance and will bite me, so therefore have no place in "my" garden, and should be killed; but to notice they are there, observe their habits, and that they have made all this lovely seedling compost, and then use or redistribute their product, just as we do with honey from bees, to give benefit in turn.

So now it not about killing the ants and preventing the weeds, but providing the ants with somewhere to live that is not too much in the way and in turn, won't be disturbed; and then collecting their fresh earth each spring for seedlings. I would in fact then observe the weeds that grow, finding out when they grow up, whether they can be eaten or used for other purposes, by myself or other animals, and in turn, intervene to find them their place in this little ecosystem. These little plants by some magic, then turn this earth, with a little sunlight and water mixed in, into food for my plate, or for something's feast.

And this all requires almost no work on my part, but just sitting in a small garden and observing and thinking about what I see. And all the while, browsing on baby Alexanders. While this won't feed me properly, it could be scaled up and over the years I would extend this experiment to a larger space and a more complex system. And there all the benefits of gardening such as creating an interesting and relaxing place and providing an abundance of resources to draw upon, from cut flowers to herbal medicines, light snacks to staple dishes and from rare encounters with wild creatures to celebrations with dear friends. And look - if an ant bites you, well, you can eat it, and the ant cannot do the same to you. (I am convinced that sherbert dip is an artificial imitation of its natural precursor, the ant snack.)

The goal is really, to maximise the diversity of the site, and to have the minimum amount of effort but to allow each thing to work in its natural way, intervening to distribute things evenly and prevent anything taking over too much, and to thus create the greatest total wealth possible in the given space.

I could say that this philosophy could be extended to human society too, a matter not of opposing forces, with this absurd concept of "winners" and "losers" and "the fittest" but of each element finding its place, each behaviour having a function, and of placing people and things in such a relation that they feed off each other. Redistribution and balance are very important, when there are great imbalances, such as an overadundance of, say, nettles, but once its running, a complex system can usually manage itself. As in the case of a rainforest or ancient wood.

Finally I add that the pond in the nature reserve had a lot of frogspawn but it was drying out, so for the first time in my life I touched frogspawn, and it wasn't slimy but rather firm, like a jelly, and I hope I might be able to save a few frogs.

One Wassail Picture

2010-01-13T20:56:00.001Z

We had another wassail at Pensford Field where the camera battery ran out (Twice!) so I only got one picture. I was going to go back to get some pics for you of the notment in snow but Then my own battery ran out and I got a horrible flu. If the snow holds I will report on the state of the plants in this delicious snowy blanket, which I learn might be helping to suppress virulences of various kinds, in the earth if not in my own weary body.

Pensford Field are asking for votes in a Bovril competition so they can win a grant - they would be very happy if you would click to vote.

Blewitts (and more) in Pictures

2009-11-16T12:07:00.001Z

I brought camera on sunday and got some pics for you:

A woolly blanket for the baby herbs, keeps down the competition and the slugs hate fur too:

Nettle roots will be used to dye the rest of the fleece:

Lepista sordida growing among nettles - and Alexander seedlings in the foreground:

and at home waiting to be cooked:

with red onions and butter:

giving a simple meal with a beetroot and Alexander salad in the background:

Wood Blewitts and Alexanders

2009-11-14T19:08:00.000Z

I went down the notment a couple of days ago as its the change of season and its time to check up.

I found all the little herbs I planted doing well under their woolly blanket, and the big dominating original plants that were so enormous in the summer, dying back and shrivelling. The Alexanders were fallen, rotting already, but there were masses of baby ones coming which is perfect for harvesting so I got a good crop of those as well as some very lush and think dandelion leaves for a nice salad. The Alexanders are rather strong flavoured to eat in quantity but they were excellent chopped up small with a beetroot salad.

As I cleared away the burdock, getting burrs all over my woollens, and the nettles, and the big Alexanders (fallen), I found a big collection of purpley-brown mushrooms. They smelt heavenly, a very strong mushroomy smell like oyster mushrooms and at first I thought that's what they were. Really the scent made me want to eat them right there and then, its was very powerful.

But closer up they obviously werent that, so i took one home to identify and pored over my books and left it on a black paper to see the spore colour. It looked promisingly like a Wood Blewitt but could have also been something nasty called a Silky Pinkgill, so as always with a new mushroom a certain sense of adventure fell upon me.

I checked the books and they gave rather unclear and conflicting information, and online I fared no better. Adding up all the evidence and trying to make sense of it (what is a 'mealy' smell? Is the Silky Pinkgill poisonous or not? What is the difference between 'pink' and 'pale pink' spores? Does it matter that my mushrooms stems didnt look as fat? Why does only one of the books mention Lapista sordida?) I decided that I was 90% sure it was OK.

So I cooked them up in copious quantities of butter (the books say you must cook your wood blewitts), and served them to my family to see what would happen... they cam e with a warning so in the end it was only me and my father who actually tasted them, and in very small doses, and mum reminded us that only one mushroom can actually kill you, so it was fine, and they tasted fab.

This morning I had no ill efects at all so I have eaten the ret of the mushrooms along with the remains of the chicken stew which was very delivious but even better with the mushies.

And now that I check up on Lepista sordida, I actually think that is the mushroom I have been eating, and apparently it is uncommon. This is very exciting because I almost have never found uncommon things and most things always turn out to be something incredibly normal. The picture on the link really does look most exactly like my mushrooms. I'm sorry to say I didn't take my own pics this time but will try to get there tomorrow in daylight and photo the little ones that are left.

So here's to the notment and its amazing and unexpected autumnal offerings - for which I had to merely turn up. (Well there was a certain amount of nettle root pulling but that is all part of the fun.)

Kew Road Chestnuts

2009-11-12T22:14:00.002Z

It was chestnut season a week or two ago and now they are over but I still have the pics. Being from the Kew Road, they are probably full of horrible pollutants but they were very sweet and delicious after a bit of roasting. They went down well in this house and you can see the before and after in the pics. I also put some into a potato mash with Kew Road Walnuts as well. It went very well with the pheasant that Dad gave us from the Richmond Market game stall, roasted and stewed with beetroots and loads of gorgeous veg.

Chestnuts come in a prickly casing which you stamp on to pop the nut out so you don't have to get your fingers scratched.

The walnuts make a great and very durable dye but I haven't used it because we were moving back into the flat after the New Kitchen and all that, so I didn't have time to do all the processing.

I have bought some wool carders however, and will spend the winter processing the fleeces I collected in the summer. The white wool will be dyed with colours from the nettle roots and onion skins that I also have been collecting up, and when I am ready I will collect some walnut leaves which are just as good as the flesh on the outside of the nuts for dyeing with.

Why are most of the trees in the back streets just horse chestnuts and planes, when we could all be eating fabulous walnuts and chestnuts every autumn?

I even planted a Kew Road chestnut last year in a little pot and now its a healthy seedling. But I wonder where he will live, will I find him a good home?

more pictures and nettles keep coming

2009-10-04T12:26:00.005Z

how the notment is looking after a lot of nettle-clearing. I have cleared this area twice now, cropping the baby nettle and fat hen as it crops up so quickly.

A pile of breeze blocks under the nettles has been partially dismantled to make small seats in a circle for the herbs - with the help of my Lovely Assistant

Collecting fat hen (delicious! like spinach but nuttier) and dandelion

using sheeps fleece to protect herbs planted out from my backyard pots. They are doing ok and the fleece also keep slugs away very effectively (they dislike hair!) The fox liked it though and came and dug at it when it first appeared.

a large burdock - can be used in dandelion and burdock cordial...

collecting the nettle tops

pureeing the cooked nettle tops with the white sauce, a messy business. (My old kitchen, soon to be gone, a nasty steel cooker in its place.. it just wont look as good in the pictures any more :-( )

ooh a lovely meal, cheese makes anything taste good!

All the details on cooking the nettles are on the earlier post

Tell me a good recipe for nettles please!!

wild food course

2009-10-04T12:01:00.002Z

This:
http://www.wildfoodmentor.co.uk/x/notify

is a course on wild food, I am wanting to sign up but will i have time? can i justify the cost? will i actually follow it?

maybe i could do it and report on the results here. your recommendation?

xx

Back on the Notment

2009-08-17T12:55:00.004Z

I harvested a large batch of nettles the other day. After all the hard work a couple of weeks ago the nettles sprang back incredibly fast and are already a foot high again. I made an enormous quantity of nettle puree from the young tops. Did you know nettles contain more iron and more protein than spinach? It is very very rich, and I think better in small doses. They could be used more like a sauce or herb than a main vegetable. So I froze a lot of it as I doubt we can manage to get through it all.

My friend Anna reports a French recipe she tried recently that uses the nettles in a flan, with great results which I must try.

I also collected abundant amounts of Goog King Henry which has sprouted up on the cleared ground, and some dandelion leaves, for a salad.

There is a huge dock doing well and the herbs I've planted are taking too, the feverfew and calamint are seeming happy under their protective sheeps fleece mulch which works extremely well now that the foxes have lost interest in digging it up.

I've added sage, a mint, and some marjoram I found growing in the field, hoping they will take too. The reserve is full of blackberries and hawthorn now, but the plums all completely vanished so I missed out.

Nettle Puree Recipe
Big Pile of young nettle tops (if your nettles are old and straggly, cut them and pull them up and come back a week later to harvest the young shoots)
1 pint milk
3 oz butter
3 tbsp flour
3 oz meltable cheese (cheddar)
Seasoning

First rinse your nettles (wear rubber gloves!) and strip away leaves from larger stems as they are very stringy (older nettle stems can be used to make twine). Put the rinsed leaves in a pan to simmer in their own water, no need to add any - like spinach, the nettles shrink down and produce their own water.

Meanwhile make a white sauce using the usual technique. Melt the butter in a pan over a low heat, stir in the flour, slowly add milk a little at a time, always stirring, until you get the thickness and quantity you want.

When the sauce is ready you can put it aside while you use your blending machinery to puree, or at least partially puree, the cooked nettles. You may want to drain off the water from the nettles first if it is very dark and strong, although it can also help to make the sauce a little runnier and contains a lot of nutrition.

You can then start adding the sauce to the nettles and keep pureeing. When its nice and smooth, add the cheese and heat a little if needed to melt it all in. Season, and of course do experiment with your own white sauce and herbs.

This makes a very nice and exceedingly healthy sauce for jacket potatoes. You can go back next week for the next round of fresh nettle tops as well! Or do as I did and freeze the remainder sauce. The plastic containers from the indian takeway are ideal for freezing sauces.

I imagine it working well with fish too, espceially with some lemon or yoghut mixed into the sauce for some extra bite.

Greenway Botanical Expedition

2009-07-28T10:30:00.017Z

On Saturday I was very happy to be invited to join Pudding Mill River at the Greenway in Stratford, running through the Olympics site, to collect some plants with the help of some lovely people who joined the Botanical Collecting Expedition.

Marie Briggs at Kew Herbarium was good enough to make the loan of a Vasculum and a press which made it a much more efficient expedition.

We collected specimens from herbs and shrubs. The list is as follows:

Viper's Bugloss - Echium vulgare
Hedge Mustard - Sisybrium officinale
Burnet Rose Rosa pimpinellifolia
Bird's-Foot Trefoil - Lotus corniculatus
Teasel - Dipsacus fullonum
Black Horehound - Ballota nigra
Treacle Mustard - Erysimum cheiranthoides
Common Mallow - Malva sylvestris
Oxeye Daisy - Leucanthemum vulgare
A Grass - unknown

We also saw plenty of apple trees, brambles and mugwort, ragwort, yarrow, various roses including dog rose, three types of bindweed (probably Convulvulus arvensis, Calystegia sepium, and the non-native Calystegia pulchrum) and a mix of grasses.

Hilary from Pudding Mill River had made excellent blackberry cakes which were very popular and I was delighted to take some home along with a bottle of Pudding Mill sloe gin.

I was struck by how many native plants were growing on the Greenway, in contrast to the railway sides I had seen from the train on the journey there from West london. Buddleia, Russian vine and japanese knotweed dominated most of the tracks all round north london so to see a great many natives there was very interesting.

It is not clear to me what the plans are for the Greenway but my somewhat vague impression is that they intend to clear most of it and then replant after the Olympics are over. I am concerned that the infrastructure of the wildlife already there will be damaged and cannot be replaced. I hope this impression is wrong and would like to know of any plans made public about it. Also whether any more comprehensive surveys are planned or have been done.

We did see a great deal of mugwort growing and this being a relative of the plant used to make absinthe, it a question as to whether mugwort can be used in a similar way. There are some records of absinthe plant itself in the east of london so it may be possible to find some although I didn't spot any on this trip.

I was also very impressed with the people who joined in with the collecting especially Michael and Ayesha who were very open and seemed genuinely fascinated with the whole experience. Michael carried the vasculum which although small is actually a very good way to carry plants around although I don't know of botanists using it any more. He also was very attentive and made sure we got the mustards named correctly which I confess I was being a little too quick about. Ayesha was meticulous in recording notes and labelling and Jim was very interesting adding his knowledge of the plants from his childhood, for example how the rosehips were used not only for paste, rich in Vitamin C, but also to make itching powder to irritate teachers and other enemies. He used to sell rosehips as a kid, and had an excellent tip about steaming them so you dont have to spend hours picking out the little irritating hairs from the inside like I had to last year.

All in all a fascinating and lovely day out and I hope that Kew accept the collections and help to identify the grass. Many thanks to Dan and Hilary from Pudding Mill and to everyone who took part in collecting and naming the wildflowers. Also to Jim for some great photos.

A Not Allottment

2009-05-30T12:48:00.008Z

At Pensford Field there is a hut (the studio) and behind the hut is a bank of earth with a lot of nettles on it.

I am amazed to find that I am offered the opportunity to grow things on this bank. I am allotted, not an allottment but an aNottment.

I went there yesterday with Graham from the Alpines in Kew Gardens, you could say he knows a few things about native plants. We had a look around and got together a list of plants growing on the patch. Of course it is mostly nettles, but also Alexanders, burdock, green alkanet, horsetails, Black HoarHound, a type of wild lettuce and a mustard, some pretty grasses and a wild barley, mugwort (allegedly useful in clairvoyancy), a buddleia and some buttercups. I may well have forgotten a couple of things too.

We also have on the site a pile of breeze blocks, some rubble, a few black plastic tubes and a bird box.

With this highly promising collection of assorted plants and objects I want to intervene as a concious and conscientious agent of ecological change. I would like to foster whatever wants to grow there naturally, introduce a few new things, (mostly native) for diversity and for edibility, usefulness, and interest (eg perhaps some woad) and monitor the assortment of plants to maximise their happiness and health and also the diversity both of species but also of uses to myself, other animals, and the earth and other plants, other people etc.

People usually dominate when it comes to choosing who should a plant serve but i want to make sure I provide for as many strange creatures as possible.

In short, I want to make it a garden of natural wonders and delights for all the senses and the imagination. When you really look at little humble plants they become the most amazing extraordinary beasts of all manner of marvels.

Also I'd like to put in more bird boxes so if anyone can help please get in touch.

I tried digging up some green alkanet roots thinking they were good for dye, but it turns out its the wrong type of alkanet. But for now the alkanet stays: its pretty , and the bees and bugs seem to absolutely love it. They were thronging in.

When I clear out some of the nettles (some will stay) I can eat the tops, make fibre from the stems, use the roots for a good yellow dye (for the fleece that will be delivered at the Pensford Field Picnic 20 June) and put the rest into a mulch for a good compost.

This is totally thrilling and all are welcome to help out and learn about the amazing wonders of weeds.

Hurrah! many thanks to the lovely Diana and Pensford Field people, and Graham.

wedding day skirt with onions

2009-05-12T22:00:00.006Z

i got married last week, on May 1st we went to Pensford Field for a 'picknick event' to celebrate, and i wore a cream embroidered top. i also had a white skirt but it was too white so i dyed it with teabags and onion skins.

Pickled Magnolias

2009-04-20T08:31:00.002Z

Who knew? I will try this recipe and let you know how I get on. It will be tricky nicking the magnolia flowers, if mum catches me it will be her eating me for breakfast.

Ethnobotanising En Masse

2009-03-09T12:34:00.010Z

At Kew Gardens on Saturday there was a fab event showcasing various kinds of ethnobotanical research that goes on here and there.

I went along and met various friends from life and internet, and discovered some really great new plants to eat from the weed-bed.

I've also got all interested in collecting english plant lore for Ethnomedica so if you have some ancient plant remedy to tell me please do.

I met some really great people with weeds to eat so I thought I would mention it and then I will go and find the weeds for myslef and report back.

One particularly cool thing was eating thistles, speficially in this case, Sow Thistle. Anna showed me how to cut away the spines and gave me the stem to try. Its crunchy and juicy and fresh tasting, vaguely in the same food bracket as celery I suppose.

A lot of the plants at the stand were things you know very well from the garden, little hairy things that grow in the grass or along the cracks in the paving.

In fact hairs and spines are a good sign something is nice to eat - otherwise why would it bother making hairs and spines to try and put you off.

I was also fascinated by wild parsnip which I'm not sure I would find as easily as cats ear or hawks bit, or of course the Ubiquitous Dandelion. So Iwill be reading up on it and hoping to discover one this year. I also will be finding out more about Fergus Drennan who is living off foraged food entirely.

Apparently Anna and her colleagues are going to run a course in Sussex on wild food foraging, but its fully booked and there arent more planned just yet. Judging by the enthusiasm of the punters I reckon they would be well advised to sort it out. And BBC TV shows like my former colleague James Wong's, about herbal medicine in the garden, and Ray Mears (whose book Wild Food was co-written by Gordon Hillman who was there with Anna Richardson), and of course the adorable Hugh F-W, will all be helping feed this apparently resurging interest in local herbalore. The famous James was also rumoured to be at the show but I didnt see him. I was probably too busy fondling bamboo fibres in the textile displays.

I just can't wait till some things start growing again and I can go and eat them.

I also watched a film about shamans in the Amazon which brought back great memories of my adventures in Ecuador all those years ago.

Many thanks to the organisers and participants of this brilliant event. It was even better that it was on my doorstep and for once, my friends were schlepping in this direction and not the other way around. It made me think what a great place Kew is to live, if only they would all come and live here too!

Back with the bees

2009-03-06T12:48:00.002Z

I don't have photos this time but have been bee-servicing again. This time we were just scraping honeycomb wax from the wooden frames so they can be reused for the coming year and the new bees.

Bees are in a bad way and unlike other creatures in a similar, or worse, situation, People are notcing. This is because
a) bees are quite cute
b) people like honey
c) bees pollinate fruit crops, and the fruit crops are suffering.

I saw a little while back a Haagen Daaz campaign to help honeybees - because the bees are not there to pollinate fruits, and this is making it harder for the ice cream manufacturer to source and pay for fruits. It is a very serious problem in the US and also I have rumours from China and the Ukraine that they are losing fruit crops.

One of the main threats to British honey bees is a parasitic mite called Varroa destructor. Originally confined to Asian honey bees, it has spread across Europe and reached England in 1992. It now infests 95 percent of hives.

You can get a bee chamber for your garden to provide a home for bees here - search for bees to see bee related stuff

Read about bee conservation here

Article about bees problems in the Daily Telegraph

Reuters report on the bee problem globally

Snow and Honey

2009-02-06T18:43:00.010Z

Monday was a day famous for Snow, but for me it was also about honey.

I visited Linda who has recently started keeping bees.

We processed some honey and she very kindly gave me a pot of golden sweetness at the end.

I learnt about mites, and deaths, and bee dancing and pollen and nectar and propolis (the red stuff in the pot - very sticky and it stains the hands, the bees make it from tree resin), and how the bees tenderly care for the grubs and feed them bees milk, and how the worker bees come out of the growing chambers and do housekeeping first for a few days, and then nursing, and then they guard the entrance, and then they start foraging only after all that.

The pics show how we scraped the honey out of the combs, avoiding letting pollen and nectar into the honey, and let it drip through a net to separate it from the wax - collecting the was crumbs for melting down and further separation from the honey that is left; propolis; and the honey pots that were filled. 20 in total, from about as many combs. This seems a lot but there are many hours of work to go into making this much honey and £4 a jar in the shops is an amazingly low price when you realise what is involved. Of course a lot of wax is also produced and it can be used in hand lotions, candles, furniture polish, bookbinding and all sorts of other things.

The bees had died in the frosts (before the Big Snow) and it was because there weren't enough of them to keep warm. They had been decimated by a mite earlier in the year which is the thing killing all the bees and causing mayhem for fruit crops and honey-makers worldwide.

Apparently there is a lot of extra work nowadays because of all the various diseases affecting bees. I think the snow will help to kill off some of the alien species and make things easier for bees next year - well I hope.

I am thinking of trying to make some hand cream from part of the honey Linda gave me so recipes would be welcome. I have various oils including coconut oil in the cupboard (available for incredibly low prices in large amounts from Southall by the way).

As for the snow, well I cycled to Linda's and it was rather wonderful as there was very little traffic, and people pulling kids along in sleds, and saying hello to each other, and I had to go very slow because it was very icy and I really wish that the snow would have stayed for a week or more.

Many thanks to Linda and looking forward to learning more about beekeeping -and honey- this year.

Fruitful Trees

2009-01-14T13:54:00.007Z

Last Friday I went to a Kew Wassail in aid of making the apricot tree fruitful for the year. It was very exciting because I also met a woman with a sheep, and another woman who has a spinning wheel - and knows how to use it - so I think it was a very fruitful occasion already.

AND I met a woman who keeps bees there (its called Pensford Fields and its a hidden gem of a kind of naturalness, behind some houses in Kew) and she wants help looking after the bees, so one day I might know enough to have my own honey. If there are any bees left, that is.

Anyway the Wassail is meant to be around Twelfth night, when we know we are safely through the dark Solstice, and its time to get things going again so we have food for next winter.

So we all pile down to the orchard and sing a song to the tree to ask it to be fruitful - and make it a toast - and make a lot of loud noise to chase away evil spirits ("and pollution" - maybe a reference to the pending expansion of Heathrow nearby), and wear silly clothes. The Mayor was there as well as the sheep and some nice local people.

Lets hope it works and the trees are Fruitful, and the bees come back, and then I will have plenty to talk about on this blog.

Dont Collect Chestnuts

2008-12-09T15:40:00.007Z

I do sometimes think "is it ok for me to collect wild food" because surely there are lots of wildlife who cant go to tesco if they dont find any nuts in the woods that day. And generally people like the guys at River Cottage and other proponents of wild food collecting give the answer more or less of "yes its fine, there is plenty to go round, so long as you always leave a bit of it ie dont dig up ALL the truffles you can find in one spot."

Now I know the deer in Richmond Park are not a "naturally occurring" species in a "natural" environment but even so I found this interesting. I was up there on an early morning to photograph the deer with a friend and saw this notice.

I hadn't seen that sign when I collected the chestnuts last time.

I have taken an interest in the past in the idea of eating invasive species so will start to investigate that as an alternative. We could act as a biological control agent, enhancing the biodiversity rather than damaging it, by making conscious choices about what we eat and using wild resources in a balancing rather than 'i eat what i am interested in' sort of a way.

And now here are some nice pictures of deer and chestnut trees:

Christmas Pudding - A Book

2008-11-11T11:46:00.006Z

I have just become a publisher - with the production of a book about the English Christmas Pudding under the publishing name 'Spiderbooks'.

The book is a tasting sample of some of the stories behind the ingredients of the Christmas Pudding. it will be in some local shops in the Kew and Richmond area, and should be on Amazon soon too.

Your feedback is welcomed! Find out more at http://www.spiderbooks.co.uk

Oat Recipe

2008-11-04T17:36:00.000Z

Rosehip jelly

2008-11-03T15:48:00.007Z

There was a big pile of rose cuttings in the garden and they were covered in rosehips; not being one with a high tolerance of wastefulness I set about cutting them off with plans to make some delicious thing or other.

Then the little red hips sat in my fridge for a few days while i was too busy.
Eventually I got round to dealing with them but quite a lot had gone soggy and or mouldy so the initial crop was quite whittled down.

It was surprisingly difficult to find recipes for rosehips. I found several for rowan berries in my assortment of ancient recipe books, even though rowan is less spoken of generally in life, and i rather suspect, considerably less palatable than rosehip.

I did find one however, in May Byron's Pot Luck, an old favourite.

And it was very true about how awkward they are to prepare, covered in fine sharp hairs than get under your fingernails and apparently in another recipe ( which I ignored) one is expected to not only top and tail but de-seed and peel them before boiling up! This is preposterous as you will discover if you try it yourself.

Rosehips are said to be incredibly high in vitamin C content so the tiny jar of jelly that resulted from my efforts ought perhaps to be viewed as a sort of winter medicine rather than Jam. It also tastes very sharp (and delicious) and is probably best suited as an accompaniment for game rather than for bread and butter.

The method is simple as for all these jellies made of indigestible fruits: Get your rosehips, top and tail them (mind all the sharp bits) stick em in a saucepan with a minimum of water, boil up till soft, force through a sieve, add a quantity of sugar, boil down till thick and pasty and cram into a sterile jar.

Amazing how sugar can make food of almost anything.

grapejuice nut strings

2008-09-19T13:38:00.002Z

figs

2008-09-19T13:21:00.003Z

bread

2008-09-19T12:21:00.005Z

you want pictures - here's pictures!

2008-09-19T12:21:00.003Z

Cyprian Food Adventures

2008-09-12T09:02:00.003Z

I recently signed up for a local food pledge (see previous post) but I had also sigend up to go the summer school at the Cyprus College of Art. So i am doing the local thing here in Cyprus, and its been tootally fantastic.

Two highlights have been the best breakfast ever in Fikardou, staying with freinds, and a supberb lunch in the weaving village of Fiti, not too far from Paphos.

Fikardou Breakfast
Sophocles is a breakfast guru and I was presented with a leaisurley mountain breakfast of fresh anari, local honey, eggs from the builder who keeps hens, fresh local sheeps yoghurt, sweet plump dark plums, Paphos mangoes, grapes from my hosts vine, figs, and what else I cant remember so will have to look at my photos to check.

Fiti Lunch
I first found Fiti last week when I am dmy travelling companions, both Irish weavers, went exploring and stumbled into it on the way to a monastery. It turned out to be a weaving village, and I hgad one the best lunches Ive ever experienced in the local restaurant. We asked what they had and the woman said ' Oh, lovely things' and it turned out to be mnore than accurate. I became an instatn fan of courgette with egg, and the irish girls said it was better then the food they had at a Michelin star restaurant in Dublin once.
Anyway that wasnt the highlight! After lnch we were shown around the local folk museum by curator Charalambous Mavrovollis (?) and we were enchanted and delighted by the weaving, the hand made looms, the they home spun wool and everything else beautifuil in this charming place. I came back a few days later on my own to buy a blanket they were selling, made of local sheeps wool and locally grown cooton, many years since. Apparently noone can spin wool any more so they now weave with imported threads. Anyway after I bought the beuatiful blanket I was invited to lunch and not wanting to miss out on an interesting experience I joined the curator and his wife the weaver for a fantastic meal on the hillside. They had grown their own marros and tomatoes, the egg was from their own hens - and best of all, not only does madame make her own loaves in a traditional oven, using sourdough, but they grow their own wheat and take it to a local mill for grinding. It was trulyu a nwonderful experience that I won ever forget.

The food here is easy to get hold of although one does have to hunt around a bit now for really good quality local produce like cheese and meat. The veg remain impeccable even a t the supermarket.

As an aside, you may know that i am quite involved in anti=plastic bag campaigns, and when I went to said local supermarket (largely cartering to an aged British expat populationm steadily taking over the hillas aroun dPaphos) I said I didnt need a plastic bag please, to weigh the fruit., I was startled to find that this caused an uproar and i found myself surrounded by hostile aging Brits glaring at me for daring to cause a meaningless fuiss, an incomprehending sri lankan fruit weighing girl who said ' If you really dont want the bags, you can take them to the checkout and throw them in the bin outside the supermarket as you leave', and a Cypriot woman who tol dmne that it was the custom in Cyprus to use plastic bags because unlike in England, where we just buy one piece of fruit, one lemon, the Cypriots buy many pieces of fruit (the implication being that we are a sad, lonely, unloved people, in contrast to the healthy family life of Cyprus) and so they need bagts to carry them in.

I had to relent, mainly because I was getting upset and didnt know how to show that I really didnt want one and there was not law insisting that I had to have one, so I took a couple and havent been back to buy veg since. I am going to make the bags into Art.

Apart from strongly flavoured and juicy, sweet fruits, (The most extraodrainarliy sweet pomegranates are growing on a tree down the road from the college) there are almnonds on a tree by the house, wonderful halloumis and olives, there is so much abundant and cheap and available local food that I have had to forego little, and perhaps only the cornflakes are what I would have eaten otherwise although they make me think of cardboard now hat I have been on this super fresh diet for a few days.

However all is not well in paradise. The drought this year has been so bad that many wheat crops have failed, and my weaving couple told me theior wheat didnt grow well this year. Many locasl have mentioned it but apparently some of the city folk think that the farmers are wasting all their water, and all food should be imported, and their have even been suggestions that they should cut down all the trees on the island to conserve water!

So perhaps there is great local food, but in the light of the fact that Cyprus is now importing water in tanks from Greece, I have not been drinking local water. ( Mind you there were some lovely srpings in the mountains)

A Mini Food Adventure You Can Take Part In

2008-08-05T12:52:00.001Z

Ever wondered what you would eat if oil ran out tomorrow? Well now is your chance to find out!

Join us* for a week of eating only local organic food, free from plastic packaging to highlight to government that they need to act now to reform our food system

Between Saturday 6 and Sunday 21 September, during Organic Food Fortnight and when food is at its most abundant in the UK, we ask you, for one week, to only eat food from a selection of the following sources:

a. Organically grown UK food without plastic packaging – if it is organically grown on British soil, it qualifies, but obviously the more local the better. Plastic packaging is out.

b. Foraged food – food growing wild and abundantly all over the UK – free rich pickings!

c. Self-grown food – any food you, your friends or family ha ve grown.

Advice and support on sourcing food will be given throughout, and all participants will be encouraged to keep a diary of their experiences over the week on our website, not only to share experiences, ideas and advice, but to highlight to policy makers how difficult it is to do something which should be easy – to live off food from your own soil.

Take action!

1) Sign up to take this action at http://www.pledgebank.com/eatthechange or http://apps.facebook.com/pledgebank/eatthechange

2) Ask your friends and family to support you by also signing up!

3) Let your community, local shops, press and decision-makers know what you're doing

4) Nearer the time check out our website for advice and tips on what to eat and where to find it (we'll email the website address to you)

5) Share your experiences on our website in solidarity with others and to let decision-makers know how ha rd it is for us to eat sustainably in the absence of policy change.

*Who is 'US'?

The fortnight is being led by three of the UK's Local Food campaigners –

Fergus Drennan (aka Fergus the Forager, http://www.wildmanwildfood.co.uk/) – has already done two and a half months living solely on foraged food! He makes this seem easy.

Mark Boyle (founder of The Freeconomy Community, www.justfortheloveofit.org) – 3 months into his 'Transition Experiment', Mark eats only UK grown, organic, vegan and non-plastic wrapped food. And has vowed to put his last item in landfill – the bin itself!

Beth Tilston (http://www.betheatslocal.org/

) – a Brighton Locavore who has vowed to eat only food from 100 miles from wherever she finds herself for one whole year!

For more information, email saoirse@justfortheloveofit.org

Living Bread

2008-07-12T11:10:00.018Z

You may know that we started making our own bread last year when we were on the local diet, as none of our suppliers knew where the flour was grown, that they used in their bread making. So we had little choice. But we just threw some flour, yeast and water into a bowl. slopped it a bout and baked it after rising. It was very delicious but it was on the dense and cakey side and it went hard quite quickly.

The other day though, I bought an amazing book (after spending about an hour browsing in Kew bookshop and knocking books over) called Bread Matters by Andrew Whitley (who runs Village Bakery, so admittedly he has a bias but also he knows a hell of a lot about bread), which explains both how most processed or shop bread is made (even the really sexy nice stuff is all made by the same 'Chorleywood bread process') and how yeast and lactic acid bacteria work on wholewheat to extract nutrients and flavour and reduce the presence of common allergens.

The book also shows how to make your own bread and it even has a recipe where you can fit it into a busy day. Of course breadmaking machines are the easiest way of all but we literally have no room left in the kitchen or anywhere else in the flat - so its handmade for me, and anyway thats the best way to learn about real bread. Maybe when I grow up I will have a flat big enough for a breadmaking machine, and enough money to buy one.

OK so I want to show you how I did it and also highlight the key points about real bread.

Key Points and Cool Facts about Real Bread

Normal white flour is refined so that all the nutrients in the outer parts of the grain are milled away. This leaves nothing much but starch and gluten. This is true even for more nutritious and wholemeal flours, because they add the nutrients back individually after refining, which means not all of it can ever go back in. The only way to get a true wholegrain flour is to buy STONEGROUND. A traditional stone mill cannot refine the flour the way the industrial process does so they cant remove all the nutrition.
Yeast and bacteria work on the wheat grain in the flour so as to do all sorts of amazing things to it. Mainly they make it so it lasts a long time and is very nutritious. Industrial bread process uses added enzymes to do some of these things, and the enxymes do not have to be declared on the packaging even though some are from pigs pancreas and others can trigger allergic reactions. They also add 23 times as much yeast as in traditional baking, to make the bread rise quicker, and exclude the bacteria from the process.
Kneading makes the gluten come out and change structure. This is what gives the elasticity that means you get air bubbles in the bread. We didn't knead our bread when we made it before, so it came out "cakey" and crumbly - the air just went through the flour and didn't form bubbles. The thing about kneading is to 'get as much energy into the bread as possible, as quickly as possible'
Wheat is not easily digestible, yeast and bacteria act to make it more digestible. In a sense, they partially digest it so humans can make more of it. Making bread is a living process and rather like the fact that milk is a living food so shouldnt be pasteurised, because that kills it dead, the industrial process also kills off the bread so its no longer a living process but a high speed imitation of the real thing.
Industrial process bread consumes more energy than traditional breadmaking. This is probably because it replaces the work of the yeast and bacteria, which need time to do their thing, with a speeded up energy-intensive process.
Bread goes hard when its older, not because it is dry, but because the starch in it crystallises. Warming the starch makes them de-crystallise, so wamring stale bread softens it up again.
Living bread lasts a long time and evolves into different things as it ages. At first its warm and soft and fresh. Then it goes more chewy, then stale, but you can still warm it up and eat it or dip into soups. Eventually it is good for bread pudding or croutons, and finally you can use it for breadbrumbs in stuffing or something like that. Industrial bread cannot evolve like this because it is not real bread, so the enzymes keep it soft for ages and ages and then it just goes mouldy because it hasn't any bacteria and acid to protect it when the enzymes finally give up the ghost.

Basic bread making process

1. Make dough
2. Knead dough
3. Leave to rise
4. Shape your loaves
5. Leave to prove
6. Bake
7. Eat

Now with pictures:

1. Mix your yeast into some water, leave it for a few minutes to let it come to life - it will froth a bit.

2. Mix the living yeast-water into your flour and salt. The measurements are meant to be quite precise in the Bread matters recipe, and you can weigh your water rather than measuring it, which makes it easier and more accurate. You put your bowl on the scales and add ingredients by weight bit by bit.

3. Slub about with your hands to make dough. Get messy so a spoon doesn't have to.

4. Knead it - this an important bit and its also quite hard work. The only bit that is really difficult. You will notice the silky elasticity developing towards the end of a gruelling ten-fifteen minutes of mankering the dough. Kneading is not necessarily about leaning on it with your knuckles by the way. You just play with it, pull it apart, stretch it out, slap it down, generally abuse the dough. Stressed? Angry? Put it in the dough!

5. Leave to rise. You can put the loaf into a plastic bag and blow it full of air so it doesnt touch the plastic when it rises, seal with elastic band and leave for a while. It doesnt have to be warm, on fact you can rise or prove a loaf in the fridge overnight. This is good if you want to finish the job in the morning eg fitting around 9-5 work schedules. If it rises too fast its not always a good thing so best not on top of a radiator. I put mine in the plastic greenhouse in the garden.

6. When its risen you will see how lovely it looks, Clever yeast!

7. Butter a tin

8. Cut up your dough if you want two smaller loaves

You can also keep a bit of dough aside in the fridge to add to the next loaf, it adds a lot of flavour and yeast.

9. This is fun. You roll out a sausage of dough,

knuckle it down

till its flat

fold it in thirds

knuckle again

and thats shaping a loaf. The crease goes on the bottom. You can roll it in seeds if you like,

then pop it in the tin and leave to prove

then bake in a very hot oven.

When its ready it looks amazing - this was my first ever proper loaf and it tasted just like the best shop bread. Actually I was disappointed as I thought it would be mysteriously BETTER than shop bread.

Anyway I used my loaf - had a lovely lunch of red cabbage and scrambled egg with it.

Using old oats (not wild oats)

2008-07-04T11:06:00.008Z

These are SO easy to make, last for ages,are delicious and healthy so I think a great recipe even if you aren't out seeking wild oats.

Oat cakes basically involve oats, water, a pinch of salt, and a little fat.

You warm up some water and mix in a bit of butter to melt. Then mix that warm liquid into your oats in a bowl until they are of a nice pasty, sticky consistency.

Roll them out on a board - you can use a few more oats or some flour to reduce stickiness if you like, and bake in a medium oven for about 15 min on baking parchment paper. Keep an eye on them to see when they are ready.

Rolled oats are better because they have been softened up a bit and the starch powder helps to stick them all together.

As you can see I got all romantic with them. I hardly ever get to use thes nice pastry cutters from Anna so thats another good reason to make oat cakes.

I believe the scots used to leave the oat cakes by the fire overnight to dry out so I guess a low oven is also suitable.

They are so yummy and the better the oats the yummier they will be but I used some pretty crummy old rolled oats from the cupboard and they were fab. A really satisfying snack and a great way to use up old oats.

I kept them in a tin and they lasted about a week and still tasted great.

Elderflower Bliss

2008-06-09T09:33:00.009Z

I've been having fun with elderflowers last week. Making cordial, and making a film.

It is of course elderflower season. The elder grows a lot by the Thames. Its a small tree or large shrub depending on how you think about things. The Blossoms are large white foamy circular things scattered all over the tree like white pancakes.

I made elderflower cordial which it turns out is incredibly easy and is probably the most delicious thing I have made yet from foraging food.

You simply boil some water, about 4 pints or more,

Add sugar so it melts in

and pour this mix over the elderflowers in a big bowl.

The mix looks dark brown in the picture because I used dark brown sugar. I really thought this would overwhelm the elderflower flavour but it doesnt at all, quite the reverse in fact.

Leave this in the fridge for four days or so, then strain off the juice. You can add lemon peel, lemon juice, and/or oranges and juice to add flavour and acidity, either at the beginning or after you make the cordial.

I was very surprised that the flowers don't seem to smell so sweet but the cordial has the most amazing luscious fragrance.

On Saturday I took part in a film shoot with some friends who are doing art events to do with the Olympics site.
They have been collecting elderflowers and making champagne as part of a project involving a semi-real, semi-fictional company that makes food from wild plants in the Hackney/Olympics area. View pics from the shoot on Flickr

We saw not just elders but roses, which they have been using to crystallise the petals for cakes, and also crab apples, a vine, pineapple mayweed, and lots of nettles. It was a very interesting day and it brought people together and talking about history (part of the film was set in the 40s) and wild food and grandmothers.

We had a 40's picnnic and sampled the sloe gin they made last year. That was fantastic, I am going to try that one day as well. The rowan brandy I made last year was frankly a waste of good brandy.

I would like to try my hand at the elderflower champagne!
Or maybe just buy a bottle at the performance.

Great Coffee from New Zealand

2008-05-30T09:34:00.001Z

This isn't actually about coffee from new zealand, its a message from Eve in New Zealand about making Great coffee.

Thanks Eve!

************************************************
Yesterday the guy from Atomic Coffee roasters came for the fair trade coffee event. He told us how to make coffee properly and how we hadbeen doing it so wrong... This is with a plunger as we don't have a machine.

The coffee must be ground quite coarse a bit bigger than granulated sugar.
Grindjust as much as you need at the time coz it oxidises quite quickly. about a heaped desert spoon for a cup but more or less if you like.
Then.....you pour the water on just a bit and let it go frothy but not boiling water, you need water just off the boil about 85. This will make the coffee much sweeter because it burns at about 95 which is what makes it bitter. mmmmm
So then poor the rest of the water on and leave for not longer than a minute (its not like tea wher it keeps gettingstronger) and then plunge away.

Ooh and store coffee in an airtight container in the dark (and not in the fridge because water would condensate on it when you got it out of the fridge).

************************************************

I dont actually drink coffee - it gives me the shakes - but I do love it and if i did drink it I would definitely want to do it this way.

Comfrey Fritters and other marvels

2008-05-27T17:33:00.004Z

Comfrey or knitbone is famed for its ability to heal wounds. Rob and I have both tried it and its marvellous. No really. But that is in the form of oil or crushed leaves.

Then I discovered you can also eat these very rough-skinned leaves. The comfrey plants are brimming with life these days so its a good time to collect these leaves. Apparently comfrey fritters are the thing, and are particularly enjoyed by Germans I read.

Anyway you take some comfrey leaves from your plant in the back yard that seeded itself and grows most vigourously.

You make a thin batter using oil, water, flour and fold in a whipped egg white, as you are making a sponge.

Dip the leaves into the batter and drop into hot oil, like you would with deep fried mars bars or whatever you normally deep fry.

Actually this wasnt very nice, not because of the leaves, which are lovely, but because they are too oily. Maybe the oil was at the wrong temperature but I would welcome any tips on improving this recipe.

Comfrey is also good for making a stinking goo to nourish your plants with. Leave some leaves in a bucket with rainwater and let them rot down. A nutritious nitrogenous soup for all (vegetables) to enjoy.

May Gathering

2008-05-23T13:48:00.005Z

I was in Stroud in early may and we went for a walk across the tops of the hills. I was nearly out of hawthorn tea from last year so when I saw the may bushes I decided to collect it in my walnut-dyed scarf.

I made Rob take pictures with his mobile.

The may leaves have been dried since then and I have a full jar of leaves again, to last another year.

Apparently the phrase 'Ne'er cast a clout till May is out' doesnt mean 'until the month of May is over' but ' Until the May flowers have blossomed'

May (hawthorn) apparently has had a huge significance in English (and Scottish) folklore in the past. It smells a bit nasty as Rob so eloquently expressed when we started this lark...this and other factors have been woven into the folklore. Read Richard Mabey 'Flora Britannica' for all the lowdown on May.

chicken of the woods - feeling chicken?

2008-05-09T13:16:00.007Z

I was walking home the other day when I saw a huge orangey-yellow fungus growing in a the nook of a tree in our road (I think its a type of birch but I am not great on tree species. that is my best guess from my new tree book).

So I bethought myself to investigating this large orange putrescence.

The mushroom books tell me it is Chicken of the Woods (Laetiporus sulphureus)

This extraordinary fungus is apparently - very occasionally - toxic - with hallucinations and upset stomach.

Hallucinations etc

So I have approached this particular culinary adventure with some trepidation and tested a small sample first before eating it for a meal.

Even though the books say it can't be mistaken for anything else, I still am a bit nervous about having got it right.

Nice for lunch

No suffering followed the initial test so I have just eaten up the lot for lunch. I fried in in small pieces with olive pesto, mackerel, a squeeze of lemon and some balsamic vinegar.

As you can see on the right, I had with it some aubergine, cold greens, radish and yoghurt. Actually the mustard and the yoghurt both help to make the meatiness of the fungus stand out more, and compensate for its lack of flavour.

It tastes quite mild, although it smelt heavenly of that lovely fresh, cool mushroom smell. The texture is the most notable thing when eating it, its rather floury or rubbery, a bit like eating synthetic sponge I suppose. Not very appealing but definitely it has a kind of 'meatiness' which I suppose gives rise to the Chicken analogy.

I read about herbs a suggestion to 'sit and listen' to a herb and feel what it is like to be that herb and then ask the herb permission to eat it and then listen for the answer. I tried this in a minor sort of way when I was feeling nervous about the mushroom and I seemed to feel I had a postive answer. I sort of felt then that it was absolutely safe to eat and rather good. I would like to develop this intuition further.

Apparently if you cut away only a part of it you can come back and harvest again next year this spring crop mushroom. We cut off about a fifth of what you see in the picture at the top. I don't think anyone else in Kew is after it.

Another Link - Roger's Mushrooms, nice and scientific for those who like that sort of thing.

Very detailed info with an omelette recipe here

A message from a fellow food adventurer

2008-04-22T15:16:00.006Z

I got this from Ulrike who has also been playing with her food:

"Hello Sarah & Rob,

I've made an adventure with food today: Black Salsify. Abel & Cole have delivered them with the small deluxe box twice in the last three weeks and today we felt adventurous enough to cook them!
You boil them for about half an hour, and then peel the bark-like skin off:
We've eaten them in browned goat's butter & parsley accompanied by an omelette:

Tastes like jerusalem artichoke I find.
According to Jules' research on the internet, salsify was Thomas Jefferson's favourite vegetable!

I don't think it's as adventurous as your purple mushrooms or squirrel stew but I thought I'd share it with you,

Ulrike xx"

Ulrike then reported that she thinks the salsify didnt agree with her too well but maybe it was because it had been sitting in the box for three weeks.

Thanks U!

playing with food

2008-04-10T16:32:00.006Z

Rosemary is not exactly food, its a herb. But you can eat it so for the purposes of this blog its food.

You can also use it to make your jumper an interesting greeny-yellow-mustard colour.

First you boil up some rosemary leaves (lots of them) in a big old pot. I got some from the garden, where someone had pruned the big rosemary bush.

Then you add a spoon or two of potash(alum, or potassium sulphate). This is what's called a "mordant" or fixer. It makes the colour brighter and it fixes it so it lasts longer and doesn't run.

Then you stick in your jumper or whatever it is and let it simmer for about an hour or so.

When it comes out its a lovely greeny colour.

I also decanted some rosemary juice (BEFORE adding the alum, whic is toxic!!) into a bottle to use as a hair tonic। Apparently it stops grey hair. I will let you know if it works or not. I will be able to tell you this because i have some grey hairs appearing and would like them to go away please.

taste the snow

2008-04-07T18:12:00.001Z

taste the snow
Originally uploaded by spidea

there was plan to go on a wild food walk this weekend, in ashdown forest. But it snowed heavily so we could only eat the snow.

I think that counts. It came in very useful for making tea as well.

Make Orange Jam

2008-04-02T15:21:00.010Z

Abel & Cole send us a box of unwashed vegetables and fruit every week. It is left in the plastic greenhouse outside the back door.

Since Christmas they seem to have had a special deal with the orange suppliers of Spain as we have had streams of oranges (and clems, tangerines, etc) flooding through each week. Now I am not that into eating oranges. I normally eat biscuits and toast and things like that unless Rob cooks a nice pasta. (That;'s why I need to go on these diets because otherwise i eat all sorts of crap. Like right now, I am eating shortbreads that I picked up free at the local shop, they are past their sell-by date but taste none the worse for that!).

Eventually we had a mountain of oranges piled up in the fruit bowl, one or two went mouldy of course as citrus does.

And then Rob caught the epidemic flu-cough of Ealing. And I looked after him. And I saw those oranges, and my friend Anna told me that vitamin C helps during a cold (but not. apparently, beforehand, to build resistance; that is apparently a myth)

So I got this idea.

And I spent ages squeezing every last orange by hand into a jug and it made the most amazing elixir of life you can imagine. It was SO delicious despite the hard work. A lot of the oranges were blood oranges, so the juice was very sweet and very red.

And then of course, there was a mountain of orange peel, and not being one to countenance unnecessary waste, I bethought myself to adapting a marmalade recipe.

These being sweet oranges, they aren't the right thing, but there they were, these hundreds of orange skins, all plump and mangled and I couldn't bear to throw them away. So i stuck them in my giant cooking pot and poured in some water and a bag of sugar. And this time I kept an eye on it so it didnt burn, even though it took ages to boil down. and then I made pots and pots and pots of the stuff.

Maybe you are one of the lucky recipients of one of these pots and can give me some feedback.

Rob loves it but then he loves everything I made so far! (apart from the whelks, that wasnt popular even with him)

Then I got the Epic Flu thing and we both lay on the sofa for three days eating orange jam on sourbread.

Fifers become locavores

2007-12-20T14:45:00.000Z

This link was sent to me by a friend. It's interesting - the Fifers have discovered many of the same things we did. Their perspective is that a local diet is preparation for the future, this is interesting as it suggests people are wanting to prepare for times ahead in which food supplies are cut off and international trade is reduced. Is this a possibility? I think so.

River Cottage Feature

2007-12-13T18:04:00.000Z

Hey the River Cottage folk liked my amethyst deceivers,
check it out (scroll down a bit, my pics are near the bottom of the page).

If they are super nice to me I might let them have my squirrel stew recipe. Or maybe they can just read it on the page below...

and its not just the africans who benefit from eating air freight vegetables

2007-12-13T12:23:00.000Z

This article is really good, it busts a few myths about how to save the world.
the thing is, everyone likes recycling because it doesnt mean much change. The article points out that it would be better to stay in UK for your holiday and do no recycling at all, than to recycle carefully but still have nice two weeks in the sun. the list goes on, and people stay dumb.
Of course it also means local meat is much more carbon heavy than air-freight veg

The simple list of what to do is:
1. Go vegan
2. Don't buy anything. But especially not big TVs and gagdets and computer games etc
3. Eat up your food and dont chuck it out/
4. Insulate your house.

If you did that it would far outweigh a few plastic pots being recycled.
But its sexier to instal solar and drive a hybrid and think that that is enough/

This is an emergency people!

The moral duty to eat African strawberries at Christmas

2007-11-12T10:35:00.000Z

This article (Acrobat PDF opens if you click the title of this post) explores the problem that arises if we all reduce our food miles. The author argues that poor people who are trying to sell the produce we will no longer buy because its air-freighted, will pay a high price for our good intentions.

A prominent environment and development consultant from Kenya has commented:

"My congratulations to the author of the article! At least some one else is able to put in clear writing what I struggle to say in so many places. Simplistic solutions such as food miles will hurt the environment more and lull us into the false belief that we are part of the solution when are actually still part of the problem and making it worse."

Here is one extract:
"A number of studies analysing the total carbon footprint of agrarian products, particularly those sold in the UK, have conclusively shown that the full life-cycle climate change impact of food supply in industrialised countries cannot be reduced to simple distances between consumers and producers.

"According to a report by the New Zealand Agribusiness and Economics Research Unit (AERU),6 the carbon footprint of NZ milk solids, lamb and apples sold in the UK is up to four times lower than that of their locally produced equivalent, even if transport emissions are included."

If you are thinking of reducing your carbon footprint by reducing food miles, make sure you have done the calcuations!

They also say:
"over one million livelihoods [in Africa] are supported in part owing to the fresh produce trade with the UK alone.”

I think this just shows how complicated everything is.

A large part of our reason for doing the local diet was to learn more about our own culture and land, and get more connected to the earth. These might sound like woolly concepts when you are considering how to support poor farmers but to us they were important and I think that a lot of the "local produce" trend is actually driven by this desire to connect with roots and identity and to assert one's identity through a sense of place. 'Food miles' might appear to be an eco-concern but I believe it taps into a much more primeval tribalism. That tribalism is what drives it, and the noral justification is found inthe eco-movement, which itself is partly driven by the same desire to create a sense of place and connection.

Squirrel Nut Stew

2007-10-25T14:46:00.000Z

Spent a weekend in the woods and collected a few mushies plus some fresh squirrel!

I've also had a bumper crop of sweet chestnuts and walnuts from trees down the road.

So i had a superb stew made largely from wild local food, apart from the flour (Waitrose farm in Hampshire), thyme (Dennis' allottment), salt (Maldon's, Essex), oil (olive but local rapeseed would be perfectly good substitute. I just happen to have a five gallon bottle of olive oil that was given so am making good use of it!) and carrots (Abel & Cole).

Here is my recipe for squirrel stew, incorporating Tristram's suggestions about the first stage for the meat:

Preparation stage:
1 squirrel, skiined and prepared (see Flickr for details of how to do this)
A few ounces of flour with salt and thyme mixed in
Oil

For the stew
1 or more penny buns (cep mushroom)
A few spiny puffballs
Handful of Amethyst Deceivers
Handful of sweet chestnuts, peeled
Handful of walnuts
Water
6 medium size Chopped carrots
Spoonful of apple cheese

1. Chop and put the carrots in to boil
2. Toss the squirrel meat in the flour mix and fry on a medium heat until nicely browned all over.
3. Tip off some of the carrot water if you think there is too much for the stew. Put the squirrels in with the carrots and add a spoonful of apple cheese or other flavouring. Leave to continue simmering
4. Add the assorted nuts and mushrooms to the frying pan and fry until nicely browned. keep an eye on the stew mix in the meantime.
5. Add to the stew and continue to heat for a bit.
6.Eat!

You could have potatoes with it for filling. The flour on the squirrel helps to make the stew itself very thick and creamy.

The key to this recipe is a) collecting nice things from the woods or local streets and b) getting the timing right so the carrots dont go too mushy.

It is very sweet and very nutty and very autumnal. The ceps really were very good indeed and the mix of the wild foods gives it a deep complex flavour.

Penny buns in the woods

Ingredients for stew: Squirrel, spiny puffballs, ceps and sweet chestnuts courtesy richmond council

Walnuts are big - whats left after processing is not much! Debris in background (subsequently used to dye a scarf and a bag dark brown), edible walnut bits in the front.

Squirrel stew!

Apple cheese recipe (click the pic to see it larger)

...and roast for 60 miles at 65mph

2007-10-17T11:14:00.000Z

found this and thought of blog...

apparently chicken breasts need 60 miles of cooking at 65mph

Sweet Chestnuts

2007-10-16T19:54:00.000Z

There is a tree at the end of our road dropping handfuls of fluffy- looking balls onto the pavement and the very busy road next to it.

These are not fluffy at all but very prickly. So one has to stamp on them to find the gorgeous, glossy, yummy, sweet chestnuts inside.

I brought some to work. Not sure yet if they are popular but I hope they can at least make a good showing against the Piggy Gummy Treats from M&S that someone brought in the other day.

I just got an email from a friend who is planning a tree-planting weekend. Apparently the sweet chestnut "was introduced to Britain by the Romans by 400AD and has naturalised here - it is also a very useful wood!"

If you find one, don't mess about. Pick those nice things up!! (Leave some for the squirrels. Or don't. I dont know it so confusing, what species is OK and what isn;t and who gets what. Leave a comment if you feel the need to protest - at anything)

Amethyst Deceiver!

2007-10-16T19:45:00.000Z

The little purple one was the edible and rather delicious Amethyst Deceiver. The River Cottage handbook claims that they are generic, "filler" mushrooms. I don't agree. They are a bit tough and chewy but that was a good thing.

I spent ages poring over these little lilac beauties thinking they might be Lilac Fibrecaps, in which case a very nasty dose of pretty much everything was in store.

They are called Deceivers because they have a near relative that is edible but takes on a thousand forms, making it very tricky to recognise.

Happily the story ends well with me having a nice purple treat and a full tummy.

The one in the background was Charcoal buirner (Russula cyanoxantha) or simliar, but it turned out to be full of little mushroom grubs. All the other mushies we brought home were poisonous - or couldn't be identified but were similar to known poisonous ones.

Mushroom season

2007-10-08T20:34:00.000Z

Yesterday we went mushrooming in Epping Forest.

We didnt find much to eat, but I was amazed how many different kinds of mushrooms there are when you start looking. We found at least fifteen different kinds. I will put some photos up.

We did get some Amethyst Deceivers which are edible, but there arent many of them and the River Cottage book suggests they are not a top mushroom but being pretty can be good fillers or with a nice saffron risotto.

We got lots of poisonous ones and a couple I really cannot figure out what they are.

Watch this space for photos or upload your own in the comments!

British Food Fortnight has begun!

2007-09-23T10:13:00.001Z

back in food time

2007-09-12T00:22:00.000Z

OK so we tried the local thing, I will jsut say that it was bloody hard work but i would have liked to stay on it for a whole year.

But I also liked giving up, that day when I had Frosties, that will stay with me. But now I miss the clean feeling I had when on the diet. I think that can be attributed to the absence of processed food.

Anyway the thing is we have had several discussions about it and agreed to go back to a similar thing but its the whole of the uk this time which should make it a bit more practical.

In the meantime we've been having food adventures with things like rock samphire from the sea cliffs in Cornwall. (And loads of other stuff like making an animation, but those are different stories)

So I'd like to keep posting about these interesting UK foods and stay with the local theme and jsut see it more of an ongoing adventure and less of a serious and focused challenge.

I also want to write about the thoughts and experiences that came out of being on the diet . But its half one in the morning and I have to go to work at some point tomorrow.

xx

some time later...

2007-05-22T22:58:00.000Z

I found this interesting ad on gumtree about fresh bread
http://www.gumtree.com/london/95/8354295.html

The fact is we aren't following this diet properly any more but have adapted our regular diet taking on board some of the things we have discovered.

I have some conclusions to share that may be of interest. I'll put them up presently. Watch this space!

god bless hilary

2007-04-14T11:27:00.000Z

I met hilary at her allotment at a secret location in west london. She supplied four packs of local butter from Berkely Farm Dairy near Swindon.

She also gave me some greens to take home and told me about some organic slug pellets she is using that work without harming cute things like birds.

The greens were amazing:
fresh oregano - i am attempting to grow a cutting
sorrel - a revelation in a world without lemons - I must have some!
purple sprouting - the staple of local organic eating
some green leaves - nice!

This hanging around in a garden plot and trading cuttings reminds of what the women get up to in the amazon chacras where we were so many years ago.

Its nice to feel that sense of unity with people who live so far away.

Thanks Hilary

more on the price of fish

2007-03-29T15:53:00.000Z

Well not strictly fish, although you could say the whelks and the scallops come into it but they aren't really fish. (We havent yet succeeded in locating local fish, which is probably one the biggest changes in our diet as we used to subsist on mackerel - cheap and healthy though probably endangered or something. But I digress.)

i said before that the price of food doesnt really impact on one;s budget but i did notice last time in Waitrose that we are paying more than double the price for milk from Prince Charle's estate than it costs for some equally beautifully packaged and unhomogenised milk with lots of cream on top that comes from just outside our range. The cheaper milk also comes in bigger cartons so it produces slightly less waste.

Even though this is a matter of 40 pence, I think it indicates how there can be quite dramatic differences in food prices for very similar items. I suppose people are paying the extra for the status symbol of having Duchy milk.

There we are back to status again.

I certainly don t think this diet is a blueprint for eco living. In fact its not a blueprint for much apart from a good way to confront and have to learn about how food gets from sun -earth-plant-animal-shop -home - plate. to me that is the most interesting thing.

Also please note: there is an apparently almost total separation between local and organic food. And in wholesome looking organic shops they often dont know where the food comes from and also, 'locally made' processed food is usually made with ingredients from wholesalers and the producers generally have really and truly no idea where it originates.

In waitrose the other day the guy at the meat counter said they have total traceability for the Aberdeen angus beef but not for the lamb. So even if you wanted to you couldnt find out which farm your lamb came from.

I think this concept of traceability is a most interesting one and is an area our society seems to value very little. This diet is basically forcing us to trace to the source everything we eat, and a lot of times (id say at least 50% maybe as much as 80%) we can't eat something not because its from too far away, but because there is no information on where it came from.

Contrast that with the near-obsessive amount of time and effort that goes into giving us information on the calories, nutritional values, and ingredients of food - and just as much that we spend on finding out these 'facts'.

I suppose I, and because this phenomenon is a current trend or craze, many others too, am seeking more of a sense of connection and even perhaps of identity, through tracing where the things we eat actually come from. Is that as important, or more important than what the chemical make-up of the food is? If you know where it comes from, well in a way, what does that really tell you? Its just a concept. yet I think that concepts, feelings and impressions of meaning are as important as 'real' facts. maybe that is a good thing or a bad thing, or neither, but I do think it is a much more important factor in people;s behaviour than objective recognition of the Facts. Anyway have you ever noticed how the Facts keep changing? It used to considered much better to feed babies on Formula milk from a factory than real milk from their mother. Now it is widely accepted that its usually healthier to feed a baby mother's milk. Who decides what these Facts are? And if they are so Factual, how come they keep going out of date?

I read in a glossy magazine recently that this back-to-the-earth trend was a collective response to 9-11. We all got nervous and started wanting to go to ground. maybe so. But my theory is that the various technological revolutions promised that life would become knowable and ordered, but of course it can't, and we are starting to realise it, and maybe we can evolve into something more organic and less obsessed with Knowing Facts and more into Experiencing Life.

Mammoth Reflections

2007-03-28T12:34:00.000Z

We are now nearly three months in to the experiment and there is still an open question over whether to continue and in what form.

I would like to reflect on the experience so far.

I have noticed recently that the novelty and initial excitement has worn off and at times it has become a real drag. Its not a matter of craving things, which passed quite quickly and the new eating habits have been easy for me to adapt to and beneficial eg. herbal tea and low sugar.

However it is the amount of work involved that makes it difficult. For example, we have to go to a market every saturday and they all shut at one or two, thank god Richmond Farmer's market is open till three or we would have starved a few times. Some saturdays you really dont feel like going to the market so it makes saturdays into more of a workday because there is a routine and a deadline. Also actually shopping is hard because it is all scattered. You go to Waitrose for milk and flour and oil; the market for some greens and game; Freshers grocer over the bridge for different greens; then try to locate other sources of butter and treats or rarities. So it takes ages, and you must have cash, and if you are alone it is much easier with the car but then you risk parking fines or not finding a space at all, or getting stuck in saturday traffic.

Then there is the matter of cleaning all the earthy veg, and then processing it into something nice to eat.

I think one of the biggest changes is that there is no processed food. This is very healthy and I have definitely noticed the quality of food being very high, plus i get a huge sensual pleasure out of working with luscious piles of fressh leafy greens and earthy potatoes and juicy tomatoes and from boiling huge vats of burbling nutrition; but if you have two people not earning much and holding down jobs with complicated work patterns it can sometimes be really tedious to have to spend ages cooking.

Its all to do with economics. If we grew our own veg, and cooked and preserved it all ourselves, then we would need less money to live and therefore could do less hours at the office. I would rather spend my morning tending, digging, cooking and cleaning veg than going to the office as it happens, but in London the economics and the way things are set up is such that this isnt feasible. So instead of having land, we have cash, and we use it to buy stuff that other people grew and made and then they buy stuff off us, like the legal contracts they need to run their business. and in a big city you get lots of people concentrated together doing more abstract things, like recording information, and they ship in all the earthier stuff and pay for it instead of doing it themselves. And they get cleaners in to do the chores for them, and so on.

But what have you really gained? You are just swapping one chore for another, and it seems to me that digging a garden is a nice chore than processing information at a screen all day. Plus its MUCH healthier on the mental, physical and spiritual levels, so why do so many people choose to get away from it and go and abstract themselves from the earth? Personally I think it is all down to a need for higher status, which seems to be a huge drive for humanity in general, and *maybe (*cod psychology alert) behind that is a desire to be loved more.

Anyway I have really enjoyed sensing the earth itself, I mean like when we went to Exmoor, you could taste that the food was richer, and I think its because the soil there is so rich and red and wonderful, and so the veg they grow and the animals that eat it, all taste better. The 'richness' means lots of minerals and nutrients, and less of the odd chemicals that go into food and the food chain. Look at the word 'richness'. it may seem that if you earn lots of money in Lond but you dont have to clean your veg, or you get exercise in a fancy gym instead of down the garden, then you are 'rich'. Well you may be, but how rich is your food? Your body? How enriched are your senses, when you jog on a running machine, compared to when you are digging the ground and feeling the cold crumbly soil and touching slimy worms and hearing robins and little rustling noises and breathing in the amazing cacophony of scents of each leaf and earth and air, and tasting the veg to see if its ready, or just because its nice to graze on the freshest food you can ever get? Its a rare shop can give you food fresh from the ground, and in my experience, that is a very different and much RICHER experience than a beautifully packaged, elegant, delicate, but faded, jaded, alienated, blanded, processed thing. Some expensive delicacies are good of course, but on a day to day level, its more nourishing and richer to engage with the living earth than to have it all pre-packaged in long-shelf-life boxes, however pretty.

But trying to have both ways is not easy. Trying to live in the pre-packaged system we have now in London, but trying to get a few threads into theses more nourishing experiences as well, is Really Hard Work.

I was sent a link this week to a story about a New York couple who are trying to live a No Impact life in Manhatten. They have a baby daughter too, and this is extreme- they are generating no waste, for example. Ie no disposable nappies, or apparently, even loo roll.

However there is one key point I want to make about their plan. The guy has a book deal and also a documentary film deal. in other words, he is making his living just doing this lifestyle. He doesn't have to live like that AND have a regular job. So he has all day to clean vegetables and look for butter and walk to the shops and cook and then write about it. That is a crucial difference. It is POSSIBLE to live a low impact and healthy life in a city, BUT it takes more time. If your salary just covers the bills then you pay the price in terms of being more tired or seeing less friends.

The only thing for it is to head for the hills and build a house out of mud and spin our own cotton.

Exmoor Adventure

2007-03-26T11:53:00.000Z

We had a long weekend in Exmoor which is over 100 miles away. What a conundrum! We took the opportunity to see what produce they have in the area and went to the local farmers market in Minehead. We also stayed on an organic B&B farm (Hindon), where they serve huge breakfasts made from the pigs and lambs and cattle that you meet as you head off up the hill afterwards for your walk across the moor.

This makes a good change as most local food is not organic. If we tried to live on local organic food we would be in intensive care by now.

We brought back some goodies and I would like to mention that the taste of the cucumber, potatoes and eggs that we brought back from Exmoor were all fabulous. I think it must be the rich red soil. I am serious - I noticed the difference in quality and will miss the eggs - that was one of the best omelettes ever! - and the sweet, fluffy, rich potatoes. I never knew potatoes were anything more than general Filler food.

More holidays in Exmoor Please!

a Plea for Butter

2007-03-12T10:38:00.000Z

The one item we are struggling to locate a regular supply for within 100 miles, is butter.
Please help!

The butter we found so far is either made from the cream on the top of the Duchy Milk or else from a tiny place in sussex that we cant go back to for a while.

2007-03-09T23:13:00.000Z

An argument is raging or, at the least, negotiations are taking place, into just how long this diet of discovery should continue before I am pushed, through despair and repression, into an illicit, clandestine affair with a forbidden toffee apple or am found by Sarah in an uncompromising menage a trois with a cadbury's whirl and a kinder surprise.

In short, if I don't get some proper chocolate soon I'm going to kill some bastard.

keep on truckin

2007-03-05T21:29:00.000Z

Here are some more pictures to show you what we have found recently.

First let me tell you - its very exciting - lettuce is now available..since about two weeks actually, say late february. Apparently tomatoes are being sold in Twickenham but our grocer says two more weeks.

Here is some pigeon breast being cooked. It is absolutely exquisitely delicious. Its really tender and has a good strong flavour. Its almost like liver actually.

here is some nice people on the Roman Road in the east end, selling whelks and cockles from Whitstable. Also delicious.

We got a cup of whelks for £3.80. I cooked them in the following way, adapted from the Mendip Snails "Court Bouillon" recipe in 'A Taste of the West Country' by Theodora Fitzgibbon, an old book i picked up at the delightful Lloyds of Kew bookshop.

This is the whelks at the back. The foreground is mussels, not sure where they are from.

Whelk Recipe

First mix some chopped herbs ( i used thyme, a bay leaf, and garlic)
with water, white wine, some chopped shallots (the shallots are wonderful - more later) and a pinch of Maldon salt, in a small pan, and bring to the boil.

In the meantime I threw a big lump of butter and a generous amount of grated cheddar cheese into another pan, with chopped cress and mustard sprouts which I've been growing on the windowsill. This is gently heated up.

Once the first pan was boiling i added the whelks and let them simmer for a bit. When it was time to eat them ( i guess i waited till i felt like any bacteria were probably dead)
that was when I added the cheesy stuff and mixed it all together.

Here is Rob enjoying it with a baked potato.

Rob said it was very nice. I thought it was ok but I must say the whelks were a bit rubbery and too reminiscent for me of a bad experience I had in the Amazon. But lashings of butter and cheese can make anything taste good. I think thats the secret really. If you like eating chewy molluscs then this recipe is by far the most interesting one I could find in my odd assortment of old fashioned english cookery books.

Anyway back to the photos.

Reasonable english table wine although Surrey Gold is much better.

Waitrose has some interesting cheeses although they seem to get a lot of produce from Somerset which is too far away for us.

This is Sussex Slipcote:

and this is Moody's Rosary Ash. It is incredibly delicious - sweet and creamy and very delicate.

The packaging is interesting because they have a series of cheeses with a map of the country its made in featured on the packet, with a big circle on the region its from. So its really easy to see where its from. This one actually looks a bit borderline but heck, its probably just in.

I keep buying goats milk but not drinking it so i don't know what it tastes like yet. I am trying to make yoghurt out of it but it isn't working.

We've been totally dependent on this apple juice throughout the diet. Its one of the few soft drinks we can have apart from the lovely Hammersmith Tap. It comes in a very wide range of flavours from sharp bramley to sweet braeburn. It's available at the local corner shop which helps a lot.

And Finally...

The nice people at Pertwood Porridge oats found Rob's blog about the oats and sent us a whole box full of them.

They are really good and we are investigating new recipes since there are now so many oats in the kitchen. Bread with oats in is next up I think. Oat recipes will appear here soon.

xx
s

a note of the cost of food

2007-03-02T23:39:00.000Z

I would like to comment on the fact that often people wonder whether the food we are buying "costs more".

Sometimes yes it is more expensive than if you just went to Tesco all the time.

However, I never did and rob only sometimes and when he was skint.

but the thing is, how much does even really expensive food cost?

Like if I am really going overboard, I might pay, I don't know, a pound for a pint of milk instead of 36p.

That's 64p more than normal.

I mean come on. That is not really going to make any difference to my life. We get through about three-four pints a week, thats about £2,40. Thats less than a glass of wine one evening down the pub.

A week. Between us. For one drink.

I really dont think that buying Expensive Food makes much difference. Running an Expensive Car, that makes a difference. Going on Expensive Holidays, makes a difference. Buying Expensive Clothes makes a difference.

Paying 64p more for a pint of milk, that doesnt make a difference.

And anyhow, for everything we buy that costs more, there are three things that are much cheaper (eg home grown mint) - or someone sends us a box of oats - so in the end it doesnt matter.

Thankyou. Lesson for the day has now ended.

Raisins

2007-02-19T10:19:00.000Z

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 very welcome.

Also this week we discovered a great local grocer near Richmond bridge, and a real ale shop near there too. And had a very quick look at Petersham nurseries which appparently grow food and sell it in the cafe, which is totally magically gorgeous.

x

"Hunger is what makes a good meal great."

2007-02-08T15:39:00.000Z

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 food taste much better.

So I would say this diet is about more than food. Or maybe food is about more than mere eating. It is about a way of life. Its a nice way of life and actually a few people have said I am looking very good these days, maybe its all that cream and eggs.

I do believe that if we are all going to be more ecofriendly its about changing our way of life and this is one way to see how that can be done. It really is a big change but its also quite easy and very exciting and it is making me think about lots of things in a new way. And it is incredibly satisfying and wholesome somehow, to actually be hungry and to really have to work hard to get your food.

Before I would just eat even when I wasnt hungry and I never really enjoyed it as much.

(NB Cooking in large quantities is good so you can then eat cold leftovers for a couple of days and it gets yummier each time.)

Stroud Eggs

2007-02-07T22:16:00.000Z

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 at us and we had to go.

It was very interesting to see how the eggs are collected. I guess a lot of egg places have that kind of system.

The eggs I bought were huge. They were too large for the recycled Waitrose Large Eggs box that I put the eggs in.

Haven't tried them yet - will let you know if they taste as good as one feels they ought to.

The last pic shows how the hens come out the back of the shed and go into the outdoors. There was a bunch of hens further away in a bigger area with grass so I guess they get turns in the bigger part and most of the time they get to hang out in this bit. And then go inside again at night. This is what 'free range' means on egg packets. Now you know!

Konstam's

2007-02-05T20:07:00.000Z

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 obviously the tarte tatin, made with local apples, local flour and locally grown lavender for the sauce. Alas, the manager, when challenged, could not accurately pin-point the source of the sugar, but it could have been Silver Spoon! He was certainly very interested to hear that Silver Spoon grows all of its sugar beet in East Anglia, slightly outside the M25 but very much within one hundred miles and most definitely English!
The ignite was on my tongue from the gorgeous leek and spinach soup. It just tasted so fresh and creamy, like a big, fresh, creamy thing on a spoon!
The fright, alas, was the main dish, a locally reared chicken that was just a little too bland, a little too fatty for me. But the highs out-weighed the lows and it was a fascinating experience that I would recommend to anyone interested in local foods. I certainly didn't feel we missed out from not eating at a more conventional, less ingredient-challenged restaurant somewhere else in town.
As I write this blog, I am thinking about chocolate.

Food miles debate

2007-01-29T14:35:00.000Z

I just read this about food miles campaigns hurting African suppliers.

The truth is there is no way to determine all the consequences of all that we do, I don';t mean we shouldnt think about it but perhaps it works best if we just do what we feel like. The thing about eating is that no matter what way you cut it, we are taking something. Something has to die, usually, except in the case of salt which isn't really food. And although plants arent said to feel pain they are still dying for our plates. And also the space they take up is space that could be used by some wild creatures instead but we use the space for our own purposes.

The point is, by existing, we are bound to deplete other being's resources. We kind of just have to have faith that there is a general balance maintained, and I suppose you can also try not to be really deliberately selfish and greedy. But beyond that, I really dont think that you can base your actions on whether someone or something else might lose out. Of course it will - that is the nature of life and the universe. Dont beat yourself up over it. Just show some respect, and when its your turn to give yourself up to the universe, give thanks that you had your turn and offer yourself freely to the next lot.

Not that I particularly want to do that you understand. I am sure I will wriggle (am wriggling) as much as possible to get out of it. But I guess that is in the nature of life - it is a bit savage and one thing does well generally at the expense of another.

Seems to me you can only try to minimise the damage and take what you need not what you want.

Regarding the problem of emissions i do agree with the point in the article about the fact that a few beans from Africa dont add up to much compared to all the local driving and holidays we take for example. I have also heard elsewhere that (its fairly obvious actually) food transportation is much more efficient when done in huge bulk via supermarkets than for lots of people to drive round the countryside looking for bits of food here and there.

I dont actually think this local food campaign is just about food miles although that is what people might think is what it is about. I think there are nationalistic threads to it and also in a more positive light, it's about people wanting to feel a connection with their land and local communities. There is probably some nostalgia and romanticism thrown in and a dose of food fear.

Anyway - more on this later

x

I Can't Believe It's Butter

2007-01-25T17:58:00.000Z

Being on a 100 mile diet is turning out to be incredibly interesting in so many ways. I want to discuss that in more depth over the next few weeks, how i'm changing how I think and how I feel physically.

For example, I never used to believe that 'you are what you eat' - I had a sense that it doesnt actually matter that much what you eat, its all broken down to calories and vitamins right? But I have been off caffeine, chocolate and every kind of processed food for a while and I feel different. I feel clean and creamy. I am eating a lot of cream.

That is coming to an end now as we went to Sussex for the weekend, checked out about five farm and local shops, and as we were heading back to London in a foul gale as what patheitc little bit of sunlight there had been in the day was dragged screaming to its destiny, the way of all flesh, i turned sharply and dangerously into a little farm shop near Fairlight. I was rootling around and asking the farmer what he had that was really local and not just looked like it, when I remembered cream... and then ... there it was.... on the top shelf of the chiller cabinet....

BUTTER!!

I had actually forgotten all about butter, its become such a fruitless search. Which is silly because I am sure there is plenty of butter being made in the radius. We just couldnt seem to get our hands on any except by making it at home from cream (hence the high cream consumption).

So I went a bit mad and bought three large packets. They are really charming. The butter is a big lump wrapped in greasepaper and then popped into a little white paper bag with a sticker saying 'Home Made Butter' and a phone number.

If only they delivered to Kew....

Earning a Crust

2007-01-19T20:22:00.000Z

Today, unlike any other day of my pampered life, I made bread. Neccesity, of course, fuelled my desire to partake in such a fool-hardy venture, even though I was well aware the odds of success for the first-time bread-maker ran to approximately one meeellion to one. My hunger was deep, my lament obvious, my absent daily loaf a bitter reminder that I maybe wasn't putting quite enough effort into this diet of enlightenment.

Indeed, Sarah, to emphasize beautifully my point, has been conjuring butter from cream on an almost daily basis this last week, in a way that is both mesmerising and utterly gorgeous.

Alas, I had to make a stand.

So I decided that if I couldn't find bread in the UK made only from ingredients found within our 100 mile barbed-wire fence, then I would have to instead make my own bread from legal ingredients found within our small and cluttered London kitchen.
Fealess, I proceeded to mix the Hampshire flour, the Berkshire yeast, the Essex sea-salt and the tepid Richmond tap-water into a fine, delightfully elasticated, goo-ey dough. I then kneeded it for ten minutes, greased the tin and and cling-film with sarah's butter and left my messy sculpture to rest for an hour while I went for a walk to get chocolate out of my head.
On my return, with chocolate harpies still tormenting my every step with their teasing dances, I popped the expanded dough into a hot oven and waited for the impending moment when all my endeavours would come to a predictably tragic end.
It didn't happen! The bread came out fine! I cut open the middle, still expecting some sort of hideous mis-hap, an un-cooked centre perhaps, or some terrible facial scarring caused by burning, bubbling, spitting dough, but all was calm around our flat. The kitchen smelt of H.E. Bates!
I sniffed, tentatively, at my cooling masterpiece, and purred. It all gave me a huge head-rush. At least it would have done if my head hadn't already been full to burst with catarrh and the unctuous remains of a charmless cold. Yet there was still room enough to give rise to the wonderful feeling of connection with the food I would soon eat.
Next, I am going to grow my own cocoa beans.

The Week in Pictures

2007-01-19T19:24:00.000Z

This has been a very productive week, in which we made our first butter (from the cream off the top of the milk - amazing how little cream you need to get enough butter for pancake making - thanks to Suzanne for your helpful demonstration of how to vigorously beat the cream until it turns to butter),

I got to use the wooden butter pat makers I bought in Stroud four years ago when I had romantic notions about my domestic destiny (now being fulfilled!!)...

Rob made bread for the first time ever,

and luckily he called to check that yes, it is better to remove the cling film from the risen bread before baking it, so the results were amazing ( I can honestly say its the best bread I've ever eaten, at least that I can remember eating, I don't even normally like bread)

and I got to eat home made bread with home made butter and home made blackberry jam for the first time ever, eating bread at all was wonderful treat after weeks of pancakes , porridge and potato

I also found English wine at the market and discovered that [allegedly] there was more Pinot Grigio sold in the UK alone last year than was officially produced in Italy (you do the maths)
Ulrike brought us pure filtered Hammersmith water (filtered through generations of londoners this pure fresh Tap water with a unique taste is bottled at source by handcrafted ancient London tradespeople) - see Rob's post below for full details -

and Sarah from the office brought in the most amazingly fragrant and uplifting home grown veggies for us...

(beautiful Rainbow Chard - I adore it just for the glamorous and unvegetable-like colours)

....which took a little while to clean but it was very satisfying and interesting.

Home Made Tap Water

2007-01-19T15:19:00.000Z

For the benefit of those of you, i.e everyone in the world except me, Sarah and a certain female German book-seller trading in Kew, who haven't read Ulrike Bulle's comments concerning my mineral water tirade earlier in the month, the picture you are idly gazing at whilst reading this latest blog entry is that of a bottle of bone fide Hammersmith tap water which has been filtered clean of stomach gremlins and presented us sweetly as a gift. Mmm!
Now rumour has it there is an inexaustible supply of this particular variety of H2O flowing under the surface of southwest London, so both Sarah and myself look forward to toasting Ulrike's very good health with the stuff for as long as the diet continues.
Does it taste different to Richmond tap water? I hear you ask.
Buggered If I know!

Oil Discovered 97.37 Miles Away

2007-01-17T17:45:00.000Z

I went on the River Cottage website because of their hempseed oil and got help in the forum from some nice person.

Apparently Hillfarm Rapeseed oil which is sold in Waitrose is IN at 97.37 miles from Richmond. Hooray!

And thanks to the UK Postcode Distance Calculator

Porridge Oats Good for the Heart

2007-01-16T09:40:00.000Z

This week, what with a bout of flu and a general mallaise brought on by a lack of sunlight, I have been eating little else but Pertwood porridge oats.

And they are helping to cure what ails me.

Until Sarah found this cereal last week whilst trawling the deep, rich waters of the internet, we had been living off a less-than-healthy but utterly indulgent breakfast of pan-cakes, washed down with local apple juice or hawthorn tea - whatever was our poison. ( And, trust me, hawthorn tea is utter poison of the taste buds.)
But now we have a choice of early morning treats and not one of them is chocolate. Still, there is something about these thick, chewy, giant oats from a Wiltshire farm that teases my tongue like the sweetest dessert and nurtures a tiny realisation in me that I have been consuming absolute groul for the past thirty-five years whenever porridge has been served me. For, unlike the flour-like substance of most mainstream brands, you open up a packet of Pertwood oats and the intoxicating memory of flapjacks immediately infiltrates your nostrils, reminding you that life is good and that chocolate isn't the only cake. It looks like the winter just got a little sunnier!

Put Silver Spoon in Your Mouth

2007-01-09T13:32:00.000Z

Great news!

Silver Spoon sugar is all produced from sugar beet grown in East Anglia. You can read the details of my correspondence with them in Correspondence with Silver Spoon in the 'Link' list to the right.

Oats On the Way

2007-01-08T22:29:00.000Z

Our local health food shop (Oliver's) has ordered Pertwood porridge oats specially in for us. They were already stocking some other products from the same farm but not the oats. The other products all have added ingredients, so even the barley flakes are out as they have salt and malt and we can't guarantee the origin of those ingredients.
The shop were very helpful and interested and they asked us to tell them about any suppliers of local organic food we discover.

I should add the local corner store/grocer are also very helpful and interested and let us know in quite good detail where their UK products come from.

Lesson One: Don't Go Out Hungry

2007-01-08T21:00:00.000Z

Wow! That was a very interesting weekend.

The first week was admittedly an easy ride and it was on Saturday after getting to the farmer's market and being laden with as much produce as we could carry (we can't top up mid-week remember) that hunger started to kick in. Not real proper hungry-people-hunger, but still, enough to make life become rather uncomfortable and to make us think we should go home and cook something rather than continuing to try and find butter. No stopping off at the many cafe's and snack bars, no dropping into a newsagent for a bottle of energy juice. Just feeling really tired and hungry and not being able to eat anything as its all raw and needs cooking. When you take it for granted its hard to really imagine what that will feel like. What I found interesting was that it was actually really easy to see it as not an option. I mean it would be so easy to just think 'well i must have something to eat' and break the rule. But now that rule is there, its like an invisible wall between me and Starbucks. Which I think might be a good thing but I am sure it could be a bit dangerous to make up rules and then completely believe them even though they are only made up. Probably if was really genuinely hungry and not just having a sugar crisis I would throw the rule out of the window. Still I was surprised by how completely I had closed off from the possibility of eating outside the diet. I am sure everyone who was at D and K's on Sunday will beg to differ (more on that later).

******************************************************
Finding Local Food in Richmond

We went to the farmer's market and found lots of meat and veg as expected. However, the dairy people weren't there, and the bread people weren't sure about the wheat and anyway the chances of the salt being local too were too low so we didn't get that either.

Then we realised we really needed dairy so we tried Waitrose, which was quite productive. They sell (and so do Tesco) some pastel coloured eggs at an exorbitant price which are IN. They also had several types of flour from named farms, a couple of cheese suppliers and milk from Prince Charlie's place in Gloucestershire (its REALLY REALLY YUMMY even though it costs three times as much as milk) but NO BUTTER. Lots of fancy lovely home made butters - from France, from Italy, from everywhere but IN. And no English wine (local health food shop Elderflower wine sufficed!) and all the cider was from Somerset which I think is OUT.

We also tried M&S, which label their food with sources helpfully apart from the fact that they are all ISRAEL, ARGENTINA, PERU, MEXICO, FRANCE, SPAIN, etc.

In Tesco everything is from 'Produced for Tesco' - sometimes they do give 'UK' but mostly nothing unless its a non-Tesco branded product.

The health food shops actually seem to be the vaguest. All the packaging there is about 'Organic' and 'xxx-free' so once again we suffered a lot from NEI (Not Enough Information).

We tried the Chiswick market on Sunday for butter but still no luck. I am now saving the fat from fried bacon and saving the tiny weeny little piece of butter to cook pancakes, which have been our breakfast for the past few days as the oat farmers don't seem to have tapped in to the Farmers Market phenomenon yet and the shopkeepers have no idea where they come from.

You wouldn't believe how long it takes to work out where everything comes from. I was going to do some sales shopping and use all those nice vouchers people gave me for Christmas but somehow Butter became the focus of the weekend and took up hours of my time. It still is actually.

******************************************************
Lessons Learnt

I propose that the next shopping trip will take the following form:

- Get up before 11am
- Eat as much as possible for breakfast
- Go to Richmond
- Get out a huge bundle of cash (local food is often considered fancy and is thus very expensive)
- Go to market
- Get whatever we can carry
- Go really quickly to another market eg barnes is quite good
- get as much as...again
- go to waitrose if desperate
- crawl home, cook large quantities and eat it. Nap then go on the internet to try and identify sources of food.

Actually that is pretty close to what happened last week except I wont be going back to M&S - all from Abroad - or Tesco - NEI. Which should save a precious hour or two which we can use for things like saving goose fat.

The local corner shop has actually turned out to have more useful locally produced goods than anyone. We can get eggs (Kent), apple juice(Kent) and potatoes (Essex) and that forms the basis of a healthy diet. In fact, that solves it. Egg and potato for a week sounds good to me, if it means I can go sales shopping before they put the prices back up again!

Discerning Tastes

2007-01-07T11:18:00.000Z

O.k, so there are a few of you out there with slightly more discerning tastes than mine - sensitive souls who can indeed differentiate the subtle flavours of water into categories of good and bad, hard and soft, wet and not-so-wet and so on. I am willing to be educated on this subject by anyone patient enough to teach me. After all, this is a diet of discovery and I am humble enough to suppose the possibility of enlightenment.

But the more important point I was attempting to make, though it was seemingly lost in all my spitting, is that, although it is fine to have these pleasantly packaged foreign brands on our shelves, Perrier in particular seems to have become a national institution, a mainstream favourite, and that emphasises beautifully mine and Sarah's argument that people in this country are not emoting with what is being grown and produced in their own corners of the world. Clear, crisp, unadulterated mineral water cascades over the rocks of each and every range of hills in the British Isles and is duly captured, bottled, named and sold throughout the land. So why is Perrier so popular? When it should really be a treat, like Brie or Parma ham, which are gastronomic delights, utterly delicious, that do not affect the popularity of Cheddar or other English meats.

Not that I consider Perrier to be particularly delicious, you understand!

Water, Water, Everywhere, and Not a Drop to Drink

2007-01-05T19:52:00.000Z

Water, water, everywhere, and it's all a lot of poncey crap from Italy and France, beautifully packaged and carefully marketed, that wends its way into the receptacles of Londoners who use it as prop to help them make believe their city is chic like Paris when it is nothing of the sort, it is just the grubby old capital of a country that obtains its water from across the sea.
The point I am trying to make, through this un-dignified rant, is that water is indeed everywhere and it all tastes the bloody same. Perrier, for instance, though I could have easily picked out Badoit, Barisart or Pellegrino, arrives on the shelves of our abundant supermarkets in sexy looking, stylish bottles that are pleasing to the human eye. There is little wrong with this, beauty has its place. The home should be filled with gorgeous things. But it's the human tongue that counts here and mine says the only dissimilar thing its buds can gauge between the continental waters and our very own mountain spring collection is that the former seem to have a little more fizz about them.
So buy a soda stream and fizz your own tap water.
Or better still, if it's the purity of the mineral water you are after, go on a bike ride to Buxton and bottle it at source, using, perhaps, an empty Perrier bottle that has already travelled 400 miles or so anyway.
No, I don't know where Perrier is.

Rob x

Fine Dining Interspersed with Starvation

2007-01-05T17:31:00.000Z

Another restaurant adventure yesterday (excuse: business lunch) drew out some very interesting conversation but sadly, once again, no local ingredients.

This time it was the local pizza restaurant where they didnt really know anything about the ingredients. And this time the waitress definitely wasn't shy, and definitely seemed offended by the enquiry into the origin of the food being served. "What's on the menu, that's what we sell, eat that - like it or lump it" was the gist of the response. Once I had explained that I would eat the food, I just wanted to see if anything came from England, I was told it was 'all imported from Italy'. Admittedly she apologised gently after she realised i wasnt being fussy about my food or about the restaurant.

The conversation turned out to be much more enjoyable and fertile than the communications with the waitress. Bob let us know that the Economist had analysed the green-ness of farmer's markets and concluded that more transport petrol was used by all those people driving all that way to the market and home than would be consumed if they went to the closer supermarket and bought food that had been efficiently transported in large bulk. I said that i thought that most people are not motivated by the efficiency of food transport when they choose to go a farmer's market. Dad goes faithfully every week to the Richmond one and seems to enjoy it for similar reasons I myself, and I suspect thousands of others, do: you get to connect with the food and its makers, you can have a conversation with the producer, you can smell and touch and taste things and its got life in it. Vegetables are not packaged and they come in different shapes and sizes. A supermarket is to me a grim, sterile battleground where you fight with the trolley, with the queue, surrounded by the sounds of mechanical bleeping and squally children whilst being bombarded with assaults on the senses designed to trick/seduce/bully you into buying more gubbins than you need, wrapped in lots of pointless, sanitising, wasteful plastic shiny things to make sure you wont be infected by any of the other grubby people struggling around the fluorescent wasteland, or by the bored, despondent, floating people who have to stand around dressed in ridiculous faux-olde-england puffy hats and butcher's pinnies and pretend to be Passionate About Food, or something.

The very fact the supermarkets try to emulate the trappings of a real shop with a real, local grocer or baker in it just reveals how important that still is to people. Its only sad that they are, en masse, willing to settle for this ghostly, ghastly imitation for the sake of 'convenience'. Its only convenient because they are spending their precious time working long hours in jobs that pay them too much so they can buy lots of things they dont need (or too little, so they cant find any alternatives), and pay for diversions to distract from the absurdity and grind of it all, for the sake of, on the whole, someone else's profit margins. If they made more time by working less, buying less stuff and going on less holidays they could have more time to go to different shops (on their bikes, so they dont have to spend time in those equally empty places, gyms) and talk to the shopkeepers and prepare their food at home.

Anyway I was very proud of myself for avoiding pudding and sticking to peppermint tea which may have some small possibility of having come from somewhere in the UK, although it's not that likely, I admit, and I didn't dare to ask.

If this keeps up I will have a year of fine dining interspersed with starvation fended off by snacks of apples and strange herbal brews and whatever random assortment of food our friends get for us.

PS We came up with Rule Number Two which relates to eating with friends, but i cant remember what it is so will get back later with it.

The Aroma of Fruit and Freshwater Fish

2007-01-03T19:56:00.000Z

My first proper day as a 100 mile dieter began when I returned home following a 24 hour shift at work (I kid you not) and realised I couldn't take a lovely hot mug of Earl Grey into the bath with me.
Bollocks, I thought, I'll have to make do with a refreshing mug of Hawthorn leaves that our dear friend, Barbara, had picked for us, instead.
A strange sort of brew, Hawthorn leaves. I sank back in the water and stirred to the aroma of fruit and freshwater fish, leaving me with a curious sensation, a taste in my mouth that made me wonder if I had just consumed apple juice and trout oil in equal measure.
I duly fell asleep and dreamed of rosehips.

Rob x

A New Year, A New Resolution, A New Rule

2007-01-02T18:02:00.000Z

Well the day has finally come to begin the diet and we are not as prepared as it would be nice to be. eg we have a random assortment of allowable items in the house and we haven't decided all the rules yet. But we are making a start, and even if its a bit shaky its already proving interesting.

It started with a new years day trip to a chinese restaurant in Richmond with a friend who was staying. We quickly had to come up with the first rule, which is for eating out:

*************************************************************************
Rule One - Eating Out

We aren't foregoing eating out altogether because it is an important social activity. We will avoid it where it wont affect social relations, and we will use it as an opportunity for finding out about food and raising discussion with co-eaters.

The rule is we have to ask where the ingredients come from and choose the most local item available on the menu.

*************************************************************************

Day One, Continued

I duly asked the somewhat taciturn waitress where the chicken and beef from the Szechuan Spicy Chicken of Beef came from. She didn't know, and seemed nonplussed. It being New Years Day she said the chef wasn't in and when pressed she said it probably came from "the supermarket".

I concluded that probably all the food on the menu came from the Supermarket and this was suitably indeterminate not to prevent me from choosing whatever I liked. I extended this principle to include the sake, which almost certainly came from japanese rice, or at least from somewhere in Asia, but I figured I needed the heat and since everything else was from the supermarket - ie all over the world - it was kind of too late anyway.

The conversation centred for a while on deciding whether the waitress' quiet, get-it-over-with manner was due to a hangover, or incredible shyness. We flirted briefly with the idea that she was offended by our enquiries, but it seemed unlikely that she had any personal interest in the matter since she didn't know much about it in the first place.

This inauspicious start was followed by an evening of using up everything left in the fridge and cupboard with help from some friends, so we can begin properly.

Fortunately my brother and his girlfriend have given us a hamper of local food to keep us going for a bit until we get organised enough to go to a shop.

Life After Tea

Living without tea is going to be very tough for me as it is my cheerful companion and warming consolation throughout the day. I am not relishing the problem and although I've spotted some lemons growing locally and am plotting to find a mole to help me get at them, I haven't any hopes yet of finding a locally grown tea bush.

We do however have some Hawthorn tea (well actually its just some dried out hawthorn bush with tea-making potential) collected from an estate in Oxfordshire and donated by a colleague. Its actually delicious (although it smells pretty bad when you make it) and there is a satisfying pleasure in sitting and picking all the leaves off the prickly stems - one of those wholesome old fashioned activities that helps to clear the mind and make room for soothing, nourishing meditiations. So much more interesting than Tele. Apparently hawthorn tea is good for something but I can't recall what. Watch this space for an update. I think it might be for the lungs, or maybe the blood.

In fact so many friends and family have shown an interest in the 100-mile project and given us goodies that I have decided I can stay in and needn't worry about the food until the saturday farmers market when things all get much easier. So to all you generous and helpful contributors, many thanks and I hope we can provide you with some interesting stories and results over the coming year.

xx
s

2006-11-15T13:41:00.000Z

Found Vinegar!

http://www.parkfruitfarm.co.uk

Lets Pickle!

2006-11-13T16:10:00.000Z

Quince Cheese

I made quince cheese earlier in the year. It is now maturing in the cupboard. It may not be allowed on the diet as I made it using sugar collected in cafes and not sourced locally. But by next autumn I hope we will have a sugar supply, so I will want to come back for the recipe.

Here is a recipe for Quince Cheese

Quince cheese is nicest if you leave for about three months in the cellar before eating. So it will be ready in time for Christmas.

I think Waitrose have a good recipe and there are several in our old recipe books too.

2006-11-13T16:00:00.000Z

A Question of Spice

A recent email conversation with Tristram raised some interesting points about spices:

From: Tristram Stuart
Sent: 24 October 2006 14:55
To: Sarah Dixon

Dear Sarah,

Hooray for 100 mile diets! That sounds really interesting. I sometimes wonder if one could make a fair case in favour of importing high value, low volume items such as spices. I haven’t looked at the figures for wealth generation at point of origin, or tried to balance them against emissions from the international trade; but at least I think there’s a stronger case for buying those things than say, imported low value high volume items such as courgettes or rice. I guess crops such as coffee/tea/chocolate would probably be borderline on this scale.

Pickles; very nice. I’m always a bit torn when I use sugar (and gas) in huge quantities as a preserving agent (as I did last night for quince cheese); chutneys and pickles using vinegar is probably more eco-friendly; and best of all is bottling which doesn’t need any agent except for a bit of heat and the kilner jar (though sometimes best with a scoop of sugar).

love
Tristram

2006-11-01T13:56:00.000Z

Konstam's Restaurant

This is about the London restaurant that aims to source all its food from within the M25. Very mixed reviews on the london reviews website. We are planning to start the diet officially with a meal there.

2006-10-30T18:26:00.000Z

And while exploring the British Sugar site I found this little-known fact :

British Sugar is the UK's largest grower of classic round salad tomatoes. The glasshouse at Cornerways Nursery covers an area of 5 hectares and produces over 34 million tomatoes each year between April and November.

Apparently 83% of UK tomatoes are imported. Is that sustainable?

2006-10-30T18:25:00.000Z

I just got these great links from Dad:

In an idle moment this evening I found British Sugar's website
- Bury St Edmunds seems to be the nearest location for your
sugar - I found this on the web:

http://www.britishsugar.co.uk/RVE4056ad1977cd45c98eac02fd792bdf35,,.aspx

And you can get salt from Essex -
http://www.maldonsalt.co.uk/contactus/

Isn't google great!

Thanks Dad

x
s

2006-10-30T18:20:00.000Z

Ever since I agreed to do this 100-mile diet, people I know have wanted to discuss it.
Many want to challenge the environmental or social/ethical credentials of it - assuming we are doing it for those reasons in the first place - or they want to tell us where to get fresh fish, or salt.

So if you have something to say about it - please put it here! Use the 'comments' link.

That way you can see if your question has already been answered, argue with someone about the niceties of importing spices from poor countries, or share a link so that anyone who wants to get English salt can do so easily.

x
s