Adventures in Food

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) wit...

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 in...

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.