Adventures in Food

Found Vinegar! http://www.parkfruitfarm.co.uk Lets Pickle!

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.

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 n...

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.

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?

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 /RVE4056ad1977cd45c98eac02fd79 2bdf35,,.aspx And you can get salt from Essex - http://www.maldonsalt.co.uk /contactus/ Isn't google great! Thanks Dad x s

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