Adventures in Food

Sometimes bugs are spotted: I liked these ones.

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

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 c...

More coming soon!

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 d...

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! ...

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...