Autumn? Already?

Firstly I must apologise for a prolonged absence from the blogosphere. Those who follow my baking blog will know that I have been kept busy with moving house and, ahem, being on holiday for three months. I was in America for two of those months and it certainly lit a fire in my belly for continuing to try to be an ethical consumer. I have been many times before but never with the same interests as I have now. The US is definitely the land of plenty and it is shocking how much goes to waste. Everywhere in the cities there are bins overflowing with plastic bottles. Many houses do no recycling at all. Everything is served in and with plastic. The supermarkets are so large and plentiful that it made me feel sick to think of 50% if it going to waste there and then, and another 25% in people's homes.

So you can imagine that I was not pleased to return to England and find  a few of my poor plants had not survived my absence. Sal and Ed had tried to keep them going but not all had made it. Still, it is my first shot. We have managed to successfully grow so much lettuce that we did not know what to do about it. Our chillis are going strong and about to yield us some fruit I believe. We still have tomatoes -both cooking and cherry- growing and have been eating them throughout the summer. Although my garlic perished before it reached full size, I ate the bulb and it was delicious.

Next season I am looking forward to trying more different kinds of seeds. Certainly growing lettuce saves a lot of money and is very easy, so I will be doing that again. I would also like to grow some spring onions and, if we have the space, try some root vegetables. Growing your own food brings an enormous sense of satisfaction. Not only do you help support life, you then get to eat it. It's a winner. I bought my greenhouse from Wilkinsons. It was around £30 and it's brilliant.

This weekend Sal and I were at her parent's farm in East Yorkshire. Her stepdad has given us two huge bags of vegetables, including beetroot, swede, turnip and leek. I will be making a lot of autumny food this week with these wonderful veg and will let you know some recipes in my next post. Autumn is a wonderful time for veg and I am very excited to have the likes of squash, leek and swede back in full swing. Remember there are tonnes of berries out there too right now so get picking. I have picked some sloes and will be making gin later today. I already have damson gin and raspberry vodka on the go. They'll be delicious by December. For recipes, check my baking blog at www.homemadebestmade.blogspot.com

See you soon, green beans.

x

Veg Ahoy!

Hi!
I am so excited because I am going to talk about my veg box (which I love). We decided to have another stab at veg boxes after theorganicfarm.com really let us down (avoid like the plague) and went this time with national company Abel and Cole because there was very little offered locally. You can get most anything from them, we went with a small veg box at £6.50 and a small fruit box at £7.50. It arrives about the same time every Tuesday and thus far it's been super.

The company sources most of its produce from farmers in England, using LPG vans to deliver it, but they do sometimes ship from nearby countries veg that is in high demand. I don't really know how I feel about this. Ultimately I only what to eat what is available... This is a big down-side for me. Also, I'm happy to support British small-farmers but I would love to specifically support local ones. This is something everyone should weigh up when choosing to have food delivered.

So what have we been getting? Well fruit wise we've had blood oranges, satsumas, bananas, apples and pears so far. They are all sweet and juicy, the apples particularly so. Some of the nicest I have had. I've been baking with the blood oranges, recipes at www.thoughtsforoli.blogspot.com and also the bananas. Found out this week that 1.2 million bananas are thrown away every day in the UK so my interest in ripe banana recipes has been stirred! I'll be putting up recipes as I find them.

Veg wise, we've had radishes, salad stuffs, beetroot, onions, carrots, mushrooms, big tomatoes... and potatoes every week. All have been delish and have kept a long time in the fridge due to them being so much more fresh. The sheer size of some of the stuff we've been getting has been surprising! Check out this pepper we got. It was the biggest I'd ever seen and made two meals. I've put an egg next to it for scale:

Check that out! Awesome.

I'll let you know how it goes with the veg box and if we find a more local company (I have had suggestions). I'm moving house soon, hopefully to a place with outside space, so the summer may be all about growing things myself. I'll definitely be blogging because I will need help!

Lots of boxy love,
Ash xx

In t'olden days...

It struck me this week that the way we shop has changed so much over the last few decades, largely due to the influence of supermarkets. As a country we have become very used to being able to go to just one place for everything we need. But it's more than that. What we feel we need has changed too. In the past, you could only buy what was available. That meant mainly local and seasonal produce. Now though, we can go and buy tomatoes in the dead of winter and leeks in July. We've learned to expect everything to be available all the time.

Therein lies the problem.


If everyone knew that they wouldn't be able to get a parsnip in August then we probably wouldn't fancy eating them then. But imports from far-flung countries and an immense demand for more and more different kinds of food to be in the shops all year round have taken away the need to learn about the importance of eating local and seasonal produce. They've taken away the sense of winter that root veg can bring, or the taste of summer that is a fresh salad. Maybe I am a bit of a lunatic thinking that these things matter.

It was a real struggle to get out of the habit of thinking of a meal, then going to the shops to get what I needed to cook it. I'm still learning now that giving up supermarkets means a different style of shopping. Now, when I go to the Slaithewaite shop, I don't have any thoughts about what I want to make. I just get there and see what's fresh, and delicious. I see what veg are having a good season, see what's British or locally grown and just get it all. Then I get home and decide what to cook with it. It's a liberating way of shopping and it's improving my cooking skills too. There are things that I can always make of course- chilli, bolognese, sausage and mash- things that have always readily available ingredients (I am yet to manage life without tinned tomatoes).

And then imagine my delight when we went shopping a couple of weeks ago and there was an English lettuce, local cress and a couple of other salad ingredients on the shelf! We had a lovely big salad and it felt like forever since I'd had the pleasure (no tomatoes yet of course).

Anyway, in other local food related news (I promise to stop ranting now) I ordered food from the Suma website this week. They sell organic and British products of pratically every nature. Anything you need for your home, or anything non-fresh that you want to eat can be found on this site www.sumamarket.coop. I found the service really fast and easy to use, though admitedly it is not cheap. Ed and I bought pasta, rice, a big box of recycled toilet paper, fairtrade coffee, tinned tomatoes and beans, cereals and a few bathroom supplies such as toothpaste. The total was around £25 and I opted for next-day delivery which cost £5.95. It came on time, everything we wanted was in there and it was packed in recycled materials. I will be using the site again for sure.

Rather less successfully, we ordered a veg box and a fruit box to be delivered from The Organic Farm (http://www.theorganicfarm.co.uk/index.aspx). Not only did it not arrive last Thursday when it was supposed to, but they never answer the phone when we call or reply to answerphone messages. I tried e-mailing a couple of days ago but to no avail. It's this kind of disorganised service that makes staying out the supermarkets difficult. I'll keep you up to date on whether or not our food ever turns up.

Until next time, my green friends.
Ash x

Please sir, can I have some more?

Hello all,
There's a decent reason as to why I have not been able to be very focused on writing up my blog in the last few weeks and it is this: poverty. That's right. I am el broke-o. Like pretty much everyone else in our blessed coalition country. Uni is 3 days a week so I'm only able to work 3 mornings and two full days Monday-Friday. I play hockey on Saturdays, no way I can give that up, so that doesn't exactly make me an employer's dream. I kept shopping out at the Slaithwaite community shop up until about the beginning of November when I existed for a couple of weeks on whatever was left in my cupboard and whatever I could steal from my lovely Sal.

Things have not progressed much in the pennies department but I do now have a little cleaning job on a Friday, just £25 a week but enough to buy food again. I've been shopping at our local tiny Co-op supermarket mainly. It's not felt great, having to go in there. Co-op is by far the best of the supermarkets (excepting Waitrose which we do not have up here), much of their food is fair trade, free-range or organic. Even their tuna is both dolphin friendly and sustainably fished. Obviously I only buy their British vegetables too. So it's not really the products that are the problem in supermarkets like this, it's the amount of waste they produce and the brand name products (Nestle, etc.) whose behaviour they support. It's hard to draw a line between what is OK and what isn't with ventures like this. You have to know so much about where everything comes from.

Still, I am not giving up! When I get more money on Friday I will be going out again to the Slaithwaite shop. I am looking forward to seeing what veg they have in at the moment, the earth is so frozen and snowy, I love to see what resilient veg has persisted with growing. The problem with having very little money is not that this shop is more expensive than the supermarkets, it's that what I would usually buy has changed from plenty of veg and fresh food, cheeses, fish and meats, to simply potatoes,  pasta, rice etc. I live with my good friend Ed now, and splitting bills means we can get a bit more. But still I am looking forward to a time when I can really afford to shop the way I want to. It makes me sad that the supermarkets, even if it's just the local Co-op one, have one up on me at the moment.

I'll do some research into super-cheap winter meals possible without supermarkets and let you know how I get on.

Lots of love to you all on this brilliant white snowy day,
Ash

Winter Recipes

Hello everyone,
Apologies for my recent absence, have been having Internet usage issues but these will hopefully soon be solved! I am popping in to give a little update and tell you a couple of recipes I have enjoyed recently. I still haven't been in any of the big supermarkets, but this doesn't include our local little Co-op which I have been in a few times. The main reason that this has been necessary is... tuna! I can't find it anywhere else apart from corner shops, and they do not stock dolphin-friendly sustainably fished tuna like the Co-op does. Some things this supermarket does well. However the amount of waste they produce rules them out as a permanent solution so if anyone knows where to get tuna please do let me know!

I'm now beginning to enjoy not going in the supermarket. I've found that I've stopped thinking about a lot of foods that I can't get easily out of the supermarket, and I am now trying to phase out foods I know are not available in the winter without getting them from abroad. Tomatoes, for instance. The ones grown in hot houses here produce the same level of Co2 as the ones driven over from Spain. There are a few hot houses in England that pump the gas back in to feed the tomatoes and so are virtually carbon nutral but I am going to have to find out which ones and how to know your tomatoes came from there. Do we need to eat these foods that are not naturally available to us at this time of year? I am thinking not. It's wonderful to eat seasonally, to let your diet change with the weather. Sal took me to the restuarant Mal Maison in Leeds a couple of weeks back and they had a locally-sourced seasonal menu. It was beautiful. Who needs a tomato?

OK and so to a couple of recipes using just such foods. The first includes smoked salmon which I did get from Co-op but there's no reason that you couldn't get some from a proper fishmonger, I just happened to have some in the freezer. It's a variant on a Slimming World recipe, so good for you too! The second recipe I sort of invented so hope you like it!

Season Salmon Pasta

Ingredients

Smoked salmon (as much as you want)
Leeks
Courgette
Brocolli
Onion and garlic
Whatever other seasonal veg you enjoy!
Pasta of choice
Creme fraiche or natural yogurt

Method

Cut off the brocolli heads and set them to one side. Chop up the remaining stalk into small bits. 80% of this veg's nutrients are located in the stalk and it is delicious so fry it up with the onion and garlic, yummy. Next chop up those courgettes and leeks and throw them in with the onion et al. Fry until they're as soft as you like them to be. Boil water and add pasta. Just before the pasta is ready, throw in the brocolli florettes and finish off cooking the pasta. Drain it then add the veg into it, along with your smoked salmon (cut up into strips). Then stir in a big dollop of creme fraiche or natural yogurt while it's over a low heat to warm it through. And that's it! Tasty.

Buttery Butternut

This is bloody lovely comfort food. It's autumnal and flavourful.

Ingredients

One butternut squash
Garlic
Butter
Feta
Cous cous
Veg of choice (I used courgettes, cabbage and leeks)

Method

Slice the butternut squash in half length ways. Scoop out all the seeds and stringy stuff then put a knob of butter where the seeds had been. Squish up some garlic and rub it all over the rest of the squash (not the skin, obv). Stick it in the oven for a good hour at around 200 degrees. When it's getting close to done, fry up the garlic and other veg (or boil, if you prefer) and set them aside. Oh, if you like things spicy, throw a little fresh chilli in with the veg if you like. Boil up the cous cous, it doesn't take long, 5-10 minutes. Dice up some feta and throw it in with the cooked cous cous. Then pull the cooked squash out the oven and fill the buttery hole with cous cous and feta. Serve it with a big helping of the veg. Bloody yummy.

So I hope that you maybe enjoy trying one or both of those meals. I will keep an eye out for more delicious tips!

Thanks for reading my possums,
Ash

Mortal Enemies

It's come to my attention, during this little exercise of mine, that the biggest enemy of nature is convenience. Virtually every conversation I have had with anyone who is not 100% into the idea of this blog, and there are certainly quite a few of these people (I do not mean this in a bad way, the purpose of this challenge is to change my life and help people change theirs if they want to, not to make anyone feel ashamed of their lifestyle choices), has come down to this one complaint: it just isn't convenient to shop ethically.

Humans discovered, many many many decades ago now, how to live with very little effort. We discovered how to produce enough food and collect enough water and heat to keep us alive, and give us the ability to procreate. So we have surpassed the basic goals for any living thing on Earth. Since then, we have been on a mission to fill our lives with things we enjoy, and that we want. Nothing wrong with that. And now that we have so many things we want in our lives, we need everything faster. We need everything NOW. I am as familiar with this feeling of impatience as anyone else on Earth. That's why I am trying to find ways to make ethical consumerism convenient. To make it those three Holy Grails of modern life: easier, cheaper, faster.

Yes, it's true, shopping outside a supermarket does require more planning. It does mean changing your routine. It does mean that the sheer, riduclous, enormous range of products you and I are used to buying may not longer be right at your fingertips. But it doesn't mean deprivation. It doesn't mean difficulty and it doesn't have to mean inconvenience. It means a healthier lifestyle, for you and your community. For the people who live and work around you. It means sutainibility. It means responsibility. And, at it's most simple and wonderful level, it means great food. Food that stays fresh in the fridge for a week longer than you expect because it hasn't flown over from Spain (really, it's a big perk how long veggies last). Food that is versatile, and contains only what it needs to. Food that's the same colour as it was when it was grown.

Here's a disturbing thought. Human beings are the only species on the planet that produce waste that does not go back into a life system. We are the only ones who throw away things that cannot be used again. The only animals who require land fills. We create so much more than we need, and we waste what we don't use. And that waste cannot be re-used. It cannot be put back into the ecosystem. It's a fact that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it must flow into something else. Well most of our energy doesn't flow anywhere. It remains trapped in the piles of things we throw out. That's the big gripe about the supermarkets really, forgetting all the fair-trade stuff, the local stuff, their really big issue is how much they throw out, and how much it encourages us to throw out. My mum told me yesterday that it said in the paper this week that we throw out 67% of the dairy products we buy UNUSED in the UK. Can you believe that? I know I've done it, I bet you remember a time when you have too. And that's what changing your shopping habits can stop. OK, so I've only been doing this three weeks. But I can honestly say that in that whole time, I have not thrown out anything at all. I've had barely any packaging to throw out and what I have thrown has usually gone into the recycling. And that's not been hard, it's been completely natural because I haven't bought things I don't need. It's the first time in my life I can really say that and it feels good.

I encourage you all to have a go. Just to see that although it may not be as convenient as Tesco, it really isn't any harder. And you make a difference right away. It's the small steps that add up to the giant leaps.

Ash

Fun and Frolicks in Farm Shops

Friday was officially 'Drive Around In The Rain Looking At Muddy Produce Day'! Hurrah. At last. Sal was up with her little car and therefore we had the means to go out investigating what the local area had to offer in the way of independent food and drink producers.

First stop was Hinchcliffe Farm Shop. They've got a temporary store at the moment due to expansion. The fruit and veg all looked good. I bought a large cabbage for 99p which I later fried up with chilli, garlic and onion and it was very tasty. We also bought two very large free range chicken breasts for £3, the same price as two small non-free range ones in the Co-op supermarket so that was gratifying. However, Sal informed me that the pork wasn't free range (she could see from the housing). This highlights the importance of asking if the meat you're buying is free range. Just because it's sold from a farm, does not mean it definitely is. Don't be afraid to ask.

Next we went in search of booze. Disappointment followed when we discovered Splash Winery had been shut down and even more disappointment came when we visited Holmfirth vineyard but they'd sold out of all their wines! It's fantastic though that they are in such demand. It was a beautiful location for a vineyard (minus the fact that it was pissing it down), good enough to match many I've seen abroad. The good news is that they are expanding and building a new shop and visitor's centre. Here are the vines themselves:

We popped into the village of Holmfirth on our way through and I called in at the local health food shop. They had a fantastic range of spices from Suma. I bought a fajita spice pack and made mexican spiced chicken in the evening and it was the best I've had, far better than Old El Paso or Discovery. For real. It cost 79p for the pack and I had enough to make chicken for three plus chilli for three the next day. Smashing.

Our last stop of the day was to Haigh's Farm Shop, just a couple of miles from Huddersfield. Places like this bemuse me. It had a lot of fresh produce but also a lot of frozen things and brand name products in bulk. Once again, don't assume that at a farm shop everything is fresh and free-range. However, I did manage to buy some just-out-the-earth beetroots. I've never cooked them before but after a couple of hours boiling they were bloody lovely on a salad. Also spotted free range eggs that were just £1 for 6 there so I will be returning for those most definitely.

And so that was the end of our little journey! Quite a productive day. I am very excited for the winter because Sal will be bringing me fresh game and fish from her parents' farm in East Yorkshire. I've never really cooked with either before and am looking forward to learning how to do it. You'll be along with me for every step, don't worry! I'm going to post a couple of recipes that include seasonal produce and are easy and cheap a bit later in the week, perhaps they might get you started.

Lots of love, grassy ones.
Ash