Food
How to start an allotment
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Jane Moore and Lizzy Gayton share an organic allotment in Bristol.
Here’s their essential guide for allotment beginners
Recipes
Cheese and Butterbean Roast
Fry onions, add herbs, yeast extract, stock/water, salt, tomatoes to taste. Mash drained butter beans, mix with bread crumbs and cheese, and bake for 30 minutes at gas mark 5.
Tofu fingers
Ingredients – block of tofu, 2 tablespoons of wholemeal flour (rounded), soy sauce, tumeric (half teaspoon), salt and pepper
Wash the tofu, and dry on kitchen paper. Cut into wedges/strips and put on plate. Add soy sauce. Leave for an hour or more. Turn over. Heat cooking oil in frying pan, dip tofu slices in the flavoured flour, then fry on both sides for about 5 minutes each side.
Savoury rice
Cook 5 oz. chopped onions in one tablespoonful sunflower oil. Heat very gently with lid on for 5 minutes. Add 6 oz./ one cup washed brown rice, stir, continue cooking gently. Add 18 fl. oz/ two and half cups boiling water, boil, then simmer for 40 minutes. Towards end make sure doesn’t boil dry. When nearly cooked either add more water if too thick or a handful oats if too runny. Stir in yeast extract, grated cheese, and beaten egg and bake in shallow greased dish in preheated oven at no. 4 / 340-350 degrees for 40 minutes.
Apple crumble
Makes one crumble – increase quantities to make more. For apples any fruit can be substituted, eg. cherry pie filling/plums/pears etc.
Peel core and slice approx. 1 kg. of cooking apples and place in a greased dish layering with soft brown sugar, cinnamon and sultanas/raisins. Add a little lemon juice and a cup of water. Make crumble by mixing 250 g of oats, 125g margarine and 75g. of sugar. Add crumble on top of apples and bake at gas mark 5/ 170 degrees for 30 minutes in a pre-heated oven.
Wholemeal bread
Ingredients: Have large mixing bowl, wooden spoon, 2 oiled 2lb bread tins, honey, yeast (fresh or dried) flour, oil, salt, sesame or poppy seeds if desired. Boil kettle.
1. Take a little honey with wooden spoon, and put in mixing bowl. Add half a ltire/pint boiling water and stir until honey dissolves. Add same amount of cold water until at blood heat. Add 1 oz. crumbled fresh yeast or 2 level tablespoons dried, sprinkled into the water and leave for a while until it erupts.
2. Add enough flour, stirring in with spoon, until turns mixture into a sponge-like consistency, thick but easily stirrable. Leave bowl in a warm place for as long as it takes to rise a few inches – 20 mins. to an hour depending on how warm.
3. Add a little oil, and a little salt if desired, and enough flour to make dough thick enough to work with hands. Turn dough out onto a clean, floured surface, and with floured hands, knead dough into cohesive lump. If sticky add a bit more flour.
4. Divide dough in two, and make into loaf shapes. Push wetted tops of loaves onto a surface covered with seeds if desired. Put loaves into oiled tins and leave in a warm place to rise. At this point, put oven on and let them rise in the warm space above, eg. grill space. Takes about 20 minutes.
5. Set oven to 400 degrees F or gas mark 6 and when the dough is at top of tins put in quickly before they collapse. Give 5 minutes at this temperature to brown crusts, and then 30 minutes at 350 degrees / gas mark 4 to bake.
Summary of stages –
1. Honey/yeast/water – 5 minutes
2. Add flour – 20 -60 minutes to rise
3. Add flour and oil – 5 minutes
4. Dough in tins in warm place – 20 minutes
5. Bread in oven – 30 minutes
Green Shoots of Recovery
Crunch your way healthily through the credit crisis
by growing fresh vitamins and minerals on your windowsill !
Start the New Year afresh and give your bank balance a break after all the excesses and expense of the festive season – growing your own sprouts is the healthiest way of joining the raw food revolution and adding concentrated fresh vitamins and minerals to your daily diet, plus it will save money by bringing the farmers market into your home. Energiseyourlife.com aims to encourage everyone to consider their health-enhancing and longevity-promoting kitchen juicers, sprouters and water purifiers, to give the consumer control over their own health, in their own homes.
But why sprouts? Aren’t they those horrid green things we eat for Christmas dinner, which children hate and which make the kitchen smell for days afterwards… The answer is no! The sprouts we’re talking about here are actually micro greens – fresh salad leaves at the very beginning of their growth cycle, when they are at their freshest and healthiest. These tiny mini greens contain minerals, vitamins, antioxidants and even protein, giving you a daily dose of all the nutrients you need with no need for a daily synthetically produced vitamin pill. Sprouts aren’t just for health freaks either – they can be an important natural boost for the elderly, children, and the infirm, as well as a rich source of nutrients for vegans and vegetarians.
Oriental medicine has used raw sprouts for thousands of years for medicinal purposes. Increasing energy levels, vitality and even helping prevent and convalesce from disease, raw sprouts are easy to grow with the EasyGreen MikroFarm Sprouter – harvest a handful of delicious, vitamin-packed mini salad leaves as and when you need them, to add to soups, salads, sandwiches and packed lunches for a quick fix of minerals and vitamins and a lasting energy boost.
Doing it yourself can be fiddly and time consuming, with daily water changes, muslin cloths, daily strainings and quite a fiasco – but the EasyGreen MikroFarm Sprouter makes it easy, with their simple sprouter system, seeds, oxygen (the key ingredient in growing sprouts!) and water: the sprouts stay freshly watered and oxygenated, ensuring no mould growth and only the freshest, healthiest greens for everyday consumption.
Not only that, but with Energise Your Life’s range of sprouters, juicers and other healthy living gadgets, you can ensure optimum health within your own kitchen for years to come.
The EasyGreen MikroFarm only uses 100% recyclable packaging, including compressed paper chipboard packaging, and uses no plastic at all, just recycled paper and organic ink. Energise Your Life are the exclusive distributors in the UK and Ireland for the EasyGreen MikroFarm.
The EasyGreen Sprouter is currently priced at £149 at www.energiseyourlife.com – the perfect Christmas gift or start to the New Year!
Jamie Oliver Attacks
British Culture
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Read Jamie Oliver's extraordinary attack on British materialism and our drink culture.
Telegraph
Go Self Sufficient
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For a range of features and tips on how to go self sufficient, there is an excellent site called
"Go Self Sufficient". The site includes over 70 articles on subjects including around the home, energy and water, food and drink, foraging, growing herbs and salads, growing vegetables, keeping animals, and natural remedies. Well worth a visit.
Love Food Hate Waste
Help cut food waste that costs £8 billion a year
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Celeb chefs offer their advice on creating top meals to cut back on food waste
British consumers experience 'food blindness' when it comes to the amount we waste. New research reveals that 90% of UK consumers do not realise how much food they throw out each week. Our negligence equates to 6.7 million tonnes of wasted food being shipped off to landfill sites and over £8 billion of our hard earned cash being squandered on produce we never get round to eating each year.
The figures released as part of WRAP's "Love Food Hate Waste" campaign, further highlight that a third of all food is being thrown away. The question is, why are we doing this to our planet and our pockets? The campaign hopes to be able to provide consumers with information on what simple steps can be taken to combat the problem, which has a significant environmental impact.
Top celeb chefs include Paul Rankin, James Martin, Cyrus Todiwala and Jimmy Doherty (Jimmy's Farm) who are lending their support by offering their advice on top meals to cut back on food waste. Click here to view...
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To watch the video click here:
mms://groovyg.edgestreams.net/groovyg/clients/Markettiers4dc/webchats/11664/WRAP_vignette_2.wmv
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Permaculture
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What is permaculture? How can it help reduce global warming and promote biodiversity. Read our feature.
How to build a compost heap
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Compost making is easy, fun, and can be successful in any size garden.Throwing away garden and domestic refuse which could make compost is wasteful. It gets taken away with general rubbish, and when buried gives off methane as it rots away.
What can I compost?
Grassmowings, weeds, vegetable peelings and dead leaves can all be used to make a rich, healthy free fertiliser, and soil conditioner for the garden. Virtually anything which once lived can be put on a compost heap. Woody things like shrubs prunings and brussel sprout stalks should be finely chopped first. Evergreen trimings and pine needles do not rot well and should be avoided, and cooked food should not be composted as it can attract rats. All materials of animal and vegetable waste eventually rot down and return to the soil with the dead of many tiny micro-organisms. A compost heap is simply an environment where this natural process can be speeded up. The resulting material is rich in nutrients and 'humus' (decayed organic matter, important in soil to help it maintain a free-draining structure).
How do I get compost to work?
Compost needs a strong population off micro-organisms, which need favourable conditions - i.e. air, moisture, warmth and food. It is best to mix lots of different materials together rather than just have one material to avoid a rotting smell. Compost heaps should be moist but not wet. Wet any dry material which you add to the heap and water the heap in dry periods of summer - but protect heaps from excessive rain. Rain will 'leach' the nutrients which you are trying to save, e.g. nitrogen and phosphates.
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The compost heap must have air, so most people use clay pipes or bricks at the base, and slatted sides to allow air in higher up the heap. The maximum height should be 1.5 metres (c. 5 feet). A healthy compost heap should reach temperatures of 140 degrees Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius) at centre, and this heat will kill weed seeds and steilise your compost. However to maintain a good temperature in periods of cold and therefore sustain the process at work you should insulate your heap. Old carpet on the top and bales of straw or corrugated iron around the sides work well - but don't completely block the airflow.
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The correct balance between carbon and nitrogen (the CN ratio) must be maintained in the heap. Many plants (particularly older ones) have a lot of carbon in them and micro-organisms need nitrogen to break it down. This can be added in many forms as an 'activator' layer when you build your compost heap. Animal manure (horse, pig, poultry), bone and fish meal and manufactured products (e.g. from seaweed) make excellent activators. If you live in a town or you have acid material in the heap a layer of lime can help neutralise this. Some gardeners recommend layers of garden soil to 'innoculate' the heap with the right micro-organisms - but don't overdo this. Other high 'N' additives include a layer of nettles or comfrey.
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If you can spare enough room for two compost boxes 'turn' your compost about every 4 to 6 weeks, so that all material spends time at the centre and rots properly.
If you cannot do this, only use the best composted material when you need it, and use other stuff as the basis of your new heap.
Compost takes about 12 weeks to make in the summer, longer in the winter.
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How will I know when its ready?
A mature compost should be friable, deep brown, and smell like good, healthy soil.
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Sources:
Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust
Wikipedia
Gardening Links:
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The Soil Association, Bristol House, 40-56 Victoria Street, Bristol, BS1 6BY: www.soilassociation.org
Garden Organic - the new name for the HDRA, the organic gardening charity
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Online garden centres
BandQ online - a shop that has made considerable efforts to go green
Crocus
Green Choices
Envocare
Cornish Coffee
That's right. Cornish Coffee. Eden Coffee has been launched, grown in a biome at The Eden Project, and served at Jamie Oliver's Fifteen restaurant for disadvantaged young people. Fifteen bar manager Tristan Stephenson, described the coffee:
"I thought it was quite mellow and soft, well-balanced with a good body. It had decent structure, it wasn't too astringent."
So far only tiny quantities have been produced, but if coffee can be grown Cornwall it would cut thousands of food miles off the imported variety. And it is not only coffee that can be produced in the South West. Fifteen Cornwall already offers loose-leaf tea grown at Tregothnan, an estate near Truro.
The restaurant Fifteen souces as much as 80% of its produce locally, and the combination of The Eden Project and Fifteen shows that Cornwall is taking a lead in environmentally aware business.
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June
Fruit – blackcurrant, cherry, elderflower, gooseberry, loganberry, raspberry, rhubarb, strawberry, tomato
Vegetables – globe artichoke, asparagus, bean, beetroot, broccoli (calabrese), cabbage, cauliflower, chard, courgette, cucumber, dandelion, endive, fennel, garlic, kohlrabi, lettuce, mushroom, onion, peas, potato, radish, rocket, samphire, shallot, sorrel, spinach, spring greens, spring onion, turnip, watercress
Top 10 jobs
1. Hoe borders regularly to keep down weeds
2. Be water-wise, especially in drought-affected areas
3. Pinch out sideshoots on tomatoes
4. Harvest lettuce, radish, other salads and early potatoes
5. Position summer hanging baskets and containers outside
6. Cut lawns at least once a week
7. Plant out summer bedding
8. Stake tall or floppy plants
9. Prune many spring-flowering shrubs
10. Shade greenhouses to keep them cool and prevent scorch
What to sow in June
Courgette, cucumber, pea, runner bean, sweetcorn, beetroot, carrot, endive, radish, onion.
Broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprout, cabbage, cardoon, kohlrabi, celery, chervil, chinese cabbage, cress, escarole, endive, fennel, lettuce, parsley, purslane, rocket, sorrel, swiss chard.
Gardening Links
Royal Horticultural Society
The Gardener's Calendar
Chicken feed
With the rising cost of food, and increasing interest in becoming more self-sufficient, more and more people are keeping chickens.
Read our guide to how you can keep your food bills down, lower your food miles, and feed your family:
Chicken Feed
Related links on keeping chickens:
The Credit Munch
Hit by the credit crunch, millions of British people are now taking their own food and drink to work to save money. Sales are falling at posh sandwich takeaways like Pret a Manger, and food sales at Marks and Spencers have fallen 5%. Many shops are now introducing economy lines to tempt consumers back.
Meanwhile "Thermos", whose food and drink flasks are often viewed as the preserve of hikers and the elderly, has seen a 30 per cent increase in sales over the past year. At the retailer "Robert Dyas", sales of lunch boxes have risen by 68 per cent, year on year. Time to start that Tupperware franchise again!
Statistics indicate that a growing number of cash-strapped commuters are also ditching their shop-bought coffee. On average a takeaway cappuccino or latte will cost £2.05, and many people have opted to brew their own at home and take it with them. Sales of Thermos portable tea and coffee mugs have increased by 40 per cent over the past year.
This shift away from ready-made lunches could also have a beneficial effect on the amount of food wasted. A survey commissioned by the Government's Waste & Resources Action Programme (Wrap), as part of its Love Food Hate Waste campaign, revealed last week that British workers shell out £5.5bn on shop-bought lunches each year, while leaving the same amount of food to go off at home.
Research suggests that if people make their own food they are less likely to simply throw it away.
There is also a trend away from plain sandwiches, as foodies go for something more appetising:
"People are definitely making more exotic lunches now. Puy lentils, feta cheese, couscous, haloumi... they are taking their cue from the high street. They see things like oriental salads at places like M&S, and think 'I can make that'," said Janine Ratcliffe, food editor of Olive magazine.
Lisa Miles, senior nutrition scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation, said that the surging number of people making food and taking it to work with them were more likely to be eating a better diet.
"You will be thinking about lunch in advance and preparing it at home, instead of grabbing something that you walk past in a rush, which might be unhealthy," she explained. However, Ms Miles added that people should resist the temptation merely to slap a slice of cold meat between two bits of bread. "Sandwiches are a classic, but it is important to vary things so that you get a range of nutrients and don't get bored."
Meet the Greenshifters
For the first time in generations, more people are moving to rural Britain than leaving it. More people are growing their own fruit and vegetables, and keeping chickens is the fastest growing hobby. Is it just the credit crunch, or the start of a new movement? Read more about the "Greenshifters" - Observer - 7/9/08
Greens warn £1.99 chickens spell further disaster for British farmers
Farmers already make as little as 2p profit for each chicken sold, and this move by a major buyer is likely to push many of them to the wall
Green Party Principal Speaker Caroline Lucas MEP has warned that moves by Tesco to join Asda in selling whole chickens at £2 or less further demonstrates that big supermarkets are abusing their buying power to force down prices paid for farmers' produce, making life increasingly difficult for UK farmers and suppliers.
Dr. Lucas, who last week won the backing of over half of all MEPs in the European Parliament to call on the EU to launch an investigation into supermarket dominance, said:
"Tesco's decision flies in the face of its commitment last year not to engage Asda in a price race to the bottom, when the Walmart-owned supermarket offered chickens for £2. It would appear that the temptation to further impoverish farmers and suppliers was too great for a company that posted a profit of £2.2 billion in 2006.
"Farmers already make as little as 2p profit for each chicken sold, and this move by a major buyer is likely to push many of them to the wall. It follows the recent news that the unwieldy buying power flaunted by supermarkets has contributed to many British farmers refusing to grow such crops as cauliflowers, as they cannot make a profit from the low prices that retailers are prepared to pay.
"It is clear that the current methods of assessing supermarket buying and trade practices are inadequate, given that the Competition Commission has appeared willing to turn a blind eye to obvious abuses of power in its own individual reports on the sector. Furthermore, such abuses are not limited to the UK alone, but are widespread across the EU. That's why my recent initiative in the European Parliament calling on the Commission to launch a Europe wide investigation is so urgently needed."
Food for thought
The distance that food travels before it reaches your plate is referred to as “Food Miles”, and as more and more people are becoming aware of the damage caused by flying food around the world, there is growing interest in local food. Farmers’ Markets are growing in popularity as places where we can buy local produce and support British farmers. The market for organic food is growing rapidly, as are vegetable box schemes where people get a weekly box of seasonal organic vegetables delivered to their door.
As with so many green issues, the situation with regards sourcing of food is complicated. Much organic food is grown abroad, so while it may not be adulterated with pesticides, its flight to the UK will have produces large quantities of greenhouse gases. There is also the argument that overseas food production helps poor people in developing countries. However in the long run, the green answer to the question of food production has to be local production for local need, and eating local produce in season.
One company which aims to get British food to your doorstep is The Local Food Company which offers green, ethical and quality food produced in the West Country. Their food is either organic or healthy, and is free from preservatives and additives. The company has a full ethical policy, and you can shop online. The delivery charge is reasonable and compares with the supermarkets.
There has been recent interest in something called the Fife diet. A group of volunteers are trying to live on food produced in the local area, and none of it flown in by air. By using a lot of imagination, the volunteers have enjoyed a varied diet, without undue hardship, and the idea is catching on elsewhere.
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