We came back from our summer holiday this year to a bumper crop of green tomatoes.
Obviously I was aiming for red tomatoes. Some of you may remember that I was trying to grow enough tomatoes to make and bottle a lot of pasta sauce. It was not to be….
I planted three types of tomato seeds […]
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Have you ever looked at a carton of eggs marked ‘very large’ and wondered: “How can any chicken lay eggs this size? That must be painful!”
According to a Danish study it actually is painful, and extremely so. Scientists from the University of Copenhagen assessed the health of 4,800 hens from 40 different flocks and found […]
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I am used to swapping produce and seedlings with friends and neighbours throughout the year, but apples are the one thing we can’t give away. Around here, everyone has a tree or easy access to one and they don’t need any more.
We have three apple trees – an ancient cooker of indeterminate variety, a mature […]
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Today, 25th August 2021 Orkney Boreray is recognised by Slow Food International as a Presidium
Product name – Orkney Boreray Sheep
Scientific Name – Ovis aries Category – Breeds and animal husbandry
Country – Scotland – Orkney
Is it a product of an Indigenous group? Originally. Back in 1930 the folk on St Kilda archipelago – 64km west-northwest of […]
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A little under a year ago, PAMA won the Supreme Champion Slow Food product (for their Sauerkraut), in the Slow Food in the UK Awards. No easy feat normally, but what was extraordinary is they won by the biggest margin of any product, since the awards started almost ten years ago.
Now we are ferment fiends […]
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The beginning of August marks the beginning of our beetroot harvest.
We have grown to love beetroot in many forms, driven partly by beginner’s ignorance in our first year which led to more beets than we knew what to do with. The teenager likes them best roasted and eaten with brown bread, balsamic vinegar and feta. […]
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I don’t know whether this is unusual, but you will never find frozen meals in our freezer. I am aware that people cook meals in batches, and I once knew a family who bought supermarket ready-meals, but that just isn’t our way. We’ve always cooked our dinners from scratch for immediate consumption, with a large […]
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It’s a hot Sunday afternoon in July. The Spurgeon Estate in London is just a short walk from Stockwell tube station, but pavement, walls and houses seem to radiate heat. I meet Laura Chiwarawara and Ange Guisso at the entrance of the towering, 22 story Kelvedon House. The two women are firm friends and the […]
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It was John Lanchester who first made me think that artichokes would be easy to grow. His book ‘A Debt to Pleasure’ contains an evocative chapter about artichokes gone feral in an English garden. I have also seen huge fields of artichokes growing in Malta, which I thought might suit a garden such as ours […]
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This year I have started what I think will become an enduring love affair with dried peas and beans. It’s rather surprised me; pulses don’t sound exciting, and I’m old enough to remember the rude comments they attracted in the 1970s and 80s when vegetarianism was for hippies.
My first experience of dried peas was many […]
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