Marmalade time

The Seville oranges are back and our first preserve to fill the pantry this year will be Orange Marmalade.

A step by step visual recipe for you to enjoy.

Edible flowers

Viola Cornuta "Violet Flare" (Horned Violet), Evergreen Perennial


There are many flowers that we usually cultivate for their ornamental value but surprisingly some can make a wonderful addition to your salad bowl. It makes a green salad look very special indeed.
Here are some to try raw.

Violas are pretty with pastel colours, they are easy to grow and have a delicate flavour.
Borage- pull the blue flower away from its hairy base.
Calendulas - rip the flower apart and spread the petals in your salad.
Chives - break the purple globes up and spread the petals in the salad.
Nasturtiums - these have a strong and peppery taste but add very pretty orange colours to the feast.
Rocket - when the plants start to bolt, leave them in the ground, strip the leaves and the flowers as they have a really hot peppery flavour.

Later in the season courgette flowers offer an opportunity to be fried in a tempura base.But I am ahead of myself here.

changing seasons

The autumn and winter weather here in the UK are comparatively mild in temperature compared with the USA for instance. It gets wet,windy and damp and to go out requires some effort. The dog is an excellent creature of routine and expects at least 2 walks per day. The difference living here is that it gets light after 8 am and quite dark in the afternoon, just after 4 pm when the children get home from school.
Pumpkin carvings by Nathalie Halloween 2008

Light and candles are therefore important during these months and I feel drawn to scented candles and a daily walk in the fresh air. It feels like a time of hibernation, rest and contemplation and this year, I intend to give in to that rhytm a little more than previous years.
Dampness in the air, colder nights and daylight have a mellow feel to it. There is a poignancy about this time of year. Nature is still blooming, ripe with berries, hips and haws and there are still many flowering plants in the garden. Yes we know that it is impermanent and that change is imminent.

At the same time, our bodies change too in anticipation of a different season. The ancient chinese associated this season with the earth element. When you look around at harvesting of crops, gathering fruits of your labour in the garden it can be linked naturally with digestion and nourishment. Autumn and winter bring us back inside, out of the cold, expecting warm nourishment and a time of rest.

I find it fascinating that eating with the seasons brings me into a different way of preparing meals that are suited to a woodstove. Comfort foods; warm stews, soups and hot drinks centre us at this time of the year. Cold food and drinks are thought to deplete the spleen and stomach energy. When cold food enters the stomach it has to be warmed diverting valuable energy from the digestive process.

Some seasonal preparations:

• millet is a gluten free grain which in Chinese medecine is thought to be supportive to the spleen and is cooked in much the same way as porridge : 1 cup of millet flakes to 2 cups of water, simmer for 30 mins.
• Root vegetables can be roasted in the oven ; sweet potatoes, carrots, parsnips, squashes and yams are high in natural sugars and are a healthy way to indulge a sweet tooth.
• Slow cooked foods; casseroles, stews and soups.
• Add cumin seeds, and coriander to vegetable, bean and lentil dishes- this helps digestion.
• Drink peppermint tea after meals.

Despite the wet weather, I love the colours, the composting scents in the countryside and I look forward to coming home and taking up my knitting, my reading and spinning in the warm room.

Damsons

A winter tipple in the making and maybe your next weekend project?
Our village is full with octogenarians and beyond and even the gravestones mark 93 years, 94 years so there has to be something in the air. The secret I found out, is a regular tipple in the winter.

I have been writing a small article in our village magazine over the last few months and people have began to bring in produce as both gifts and challenges. Can I do anything with it? Will I share? I love these impromptu gifts of appreciation ( at least that is the spirit in which I receive them). They could just as well be a last resort for a glut of produce, but I am happy either way. The garden at the shop produces a small amount of food and I am only too pleased to take on surplus from our excellent local gardeners.

Today, a box of damsons arrived. Hmm, damson jam, damson jelly, damson cheese.....hold on, damson gin that sounds a bit more like it. As we recently cleared the large sweet jars from the top shelf they seemed the perfect jar to start with. Its easy really, you need gloves, a toothpick, a jar, sugar and gin. You prick the damsons, put them in the sterilised pot, add sugar ( as you go) and top up with gin. Stick in a dark cupboard for 3 months. Visit every few days to shake the jar and in 3 months time, when all the sugar has melted you will be left with a lovely liquid.Strain off the damsons, pour the alcohol through a funnel into a dry warm sterilised bottle and seal. Just an ideal home made present for Christmas. A more formal recipe follows :

Damson Gin

450g of damsons
710ml of vodka or gin
350g caster sugar

Daisies in March

Doronicum or Leopard's Bane gives a really good show at this time of the year. I love daisy shapes and on a cold Easter Monday the colour and splendour of the display cheers me up.

As with everything in the garden I wonder whether it has a use apart from looking great and Leopards bane is also known as Arnica Montana an ingredient used in Arnica cream we often use to help soothe bruising. You can make you own lotion but only for external use and not to be put on broken skin.

So if after digging the garden, a long walk, a sprained ankle you want to have some natural relief from the garden the following might suit

For a compress :pick up a handful of flower heads, soak in 1 litre of boiling water. Saturate handtowel in mixture and apply.

The second item you can make with this plant is an ointment to apply on parts of the body.
Take 2 oz flowers and 1 oz leaves ( shredded or powdered) in 16oz lard. Moisten with half its weight of distilled water. Heat together with the lard for 3 to 4 hours and strain. Good for wounds and varicose veins.

Its a prolific plant, to keep it looking great watch out for slugs and deadhead the flowers on a regular basis.

An inconvenient shopping experience

Farmer's Market


To be encouraged to go to a Farmer's Market is likely to be difficult. There are obstacles and there are always going to be obstacles, and in all honesty it probably is a lot more convenient to go to the supermarket: I know this for a variety of reasons and yet I am passionate about overcoming the obstacles because to me it matters.

Its too far !

I realised today that Farmers and I have things in common : they produce in the privacy of their land and I write in the privacy of my home, and both of us like to remain private and not make a fuss.

I do not speak often about why it is difficult but I have a disability which limits the energy I have available and the obstacles that are most difficult relate to mobility : I cannot drive easily and I cannot walk far. So, in practice a supermarket with a disabled car parking space and battery operated shopping trolleys does a lot to make shopping for food convenient. So why on earth would I want to undertake a journey of 15 miles each way to go and purchase food, as well as growing vegetables in my garden. The reason is that I notice the difference and the benefits I personally have from locally produced food. I do no longer have the luxury to be able to eat just anything, I have developed allergies and food sensitivities and local food does not contain many of the preservatives that activate these allergies within me. Food traceability is important to me : at the Farmer's market I can talk to the producer directly and ask them what they feed their animals on for instance because indirectly, whatever goodness they receive so do I. What I get from talking to producers is their pride in what they do and between us there is an understanding about the difficulties each one of us faces. Mine is getting here to the farmers market, theirs is being visible and accountable for what they produce. Both are uncomfortable new states of being and make the initial contact clumsy, but when you take the courage to ask the farmer about the product, and you can get him talking about it, you get a glimmer of the pride, the enthousiasm which is lacking when you get your apples or beef from the supermarket. Their strength is to produce the quality but sales training bypassed many of them.( Sorry chaps!) At some level I empathise with that. Yet when you engage with the farmer about his product, you get straightforward answers. He can tell you exactly how long the meat has been hanging, where in his pasture he animals grazed, how long the cheese took to mature, what they use to press the apples, whether the bread is made with fresh yeast, with locally produced wheat etc.

It costs more!

In many cases it just looks that way. Its an argument between quality and quantity. There is a reason why champagne was expensive....it was rare, had an exclusivity about it but when sparkling wine came along, did we want to pay for champagne ( I think not). It is the same with locally produced beef. When you go initially, you may be shocked at the price but it is a realistic price at which the farmer can make a living and grow his product to the standard as consumer we would like it to be. Surprisingly, I have noticed that I need less of protein in weight from a farmers market than from a supermarket, and so the price becomes immaterial. I also know that when I have beef from a particular farmer at the market I do not suffer agonizing bellyache, as where I do when it comes from the supermarket; to me in any event, there are very real, practical reasons for buying fresh, locally, traceable, sustainable food. ( I am still working on reducing my dependency on animal protein but having less of it is my starting point)

They have limited availability?

Granted, we cannot eat strawberries in January from the farmers market locally and cabbages and apples may become a tad boring over the season. Again, if I buy my apples at the supermarket I get a few varieties that I can get all year around and that is a shame but convenient. There is food succession even in apple varieties.....you can get them from August to January but you have to look, and they have odd shapes, they can be smaller or larger than you are used to, but the taste is...spectacular and not bland. Through making a menu over a period of 12 months, and looking at it again, I realised that in practice the types of food I was eating were very limited. If you do not know what it is, just like when I introduce something new to the children, they look, they smell and some may not even have a go at trying it. I am forcing myself to try some new foods at least once.

Its too cold to go to the Farmer's Market in winter

Sure. It is a lot easier and more convenient to get the supermarket to deliver. Initially unable to leave the house, I liked the idea of a personal shopper doing it all for me and getting it delivered to my house. After a while I started to resent having peppers that looked a little past their best and products changed for other brands( as they were not available and conveniently more expensive). I did have the choice to send them back but in reality that was a lot of hassle. What I gained in convenience, I lost in my ability to choose what I wanted. Going to the farmers market enables me to ask the producer......hmmmm do you do basil? When he tells me that it is not the season I can only take his word for it ( and I feel stupid because I should have known that). I grumble mildly but notice my surprise when in August he calls me and says, Anne, if you want Basil, it will be here next week.

When I started using butter instead of margerine, my children asked why and I said I trusted cows more than scientists. ( no offence meant!) In reality, I trust the farmer more than the supermarket but I suspect that the farmer has no idea what I think unless I go out there to meet him in the rain, with a small bag, an umbrella and my walking stick and ask him embarrassing questions as to what I can do with a neck of lamb and why he does not have Basil.
The farmer tells me that he had no idea.....he trusted the supermarkets to tell him what the consumer demanded and he did his best to grow the stuff only to be told that when it was ready, the consumer demanded a lower price and they had bought it in Spain.

It reminds me about how children cruelly tell tales about eachother and how convenient it can be when there is no direct communication.

When it rains, and I stumble to the car, drive 15 miles, grab my stick and bag, walk the 50 yards from the nearest parking space and grumble about the wet weather, the numb fingers and how awful it is going to be to stand there, slowly opening my purse and counting coins, slowly and clumsily,handing them over for an item that is going to be heavy, that is going to make my arms ache, and returning home will mean I need to rest for 1 hour in bed, I can see entirely that I would be mad to go to a Farmers Market and instead it would make a lot more sense to go to the supermarket where it is warm, I can park and the trolley awaits me. What choice would you make?

When I am at the Farmers Market I have to do a scary thing, I have to become visible, I have to talk, I have to ask questions, I visibly struggle with my shopping, with cold hands, with dripping hair and yet the benefits are immense.......

It is inconvenient but I promise to keep trying because it matters.

So instead of taking on the logo ' every little helps' mine is ' every little change matters'.

Farmers - an endangered species

It continues to be in my awareness and there have been some excellent contributions from Farmer Phil, Podchef and Heather in the comments section, please go and read them.

Heather in particular offers the following suggestions :

Heather's draft guide for cheering up farming:
1: Think about the food you are eating - not just the posh restaurant meal on the weekend but the cake in Starbucks and the food in your freezer. Check out the yogurt in your fridge and where its practical start to source it locally and sustainably from farmers.
2: When you do use a supermarket - try to use Waitrose - they are the best at sourcing local sustainable produce from Farmers in LEAF.
3: Blog about it all, blog blog blog. Phone up the Wiggly Podcast and leave a message of support - or a rant 00441981 500930. We'll play it to the world. Come on the show - email me heather@wigglywigglers.co.uk, get involved with this www.heathergorringe.com
4: Ask a farmer to come and speak at your school or organise a farm visit. Check out the Year of Food and Farming
5: Get informed - it was the government research place that spread Foot and Mouth and other European countries have Blue Tongue and they dont shut down massive areas of farmland!
6: Grow things of your own (I know a really good mail order company that sells farm produced hedging, veggie seeds - birdfood all sorts...!)
There's a start anyway.

It is going to be mighty inconvenient to do this.........most people are going to say that they are too busy, not enough time= not enough money, what is the cost going to be?

If you grow fruit and vegetables in your garden you know how much work it takes and also the pleasure you have from eating something that is fresh, local and hopefully as organic as possible.

DH is in the process of starting a business venture in our local community but just like farmers, it seems to take ages because we need to have this and that certificate, go on this and that course and comply with this and that legislation. There is in principle nothing wrong with protecting the consumer but even at this level I keep asking myself, should we bother. Every course, every certificate gains you what exactly? I am not knocking it, it just seems that every step involves us paying a fee to an agency to put a stamp on what is mostly common sense. I guess it is the same with farmers.

The Uk has some of the most fantastic countryside, sheep eating the grass in the hills act as stewards to the countryside too, without them, land could go to what exactly?

What you can do easily to get an idea of a farmer's life :
Listen to Farming Today to get a flavour of what is happening and how real the situation is.
Go and source local ingredients and cook with what is in season.
Check out the Farming Help Appeal 2007 site for details.

Most of all, engage with what is happening and whatever level you can.

Little hen, little hen

Little hen, little hen, waking me from my afternoon nap. Under my window they made noises to say, corn, corn, corn. Its a fairly nice and cold day. I went walkabout in the garden to see what was happening fearing that a fox had entered our quarry. Not a bit of it, they just were hankering after some corn to keep warm.
I do not mind as the results of caring for them and allowing them to work hard are some eggs that await some culinary magic. It is a simple harvest at this time of the year but a welcome one. Day in day out we gather between 5 a 8 eggs from 9 chickens which is a good yield. They have off days like everyone else but on the whole they are reliable workers, noisy at times, but reliable.