For the Love of British Food

At home I have continued to try to economise by using what I have in the fridge and freezer and buying as little as possible other than basics like bread and milk. I’ve done quite well at that, and have used up quite a lot. I will need to tidy and pack any spare space with something like bags of polystyrene packing chips or blocks. This will make sure I use as little energy as possible.

To top up, I am looking for cheap seasonal and tasty. Winter is a good time to eat pork and I have bought some pork belly which is an inexpensive cut and can be cooked in many different tasty ways. A Chinese cookbook might be a good place to start, but I’ll think about that later. The quantity I bought will make two meals for about £2.50 a meal including veg. I have plenty of root veg in stock and I bought a savoy cabbage for fresh greenery. You would be hard put to find a good ready-meal at that price and you would not get much for your money.

Channel 4 TV featured two families who were trying to economise. One family looked to supermarket value ranges, the other family shopped around, went to local butchers and markets. They both saved money, but there is no doubt in my mind who had the healthiest diet.

The Riverford fruit and veg box still has some treats in store, one being a fresh pineapple. I’ll really enjoy that just as it is, but might chunk and caramelise a few pieces to go with a dessert of rice cooked in coconut milk, another storecupboard gift.

I have plenty of pasta, so tomorrow night’s supper might be based on that and I have all the ingredients for a full Sunday breakfast partly thanks to Waitrose generosity. The assistant on the checkout opened the box of eggs I was buying and found two cracked. The store didn’t have any more that size which were on special offer, so gave me half a dozen of extra-large at the same price.  They are usually regarded as being at the top end of the price ladder for supermarkets, but they are trying hard, they have special offers on food and household items to match Tesco and Sainsbury and are SO much more friendly.

They are also helping the community. When you pay, however little you may have bought, you are given a small green disk. That goes into one of 3 bins at the front of the store and at the end of each month, a charity contribution is assigned to 3 different local causes proportionate to the number of disks in each bin. Customers can also suggest local charities to benefit and I am hoping to see RYA Sailability feature sometime soon - we have a group at our sailing club with specially adapted boats and trimarans. The boats include a landing craft type that can take wheelchairs, and Challenger trimarans that can be controlled by hand and foot pedals and can’t capsize.

Sorry, diverted a bit from the food topic there, but it is good to see a big supermarket chain wanting to get involved like this.

I’m not sure what to do about my growing plans. I know I’ll be putting the house on the market, but don’t want too many big and heavy containers to move if I am out before the summer. I know I want to try to take a cutting from the bay tree to take to a new abode.  I will be checking my River Cottage diary later to see what I should be planting in February. It may still be winter, but there are signs of spring in the garden, even now and jobs I am hoping for a respite from rain and stormy winds to get on with.

Well, OK, really it is a little past the apple harvest now, and it hasn’t been the best year for a good apple harvest in some areas of the

UK. In the South, we had late frosts into April and May that killed blossom, our bee population has been hit badly by varroa and colony collapse, and a wet and windy summer did not help the fruit grow and ripen.  Other parts of the country had better weather, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk for example have had good crops this year. 

One delicious variety of British apple, the russet, has hardly been seen in the shops this year. It has an odd, rough almost scaly skin, rather than red or green and shiny but a wonderful crisp texture.  There are plenty of Bramley cooking apples in the shops, so obviously some areas of the country managed a better harvest. You could be forgiven for thinking that this is the only variety of cooking apple available, you hardly ever see other ones in the supermarkets, although they can be found in farm shops, farmers’ markets and occasionally turn up in my organic veg/fruit boxes.  My veg boxes come from a company called Riverford Farms (http://www.riverford.co.uk/).

The company started out in Devon, but have spread across the country and brought in other farms to cut down on food miles, by swapping local crops in bulk. One of these new farms is only a few miles from me at Upper Norton (www.riverfordnorton.co.uk)  near Winchester, Hampshire. Checking their website just now, I can see they have my beloved russets on sale this week! Other cooking varieties you might find are Grenadier and James Grieve. The latter I recall very well from my childhood when my Grandad had a ‘double’ tree he had grafted, so that it produced both James Grieves for cooking and I think, Coxes Orange Pippin for eating or it may have been Laxton Superb.  Apart from russets, of which there are many sub-varieties, I think I like the small, sharp and juicy Worcester Pearmains the best. Only a few years ago, it looked like our native apple varieties were disappearing under a tide of imports from Australia and South Africa. The movement for local food has started to reverse this trend.  I was also quite surprised to find that the idea of a different type of apple for cooking is less common in the USA.  

Researching this article, I found some interesting links that I’d like to share
Britain’s declining bee population 

An apple encyclopaedia

Growers determined to keep old varieties alive