Kathie Auton: There are very few things as magically alchemical as the creation of pancakes. The extraordinary metamorphosis of flour, eggs and milk into something so delicious. The truest and simplest example of the amazing transformative power of cooking. Pancakes are so good. So good, in fact, that I fully understand the religious link. For many people, Shrove Tuesday is a religious day that marks the beginning of lent, but in my household it’s just Pancake Day and is a celebration of the sheer cunningness of cooking.
12 February 2013 |
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Charles Redfern: Mackerel is back in the news again. Fish Fight recommended switching to mackerel - with mackerel baps in fish & chip shops - to replace endangered cod, only last year. Now mackerel seems to have lost its eco-shine. Why is that and how can consumers navigate the murky waters of fish sustainability? I attempt to give my answer. And whilst I'm trying to simplify matters, I think I want my central message to be: it's not that simple!
05 February 2013 |
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Emma Heseltine: This week I’m taking my last two pigs to the abattoir. I’m sure it’s going to be just as sad as the last time, but this time I’m hoping they are bigger and so provide more delicious food than the previous one. My mistake last time was not to weigh my pig so this time I’m getting it organised. John and I fetch the lamb weigher over from Wallace Field and get them in the pens. As the pigs have been moved a couple of times now they are quite used to getting in the trailer for a little ride, its not difficult with a bit of a treat (a couple of carrots).
03 February 2013 |
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Margaret Finlay: Here at Rainton Farm, home of Cream o’ Galloway ice-cream in south west Scotland, we’re adopting an entirely new method of dairy farming. I’ll be blogging about some of the experiences we’ve had (and continue to have!) on our family farm. It became increasingly clear to us that the UK agricultural industry faces many challenges which will only increase in potential threat in future years. We are hoping to demonstrate that, in fact, there is another way...
31 January 2013 |
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Kathie Auton: I was already getting these recipes down on paper when the mackerel news hit the headlines last week. In case you missed it, the gist is that mackerel, even dear old reliable mackerel, are no longer sustainable. But fear not. Sardines still are. Phew. A recent post of mine for was all about how frozen sustainable fish is the friend of the family cook. But if even a spot of digging around in the freezer is feeling taxing after all the busyness of the festive period and you don’t want to get your hands cold, perhaps I could suggest a ferret around in the tin cupboard instead? Yes, it’s 2013 and tinned fish is the new frozen fish.
29 January 2013 |
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Emma Heseltine: This time of year it is all about hedges and I’ve been working on two this week. The first, at Wallacefield, is a fairly well contained affair that just needs a little off the top. We work our way along with loppers taking out the straggly bits and piling them up on one side of the fence to make a bonfire later. It is of course full of blackthorn which is the spikiest natural substance known to man.
27 January 2013 |
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Catherine Fookes: It’s hard not to notice that our food prices have shot up, and while we might not be going hungry just yet, what’s the bet that a lot of us are starting the New Year slightly more cash strapped than last, armed with ways of feeding ourselves on a budget, planning imaginative meals with leftovers and generally cutting back on dining out. The increase in food prices is just the tip of the iceberg for what’s increasingly becoming a worldwide issue of food security. Launched this week, the Enough Food for Everyone, IF campaign, is tackling world hunger head on with a hard hitting celebrity backed campaign supported by industry and charitable organisations - the latest in a string of initiatives to tackle this issue.
25 January 2013 |
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Helen Browning: We are excited to have joined a new campaign coalition focused on the vital issue of hunger in developing countries. It’s called ‘IF’ and focuses on the fact that despite us producing enough food in the world to feed everyone, many are still going hungry. One in eight people on our planet are hungry and two million children die each year because of malnutrition. And the problem is not a shortage of food; there are deep inequalities in the food system, which mean that the hungry do not get the food they need to live.
23 January 2013 |
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Lynda Brown: When it comes to social media, I’m a real laggard (OK, so un-cool, but honestly I’d much rather go for a walk or dance tango any day than whitter and twitter my life away). But even I admit, it can be awesomely powerful, especially when it galvanises public opinion into a nice juicy petition with thousands of names on it; so much so, it’s fast becoming the peaceful and effective way to voice your concerns over a particular issue. And it doesn’t get more disgusting than the thought of salmon, genetically engineered to be obese (life is full of ironies, isn’t it?). The story so far is that the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved (on paper), GE salmon that will grow twice as fast as normal Atlantic salmon.
22 January 2013 |
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Emma Heseltine: I’m clipping the lambs in the lambing shed, they are going to the abattoir tomorrow and they must be clean and dry so I’m trimming their bellies and tails. I hear a clucking a lot closer than it should be. There’s a chicken got shut in the lambing shed. If anyone leaves the she’s door open the chickens go piling in and take up residence in the hay, very comfy. Trouble is they sometimes stay in too long and the door gets shut with them in.
20 January 2013 |
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Anna Louise Batchelor: The writer William Somerset Maugham famously said of British cuisine “To eat well in England, you should have breakfast three times a day”. We’re famed for our ‘full English’, revered for Scottish kippers and ‘glow’ with porridge, yet a recent study found that 47% of British people regularly don’t eat breakfast. In my ‘day job’ I’m know as Porridge Lady; cooking with, writing about and developing recipes and products that contain the humble oat. I’m quite obsessional about oats as I think that they are good not only for our health but also the soil too.
18 January 2013 |
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Colin Tudge: Food and agriculture offer fabulous jobs – real careers. Many people really love farming just as many love medicine or teaching. Of course such jobs are not to everyone’s taste – no job is – but those who love them could not conceive of anything else. There surely are enough wannabe farmers to make enlightened agriculture work, though most of them now are doing other things: making cold-calls, driving vans; or propping up the dole queue.
15 January 2013 |
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Lynda Brown: My brother rang last week to alert me to a feature on Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine Show about how because of last year’s atrocious rainy weather, veg hadn’t got any nutrients, and how it was worse for organic veg. What actually happened was that ‘leading scientist’, Professor Mike Gooding, Head of Agricultural Policy and Development at University of Reading was putting it about that fruit and veg and cereals maybe less nutritious and tasty (eg rain leaching out nitrogen means less protein – he was referring mainly to cereals here, less sunshine means less sugars etc). And that though organic growers were more resilient because they grew a more diverse range of crops, organic veg were potentially worse off because they hadn’t got recourse to quick fix artificials.
14 January 2013 |
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Emma Heseltine: One or two of our ewes are limping. We get them in to have a look see what the problem is. One of them has a bit of an ulcer on her toe and needs a bit of TLC. I give her a pedicure and clean out the foot with salt water and goop it up with some foot paste. She is going to stay in the pen tonight to keep her feet out of the mud. She is not impressed. There are a couple of others who get a foot trim too. Our sheep are big and not the easiest to tip, especially if they’re are not in the mood.
13 January 2013 |
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Kathie Auton: Half of all food thrown away - that's the news story I woke up to this morning. And yesterday I was reading about children no longer being taught to cook. Children cooking and using up food: two things that obsess my thoughts daily. I want to get on my soapbox today. I want to say 'get cooking and stop chucking', but these are hardly problems that will be solved by foot stamping and opining.
10 January 2013 |
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Colin Tudge: Is it silly to contemplate a complete 'people’s buy-out' of Britain's farmland? To envisage that all Britain’s farmland should be held in trust, dedicated in perpetuity to Enlightened Agriculture – farming that is expressly designed to provide everyone with food of the highest quality without wrecking the rest of the world? Even if we conclude (as we could well conclude) that a 100% buy-out would not be sensible (for a whole host of reasons) would it at least be worthwhile to keep the idea in focus?
08 January 2013 |
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Emma Heseltine: Christmas was still a busy time on the farm. This year the boss is going to London so I’m looking after the animals. I get all the feeding done in record time so I can enjoy my Christmas lunch without worrying about having to get all muddy in the afternoon! It’s a good few days and I also get chance to go see my family back in Leeds (after a disastrous car failure we get there in the end). So what’s in store for us this New Year?
06 January 2013 |
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Lynda Brown: Like Ben Raskin, I kicked off the New Year with a bang by spending yesterday day at the Oxford Real Farming Conference, the new ‘hub’ for sustainable-cum-agro-ecological food and farming. This is the Brave New World of food and farming, and I love it. (PS It gets my vote for another reason: it’s cheap; that means anyone can afford to go. If you’re up for a heady dose of can do culture, I thoroughly recommend it.)
04 January 2013 |
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Ben Raskin: The really successfuly CSAs are those with experienced and skilled growers and farmers at their hearts. Whether the initial idea comes from the producer or the community doesn't in the end matter, but farmer led CSAs can succeed more quickly as you can cut down on some of the heartache and painful learning that community initiatives sometimes go through as they take on a new piece of land and learn what to do with it.
02 January 2013 |
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Emma Heseltine: We are plucking and dressing the geese this week. It’s a several stage process and it starts with removing the tail and wing feathers. Geese are water birds so have several layers of feathers to remove, not as easy as chicken or even duck. We are collecting these big feathers as some beekeepers in the area have asked for them as they are very useful. I'll admit I didn’t find out what for, most likely some kind of brushing and not for bee tickling (which isn’t a thing).
23 December 2012 |
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