Spring is on the way!

  Keeping going with the EatingBritish thing has been a bit difficult for the last few weeks.  I think the unusually harsh winter led to very difficult growing conditions for British farmers.  Anyway, I noticed today that I am no longer limited to cabbage, carrots, potatoes and Brussels sprouts!  No, pak choi and tomatoes are back on the menu!  Woo!

 So, there they are, just in case you didn't believe me.  I was quite hungry after my shopping trip and needing something quick, so I opted to a stir fry, with bacon, pak choi and tomato.  I know it might sound odd putting tomato into a stir fry, but it works, trust me.  The trick is to slice the tomato (fairly thickly will do) and then add close to the end of cooking, but give it enough time to dissolve to give a thick, rich sauce.  Awesome!

 Serve on a bed of rice.  Nice.

Welsh lamb burgers with fresh mint and rosemary

Judging by my last shopping trip, Welsh lamb seems to be very much back on the shelves, at least at my local supermarket.  So, I couldn't resist picking up some minced lamb, which is great made into burgers.  Minced lamb has a fairly high fat content (around 20%) compared to minced beef, but this really helps to keep things like burgers moist when they cook.  Beef burgers can end up being a bit dry much more easily than lamb burgers.  Like nearly all of my recipes, this is really easy to do.  Simply place 500g of minced lamb into a large bowl:

 This was also a good excuse to use some of the herbs of been growing on my patio, so I picked a reasonable handful of mint leaves and a few sprigs of rosemary.  I then washed these and chopped them fairly finely before adding them to the meat in the bowl.  I also added a generous measure of freshly ground black pepper, a good pinch of salt, a finely chopped small onion and one egg.  The easiest way to mix this all together is by hand, so get stuck in!

 Now, heat some oil in a pan, to a fairly high heat, but not smoking.  Take small handfuls of the mixture and kneed them in your hands to a suitable 'burger' shape, making sure that they are not too thick.  Place these in the hot pan and fry for something in the region of 7 to 8 minutes per side.  The exact time will depend on how thick you make them, thinner ones will be quicker and fatter ones will take longer.  You can always cut one open when you think they are done, just to check.

 Serve!  Of course, burgers go well when in buns, but I didn't have any, so I had mine with potatoes and British corn on the cob.

Very tasty it was to!

Honey glazed pork chop with British corn on the cob

I picked up this jar of honey at my local butcher shop today, so thought I should use it.  Pork chops can be good, but a honey glazed pork chop is just better!  It's very easy to do, simply season the pork chop with some freshly ground black pepper and some course sea salt on both sides.

 Heat some oil in a frying pan to a reasonably high heat and cook the pork chop on one side until it is cooked about half way through.

 Now, turn the heat down and gently pour a generous teaspoon of honey onto the uncooked side of the pork chop.  Allow the honey to run over the top and then turn the chop over, placing the honey side down in the pan.  The honey will quickly caramelise and you should see the caramel creeping out from under the pork chop.  It's important that the heat isn't too high at this stage because we don't want to burn the sugar.

 Let it cook until it's cooked through, which will probably take another 10 minutes or so, but this will depend on the size of the chop.  It should turn a lovely, golden colour on the honey side.  You can turn it over again for a few minutes if you want the golden caramel colour on both sides.

 I was keen to find a way to use some of the British sweetcorn I bought the other day, so I cooked the cob in lightly salted, boiling water for about 10 minutes, until tender.  Served this way with a knob of butter, it's absolutely delicious.

British Sweetcorn

 I was very surprised to come across British sweetcorn in the supermarket!  I have seen this before, but only once and that was a few years ago.  As you can see, this is part of the Waitrose South of England range, so presumably it has just come into season.  I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with them yet, I know of boiling or grilling the cob and having it with butter (very nice), but I shall investigate if there are some other good ideas out there.

 My attempts at growing various vegetables in pots on my patio has not been very successful.  The biggest problem has been with slugs and snails which just come along and consume any young plants, particularly things like spinach or lettuce.  I have been using pellets, which seems to be working.  I found some excellent 'organic approved' pellets, which are apparently completely safe to pets and other wildlife such as birds which might eat the slugs or snails.  Also, they are safe to use around edible plants, which is good.  Despite the attacks, the tomatoes are doing well and one is just beginning to turn red:

 I'm only growing two plants this year, of different variates, so I probably wont get enough fruit for making chutney again.  Unbelievably, I still have chutney left over from last year and, more importantly, it still seems to be edible!

 A friend has also been teaching me about Thai cooking just recently, which is exciting.  I have to be careful though, as the recipes are closely guarded secrets and I had to promise not to reveal them.  However, I might be able to come up with some variants that I can post here, so look out for British / Thai fusion cooking some time soon!

Seasonal produce

 I was impressed on my last shopping trip to see that Waitrose have expanded their range of 'South of England' regional produce!  Vegetables on sale included peas, broccoli, dwarf beans, courgettes, two varieties of potato, runner beans and spinach.  This is great to see and even better to eat!  It gives a real feel for when certain vegetables come into season, which is nice and helps to create a more varied diet in my opinion.

 I also came across this article on the Guardian website the other day, which claims that for the first time ever, British grown mange tout will be available, although I think it will only be in Marks and Spencer.  I haven't had a chance to check it out yet, but I will as soon as I can!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/25/british-mange-tout-sale-first

It really does seem as if demand for British produce is increasing.

Marrow and broad bean risotto

 I mentioned in my last  post that I would write something about marrows, so here we are!  I think, as vegetables go, marrows are fairly exciting.  To start with, they are quite big and can be huge!  Secondly, I think anything that has stripes just looks good.  Marrows are the tigers of the vegetable world.  Truly, a vegetable to admire.  Handily, they taste pretty good to, if you cook them right.  This is one vegetable that I would not recommend eating raw.  As far as I am aware, doing so won't do you any harm, it just doesn't taste that great.  So, I decided to turn this marrow into a risotto.

 This is very easy to do.  Simply wash the marrow and then cut it into roughly 1cm cubes.  Meanwhile, heat some oil in a heavy-based sauce pan (olive or rape-seed oil works very well) and when hot, add some finely chopped onion.  Cook the onion until it is nice and soft and just starting to turn brown.  Now, add about half a cup of risotto rice.  I use Arborio rice, which is particularly good I think.  Stir the rice around with the onion and then add enough chicken stock to just cover the rice and onion.  Then, put the lid on the sauce pan and leave it simmering for a while.  Keep an eye on it and when it looks like most of the fluid has been absorbed, add a little more to again just cover the rice.  For half a cup of rice, you'll want about 450ml of chicken stock.  You may want to give it a stir from time to time as well to make sure it doesn't stick and burn in the bottom of the pan.

 Once you've added about half the stock, add the chopped marrow.  Now, I have chosen to add broad beans as well, because they are in season right now, so these can go in at the same time.  Flavour the dish with some freshly chopped sage, ground black pepper and a pinch of sea salt.  A knob of butter really adds to the flavour, but is optional.  Stir it around and add the rest of the stock.  Put the lid on the pan and leave it to simmer until the marrow has gone really soft and most of the fluid has been absorbed.  That's it!

 Now, a risotto should really be served with Parmesan cheese, but of course that's not British.  So, I have to admit I went without the cheese, but it would be really good to be able to find a good British alternative to Parmesan.  I shall investigate this.

New vegetables in season now!

 My last trip to Waitrose revealed that two new vegetables appear to have come into season; peas and marrow.  Now, I use peas in quite a lot of my cooking, as you might have noticed from one or two of the pictures here...  But, they are nearly always frozen peas.  Frozen peas are great because they are frozen very quickly after being picked, which means that they maintain a lot of the vitamins and minerals that makes them so good for you.  Peas are also a good source of fibre, with 100g of peas containing as much as 5.1g of fibre! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peas).  However, the fresh peas have a completely different flavour, even if you do need to go through the hassle of shelling them yourself:

 I think they are easily worth the effort as they taste so much sweeter and crisper than the frozen ones.  I use them either as I would with frozen peas (boil in lightly salted water for 3 minutes), or just leave them raw and have them in a salad or something similar.
 I also noticed that marrows seem to be in season now, so I shall post something about the marrow when I've decided what I am going to do with.
At this time of the year, when there are so many good, fresh vegetables available, it seems almost a shame to be eating too much meat.  So, an unplanned consequence of my EatingBritish diet is that I've really cut down on my meat consumption during the summer months.  When I cooked before starting this project, I tended to rotate through the same dishes on a near weekly basis (very boring!).  However, now that I am basing my cooking on what I find to be the freshest and the most in season at the shops, I am finding that my diet has become a lot more varied.  Meat is a great source of protein and other things that the body needs, but I think it really comes into its own during the late autumn and winter months, when there simply isn't that much available on the vegetable front.  It occurred to me today that, in the UK at least, we have an unprecedented amount of choice when it comes to the food we buy, on a level probably never known by any previous generations.  Yet, despite this, how many people sit down to the same meal on a regular basis?  How many people really vary their diet that much beyond just a few recipes?  I suspect not many.  The odd thing is that when I started this project, several people objected to it because they saw modern food and cooking as being about variety.  However, in my attempts at sticking to a diet of only food produced in Britain, far from reducing the variety of my diet, I have increased it significantly.

Seasonal produce

After all the fuss I made about the regional produce I bought in Waitrose last week, I thought it was probably time that I wrote a little more about it.  In the end, once I'd sampled some of the vegetables raw, I realised that they were far to fresh to be cooked to death in some complicated dish.  When vegetables (technically, tomatoes are a fruit of course...) are this fresh, I think it's almost a crime to cook them beyond the bare minimum.  The spinach and the asparagus in particular seem to really benefit from actually being in season at the moment, you can really taste it.  So, one super simple dish that I like to do when I get home from work and am hungry and in need of something fairly quick is to just basically cook some pasta and add some olive oil, freshly ground black pepper, course sea salt and the freshest vegetables available.  This could be done with almost any vegetables really, but in this case I used asparagus, mushrooms and spinach.  This dish is perfect when the vegetables are so fresh because they are not really cooked at all, just warmed through.  The end result should look something like this:

 This really is the simplest thing to prepare.  Put the pasta into little salted, rapidly boiling water.  While it's cooking, wash the vegetables.  Slice the mushrooms and the asparagus.  When the pasta is nearly done, add the slices asparagus for no more than three minutes, it takes a bit of practice to get the timing for the pasta right, but it's worth persevering.  A time saving trick I like to use is to wash the spinach leaves in a colander under the cold tap.  Once the pasta is cooked, drain the pasta through the same colander, leaving the spinach in.  This way, the pasta gets drained and the spinach gets steamed by the hot water!  Nice.  Tip the pasta and the spinach back into the saucepan, add olive oil, freshly ground black pepper and course sea salt.  Stir it around and add the mushrooms.  That's it!

 We've been having a lot of warm and wet weather just recently, which of course has done wonders for my attempts to grow my own food:

 As you can see, the tomatoes are coming on well, the mint is progressing but is still too small to use really.  Unfortunately, the sweet peppers are not doing much and appear to have been munched by snails.  However, the alpine strawberries are doing well, though I am surprised that they haven't produced any flowers yet.

Venison Steak Stri Fry

 The last dish I wrote about, the roast Venison rump steak, was rather more than I could eat in one go, so I had left overs.  A stir fry is often a good way of using left overs from a roast, or many other kinds of left overs come to that.  Anyway, in my opinion a stir fry requires relatively little meat, but with plenty of fresh and interesting vegetables.  On the subject of fresh and interesting vegetables, I have to say that I am finding the going a little difficult at the moment in terms of keeping to only British produce.  This time of year is something of a gap between the last of the previous seasons winter produce (see my posts from January, there was still quite a variety available then) and the next seasons early spring produce.  We have had an especially long and cold winter as well, which almost certainly will make things more difficult.

 There was actually an interesting article on this on the Guardian website that I came across today, which is worth a look (click here).  I had a good look round at the Sunnyfields farm shop when I was there to see what local vegetables I could pick up.  I came away with curly kale and purple sprouting brocoli, both of which are quite suitable for a stir fry.

 All I did was tear off some handfulls of the curly kale and purple sprouting brocoli and wash them under the tap.  I then heating some oil in the pan, added a chopped onion and fryed on a high heat until softened.  I then added the washed vegetables.  Continue to fry on a high heat until the leafy vegetables start to wilt. I then added a generous portion of soy sauce, some freshly ground black pepper and the sliced left over Venison.  I also added some frozen peas.  In the picture below, I have also added the left over roasted vegetables from the previous meal and as much as possible of the remaining juice, which will add a nice depth of flavour to the stir fry.

Continue to stir fry for a few minutes more to make sure that the frozen peas have defrosted, then serve on a bed of rice:

British Tomatoes

 I was pleasently surprised to find that British tomatoes are already available!

 These, as can be seen from the label, have been grown at Thanet Earth in Kent, which is the largest greenhouse complex in the UK (http://www.thanetearth.com/).  Of course, the important question is; Did they taste good?  They were really quite good, juicy and sweet as a tomato should be.

Roast vegetables and Venison Burgers

Many winter vegetables, such as parsnips and carrots are almost unbelievably good when roasted! Even if you don't like these vegetables boiled or raw, I'd suggest given them a try this way. Here, I've roasted some carrots, parsnips and shallot onions.

I sliced the parsnips length wise into halves and did the same with the larger of the carrots - the smaller ones can be left as they are. I peeled the shallots, but otherwise left them whole. Simply place the lot in a baking tray or roasting tin and cover liberally with oil. I used cold pressed rapeseed oil, which has a wonderful yellow colour and a good flavour for this kind of cooking. However, olive oil would work well to. Add a good sprinkling of salt and pepper and then place in the oven at 180C (I don't know what gas mark that is, sorry!) for about 40 minutes, or until you can push a fork into the parsnips fairly easily. The end result should look something like this:

I used my roasted vegetables to go with pan fried Venison burgers, which I simply did in the frying pan over a moderate heat and served with boiled potatos.

Baby Cabbage

I came across these during my latest trip to the supermarket. I haven't seen these before and they are British, so I thought I'd have to give them a try. I've only used one so far, just in a simple dish with spaghetti similar to one I've blogged about before (click here to see it). They are slightly sweeter then a fully grown cabbage and have a really nice, firm texture. Actually, it tasted really rather good! Looking more closely I think shows all the signs to look for when choosing a nice, fresh cabbage:

The colouring on this leaf is just perfect! It looks really rich and inviting and there is a healthy sheen to the stalk. This is what fresh cabbage should look like, not the limp, dull, lifeless things you often see.

Anyway, I did rather well for British vegetables this time round, as you can see:

Vegetable	Grown in
Baby green cabbage	Lincolnshire
Baby Chantenay carrots	Nottinghamshire
Curly kale	Lincolnshire
Parsnips	Suffolk
Shallots	Lincolnshire
Leeks	Cambridgshire

This really is a good season for British vegetables!

Cavolo Nero Cabbage, Sprouts and Bacon with Spaghetti

After all my talk in my last post about making shopping more adventurous by selecting products based on what is most local and most fresh, I thought it would be good to show something of an example. This approach to shopping really works best for vegetables and in fact I would go as far as to say that it is the best way to buy vegetables.

So, on a typical trip to the supermarket, I will hunt around in the vegetable section to see what's good and what's not, adding things to my trolley based on freshness and and how local it appears to be. Once I feel I've investigated everything on offer, I usually have a good selection in the trolley. At this point, I'll sometimes put one or two items back if it looks like I've got more than I'll need to last me a week and make a mental note to look for them again next week. Having chosen the vegetables, I will then choose what meat to buy based on the vegetables that were available, rather than the classic method of having a pre-set menu in mind before reaching the shop.

Now, I don't deny that this approach to shopping does take longer, but I still manage to do it in the evening after getting home from work, so it really isn't too bad. Sometimes other, more focused, shoppers get a bit irate at me for constantly going backwards and forwards in the vegetable section rather than following the unwritten (and unsigned) rules for correct supermarket navigation. But, I find that by taking a little longer over the shopping, it actually becomes a more enjoyable experience and I leave the shop significantly more relaxed than if I'd been barging around.

My last shopping trip was a great example of the benefits of this process. I found two vegetables that I haven't cooked with before, both of which are British produce. These were Jerusalem Artichokes, which I'll come back to in a later post and Cavolo Nero cabbage. The cabbage just looked really exciting! It's a very dark green colour, almost black in places. It has very long, narrow leaves and the packet informed me that it was originally from Italy but is now grown in the UK. So, I couldn't really resist getting some to give it a try in something. I also picked up some spouts, also UK produce, which are really good value at the moment – I got 50% extra free! I heard somewhere that there was something of a glut in sprout production this growing season, so suppliers have been selling them off cheap to try to get rid of them. I don't know how true that is, but they do seem to be exceptionally good value at the moment, for whatever reason.

There is a very simple and very quick recipe that I find is great for using winter greens, such as cabbage, spinach or indeed spouts. I'm not entirely sure what to call it really, so I won't give it a name beyond the one I've put as the title for this post, which says precisely what it is. Wash and chop about 5 or 6 leaves of the cabbage and remove the stalks and outer leaves from a handful of sprouts. At this point, put some spaghetti into a pan of lightly salted, boiling water. The pasta I use takes about 8 to 10 minutes to cook, which is just perfect for this recipe. Chop some bacon and then fry in a little vegetable oil until it starts to go crispy at the edges. Add the cabbage and continue to fry on a high heat until it starts to wilt, stirring it around occasionally. Then, add the halved spouts and continue stirring it around for another couple of minutes. Once the spaghetti is done, drain the water away and return the pasta to the pan. Liberally pour over some extra virgin olive oil and stir it around to make sure the pasta doesn't stick together or to the sides of the pan. Add the fried bacon, cabbage and spouts and stir around. Finally, I really like to add a generous portion of pine nut kernels, which are almost certainly not British, but I just love them! I like to add a little course sea salt and some freshly ground black pepper as well. Stir it all around in the pan once or twice and then serve immediately. This really is a very fast dish to prepare – it can be done in only the time it takes the water in the pan to come to the boil and the pasta to cook through.

Happy New Year!

Firstly, I would like to wish all my readers a really great New Year for 2010! May your year be full of wonderful culinary treats.

Many people may well be thinking more about dieting and cutting back on the food at this time of the year, after the over indulgences of the Christmas season. Personally, I think there is always room for good food, but if you are dieting at the moment then I really do wish you the very best of luck!

I don't really go in for new year's resolutions much myself, but if I did one I would make would be to try even harder through 2010 to explore local and British produce. I'd like to think that some of my readers may have been inspired to do something similar. Ingredients, in particular vegetables, always taste better the fresher they are. This is one of the reasons why vegetables you've grown yourself always taste better – you can't get much fresher then something pulled or picked and used within minutes. It stands to reason that the further vegetables have to be transported, the less fresh they will be and the less fresh they are, the less tasty they will be. Put simply, locally produced food such as vegetables, will be tastier than those grown hundreds of miles away.Of course, the availability of local vegetables is subject to the seasons, so it might be hard for someone who is used to cooking the same recipes over and over throughout the year. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with this and it should be possible to use local ingredients for at least part of the year. But personally, through doing the EatingBritish thing a while back and by continuing with this blog now, I find that my shopping habits have changed significantly. I still do most of my shopping at the supermarket, simply for the convenience really. However, instead of going along with a fixed menu for the week ahead, I go with an open mind and choose the ingredients that are the most local and the most fresh. In this way, the diversity of my cooking has increased enormously! And, it really adds some excitement to a shopping trip because it becomes something of an adventure. The adventure doesn't stop in the supermarket though, it continues in the kitchen when you get back home as you explore a new ingredient. If you've never tried shopping this way before, perhaps I could suggest that you make a, slightly late I admit, new year's resolution to try at least once in a while!

Plants - Grow your own chillies, sweet peppers and tomatoes!

To my great delight, I noticed while watering last night that some of my tomatoes are starting to ripen! It's such a great feeling, watching plants grow knowing that you're going to be able to enjoy the fruits (literally!) of your labour very soon. I never cease to be amazed at how few people even try to grow their own, it's great fun and requires very little space. I only have a small patio and yet I can still grow a decent quantity of tomatoes, even if they are now a little on the rampant side:

Unfortunately, my attempts to support the plants with canes has failed, with the result that they have tumbled all over the place. However, they still seem to be doing well, though I am concerned that some of the fruit is resting on the ground which probably isn't good. I'll have to do something about that soon.

The chillies are continuing to do well, actually, they are nearly all ripe now I think, so I shall have to pick them soon:

Wild blackberries

The season for blackberries seems to have come rather early this year! I am lucky enough to live next to a large park with plenty of wild blackberries, so I took the opportunity to head out and gather some.

My plan is to use them to make jam, although I may need to get more then this for that. Actually, I was surprised that there weren't more ready to be picked, though as you can see from the pictures, there will be plenty more in a few days time. I try to avoid picking any that are below roughly waist height, since these are easily reached by dogs and foxes...

Pad fried British chicken breast with sautéed vegetables

This is a great recipe for chicken breast, which I absolutely love. Like nearly all of my cooking, it's very simple, although does perhaps require a little more effort than many of the recipes on this site.

First of all, lightly season a chicken breast with salt, freshly ground black pepper and some dried basil. I tend to use dried herbs for this kind of cooking, saving the fresh stuff for use in salads and stuff, where it has more impact.


Then, heat some oil in a pan, you going to want it to be really quite hot to start with, but not quite smoking. Place the seasoned chicken breast into the pan and fry on a high heat on each side until brown. This will take around 2 to 3 minutes for each side. The idea here is to seal in the juices of the meat. Once sealed, turn the heat down and cook for about 20 minutes, turned occasionally. If the chicken breast is really thick or you want it to cook more quickly, then you can 'butterfly' it. To do this, simply cut it length-wise down the middle, but not all the way through, so that you can open it up, in a manner similar to opening a book. This way, the two halves will be thinner and so will cook much more quickly.


While that's cooking, it's time to sauté the vegetables. In this example, I used the most exciting British vegetables I could find. At this time of the year, that includes quite a lot, so I have used red and yellow sweet pepper, courgette, aubergine, mushrooms and spinach. Simply slice and chop all the vegetables, as you would for a stir fry. I fried some chopped onion first and then added the aubergine, followed by the mushrooms, the courgette, the pepper and finally the spinach, waiting for around 2 minutes between each and stirring continuously. I used a good handful of spinach leaves, which looks a lot when you first put it in the pan, but the leaves shrink to a fraction of their original size as they cook. Season with salt, freshly ground black pepper and some dark soy sauce. Cook for a further 5 minutes or so, stirring regularly.

I find that you can often tell when the chicken breast is cooked through by poking it with a sharp stick, or a fork, whichever is most convenient at the time. The idea is to make a small hole through the skin and into the meat. If the juice that comes out of this hole (you might need to press down on the chicken breast around it) runs clear, then it is probably cooked. Like all recipes, I suggest you try this out just on yourself to begin with, so you can remove the meat from the pan and cut it in half to check. With practice, you'll get it right.

Once everything is cooked, slice the cooked chicken breast into strips and serve on a bed of the sautéed vegetables, with boiled new potatoes. Nice.

British soft fruit

This is without a doubt one of the best times of the year for buying British produce in supermarkets! On a recent trip to my local supermarket, I found strawberries, blackberries and raspberries in the fruit section and aubergines and courgettes in the vegetable section, all grown in Britain.

I'll come to the vegetables in a later post, but for now I want to talk about the fruit. I always think that soft fruit grown n Britain tastes better, which I think is simply because it hasn't had to be shipped or flown a great distance to get here. Or, it could just be that we grow different varieties of fruit here, I don't know. But, I do know that it tastes great and that's the main thing!
I like to eat fruit with my breakfast and a great way to do that is to blend the fruit up with some natural yogurt and have it with some kind of cereal in place of milk. Here, I have rinsed the strawberries, blackberries and raspberries and then added them to around four or five large dessert spoons of natural yogurt. Blend this all together briefly – I don't like it to get too smooth, I think it should still have identifiable bits of fruit in it. Then, simply pour over a bowl of cereal, in this case I'm using an oat and honey cereal. You could add some sugar if you want, I didn't because of the honey already in the cereal I'm using.
That's it! Something very simple, but hopefully it'll inspire you to go out and buy British soft fruit while you can. Remember, it's a relatively short season...

Crops (rapeseed and potatoes)

I'm sure anyone who has been through some British countryside recently will have noticed the bright yellow fields of Oilseed rape. I always think that these look absolutely beautiful, especially when contrasted with the green of other fields nearby and a clear, blue sky. As far as I am aware, most of this crop will be used to make vegetable oil for cooking, or bio-diesel. I did a feature a while ago on rapeseed oil, which has a high smoke point making it ideal for, amongst other things, stir frying.


I also noticed that potatoes have been planted and are just beginning to shoot. These don't look quite so pretty, but are certainly quite useful!

Home grown vegetables

Well, it's been a while since I last posted! I've been busy moving down to the South of England and starting a new job, which I think is a good enough excuse.
Anyway, I now have some outdoor space, so I can finally grow some of my own food! This is quite exciting because it means I'll be able to have British grown tomatoes, courgettes and butter-nut squash. Well, British tomatoes will be in the shops eventually, but it'll take a while. Mind you, the seeds I've bought will take a while as well, so we'll have to see which is first - watch this space!

I also bought seeds for coriander and basil, both of which I use a lot in cooking. As I found when I did the year of eating only British food, it's very hard, if not impossible to find British produced herbs. And, because there was a special offer on, I got some sweet pepper seeds as well, but they'll only grow indoors, along with the herbs.

So far, I have only planted the tomatoes and the sweet peppers:


I don't have a propagator, or a green house, so I've used clingfilm over the top of the pots. Not very exciting yet, but watch this space, they should start germinating soon! Now is the time to get planting most things, in fact it's almost too late for the tomatoes. The butternut squash and the courgettes will get planted next month. I will transfer these to grow bags on my patio once they are big enough to fend for themselves outside.