In a previous post I wrote about how rather than the standard winter, spring, summer and autumn a kitchen gardener enjoys a lengthy series of seasons, their starts marked by picking and eating the first of a particular fruit or vegetable. Last week we had the first of our delicious Discovery apples, eaten straight off the tree they are somehow far more appley than shop bought, and the reddy-pink blush brighter and more alive. That's the good side of growing your own.
There is, then, a bad side too. We dashed off for a few days away recently, having inspected the produce close to readiness. A tiny greengage tree had seven or eight fruits just on the verge of ripeness, so we left them, anticipating a mini-feast on our return. The squirrels had other ideas - all bar one sorry specimen left broken on the ground had gone when we returned. We shared our strawberries with the little grey monsters too, the netting meant to protect the plants no barrier to these furry thieves, and a few well-bitten apples can be seen littering the ground in the orchard bit of the garden - we leave them in the hope that, easier to get at, they'll keep them off the rest for a time. Some hope.
I googled 'legality of shooting grey squirrels' and learned that you probably need a licenced shooter, and the preferred RSPCA method is catching them and getting a vet to put them down at £30 a pop. Only if you can guarantee a clean kill can you shoot them yourself (I have an old air-rifle that could possibly be of value, if they'd hold still until I was within three feet), so they will continue to enjoy the fruits of our labours undisturbed. No need I guess to go into detail of what happens to the bulk of the walnuts we grow.
Our interaction with the resident fauna is not all negative. We feed the birds partly because they put on a fine show, but also because in a largely organic set-up they are very helpful, for example eating loads of caterpillars. And we have a lot of flowers that attract hover-flies, which do a fine job on white fly and other pests. Thinking along those lines, what we really need is a resident raptor capable of taking squirrels. We don't have that, but hear owls aplenty, and The Dear Leader was buzzed a few weeks back by a Nightjar while she was on a dusk inspection tour of the crops. I now have to google 'how to attract Golden Eagles to your garden.'
Showing posts with label apples. Show all posts
Showing posts with label apples. Show all posts
Tuesday, 6 August 2019
Tuesday, 16 April 2019
Breaking My Fast
As these days the Dear Leader and I undertake a 600 calorie fast every Monday we actually do break a more meaningful fast than normal on a Tuesday morning. Strangely we neither of us wake up ravenous, nor horribly early, on the morning after the slight deprivation before. In fact what we have on the Tuesday is only a variation on the Monday fast breakfast (and yes, it is fast to do as well) of a boiled egg and a bowl of fruit.
Lest this all begin to be too too virtuous, I am looking forward to a short holiday in Scotland in not many weeks' time, where I hazard a guess there may not be bowls of fruit available on the hotel breakfast menu. With luck there will be black pudding, and I am certain sure bacon and sausages will feature, things reserved now for high days and holidays. For the sake of my - love that euphemism - digestive transit - I hope they will have given in to brown bread as an option.
That bowl of fruit is a major pleasure, but given my constant wish to have diversity in our diet it is something of a challenge too. It's April, so imported strawberries make the grade occasionally now, along with blueberries. Citrus is a must for some sharpness (but as per my previous post, not as sharp in the case of grapefruit as was once the case), kiwi for the beautiful green and the eye-beneficial compounds signaled by that colour, and plums for some crunch and their purple or yellow skins. Pomegranate seeds (the trick is to bash the back of the halved fruit over a bowl with a heavy wooden spoon) strewn over the lot once or twice a week bring a touch of Aladdin - it takes little imagination to see them as drifts of rubies in a bandit's treasure chest. But back to my less camp self now.
The rather limited fruit range offered by my local supermarkets is bolstered by visits to the excellent Asian shop we use more or less weekly. Today I bought dragon fruit, golden plums, guavas and a bright yellow-skinned mango (along with a load of non-fruit items). The white with black dots of the dragon fruit, cut in elegant dice, and even the light-green-beige of the guavas, will add to the richness of the breakfast palette. It is not too long too until we will have our own rhubarb, gooseberries, greengages, mirabelles, pears, apples, quince, blackcurrants and even with luck apricots to add to the mix.
I will enjoy the contrast of hotel bacon and eggs for a few days (they can keep any hash browns on offer, I'm yet to encounter one anywhere that's not oily and badly cooked), but at the same time will miss the burst of colour (and flavour) that breakfast at home brings.
Lest this all begin to be too too virtuous, I am looking forward to a short holiday in Scotland in not many weeks' time, where I hazard a guess there may not be bowls of fruit available on the hotel breakfast menu. With luck there will be black pudding, and I am certain sure bacon and sausages will feature, things reserved now for high days and holidays. For the sake of my - love that euphemism - digestive transit - I hope they will have given in to brown bread as an option.
That bowl of fruit is a major pleasure, but given my constant wish to have diversity in our diet it is something of a challenge too. It's April, so imported strawberries make the grade occasionally now, along with blueberries. Citrus is a must for some sharpness (but as per my previous post, not as sharp in the case of grapefruit as was once the case), kiwi for the beautiful green and the eye-beneficial compounds signaled by that colour, and plums for some crunch and their purple or yellow skins. Pomegranate seeds (the trick is to bash the back of the halved fruit over a bowl with a heavy wooden spoon) strewn over the lot once or twice a week bring a touch of Aladdin - it takes little imagination to see them as drifts of rubies in a bandit's treasure chest. But back to my less camp self now.
The rather limited fruit range offered by my local supermarkets is bolstered by visits to the excellent Asian shop we use more or less weekly. Today I bought dragon fruit, golden plums, guavas and a bright yellow-skinned mango (along with a load of non-fruit items). The white with black dots of the dragon fruit, cut in elegant dice, and even the light-green-beige of the guavas, will add to the richness of the breakfast palette. It is not too long too until we will have our own rhubarb, gooseberries, greengages, mirabelles, pears, apples, quince, blackcurrants and even with luck apricots to add to the mix.
I will enjoy the contrast of hotel bacon and eggs for a few days (they can keep any hash browns on offer, I'm yet to encounter one anywhere that's not oily and badly cooked), but at the same time will miss the burst of colour (and flavour) that breakfast at home brings.
Wednesday, 3 April 2019
Changing Tastes
Now in my very, extremely, exceptionally late thirties I find that my tastes have changed. Or has the taste of the things I taste changed?
Two specific examples. First, chicory/endive. A few days ago I cooked an Italian-ish dish as a starter, the basis of which was purple-tinged chicory picked fresh from the garden. It was served with griddled bacon and mozzarella, but that's not to the point. A good thirty or forty years ago when I first encountered chicory (not something that featured in my 1960s and 1970s Norfolk childhood and youth) it was so much bitterer. Before ours was usable I bought something very similar from Waitrose, and regularly purchase the version with yellow highlights from a variety of sources. They all taste sweeter than they once did.
That could be my taste buds becoming less sensitive - certainly children have far more discerning TBs than adults - but I think it is the bitter quality being bred out of the shop stuff and the seed stock alike.
Same thing with grapefruit, that even ten years ago was sharper and again bitterer. Sadly, though ten years ago I may have been childish I was not a child.
Given that the bitter quality of chicory, and the mouth-puckering sharpness of grapefruit were their defining virtues this is rather sad. To suit palates perhaps trained by the processed and fast food industries to like sugary sweetness in all things we are losing - we are being robbed of - character in our food, or some of the ingredients at least.
I am not a complete Luddite as regards changes to the stuff we grow and eat. Apples have definitely been bred to brown more slowly when cut into. That's fine by me. But I also think that along with breeding nearly tasteless varieties like Golden Delicious, the ultimate misnomer as they're light green and lack flavour, growers have reduced the sharpness in many (but not all, so it's not my taste buds) apple varieties found in the supermarket.
Sadly my usual remedy - grow it ourselves - does not fully resolve this problem. Apples perhaps, as we have established trees whose fruits remain sharp and tasty, with their own individual character, not just a vague apple-ness and different colours. But not chicory, as the experience recounted above demonstrates. Except - maybe this is pushing me to rejoin (again) Doubleday Research, or Garden Organic, or whatever they are called now. The joy of membership there is that once a year you get a small selection of 'heritage' seeds, chosen from a fairly long list. Part of the value of that is retaining bio-diversity; part that the vegetables grown from the seeds have individual character. Yes, I have to rejoin, on both counts.
Two specific examples. First, chicory/endive. A few days ago I cooked an Italian-ish dish as a starter, the basis of which was purple-tinged chicory picked fresh from the garden. It was served with griddled bacon and mozzarella, but that's not to the point. A good thirty or forty years ago when I first encountered chicory (not something that featured in my 1960s and 1970s Norfolk childhood and youth) it was so much bitterer. Before ours was usable I bought something very similar from Waitrose, and regularly purchase the version with yellow highlights from a variety of sources. They all taste sweeter than they once did.
That could be my taste buds becoming less sensitive - certainly children have far more discerning TBs than adults - but I think it is the bitter quality being bred out of the shop stuff and the seed stock alike.
Same thing with grapefruit, that even ten years ago was sharper and again bitterer. Sadly, though ten years ago I may have been childish I was not a child.
Given that the bitter quality of chicory, and the mouth-puckering sharpness of grapefruit were their defining virtues this is rather sad. To suit palates perhaps trained by the processed and fast food industries to like sugary sweetness in all things we are losing - we are being robbed of - character in our food, or some of the ingredients at least.
I am not a complete Luddite as regards changes to the stuff we grow and eat. Apples have definitely been bred to brown more slowly when cut into. That's fine by me. But I also think that along with breeding nearly tasteless varieties like Golden Delicious, the ultimate misnomer as they're light green and lack flavour, growers have reduced the sharpness in many (but not all, so it's not my taste buds) apple varieties found in the supermarket.
Sadly my usual remedy - grow it ourselves - does not fully resolve this problem. Apples perhaps, as we have established trees whose fruits remain sharp and tasty, with their own individual character, not just a vague apple-ness and different colours. But not chicory, as the experience recounted above demonstrates. Except - maybe this is pushing me to rejoin (again) Doubleday Research, or Garden Organic, or whatever they are called now. The joy of membership there is that once a year you get a small selection of 'heritage' seeds, chosen from a fairly long list. Part of the value of that is retaining bio-diversity; part that the vegetables grown from the seeds have individual character. Yes, I have to rejoin, on both counts.
Tuesday, 20 November 2018
Wood - and More - from the Trees
Last week I read what was an eminently sensible suggestion from a green lobby group, namely that in Britain we should produce less meat and use the land freed from sheep and cattle to grow more trees.
The idea was rooted (hmm) in thinking on greenhouse gases, animal farts being a significant contributor of unwelcome emissions, as it were. Trees take in carbon dioxide, and produce oxygen, so it's win-win. And win again, if the trees planted on the land in question were to be food producing species.
I'm not suggesting a vegetarian future, indeed for culinary, nutritional and other reasons I want to see us continue to farm land that's most suited to meat to produce - meat. There are plenty of upland areas in the UK where trees struggle, but make great grazing for sheep. But we've moved on, or should have, from every meal being a big lump of meat and two veg. Growing very productive trees like chestnuts - good protein and carbs - apples and pears, all suited to our climate, makes sense - I don't have the figures to hand, but I've read several times that in broad terms such husbandry produces a multiple of what meat farming can.
Walking the Dear Leader's domain* recently I counted up what we, in a very small way, had done along those lines. We have 18 trees in the ground that provide us with nuts and fruit, and a further 10 smaller ones in pots likewise giving us some return now, with the promise of more to come. There's (continued) austerity sense in investing in these plants, though we are now reaching peak tree at Pilkington Palace. About 15 years ago we spent maybe £15 then on what was a small quince tree, and after a decade of generally small harvests it is these days well established, and 2018 has seen it yield a perfumed glut. The walnut tree planted soon after our arrival here has similarly started to produce greater numbers of nuts, more to the benefit of the squirrels than us, but we have some jet black nocino maturing that we'd not have enjoyed without our own crop of green nuts. We have more cooking apples than we and several friends can cope with. We've enjoyed lemons and apricots, pears and plums, our bay tree is a cook's joy, and we hope one day soon to see cherries, mulberries, figs - even olives, who knows? There's a cobnut offshoot taken from the soon-to-be-quit allotment already doing well at the bottom of the garden.
This is the sort of action that many of us can take independently in our gardens. There are community orchards springing up in more enlightened towns and villages. But it's also the sort of thing the government should be getting behind. The cynic in me says that the meat processors and feed makers have more financial clout than the plant nurseries, well able to top up political coffers mightily meatily, and to wine and dine ministers and officials royally, so such thinking won't get much further in that direction than having a parliamentary committee established to study the broad range of possibilities - with deputations sent on fact-finding missions to... I don't know, Portugal, California, Australia, and anywhere else nice and warm.
Meantime we continue to lurch towards ever more calamitous results of climate change - the extreme events now coming thick and fast, though across the pond the Donald is keeping his piggy eyes shut to them - and a time when it won't be only distant foreign lands but our own struggling to feed itself. Planting productive trees, and beyond that permaculture, at least where it works best, is a proven solution.
*and mine
The idea was rooted (hmm) in thinking on greenhouse gases, animal farts being a significant contributor of unwelcome emissions, as it were. Trees take in carbon dioxide, and produce oxygen, so it's win-win. And win again, if the trees planted on the land in question were to be food producing species.
I'm not suggesting a vegetarian future, indeed for culinary, nutritional and other reasons I want to see us continue to farm land that's most suited to meat to produce - meat. There are plenty of upland areas in the UK where trees struggle, but make great grazing for sheep. But we've moved on, or should have, from every meal being a big lump of meat and two veg. Growing very productive trees like chestnuts - good protein and carbs - apples and pears, all suited to our climate, makes sense - I don't have the figures to hand, but I've read several times that in broad terms such husbandry produces a multiple of what meat farming can.
Walking the Dear Leader's domain* recently I counted up what we, in a very small way, had done along those lines. We have 18 trees in the ground that provide us with nuts and fruit, and a further 10 smaller ones in pots likewise giving us some return now, with the promise of more to come. There's (continued) austerity sense in investing in these plants, though we are now reaching peak tree at Pilkington Palace. About 15 years ago we spent maybe £15 then on what was a small quince tree, and after a decade of generally small harvests it is these days well established, and 2018 has seen it yield a perfumed glut. The walnut tree planted soon after our arrival here has similarly started to produce greater numbers of nuts, more to the benefit of the squirrels than us, but we have some jet black nocino maturing that we'd not have enjoyed without our own crop of green nuts. We have more cooking apples than we and several friends can cope with. We've enjoyed lemons and apricots, pears and plums, our bay tree is a cook's joy, and we hope one day soon to see cherries, mulberries, figs - even olives, who knows? There's a cobnut offshoot taken from the soon-to-be-quit allotment already doing well at the bottom of the garden.
This is the sort of action that many of us can take independently in our gardens. There are community orchards springing up in more enlightened towns and villages. But it's also the sort of thing the government should be getting behind. The cynic in me says that the meat processors and feed makers have more financial clout than the plant nurseries, well able to top up political coffers mightily meatily, and to wine and dine ministers and officials royally, so such thinking won't get much further in that direction than having a parliamentary committee established to study the broad range of possibilities - with deputations sent on fact-finding missions to... I don't know, Portugal, California, Australia, and anywhere else nice and warm.
Meantime we continue to lurch towards ever more calamitous results of climate change - the extreme events now coming thick and fast, though across the pond the Donald is keeping his piggy eyes shut to them - and a time when it won't be only distant foreign lands but our own struggling to feed itself. Planting productive trees, and beyond that permaculture, at least where it works best, is a proven solution.
*and mine
Tuesday, 4 September 2018
Nuts, Fruit, Blossom
One of the things I will miss most when we have given up our allotment will be the two cobnut trees planted (probably contrary to the rules) on the plot. It's not the trees themselves of course, elegant though one in particular may be, but the nuts they produce. At home we have planted a reasonably-sized sapling, the offspring of one of them, so it's to be hoped that we only have a brief gap between crops. We have a walnut tree in the garden too, though I could have counted the number we got this year on two hands and one foot. The rats with good PR got the bulk, as they generally do.
This year we've had a bumper crop of cobnuts, enough to make me feel it was right to give some to a friend and neighbour, a good cook who will accordingly have made good use of them. It's another glut, but an especially welcome one. Among other uses they have gone into pesto as a substitute for pine kernels (which weight-for-weight cost about as much as gold these days), chopped into a breakfast dish of apple puree (our own Bramleys) along with oats, honey and raisins, and as a simple salad ingredient teamed with cos lettuce, blue cheese and apple (yes, our own Discovery). I'm tempted to use those left in the basket (not the last of the year unless the squirrel bastards have had all those left on the trees) in a curry as an alternative to cashews - they are when still relatively fresh off the branch very like milky cashews.
Don't keep the shelled nuts in the fridge, btw, they sog rapidly. I've also learned to keep the stillin the shell nuts in a basket rather than a bowl, the latter home causing them to sweat and deteriorate, and to stir them about daily to keep them aired.
It is the productive trees in our (admittedly larger than average) garden that are dearest to my heart. We have a fine willow that is architecturally splendid, but other than gnawing the bark if post-Brexit times get so tough that aspirin is unavailable it has little practical, and no culinary, value. Not so the apples, quince (this should be the best year ever for them), pears, plums (admittedly they yield very little) and even in pots peach, lemon and lime. I am not a gardener - the Dear Leader (may her opponents dry to dust) is in charge of that side of things, merely assistant water carrier, third class - but they don't seem at all difficult, even the citrus trees are pretty robust, though they winter in a greenhouse or the conservatory. Trees are also great for the environment.
Free food, lovely blossom, help the environment... Shouldn't everyone lucky enough to have the space be planting more fruit and nut trees? There's also something very life-enhancing about venturing into the back garden and picking breakfast, lunch or supper, or at least major contributors to them. And it is life-enhancing too when what's picked, as is so often the case, tastes ten times better than anything you can buy from the supermarket. Our Discovery apples this year have been a revelation, their flesh tinged with pink, and eaten minutes after picking their taste clean and bright, unlike their dull imported cousins sold at the shops (even British-grown ones have probably been in storage and transit for weeks).
This year we've had a bumper crop of cobnuts, enough to make me feel it was right to give some to a friend and neighbour, a good cook who will accordingly have made good use of them. It's another glut, but an especially welcome one. Among other uses they have gone into pesto as a substitute for pine kernels (which weight-for-weight cost about as much as gold these days), chopped into a breakfast dish of apple puree (our own Bramleys) along with oats, honey and raisins, and as a simple salad ingredient teamed with cos lettuce, blue cheese and apple (yes, our own Discovery). I'm tempted to use those left in the basket (not the last of the year unless the squirrel bastards have had all those left on the trees) in a curry as an alternative to cashews - they are when still relatively fresh off the branch very like milky cashews.
Don't keep the shelled nuts in the fridge, btw, they sog rapidly. I've also learned to keep the stillin the shell nuts in a basket rather than a bowl, the latter home causing them to sweat and deteriorate, and to stir them about daily to keep them aired.
It is the productive trees in our (admittedly larger than average) garden that are dearest to my heart. We have a fine willow that is architecturally splendid, but other than gnawing the bark if post-Brexit times get so tough that aspirin is unavailable it has little practical, and no culinary, value. Not so the apples, quince (this should be the best year ever for them), pears, plums (admittedly they yield very little) and even in pots peach, lemon and lime. I am not a gardener - the Dear Leader (may her opponents dry to dust) is in charge of that side of things, merely assistant water carrier, third class - but they don't seem at all difficult, even the citrus trees are pretty robust, though they winter in a greenhouse or the conservatory. Trees are also great for the environment.
Free food, lovely blossom, help the environment... Shouldn't everyone lucky enough to have the space be planting more fruit and nut trees? There's also something very life-enhancing about venturing into the back garden and picking breakfast, lunch or supper, or at least major contributors to them. And it is life-enhancing too when what's picked, as is so often the case, tastes ten times better than anything you can buy from the supermarket. Our Discovery apples this year have been a revelation, their flesh tinged with pink, and eaten minutes after picking their taste clean and bright, unlike their dull imported cousins sold at the shops (even British-grown ones have probably been in storage and transit for weeks).
Monday, 12 October 2015
Simply Seasonal
In the civilised world, and Preston almost qualifies, nobody is truly self-sufficient but we can all be a bit more self-reliant. To that end we recently had solar panels fitted, something that will reduce our carbon footprint a bit more, though I am pretty sure that growing lots of our own food has a bigger impact on that front - but only if we actually eat the stuff.
The trouble is that certain foodstuffs tend to come in gluts. We have half a dozen apple trees of different types, the idea being to spread the season, but it's still pretty much compressed into a tall bell curve with September and October acocunting for 90 per cent of our crop. Cobnuts are worse, you have to harvest them before the squirrels (utter bastards with fluffy tails) nick the lot, so the yield from our two trees is now picked and drying in the conservatory. This year beetroot can be added to that list, as we got relatively few earlier on, but all the remaining ones have started to balloon in the last couple of weeks, and need using up before the frosts get them and/or they go woody.
For a cook situations like that are fun. I veer between thrifty and profligate, and both stances can be accommodated simultaneously in this period. An idea borrowed from HF-W - for a salad of boiled beetroot in apple sauce - led to a gratin of boiled beetroot and two sorts of apple, a cooker reduced to sauce (with a spoon of honey) and an eater chopped small and fried in butter before the lot was mixed together and baked with a cheese topping. It could have been a waste of good produce, but was very enjoyable, sweet and savoury in one blast.
It's good when the gluts can be combined like that. Another recent example was lettuces (oakleaf and cos) cut before the frosts start, made into a big salad with more boiled beetroot, boiled eggs (our chickens working overtime currently), and toasted cobnuts. I could have added chopped parsley and some chicory leaves, but wanted to keep it simple. It was doubly satisfying in both the filling-up sense and in being seasonal, and triply because beyond the dressing the Sainsbury family benefitted by not one penny from it.
The trouble is that certain foodstuffs tend to come in gluts. We have half a dozen apple trees of different types, the idea being to spread the season, but it's still pretty much compressed into a tall bell curve with September and October acocunting for 90 per cent of our crop. Cobnuts are worse, you have to harvest them before the squirrels (utter bastards with fluffy tails) nick the lot, so the yield from our two trees is now picked and drying in the conservatory. This year beetroot can be added to that list, as we got relatively few earlier on, but all the remaining ones have started to balloon in the last couple of weeks, and need using up before the frosts get them and/or they go woody.
For a cook situations like that are fun. I veer between thrifty and profligate, and both stances can be accommodated simultaneously in this period. An idea borrowed from HF-W - for a salad of boiled beetroot in apple sauce - led to a gratin of boiled beetroot and two sorts of apple, a cooker reduced to sauce (with a spoon of honey) and an eater chopped small and fried in butter before the lot was mixed together and baked with a cheese topping. It could have been a waste of good produce, but was very enjoyable, sweet and savoury in one blast.
It's good when the gluts can be combined like that. Another recent example was lettuces (oakleaf and cos) cut before the frosts start, made into a big salad with more boiled beetroot, boiled eggs (our chickens working overtime currently), and toasted cobnuts. I could have added chopped parsley and some chicory leaves, but wanted to keep it simple. It was doubly satisfying in both the filling-up sense and in being seasonal, and triply because beyond the dressing the Sainsbury family benefitted by not one penny from it.
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