Allotments and Pickles

Our allotment association just sent a mail around warning us that Eric Pickles is considering removing the obligation for councils to provide allotments. Were that to come about cash-strapped local authorities would leap at the chance to grab back urban land to sell for development. End of a wonderful British tradition. Start of a few more superstores. The relevant department has since denied that any such plans exist. I wonder still, though the idea of governments not telling the truth is clearly ridiculous.

Mr Pickles of course looks like he deep fries lettuce and serves it with a cream sauce, so perhaps his personal agenda pays little heed to healthy eating. But government agencies are continually sending us warnings that unless we eat vegetables constantly we will all die horrible and imminent deaths. For hundreds of thousands of [cliche alert] hard working families allotments provide fantastic fruit and vegetables for a small rental, a few pounds for seeds, and (as per the group label) some hard work.

I wrote a piece for Hortus a while back on George Orwell and his belief in the practical values of allotments: he once suggested they would help the dispossessed of his day feed themselves. That has not changed. I've written here previously about how spending a small percentage of the billions that went into the Olympics on providing more allotments would have done a great deal more for our national health than watching fat blokes throw lumps of lead. And the benefits would have lasted generations not weeks.

Nearly Vegetarian II

As stated previously, we are not vegetarians, though meatless days are part of our flexible culinary schedule. But is it vegetarian if we substitute fish for the meat? I'm sure real veggies would say no.

Last night's effort then was meatless but not vegetarian, a fish pie made with pollock (doubtless soon to join the poor mackerel on the at-risk list as every chef seems to be lauding it now) and a mushroomy bechamel. The top was a mash made with spuds and parsnips about 67/33. Weirdly the bechamel smelled exactly like Heinz mushroom soup, which it wasn't, but that reminded me of the 1960s and 1970s thing of using tinned soups in dishes - Batchelors made a big thing of it. Nothing too wrong with that I suppose, but for the same price we got no additives and I am sure far more mushrooms.

When I make mash it tends to be with parsnips added, or a few cloves of garlic, to give the flavour a boost and add a different vegetable without using another pan. One of the few British veg currently in season parsnips are cheap at the moment, though had we ventured to the allotment through the mud and floods we could have had some for free. It feels like the rain hasn't ceased since about June.

And another tangent, prompted by that endless downpour. We are as a nation to spend £33 billion on quicker trains. We spent £13 billion on the big school sports olympics. At what point will some meaningful money be spent on our food security? We will not be able to rely on food from the countries now coming up on the rails economically; and one of them China is busy buying chunks of Africa for its own food safety. Orwell in the 1930s pointed out that we had been incapable of feeding ourselves in WWI when he and Cecil Beaton worked together on their school allotments in the drive to produce a bit more, and the situation has worsened since.