In Praise of Chard

I'm not, nor have I ever been, the biggest fan of Swiss Chard. However I am getting more and more impressed with it. I sowed some in June and again in August purely because we had been given some seeds. It's still growing. It seems to be less popular with the slugs than the other leafy greens on my plot (which have been devoured). You can put the young leaves in salad (although I wouldn't, eurhg!), but it is amazing in soups and stir frys. And (as I think is self evident in my success in its cultivation) is fairly idiot proof. Just be careful who you give your excess to. I have friend who gave away some ruby chard, which then got put into a crumble. Honest.

How To Get Started With Raw Foods

More on worms

Okay, so my wormery is now up and running (no thanks to the royal mail, who despite the note on the parcel telling them where to leave it, took my worms back to their delivery office). I think they are doing alright, I definitely saw one wriggling through my rotting pepper yesterday. I am worried about the weather though, it's very wet. The contents of the wormery don't seem over moist though. Hmm...

How To Get Started With Raw Foods

What not to wear?

Ok so I've just listened to wiggly podcast 0158. In it, Heather talks to fellow nuffield scholar Louise Manning about water, water footprint (er, like a carbon footprint but y'know, for water) and so on. In it Louise points out that it takes 11,000 liters of water to make a pair of jeans. Heather muses over whether in the future we will go to wearing more locally produced wool for example. I'm not really sure what to think about wool. I do wear it (but wool next to ones skin is notoriously itchy) but should I? I am a vegetarian and have been for maaaaany years. But I only stopped wearing leather maybe 2 or 3 years ago. I still have leather items I've not chucked out, but I don't buy it. Bizarrely I now have a leather sofa - it was going for free, but free-ness aside I wouldn't have one. I actually fought off many very cheap offers from people for leather sofas but when it comes to free, I relented.

At this point you are probably wondering what the hell I am on about animals have to die for leather, but not for wool right? Well look any vegan literature and you'll see its not that simple, www.savethesheep.com is a place to start. Shearing Is not necessarily the nice 'haircut for sheep' that we tend to think of it being. Also this shorn wool is in contrast to the pulled wool, that is pulled form sheep in the slaughterhouse. It's virtually impossible when clothes shopping to discern the origin of the wool in these terms.

So cotton is too water hungry, and too far away, wool is local but potentially to cruel. So what is the answer? Hemp is often touted as a great alternative to cotton, and it has tons and tons of uses but I don't know if it can be grown locally (it might be - I just don't know), or the sort of environmental impact it has (i know is supposed to be low impact, but again, I just don't know!)

What are the answers? I have no clue!

While on podcasts though, Just wanted to say how great the Mitch Benn podcast is (in content anyway, the quality tends to be um, scratchy).

Curious about raw? Check out Karen Knowlers top eBook - How To Get Started With Raw Foods

Quesadillias

Following on from the last post's Mexican theme I thought I'd follow up with some gloriously inauthentic quesadillas. I love these. When I first made quesdillias they were cheese filled wheat tortillas - deep fried. Then I realised I'd like to live beyond 50 so I worked on my own version. I love them, I hope you do too.
They are easy and fun and er, best served with guacamole, salsa, and all that lovely stuff.
The recipe says corn tortillas but that's just 'cause they're my favourite, any old tortillas will do.

• Corn tortillas (usually come in packs of 8 or 12)
• Small tin of sweetcorn (or stripped from 2 fresh cobs), drained and rinsed
• 1/2 to 1 bell pepper, finely chopped
• 125g of mushrooms, sliced
• 50g cheddar (or other hard cheese, not too mature), grated
• 1 ball mozzarella, chopped
• 1/2 onion, finely chopped
• 2 chillis, finely chopped (adjust to taste!)
• 3 tbs rapeseed or other cooking oil

Heat 1 tbs of the oil in a pan and gently fry off the onions, when translucent add the mushrooms and bell peppers, the mushrooms should reduce in volume by about half then toss in the drained corn. When some of the corn begins to look toasted, pop into a mixing bowl to cool a little.

Chuck the other ingredients except the tortillas and oil into the mixing bowl, and mix it well.

Pop 1 to 2 dsp of the mix into the middle is of a tortilla, then fold it into half or a quarter (or stuff it between two tortillas, all depends on how much filling to how many tortillas, really). You are supposed to at this point, be able to seal the tortilla using a dab of cold water. All I can say is make sure you have some cocktail sticks to hold them together.

Once you've made all the tortillas you can brush them with oil (optional) and pop them in the middle of a pre-heated oven at gas mark 6 (200 degrees C I think) for 10 minutes.

Eat, and try not to burn yourself on the hot filling!

Guacamole

Mmm, Guac. I decided to put this up here after discovering that several of my boyfriends colleagues genuinely thought that guacamole is made using mayonnaise. Mayonnaise. The mind boggles. Sorry for the crap photo but this glorious green dip, in all the many recipes I have seen, does not include mayo. Nope never. Ever. So here is my version of guacamole, which i utterly love:

• 2 medium ripe Avocados
• 2 limes juiced
• 1 chili, finely chopped

Pop the avocado flesh, lime juice and chili in a blender. Blend. That's it! So simple. Most versions include chopped tomato but i never have tom's in my fridge so I don't put them in generally. You can vary the amount of chili to your satisfaction, sometimes if I just want something cooling to go with a hot, spicy dish i just leave it out entirely. My other tip is I find this easier to make with a stick blender rather than a jug blender, but that may just be my equipment.

Happy dipping!

Also how the hell do you get into a (old) brown coconut? I resorted to throwing mine from a first floor window onto concrete. Twice. worked but there has to be a better way, doesn't there? (I did have mucho fun, though)

Worms!

So my can-o-worms arrived today. Am very excited but haven't really got a clue about wormeries so this may be trial and error (think of my poor wormies!) It seems great because worms can compost stuff you can't compost otherwise, and do it quick(ish)ly (i hope). I have two 'dalek' composters at the allotment but this is the first composting thing I've got home. (hopefully this will reduce those stinky car journeys taking stuff down for the heap. Anyone know about vermiculture? (Is that the word? I'm not too sure.)

I also got a catalogue with it and as I've been thinking about seed potatoes anyway the salad blue really caught my eye. I confess I am a total sucker for novelty and comedy veg (whats the point of growing stuff it it doesn't amuse you?). But not just for the fun of having blue mash (you know it would be cool) eating a wider variety of colours means you get a wider variety of phytonutrients (so we're told). In Kate Magic's amazing superfood book Raw Magic she talks about not getting enough purple foods in out diet. She's right, I'm not sure I eat many purple foods do you? But how many naturally blue foods do you eat? Blueberries maybe? Anything else? As one the UK's raw food gurus Kate probably wouldn't approve of my blue potatoes though. You can eat them raw mind. You probably wouldn't do do it twice though.

FatVeg

Okay. So I'm here to talk about my life of growing vegetables, cooking vegatables and eating vegatables. Hopefully it will turn out more exciting than it sounds right now ;)