Veg Box Supper - Chard, Chickpeas and Sausages

Chard is one of those vegetables I had never bought before I had a veg-box. Now it's a staple when it's in season. It performs much the same function in my kitchen as spinach does, but it has the additional bonus of white crunchy stalks, which, although they have to be cooked for a bit longer, provide good texture in a dish. It's also very good for you!

Tonight was one of those nights when I love having a veg-box. Virtually everything in our meal was from today's Riverford Delivery - including the sausages. The only things that weren't in the box were sage, parsley and bay leaf from the garden, and chickpeas from the larder.

And one sausage each was quite sufficient - it's just two looked better in the photograph!

Here's the recipe, also straight from the box:

Red Cabbage Soup

There have been three red cabbages lurking in my veg drawer since Christmas. Yes, I know - three seems rather excessive. It's what comes of not paying attention to what's about to come in your vegbox. There were four - but I did cook one of them for Christmas lunch. Just hadn't got round to using the rest - it's a good job they keep almost for ever.  The trouble with red cabbage is that it's a bit like the Tardis - there's more on the inside. So once you've sliced it, the amount of cabbage you appear to have increases by a factor of about a thousand. Or at least three. So just one lasts a long time!

I've been meaning to try something healthy with these great purple orbs, but until this morning when, apart from onions, they were the only veg I had left, that intention had not got very far. However when there's nothing else left, and the house is freezing cold... 

Soup sounded a good idea: warming, nourishing, healthy. I did a quick trawl of the internet and found a few recipes to give me some idea of how this is traditionally made. This is my version.

Red Cabbage Soup

Serves 4

1 tbsp olive oil

1 large white onion, finely chopped

2 apples, cored but skin left on, quartered, then finely sliced in a food processor

300 - 400g red cabbage, finely sliced in a food processor (about 1/3 of a large cabbage)

1.25 litres chicken or veg stock

2 tbsp cider vinegar

1 tbsp Balsamic vinegar

1 tbsp dark muscovado sugar

Small bunch of dill - how much you use depends how much you like it!

To serve: Pumpkin and sunflower seeds; sour cream, plain yoghurt or cream cheese.

In a large saucepan, sweat the onion in the oil until it's soft and translucent.

Turn up the ring a bit and add the cabbage and apples. Sweat them, stirring frequently, until the cabbage starts to soften and cook. I did this for about 5 minutes.

Add the stock, vinegars and sugar. Bring to the boil and then simmer for about an hour. It might be ready sooner, but you do want the cabbage to be lovely and soft, not chewy.

Chop the dill and add most of it to the soup.

Serve with a dollop of cream cheese, soured cream, or yoghurt, and scatter the seeds and remaining chopped dill on top. 

* * *

And it was delicious. Quite Russian in looks and taste. I shall definitely be making some more of it - probably freezing batches and giving it away as well! 

Spring Resolutions

I don't know why it is, but my New Year's Resolutions never come at New Year. I suppose it's because January is such a low time - the weather is grim, the days are still dark, and there's still so much of winter to get through. For me, the year has two psychological starting points - one is in September, when the academic year starts, and one is in spring. There's something about that burgeoning newness that makes me want to make myself a better person. If nature can make itself afresh, with the help of just a bit of sunshine and warmth, well, why shouldn't I, too?

So, with the help of spring's positivity, I'm turning my thoughts to "medicinal" food. I know that when I eat healthy stuff I feel better. But I want to go one step further, and actively target the nutrients which will help me and my family be as well as we can be.There is so much in the press about this foodstuff being dangerous, and that one being a miracle cure for everything under the sun, it's hard to know what to believe. For example, for years we've been told that polyunsaturated fats are the bee's knees - now it turns out that they actually may have been causing more harm than good because too much has the effect of increasing inflammation. If you're interested, it's discussed here - but this is just one of many places you can find information on the subject. It's hard to know which sources are reliable, so I've been digging around to find some reliable ones. I'm still digging, but here are a couple I've found that I think it's worth sharing.

The Food Doctor is a website that promotes a Nutritional Advice Service and a range of products which can be found in supermarkets. While I do like some of their products (we regularly buy their wholegrain seeded pitta breads from the supermarket) I'm usually a bit sceptical about advice from sources with commercial interests. However, they have a useful feature where they collect and comment on health stories in the press, and I have found this very interesting.

WebMD, the site I linked to re Omega 6 fats above,  is also quite useful - there are US and UK versions of the site, which are quite different, and I've found it useful to switch between the two.

All the reading I've been doing has been distilled down to a few principles I'm trying to follow in my new quest for 'Ultra-Health' (though actually, just good health would do!)

• Eat whole foods. Wholemeal bread, pasta, brown rice, quinoa, etc. Nothing that's had the brown stripped out.
• Cut out all refined sugars. Sweeten - only if absolutely necessary - with substances which don't have so much impact on blood sugar, such as honey or agave nectar. Keep artificial sweeteners to an absolute minimum. 
• Be mindful of Glycaemic Load.
• Eat mainly plant based proteins - I'm basing about 75% of meals around these. There are some great vegan recipes out there.
• Get plenty of Omega 3s. Alaskan salmon is one of the animal proteins I'm using a lot of! And flax/linseeds and walnuts are also a good source. 
• Cut out polyunsaturated fats such as sunflower oil.
• Have at least 5 portions of vegetables a day, plus at least 2 of fruit. 
• Limit alcohol and coffee. I'm having a coffee maybe twice a week, and a couple of glasses of red wine once or twice a week. 

I've been doing this most of the time for about a month now. I haven't limited portions. I've had cake and treats made according to these principles. And we have had various meals out and family celebrations during that time where I had to be a bit (well, a lot) more flexible. But it seems to be working, as I feel much much healthier, and I have even lost half a stone.

Eating for Tomorrow

I've been thinking about the future recently. More specifically, getting old, and what I can do to make my old age as healthy and happy as possible. Both my parents suffer from age-related ill-health, and I see at first hand how awful it can be. So I've been doing a fair bit of reading. Most of what I've read just confirms and reinforces what I know already. Eat good stuff, exercise, make sure you're not overweight, control blood pressure, keep active mentally, and you will reduce your chances of many of the horrors of old age such as dementia, stroke, and so on. 

Well I need to do something about it. I've put on weight in the last year, which has been a very stressful one, and am definitely feeling less healthy for it. I also have high blood pressure and have had for years, so I need to make sure it doesn't get any worse. So it's time to make a change for good. I want to be fit and alert in my old age and I owe it to myself, and even more so to my family, to do as much as I can to ensure that this is the case. 

First step has been moving towards a semi vegetarian diet. Eating loads of fruit and veg is shown to increase health and reduce the risks of so many age-related problems. We've always had a lot of meat free meals, in fact twenty odd years ago we were fully vegetarian. With the advent of more easily obtainable ethically and organically farmed meat we moved back to omnivorous eating but meat, although we do enjoy it, has not been an essential part of our everyday eating. Now I've made a decision to formalise how much meat we eat, and we have become weekday vegetarians. Well, I have. The boys have autonomy over their own lunches, as they eat at school and work. But Monday to Friday our evening meals are veggie. 

I've also done something I've been meaning to do for a while, and that's to join an organic veg box scheme. My purchasing of vegetables has been erratically green/organic/sustainable over the years, but I felt that it was time to make a commitment. So I went on the Riverford website and am now the proud recipient of a weekly box of fresh, organic, and seasonal fruit and veg. You know in advance what you're getting and can change your order up to a couple of days before delivery, so there's plenty if chance to plan meals around the week's delivery. And if I'm more organised with my planning, I shall save money, as fewer vegetables will end up on the compost heap because I haven't got round to using them. 

There are many reasons for buying organic. But the one that I'm focussing on here is the health issue. Strawberries, blueberries, spinach, apples, grapes, potatoes, apples, peppers, celery - all these are among the foods most contaminated by pesticides. And these are some of the fruit and veg that a) I use most often and b) are great at promoting health. It makes sense to buy them from an organic source. If I'm piling my muesli high with fruit in order to make myself more healthy, I don't want to be poisoning myself with chemicals at the same time. 

So, this is step one. Not a particularly painful transition, I have to say. Step two is a bit more tricky. I do like a glass of wine. And over this stressful last year we have found ourselves relaxing over a bottle of Cote de Rhone rather more frequently than we should. But alcohol is not only full of empty calories, it also has been shown to increase the chances of dementia, so this is another thing that we need to tackle. Unfortunately just going for organic wine doesn't really work for this problem!

The Love of Saffron Cake

This week I discovered Slow Food. Founded in Italy in 1989, the Slow Food Movement  is 

...a global, grassroots movement with thousands of members around the world that links the pleasure of food with a commitment to community and the environment.

In the fast modern junk food environment, Slow Food is the voice of calm reason and quality. We work to promote the greater enjoyment of food through a better understanding of its taste, quality and production.

Slow Food UK runs educational projects and has a local group network which promotes the Slow Food way of life at a local level. One of its campaigns is the Forgotten Foods Project, which 'travels the country collecting small-scale quality produce threatened by industrial agriculture, environmental degradation and homogenization.' As they point out, 'Those artisan producers who opt to swim against the tide of ‘fast life’ need [...] help in explaining to the public why their products are special and, usually, cost more to make than mass-produced counterparts.' Sounds like a great idea to me. And I was delighted to discover that one of their targeted foods is the Cornish Saffron Cake.

Now, the Saffron Cake is part of my childhood. Not only was I born and brought up in Cornwall, but my grandparents and parents, along with my uncle, ran a family bakery. Saffron cake is in my blood. Apparently, when I was about three I was asked what I would like for my birthday tea, and my reply was 'Bread and butter and sashron cake.' And it still has a place at my special-occasion tea table, nearly fifty years later.

There are various recipes for Saffron Cake. As far as I'm concerned there are four basic characteristics that it must have to be entitled to the name. It must be loaf shaped. The dough must be yeast-based. It must have plenty of currants and my personal taste is to have a good helping of sultanas and/or raisins as well. As my mother-in-law says, it's no good if it's a 'station cake' - one currant here and then you have to go miles to get to the next one! And it must be that deep fragrant yellow that you can only get by using plenty of saffron. I'm afraid that the Saffron Cake on the Slow Food website is far too pale for me: you would never have seen one as wishy-washy as that at Trethewey Bros Bakers!

The Saffron Crocus
Picture Credit

It's interesting that such an exotic and expensive spice came to be so much part of the culture of a small rural society in one of the farthest corners of the UK. From Medieval times, though, saffron was grown in Cornwall, and production was still going on in Bude in the C19th. Saffron is the dried stigma of the Crocus Sativus, and it takes about 150 flowers, all harvested by hand, to produce just 1g of the spice. No wonder saffron is incredibly expensive - in fact, there is a commonly held myth that ounce for ounce it is more expensive than gold. This isn't quite true, however, as current gold prices are around £30,000 per kilo, whereas saffron is only £4,500! Still - pretty expensive. My mother remembers my grandfather keeping the saffron in a shiny metal box in the bakery safe, because it was the most precious thing on the premises.

Of course all this reminiscence about Saffron Cake meant I had to make one. So here's the recipe for the cake I made this weekend.

Saffron Cake

1 tsp dried saffron (real saffron threads, not 'saffron powder' - and don't skimp!)
125ml milk
500g plain flour
pinch of Cornish salt
1/2 tsp dried easy action yeast (real yeast would be more authentic, but harder to get)
250g chilled butter
250g caster sugar
130g currants
120g sultanas (or raisins. Or you can use all currants)

Heat the milk in a small saucepan until it is just boiling. Drop the saffron in, give it a stir, cover, and leave steeping for as long as you can, overnight if possible. Obviously of you're leaving it overnight, put it in the fridge! I left mine for about four hours and that was fine - it was lovely and fragrantly golden by that time. Alternatively you can do it my mother-in-law's way, and steep it in a small amount of boiling water, then make it up to the required volume of liquid by adding milk the next day. She also recommends a pinch of salt in the water to intensify the colour.

Cut up the butter into small cubes.

Sieve the flour and salt, and mix in the yeast. Add the butter, and either rub in, or food-process until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

Stir in the dried fruit.

Warm the saffron-infused milk again, to about hand-temperature, and pour it over the mixture. Stir it in, then use your hands to bring it all together into a soft dough.

Turn out the dough onto a floured surface and knead gently till it is smooth. Don't be too rough - it's not like bread.

Place the dough into a buttered 1kilo (2lb) loaf tin (or two 1lb tins which is what I did), and leave in a warm place to prove. It won't rise much - it's not like bread, it will have a denser texture - but it should rise a bit. 30 to 45 minutes should do it.

Cook in a pre-heated oven (180C/350F/Gas Mark 4) for 45 mins to an hour. It should be golden verging on brown and have risen more. I took mine out a bit early, and it was slightly too doughy in the middle, so I would recommend you check carefully. I didn't do the skewer test, so it's my own fault!

Place on a cooling tray in its tin, and when it's cool enough to handle, slip out of the tin to finish cooling.

You can serve it spread with butter, but to be honest, this recipe is so buttery it doesn't need anything other than a cup of tea on the side. And even though it could have done with five more minutes in the oven, it was lovely!

Sorry - forgot to take the picture of the whole thing!

Happy tea-time! And if you're interested, there's a Saffron Cake post on my poetry blog too, complete with poem.

The Power of Naming - Our Relationship with Nature

I'm not bad with the names of wild flowers: I know my campions, stitchworts, foxgloves, ragwort, periwinkles and many more. And knowing the names of things seems to make them closer to me, to create a personal link. It's no coincidence that so much of myth and story-telling is concerned with the naming of things. Adam gave the animals their names. The power of naming is deeply embedded in Greek mythology and the lore of witchcraft. In Ursula le Guin's Earthsea books, knowing the 'true' names of things gives the one who knows power over those things, and it is very important to know one's own true name. In the television series Doctor Who, the true name of The Doctor is his most important secret. The real-life mathematician Alexander Grothendieck put special emphasis on the way that naming things can give us a way of gaining cognitive power over things (and he was talking about mathematical concepts) way before we understand them.

Knowing the names of things can create a powerful relationship. If you know the name of something you are linked to it in a more specific way. You somehow own it. And 'owning' it in this conceptual sense need not be a bad thing. If you own something, aren't you more likely to look after it?

Anyway, back to my knowledge of wild flowers. We were out walking in the country lanes, and came across a plant I'd never known the name of. It's very common around here, and I'd always assumed it was some kind of innocuous nettle, as there is some similarity in the leaves. In the spirit of unleashing the scientist in me, I thought I'd better find out what it is. So I have.

Garlic Mustard
Alliaria petiolata

It's called Garlic Mustard, and is nothing to do with nettles! Actually it's a member of the mustard family, but its garlic-like properties are noted in its Latin name, alliaria meaning 'resembling allium'. You can even use the leaves in salads to provide a combined mustard and garlic flavour.

Just a few yards down the lane, we came across something I had always (coincidentally, considering the name of the plant above) thought of as wild garlic. However, talking about it to my family walking companions, I realised that there were two different plants I had classified in my mind under the same name. Which one was actually wild garlic? Or were they both?

Three-cornered Leek
Allium triquetrum

And so, back to the trusty wildflower guide I went. It turns out that although this is sometimes referred to as wild garlic, it is more usually called Three-cornered Leek. It is closely related to the other plant I had in mind, though, which also goes by the lovely name of Ramsoms. Like Ramsoms, the three-cornered leek is completely edible, and tastes (and smells) a bit like spring onions. So I wasn't wrong, calling it wild garlic, but I wasn't quite right either.


By now I was looking very closely at the plants in the hedges and banks we were passing, trying to name as many plants as I could. This small blue-flowered plant is a very familiar one, and I tried several names on it, but none of them seemed quite right. It wasn't a type of violet, or a bugle, or a speedwell, or any of those small blue flowers. So what was it?

Ground Ivy
Glechoma hederacea

It turns out that its name is one I know well, but have always misapplied. This is Ground Ivy. Not an ivy at all, but a member of the mint family, the Lamiaceae. It is also known by the wonderful names of Gill-over-the-ground and Creeping Charlie. Like the two plants above, it is edible as a herb or a salad ingredient, but it was also used in beer-making before hops were substituted,  and is still used in herbal medicines as a remedy for colds and diarrhoea. Apparently, it can even be used in cheese-making as a substitute for rennet!


So, three new names for me. In fact, many more names, with all the variations. And isn't it interesting how these plants all have the names of other plants in their own? Names which describe relationships that are beyond the biological. And now I know their names properly, when I meet them again I can greet them as friends, rather than nameless faces in a crowd.

In his 2012 TEDxExeter talk, the writer and environmental campaigner Tony Juniper suggested that it would be a very valuable thing for the environment to introduce a Natural History GCSE. I think this is a fabulous idea. And it should be a compulsory subject, even if taking the exam wasn't obligatory. When I was at school in the 70s, there was a subject called Environmental Studies. I have no idea what it involved because only the people who couldn't manage the 'academic' subjects got to do it. I feel that says a lot about where the disconnect between the environment and the average person might have arisen. Knowledge creates relationships. Knowing the names of the plants in the hedgerow or the fish in the sea, knowing their lifecycles and their place in the Earth's ecosystems makes us more connected with them. And if we could create that relationship between people and nature from an early age, we would stand more chance of bringing up committed stewards of the Earth and its resources.

Easy to Find: Three Good Things (Day 5)

It's so easy to find three good things in nature at this time of year. Plants are just bursting out everywhere. Birds are filling the sky with their songs. The days are getting longer and warmer. This challenge would be harder, but perhaps more creative, in the short wet days of winter. January would be a good time to do it: it's always so grim, with Christmas over and Spring so far away, the weather still getting colder and wetter, and that feeling that the fresh start you're supposed to have made is just going to be such drudgery and tedium.

But in May, it's easy. I don't even have to walk out of my front door to find three things. Whilst still lying in bed, I can hear the birds warbling and trilling as the grey light of dawn filters through the curtains. I go downstairs and open the sitting room curtains, and I can see a blackbird nesting in the climber outside. Where ivy has started creeping over the window I can see the rough brown protrusions it uses to adhere to the glass.


I haven't got any photos of these, though, so as an bonus, here is a picture of some ferns trying to be seahorses...