I have to say I'm eating a lot of kale at the moment though! At one of the allotments, I've got curly kale and cavalero nero growing. I like it steamed , but the other day , I slathered the curly kale in a cheese sauce (Sparkenhoe Red leicester before you ask) , threw some breadcrumbs (from a Hambleton Hall loaf) on top, and baked in the oven ...absolutely delicious.
Leeks are also featuring quite heavily on the menu. Leek and potato soup, a leek tart, you name it, a leek will be involved somewhere at least twice or three times a week!
Last night, I felt like Old Mother Hubbard...the cupboard was bare. I only had two leeks and 3 potatoes in the vegetable basket.So, necessity being the mother of invention, I steamed the leeks over the potatoes while they were parboiling. Sliced the potatoes and put them in a gratin dish with the leeks.Added milk and some cream, salted and peppered them and baked in the oven for 25 minutes.
A delicious take on potatoes dauphinoise....and one that I will definitely make again.
So I'm enjoying this food challenge....and I've been encouraged by Mike and Karen Small from Scotland. They're real pioneers who devised the Fife Diet.That's not about purely or exclusively sourcing their food just from the Fife area. Although they did do that for a year!
No, they say it's all about aiming for about 80 per cent of the food sourced from the area they live in leaving 20 per cent for the produce they couldn't get locally. That 20 per cent covers things like tea, coffee , sugar, wine, bananas -all from fair trade sources.They've been eating like this for a number of years now.
At the moment , about a third of the emissions that contribute to climate change come from the way we produce, transport and consume our food. Mike and Karen now have over 3,000 followers of the Fife Diet. -and they've seen saw their carbon 'foodprint' drop to 27 per cent below the national average.Collectively what a huge, impressive difference they're making.
I urge you to go to their website and find out more....
www.fifediet.co.uk
They produce a number of recipe books devised to help with seasonal eating too..which are very good....
I spoke to Mike a couple of weeks ago as part of a radio feature on my food challenge...please have a listen....and find out what inspired him to change the way he and his family ate. One decsion that's having a big impact.
http://soundcloud.com/localfoodrules/bridget-food-edit-pkg-bf-02-02
More news soon...and you'll be able to find out why local food rules mean unfortuantely I'm having to change the habit of a lifetime.......
You've spent the week living on cabbage and leeks! I'm saying nothing more about that! It'll soon be spring and things will be a lot more tasty and varied then I suppose. Good luck. This is such an amazing challenge!
ReplyDeleteHats off to you, and more importantly you DID make me think twice about purchases I made in the supermarket this morning, veering me towards the British option at least, if not always quite as local as Leicestershire. I do hate seeing strawberries for sale at this time of year. It spoils the absolute delight that came when strawberries (real, flavoursome local ones) were only available for those precious few weeks of early summer, and there was the feeling that you gobbled as many as you could while you could. Now they've become ordinary, and that's disappointing.
ReplyDeleteHave you talked to Radio 4's The Food Programme about all this?