EatingBritain.com » Self Sufficiency

Land share

Sarah Cabral — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 11:00:00 +0000

When I lived in my little 2nd floor flat in the centre of Brighton, I yearned for a little piece of dirt on which to grow my own fruit and veg, My kitchen window sill was crammed with as many herb plant pots as I could fit on it and a chilli plant held residence on the counter top.

If a scheme like Landshare had existed back then, I would have jumped at the chance to register. Instead, I looked out every day on to the huge garden below that belonged to the ground floor flat and that was utterly un-kept by it’s elderly owners – what a waste!

These days I’m lucky enough to finally have my piece of dirt and an imagination full of ideas as to what to grow and although it’s only in the planning stages, I can’t wait to see what I have achieved by next Autumn.

What is Landshare?

With allotment waiting lists massively over-subscribed and people right across the country keener than ever to grow their own fruit and veg, the aim for Landshare is to become a UK wide initiative to make British land more productive and fresh local produce more accessible to all. But all of this depends on people like you registering their interest now.

Sign up to help build the momentum needed to launch this exciting project in early 2009. In the meantime, via monthly updates, you’ll get the chance to help shape the initiative and make sure you’re amongst the first to have the opportunity to be involved.

For more information about Landshare and to register click here.

Source

River Cottage

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Kitchen compost and Bokashi bins

Sarah Cabral — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 07:30:04 +0000

Way back in April I went to a friend’s baby shower. After we’d finished eating and the plates were being cleared, the hostess asked us to scrape all the leftovers into a bucket, raw and cooked alike. At first I was horrified, didn’t they compost?! Then the hostess went on to explain that they had a Bokashi bin which composted all their kitchen waste, including bones and fish.

I was agog, I didn’t know anything about Bokashi bins but I wanted one! On my return home, I surfed around and sure enough there they were and so was the not so budget-friendly price. So, I added it way down the list of priorities and left it to sit in the back of my mind for a while.

When we moved house we had to leave the old compost bin behind and with nowhere to recycle our green waste, I’ve been making trips to the dump. I realised a serious investment in a garden compost bin was required and dad suggested looking at the local council website as he remembered they did special deals on compost bins.

So back to surfing again and I discovered that not only do Adur have subsidised compost bins, they also do a great deal on Bokashi bins too! So I ordered everything: a 200 litre compost bin, 2 Bokashi bins and Bokashi bran, all for less than £50!

I am so excited, the Bokashi bins arrived today and I can’t wait to try them! As well as the usual raw fruit & veg waste, you can also compost cooked food waste, including bread/baked goods, all dairy products, meat & bones, fish, even pizza. The compost produced is very nutrient rich and you can either put it in a garden composter or add it directly to the soil as a conditioner.

The bin is small enough to store in the kitchen and does not smell bad or attract flies. There is a little tap at the base of the bin, which is used to syphon off a liquid that you can dilute and use to feed plants indoors or out. Apparently you can also put the liquid down the drain to help it stay fresh and not get smelly.

All you have to do is put in your leftovers, cover with a layer of the Bokashi bran and then seal the lid. You keep adding leftovers and a layer of bran until the bin is full, then you seal the lid and leave it for 2 weeks to fully ferment. Whilst the first bin is ‘cooking’, you start filling up the other bin in exactly the same way as the first. After 2 weeks of ‘cooking’ the bin can be emptied, washed and used again.

The Bokashi bran “usually takes the form of a carrier, such as rice hulls, wheat bran or saw dust, that has been inoculated with composting micro-organisms. These effective micro-organisms (EM) are natural lactic acid bacteria, yeast, and phototrophic bacteria that act as a microbe community within the kitchen scraps, fermenting and accelerating breakdown of the organic matter” from Wikipedia.

So gone are the days when we had to get rid of a half-full bin bag because it stank the whole kitchen out with 3 day old chicken bones! Hopefully this will cut down our rubbish even further and I feel like I’m doing a bit towards sending less to land fill. Just have to see how long 600g of Bokashi bran lasts and hope that the cost to buy more is worth all the wonderful claims.

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Organised gangs of poachers cash in on food fads

Sarah Cabral — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:19:18 +0000

My views on hunting are fairly clear and I appreciate many people do not feel the same, however I fully respect their opinions and hope they respect mine. I do agree with hunting when it concerns resourcing food or population management but I do not agree with it as a sport. My difficulty arises when both are combined, I don’t know how I feel about that.

Dad and I were talking about the hunting season the other day, so the whole subject has been on my mind and as I wandered through the news this morning, an article from the Daily Mail online caught my attention.

According to the article criminals are turning poacher, in order to cash in on a growing demand for game, due to food fads encouraged by celebrity chefs like Jamie Oliver.

“The popularity of game such as venison, partridge, pheasant and hare in the recipes of Jamie Oliver and his television colleagues is proving all too tempting to a new breed of poacher.”

Professional criminals are using less than humane methods to kill animals and sell the meat on the blackmarket. “Besides crossbows and snares, deer are being lured to their deaths on roads by poachers using jam sandwiches as bait.”

Is this really happening because a few TV chefs recommended trying venison or pheasant? I don’t think so. Ever since people first claimed rights over the wild animals & birds residing on their land, there have been poachers. It is a very old way of getting food and making money and as people are struggling more and more with their bills, it’s hardly surprising some are turning to less than legal ways of supporting themselves.

I have always put poaching and scrumping for apples in the same class, harmless really. In my romantic notion of poaching, I never really considered the lengths that the poachers today will go to in order to catch their prey. I’m quite sickened to think of a jam sandwich baited deer being mown down by a 4X4.

The police are using DNA techniques to track poached meat, by matching samples taken from the crime scene, to suspected blackmarket meat seized from butchers and restaurants. But the best way to make sure you’re eating legitimately hunted meat, is to know exactly where it came from. Ask your butcher or waiter, if the meat is all above board, they’ll have no problem in telling you all about it.

We buy our game directly from a farmer’s stall at our local farmers market. It really does pay to get to know your producers; my parents visit said stall every month, they chat, catch up and get insider knowledge on what’s best at the moment. They know exactly where the game they eat is from and because of that, they know what sort of quality they are getting.

Source
THE CRUEL POACHERS CASHING IN ON FOOD FAD
Photo: Freefoto.com

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Bean sprouts in a bar

Sarah Cabral — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 09:42:30 +0000

Every week there seems to be a new snack or cereal bar on the market, claiming to be healthy and nutritious, but often when you actually read the ingredients list, the illusion is shattered. Full of simple carbohydrates and sugars to give an energy surge, the bars will soon have you crashing back to earth feeling more tired and hungry than before.

However now there is a bar hitting the UK that lives up to all its promises of being great for your body and tasting fantastic; and the secret…bio-bean sprouts!!

Already huge in America, Raw Organic Food Bars® have just been launched in the UK and are the perfect snack for the health conscious person who is on the move. As a great alternative to cereal and snack bars the Raw Organic Food Bar is packed full of raw organic bio-sprouts and other healthy ingredients to aid with digestion and give your body the goodness it needs.

Each bar contains raw ingredients taken directly from nature. Raw foods, foods that haven’t been cooked or processed, are becoming increasingly popular and their benefits are starting to be realized and documented.

It is believed raw foods contain enzymes that help the body to digest food, and which work alongside the body’s own enzymes. In food that is processed and heated these enzymes are destroyed, which means the body has to work harder to digest the food; this can then lead to health problems such as digestive upsets, toxicity, energy slumps and further health issues. Raw foods also contain higher nutrient values than foods which have been cooked.

Essentially raw foods work to make the gut process foods thoroughly, drawing the nutrients out and stabilizing the energy release.

The bar has now been the best selling organic bar in the US for two years in a row and has just launched in the UK, in leading health stores. The bars are mixed, blended, packaged and stored at room temperature to preserve the natural qualities and enzyme activity of the ingredients. Making everything in house, Organic Food Bar has total control over the ingredients; the result…well you’ll just have to taste it for yourself!

Raw Organic Food Bar® are the only product of their type in the UK, rich in phyto-nutrient dense sprouts and superfoods in a base of easily digestible, alkaline-forming vegetable protein. The complex carbohydrates give long lasting energy, so there is no ‘crash’, which most bars that are high in refined sugars give.

Organic Food Bars are only sweetened with whole-food sweeteners, including organic dates, organic raisins, organic honey and low Glycaemic Index (GI) organic agave nectar to keep your blood sugar levels stable.

The adult bars are available in 3 fantastic flavours: Chocolate Coconut, Chocolaty Choc Chip and Cinnamon Raisin, and the junior bar is available in Apple Pie from Health Stores nation wide.

I really love the almost fudge-like texture of these bars, you really feel like you are eating something substantial. My absolute favourite is the Chocolate Coconut bar, it tastes so good and more-ish, it’s hard to believe it’s healthy too!

For more information visit www.organicfoodbar.com

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Growing Your Own…

Sarah Cabral — Mon, 26 May 2008 07:30:07 +0000

I dream of my own kitchen garden. I would love to be able to grow most of my own fruit and vegetables, and eat them as fresh as possible, straight from the garden! I have dabbled a little in the past, growing my own herbs and chillies but I have a long way to go yet.

(...)
Read the rest of Growing Your Own… (210 words)

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Dandelions

Sarah Cabral — Thu, 22 May 2008 07:30:19 +0000

I love trying new foods and my foraging discoveries are no exception. Finding free foods is a delight to me and the latest addition to my wild foods repertoire are Dandelions.

For many, dandelions are considered a nuisance, a weed disrupting the serenity of a well-maintained lawn. However, if you resist the temptation to spray the hell out them, you can still control them by eating them!

(...)
Read the rest of Dandelions (484 words)

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Roasted pumpkin seeds

Sarah Cabral — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 20:00:52 +0000

Here, as promised, is my experiment into roasting my own pumpkin seeds. I’ve always wanted to try this, but just never got around to it. Roasted pumpkin seeds remind me of Portugal, where they are salted and a very popular snack called pevides. I gathered three different methods and tried them all!(...)
Read the rest of Roasted pumpkin seeds (298 words)

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Wild Food – Elderberries

Sarah Cabral — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 21:16:29 +0000

We are lucky enough to have two mature black elders at the bottom of our garden. The beautifully fragrant flowers came and went before I got around to doing anything with them but I was determined not to let the berries go to waste. So, i made use of the remaining berries on our shrubs by making an elderberry jelly.(...)
Read the rest of Wild Food – Elderberries (217 words)

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Chestnuts From Down Under

David — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 09:21:38 +0000

Following on from our two previous chestnut posts here and here we have a fantastic comment from Nick in Australia. We felt it would be a crime to keep this highly interesting information relegated to the comments section and as such we have posted it below so that none of you EB readers will miss out on it!

Remember that if you have anything that you would like to guest post about here on Eating Britain then use the ‘submit content‘ page and we will look to publish you right here for all to see.(...)
Read the rest of Chestnuts From Down Under (404 words)

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Sweet Chestnuts

Sarah Cabral — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 11:18:33 +0000

As I gather from all your wonderful comments and questions, sweet chestnuts are proving very popular! In response to some requests I have collected some sweet ways to preserve them.(...)
Read the rest of Sweet Chestnuts (680 words)

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