Potatoes in Bags

In October or November my dad ordered me a kit from Marshall's for growing potatoes in bags. His intention was that I would have home-grown potatoes for Christmas. But the kit only arrived a week or so ago, so today Steph and I planted them up, with some help from Eleanor and Rebecca.

You put about 8" of compost in the bottom of the bag then put three chitted spuds on top and cover with about another 4" of compost. Keep it watered, and as the shoots appear you cover them with more compost until the bag is full. I've had friends who used this method and they were amazed at the size of the crop. They told me the bag is just jam packed full of potatoes by the end.

The kit came with three bags and fifteen Swift seed potatoes. The instructions said to put three spuds in each bag, so we jabbed some holes in the bottom of a half-empty compost bag and planted that up as well. There's nothing magic about the bags that Marshall's sent me - you can grow spuds in any sack or bag or bucket of roughly the right size. The only "magic" is that receiving a kit through the post gave me a kick up the behind to actually do it. Thanks, Dad.

Sprouts - Not Just for Christmas

In the summer I long to eat salad and vegetables, fish and cold chicken. But when the cold weather comes I welcome the swede and leeks, roast meats, pies and casseroles, and yes, sprouts. It seems to confuse Ed when I serve sprouts. He said "It's not Christmas yet is it?" But sprouts are not just for Christmas. Steamed and served with a knob of butter and plenty of black pepper (or better still, ground nutmeg), they're divine. I had mine with a nice gammon steak and some boiled potatoes.

The next day I used the leftover vegetables and some proper corned beef from the butcher to make bubble and squeak for my lunch the next day. And that's the best bit of all. Ed doesn't realise, but that's the real reason I served him sprouts the night before.

Pumpkin Pie

I made pumpkin pie today, as I do every year from the scrapings of our Hallowe'en pumpkins. This year I used ready-made shortcrust pastry for a change. After all, the pastry isn't the best thing about the pie, it's really just a shell to hold the spicy pumpkin-flavoured custard. So why take a lot of effort over it if you don't want to?

Delia Smith got a lot of stick a little while ago for teaching people how to cheat at cooking. I don't understand why though. I'll take Delia over ten of your Gordon Ramsays any day. I understood what Delia meant, and I think it showed a deep understanding of the difference between good food and bad food. Take instant powdered mashed potato for example. It's a travesty. It's not food at all. It's some sort of fake food substitute. Here are the ingredients (I found them on the web):
Potato (82%), Full Cream Milk Powder (15%), Salt, Emulsifier: Mono and Di Glycerides of Fatty Acids, Antioxidant: Ascorbyl Palmitate, Natural Colour: Curcumin

It can't do you any good to eat it and it doesn't even taste nice. But frozen mashed potato is a different kettle of fish. The ingredients are:
Potato, Milk, Butter (2%), Salt, White Pepper.

I don't know how you make mashed potato, but that's exactly how I do it. And that's what Delia was trying to say. Use your brain. Distinguish good food from bad food. You don't have to make everything from scratch. Even top chefs don't do that. I know how to make butter from scratch but I only do it once in a while, for fun (or by accident). Most of the time I buy my butter like everyone else, top chefs included. I know how to make bread from scratch. Is it cheating if I buy a loaf instead? How about if I buy it from a farmer's market instead of from a supermarket? Is that less cheating? Why?

What matters is not that you make every damn thing from scratch every time, but only that you know good food from bad, and that you choose the good food most of the time. If having access to ready made pastry means you make apple pie at home from apples, sugar and cinnamon, rather than buying Mr Kipling's apple pies (ingredients: Wheat Flour, Apple (21%), Sugar, Vegetable Oil, Glucose Syrup, Dextrose, Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Modified Maize Starch, Humectant (Vegetable Glycerine), Salt, Acidity Regulator (Malic Acid), Raising Agents (Disodium Dihydrogen Diphosphate, Sodium Bicarbonate), Preservatives (Potassium Sorbate, Sodium Metabisulphite), Gelling Agent (Sodium Alginate), Adipic Acid, Milk Protein, Flavouring) then I think ready-made pastry is a really good thing.

Farmer's Market

My sister Stephanie is visiting and we went to a Farmer's Market together last Sunday. We bought some bread, some cheese, some pate, a sticky toffee pudding, some bacon, black pudding and sausages, some mutton pies, a chicken and some chocolate with crystallised orange. I always quiz the vendors about what the ingredients are and where they are sourced. I am looking for local produce hand-made with love and passion, and I walk away if I don't get satisfactory answers.

For example we talked to a bloke who made cheeses. He had samples of cheese we could taste, but Stephanie was blown away by the fact that he kept encouraging us to try another, and another. She was more used to the attitude "You can have a taste if you have to, but if you're not going to buy anything, get lost". This cheese guy wasn't desperate for us to buy anything, but he was excited about his cheese and keen to show it off. And rightly so - he made exceptionally beautiful cheese and we bought several different ones from him.

Over the last few days as we have eaten our way through our purchases we have talked about the difference between the food we bought at the farmer's market and food you buy at supermarkets. It really drives home how utterly dire supermarket food is. Even Tesco's so-called "Finest" range. Even "This isn't just food, this is Marks and Spencer's overpriced over-hyped food". It's all nasty in comparison to the real deal. The black pudding from the farmer's market was better by a long way than any black pudding I have ever eaten before. The sausages were divine. The sticky toffee pudding was much better than anything you can buy (but about the same as making it yourself). The mutton pies were beyond compare. We haven't had a duff item yet.

The downside is that farmers' markets are more expensive than supermarkets. And there is a lot in the news at the moment about soaring food prices here in the UK, which may harm farmer's markets as more people search for cheap food rather than quality food. But food is not yet really expensive. In fact food is still really really cheap and has been for decades. In a country where many poor people are overweight, you can see that food must be very cheap.

What is the role of farmer's markets? Are they just a luxury for the middle-classes? If you are really on the breadline, you won't be able to afford farmer's market prices. But I think many people on modest incomes could probably afford to buy great quality meat and cheese from the farmer's market by eating less meat and cooking more from scratch rather than eating ready meals. Of course some families already cook everything from scratch - Bean Sprouts readers probably do this more than most. I know that many Bean Sprouts readers already eat vegetarian at least once a week, which is a great strategy for reducing your food bills and allowing you to buy better quality meat because you are buying less of it. Why not visit your local farmer's market and compare the prices there with your usual supplier. Buy something there and compare the quality with your usual purchasers. Then you can make your own mind up whether it's worth it to your household to buy some things at the farmer's market instead. I've already made my mind up with regards to my household, and I think Stephanie has made her mind up too.

Honey

I went to the apiary on Friday and took a super full of honey (a beehive is a series of boxes and the ones on top are called "supers". Maybe I'll write a piece about what's inside a beehive in the near future).

When I brought it home I lifted the frames one-by-one over a large clean container and cut off the wax cappings with a knife dipped in hot water. It's extremely satisfying to do - it's almost impossible to resist dipping your finger in and having a taste. Then I suspended the frames over the container and let the honey drip out. You end up with a container full of mixed up honey and bits of wax.

So I strained the honey through a jelly strainer. Because honey is so thick it's a slower process than straining jelly, so I covered it to keep insects away and left it overnight. The strained honey is clear and golden and beautiful to see. I put it into washed jam jars and labeled it by hand.

I need to read up on the laws about selling honey. They're not too onerous, but I'll need to get the right size of new jam-jars (the government don't approve of re-using jars) and get some labels printed with the right information on (weight, producer, type of honey etc.) and then I'll be able to legally sell my honey. I can't legally sell these jars I've just filled, but I don't want to anyway. I want to use them myself and give them to family and friends.

The cruddy bits of left-over wax can be rinsed in water, then melted and strained to produce pure beeswax. And the drained frames can be put back on the beehive where the bees will lick them clean and then begin filling them with honey again.

Broad Bloody Beans

Don't ever mention broad bloody beans to me again. I spent the weekend lifting plants, stripping 40lbs (18kg) of bean pods from them, carrying them home, shelling them, blanching them, draining them, popping them one by one out of their skins, then freezing them in handy portions. I reckon I spent about six hours doing it in total, and I had help from Ed and the kids at most stages.

Anyone know any good broad bean recipes?

Farmer's Market

Eleanor and I went to the Farmer's Market in Poynton today. We hadn't planned to go, we just dropped in on our way back from church, so I went without my proper camera (these fuzzy pictures were taken with my mobile phone) and more importantly, without my purse.

It was a great farmer's market with so many stalls that they could not all fit in the Civic Centre, so some of them were outside in the car park. The stalls were very varied. For example there were fresh fish, meat, sausages, pate, olives, honey, hand-made soap, sticky toffee puddings and more. Most importantly, they all seemed to be bona-fide small producers and they were all friendly and keen to answer my impertinent questions. They were also very generous with tasting samples and I came home quite full without even buying anything.

It's held on the first Sunday of every month from 9am - 1pm, at Poynton Civic Hall. I'll be marking the August date in my calendar and I'll remember to take my purse with me next time.

Mark Bennion of Ipstones Park Farm kindly allowed me to reproduce this recipe:

Ipstones Park Farm Meatballs in a Red Wine Sauce

Add 6 tablespoons red wine and 4-5 tablespoons double cream to a bowl together with 5 tablespoons fresh breadcrumbs and leave to soak for approx 30 minutes. Heat 1oz unsalted butter in a frying pan and add a finely chopped onion. Fry until soft and golden. Once done, remove the onions from the pan and leave to cool.

In a bowl, mix the cooled onion and soaked breadcrumbs with a free range egg, 1lb Ipstones Farm minced beef, fresh herbs of your choice, and a pinch of salt and pepper. With wet hands for the mixture into meatballs. Heat 1oz butter in a frying pan and fry the meatballs until they are a dark golden colour on all sides. Once done remove them from the pan and keep them warm.

To make the red wine sauce, stir 1oz flour into the fat of the meatball frying pan and brown for a few seconds. Then stir in 9 fl. oz beef stock and 9 fl. oz red wine. Whisk lightly to combine then add 9 fl. oz fresh cream and let the sauce cook through for approx 10 minutes. Season accordingly. Add the meatballs and simmer gently for approx 45 minutes or until the sauce has thickened and the meatballs are cooked and tender.

Prepare fresh pasta and salad. Serve the dish with a sprinkling of fresh herbs and grated cheese of your choice.

You can buy Ipstones Park farm minced beef and other top quality meat from Mark Bennion at:
Ipstones Park Farm
Park Lane
Ipstones
Near Leek
Staffordshire

Telephone: 01538 266 049
Mobile: 07840 076 276 or 07808 086 234

Home-Made Butter

One of the advantages of knowing how to make butter is that when you take your eye off the whipped cream for too long and ruin it, you don't have to pour it down the sink.

To make butter deliberately (or by accident), beat cream in a food processor until it whips, then keep beating until it collapses again. If you stop the beaters at this point you'll see a curdled-looking mess of yellow buttery lumps and white buttermilk. Keep beating until the yellow lumps come together. It'll probably be soft and the beaters will smear it out, rather than a hard lump that goes "thud thud", but stop anyway.

Pour or scrape it all out into a sieve over a dish. The thin buttermilk will pour into the dish - keep it to make scones or soda bread. The butter will stay in the sieve, but it still contains buttermilk in little holes like a sponge. Squeeze the butter in your clean hands to get the buttermilk out, and rinse it in clean water. Keep squeezing and rinsing it - if you leave the buttermilk behind you butter will go rancid.

Once you have pure butter, put it in a dish and use it. It's delicious - cleaner and fresher-tasting than shop-bought butter. And so much better than pouring your ruined whipped cream down the sink.

A Taste of Honey

I brought home the empty hive from the colony that died. Mice got in during the winter and did a lot of damage, and the colony never recovered. It's very sad, but the hive had three frames of capped honey in it. That's honey that is finished and the bees have covered the cells with a cap of beeswax to store it. So I thought I could extract that at home and get one or two jars of honey to use.

I de-capped the cells with a dessert spoon and strained the honey through a muslin-lined funnel. The golden clear honey ran into a dish. It smelled fantastic. I dipped my finger to taste it. The first taste was sweet and complex, delicious home-produced honey. And then another taste came through - the unmistakable taste of mouse pee. I had to drink a pint of orange juice to get the taste out of my mouth.

Urban Permaculture in Havana

Thanks to Marc Roberts and via Celcias, this wonderful video of sustainable urban food production.

Slow Cooker v Pressure Cooker - Differences

This is the third in a series of articles comparing pressure cookers and slow cookers. The first article compared the nutrient content of food cooked with these methods. The second article looked at similarities between them. This article is about the differences between them. But first, a quick quiz:

• Are you the kind of person who makes a weekly menu and sticks to it?
• Are you very well organised?
• Are you a morning person?
• Do you enjoy casseroles, pot roasts, soups, chilli and curries?

If you answered "yes" then you'll probably love a slow cooker. You can prepare a meal in the morning, leave it cooking all day, and come in from work to a delicious home-cooked meal with no more work to be done.

• Are you rather disorganised?
• Do you wish you could have more home-cooked food but you hate to spend hours in the kitchen after a long day at work?
• Do you enjoy casseroles, pot roasts, soups, chilli and curries?

If you answered "yes" then you'll probably love a pressure cooker. You can fling some ingredients in it and put it on the hob, then enjoy tender meat and thoroughly-cooked vegetables in a fraction of the time. But as you probably spotted, you can cook similar sorts of foods in both of them.

The main difference between them is how they work. A slow cooker uses a low heat for a long time. The food never reaches boiling point, but over several hours this low heat is enough to cook vegetables and meats right through. The slow cooker plugs in to an electrical outlet - you don't need a stove. I wish I'd had one when I was a student in halls of residence. A slow cooker draws very little power because it doesn't boil the food, so it's cheaper than conventional cooking methods. Many types of slow cooker have a removable crock that can be used as a serving dish. The lid on a slow cooker just sits lightly on top of the crock, it isn't sealed.

A pressure cooker lid, by contrast, has a tight seal. The lid contains a valve with a weight on top, so as you heat it on the hob the pressure builds up inside until the pressure is great enough to push the weight up and release a little bit of steam with a loud hiss that scares some people. This makes the pressure drop inside so the weight falls and the pressure starts to build up again. (There's really no reason to be scared of pressure cookers. They make a loud hissing noise, but there's nothing that can hurt you. They're a damn sight safer than a stepladder.) Because it is operating at more than atmospheric pressure, the temperature inside the pressure cooker reaches more than 100°C. A pan of stew or soup on your hob, with or without a lid, will never get hotter than 100°C. At this pressure and temperature, the food cooks much quicker, using less electricity.

Because of this, I use my pressure cooker a lot for cooking dried beans and pulses. Beans take hours to cook on the hob, so the pressure cooker saves a lot of time and money. Some beans (particularly red kidney beans and soya beans) contain toxins that are destroyed by heat. The high temperatures in a pressure cooker are more than enough to destroy these toxins so this is a safe way to cook dried beans. But you should never put soya or kidney beans in a slow cooker without cooking them first to destroy the toxins. The Vegetarian Society recommends pre-boiling all varieties of dried beans before slow cooking. Tinned beans of course are perfectly safe.

This was the third in a series of articles about slow cookers and pressure cookers. The final article in the series will have some recipes for these methods of cooking. Please keep emailing me your favourite recipes for slow cookers and pressure cookers.

Vegetarian Challenge Results

April's challenge was to eat a vegetarian meal a week. 176 people voted in the poll and the results were as follows:

• I'll have a vegetarian meal each week! 13% (23 votes)
• I already eat vegetarian at least once a week! 65% (115 votes)
• Life without bacon is not worth living! 9% (16 votes)
• I'm 100% vegan! 12% (22 votes)

Thanks to everyone who voted. I hope those of you who took up the challenge enjoyed your vegetarian meals, and keep up the habit of having a meat-free dinner once in a while.

A new challenge for May will be posted soon.

Slow Cooker v Pressure Cooker - Similarities

I recently wrote a comparison of the an article comparing the nutrient content of food cooked in a pressure cooker and a slow cooker, prompted by Clare of Veg Box Recipes blog who was confused because:

Both claim that their method preserves the highest number of nutrients and gives maximum flavour.

Can they both be right?

I found that unfortunately there isn't really any hard data about the nutrients. But what about taste?

I find them to be quite similar in this respect. They're both good for casseroles and soups. Everything you put in the pot ends up tasting the same. Flavours merge; for example, if you put a quartered chicken, a few vegetables, and some stock, red wine and herbs in the pot, the chicken will end up tasting of vegetables, the vegetables will end up tasting of chicken, and everything will be infused with the flavour of red wine and herbs. This is true of both pressure cooking and slow cooking.

Another thing they both have in common is that (depending on the timing) everything becomes very tender. Even cheap, tough cuts of meat become drop-off-the-bone tender, and even woody vegetables like parsnips become about-to-collapse soft.

Finally, they are both cheaper than conventional cooking methods. The slow cooker is cheaper because it draws very little electricity, and even though it is left on for several hours it is comparable to leaving a conventional lightbulb on for several hours, a very different proposition from running an electric oven for several hours. The pressure cooker is cheaper because it only runs for a few minutes, or a few tens of minutes at most, and it runs on the hob. Again this is obviously a lot cheaper than cooking a casserole in your oven for a few hours.

There will be two more articles in this series comparing pressure cookers and slow cookers. The next article will look at differences between the two methods, and the final article will include some of my favourite recipes for them. If you would like to share your favourite recipes, please email them to me. I'd particularly like to hear vegetarian recipes, and recipes that aren't for soups or casseroles.

10 Reasons to Cook with Quorn

There are only four days left to participate in our Try A Vegetarian Meal Challenge. If you are running out of inspiration, here are ten good reasons to try a Quorn dish:

1. You can get Quorn chunks (which are rather like chunks of chicken), Quorn mince (which is like beef mince) and Quorn beef-style strips (which are self-explanatory).

2. Point 1. means that you can easily make many of your favourite meat-based recipes vegetarian. We like Quorn chili, Quorn lasagna, Quorn fajitas and Quorn Thai green curry, for example.

3. You can offer a vegetarian and non-veggie choice without all the trouble of making two totally separate meals, for example by making rice, Thai green curry sauce with vegetables, then pouring half the sauce over some heated Quorn chunks and the other half over cooked chicken pieces.

4. Quorn sausages make nice sausage casseroles, as well as bangers and mash, toad-in-the-hole, and Ed's favourite - sausage sandwiches.

5. Quorn is much lower in fat than the meat it imitates, so it can be a healthier option, especially as, just like meat, it contains high-quality protein.

6. Unlike meat, Quorn contains fibre which also makes it a good addition to a healthy diet.

7. Because it is similar in taste and texture (not identical, but similar) to meat, it can help die-hard carnivores cut some of the meat out of their diets. You know, the sort of people who would sooner starve than knowingly eat a lentil.

8. Because you use it in the same sorts of recipes as meat, you don't have to learn a whole lot of new cooking skills (such as how to cook lentils).

9. Quorn is lower in calories than meat and contains no cholesterol. So if you're watching your weight or your cholesterol levels you can still enjoy some of your favourite meals just by switching to Quorn.

10. Boil some water and cook some spaghetti. Fry an onion, add a tin of tomatoes, a pack of Quorn mince, and some Italian mixed herbs. By the time the spaghetti is cooked, the sauce will be cooked, too (Quorn is already cooked, it just needs heating through). If you've got some Parmesan cheese, put that on top. If not, just forget it. Quorn spaghetti bolognese is just as quick as heating up a ready meal - much quicker than phoning for pizza delivery - and it's tastier and healthier than either.

What is Quorn anyway? It's made from a fungus that occurs naturally in soil. Sometimes it's described as "mushroom-based" - that's stretching it a bit. The fungus it's made from is a microscopic mould, not a mushroom like the ones you put in your omelette. On the other hand I've heard detractors describe it as genetically modified - that's not "stretching it a bit", it's just hooey. The FAQ page of the Quorn website states clearly:

Q: Do Quorn products contain genetically modified ingredients?

A: The main component of all Quorn products is mycoprotein, which is not soya-based, but is a member of the mushroom family. This is grown and harvested under strict quality controls and we can therefore reassure you that it is not a product of genetic manipulation.

Quorn is approved by the Vegetarian Society who do not allow any GM ingredients in approved foods, so that's that. Anyway, they grow this stuff in huge vats, dry it out, then process it, adding egg white (as a binder) and flavours to make it resemble chicken, mince, sliced ham, or whatever. It's a processed food, but then again so is cheese.

It occurs to me that this article reads like an advert, so I'll just be clear. I have no affiliation to Quorn. They haven't paid me or asked me to write this or anything fishy like that. I'm just a satisfied customer. We probably eat Quorn about once a week in our house. The main reason is that it bridges the gap between the carnivores and the vegetarians in our family. If it was just up to me, I'd probably never eat it - when I felt like chicken fajitas I'd eat chicken, and when I felt like a vegetarian meal I'd make dishes based on beans, lentils, quinoa and all the other vegetarian protein sources I enjoy. I resisted using Quorn for a long time because it felt like cheating. It's not "natural", it's a factory-made processed food. But so is cheese, so is tofu, so is bread unless you make it at home. When I gave in I found that a lot of new dinner possibilities opened up to me. Instead of reading a recipe and thinking "That sounds really nice, but it contains meat. I'll have to wait till Steph visits and make it for the two of us", now I often read a recipe and think "That sounds really nice. I'll switch the chicken for Quorn and make it for me and Ed next week".

So it's your last chance to join in the Try A Vegetarian Meal Challenge. Why not try converting your favourite chicken or mince-based dish to Quorn? Don't forget to vote in the poll in the right-hand sidebar when you've done it.

Slow Cooker v Pressure Cooker - Nutrients

Clare of Veg Box Recipes blog is confused about the advantages of slow cookers compared to pressure cookers. Specifically she is confused because:

... the proponents of both pressure cookers and slow cookers claim their method is the best way of cooking food. Both claim that their method preserves the highest number of nutrients and gives maximum flavour.

Can they both be right?

I dunno, Clare. I see the source of your confusion - one cooks really fast, the other cooks really slow. They seem like opposites, so how can they both be the best?

Some nutrients are destroyed by heat, which suggests that slow cookers (which cook at below boiling point) might preserve more nutrients than pressure cookers (which cook at much higher than boiling point, made possible because of the increased pressure). On the other hand, the slow cool cooking process in a slow cooker can lead to loss of nutrients through enzyme action. These enzymes would normally be denatured by cooking, but because it takes longer for a slow cooker to reach the temperature at which that happens, the enzymes have longer to destroy the nutrients.

So where does that leave us? Nowhere, to be honest. I can't find any data comparing the nutrient content of slow cooked v pressure cooked food. If you know of any reliable data I'd love to hear about it. Otherwise all I can offer is an item of faith - a home-cooked meal from fresh ingredients is likely to contain more nutrients than any ready-meal or fast-food meal, regardless of the cooking method.

I have more to say about slow cookers and pressure cookers, so look out for other articles to come. I'd also love to hear (and maybe try) your favourite pressure and slow cooker recipes. Please email me with recipes or hard facts about nutrients.

Roasted Vegetables and Goats' Cheese Pasta

Here's another vegetarian recipe my sister Stephanie rustled up whilst she was visiting.




Roasted Vegetables and Goats' Cheese Pasta

Chop up a bunch of vegetables for roasting. We used courgettes, aubergines, red peppers and red onions. That was neither seasonal nor local for us at this time of year (slaps own wrist). But if you wanted you could roast onions, leeks, carrots or whatever seasonal vegetables you can get hold of. Personally I don't think I ever met a vegetable I wouldn't like to roast, so this recipe is the ultimate movable feast. Toss your vegetables in olive oil, add some sliced garlic, some fresh or dried herbs, and bung in a hot oven for a while. Sorry about the lack of precise weights, temperatures and times - regular readers will know by now that I just don't usually cook like that. I encourage you to experiment, to make use of the ingredients you have available, and to learn for yourself what ingredients work well together, how your own oven behaves, and to take food out of the oven or the pan when it is ready, not when your timer goes beep.

When the vegetables are almost roasted (which after all will depend on exactly which vegetables you use), put some pasta on to cook. I like quite chunky pasta with a chunky sauce like this one. I wouldn't use tagliatelle for example. We had some spinach trotolle from Seeds of Change that worked very well. When your pasta comes to the boil, stir a tin of chopped tomatoes into your roasted vegetables, arrange a sliced soft goats' cheese on top, and return to the oven for the cheese to melt. Steph used one of those little chevre cheeses between two of us. If you're cooking for more than two, use more cheeses. If you have some help in the kitchen, get someone else to bung a garlic ciabatta in the oven, rustle up a quick salad, and open a bottle of wine. If it's just you, open the wine and forget about the salad and ciabatta. By the time the pasta is cooked, the cheese should be melted. Serve the vegetables and cheese on top of the pasta, with the garlic bread and salad on the side if you have them, and a nice glass of wine. Lovely.

If you make this dish as part of our Try A Vegetarian Meal Challenge, let me know how it turns out. And don't forget to vote in the poll in the right-hand sidebar.

Try A Vegetarian Meal Challenge

It's often said that if you're really concerned about your impact on the planet - in terms of carbon emissions, pollution, sustainability and so on - you should become a vegetarian. For example GoVeg.com says:

The best thing that any of us can do for the environment is to adopt a vegetarian diet.

It's also argued that it is inefficient to grow crops to feed to animals to eat their meat, milk, eggs, etc, rather than just grow the crops to feed the people. Greenpeace USA says:

It takes up to 10 pounds of grain to produce just one pound of meat. ... The world’s cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people — more than the entire human population on Earth.

But I'm not totally convinced. Just east of where I live is Derbyshire, a rocky county of low mountains and fells. It's sheep-rearing country, because nothing else can thrive there. Dry-stone walls separate the fields, not because they look picturesque, but because even hedges won't grow reliably on the thin soil and the wind-blasted hills. If you didn't farm sheep there, you wouldn't farm anything.

In the book The New Complete Guide to Self Sufficiency, John Seymour strongly advocates keeping a cow on any smallholding, even one as small as a single acre, primarily because of its fertility-generating properties (he means dung). Pigs are also prized by smallholders as the rapidest of compost-making systems. You put food scraps, vegetable trimmings, windfall apples and so on in one end of the pig, and within 24 hours fertiliser comes out of the other end. And you get to eat the pig. It's a win-win situation.

Of course, most of the meat you buy in supermarkets isn't produced this way. Too often it is produced intensively. They call them farms, but really they're much more like factories. And they do produce horrendous amounts of pollution, they rely on enormous quantities of grain and soya and water, and the animal welfare is non-existent.

So I'm not asking you to become a vegetarian. I don't think it's necessary, and I don't think you would do it anyway just because I asked you. I'm asking you, this month, to have a vegetarian main meal once a week. Don't give up meat, but do eat less meat. If you know somewhere you can get well-produced meat, perhaps from a farm shop or a farmers market (don't assume all farm shop or farmers market meat is well-produced - talk to the butcher and ask lots of questions) then please use that rather than the supermarket.

I'll be posting lots of simple and tasty vegetarian recipes this month. Please email me your favourite vegetarian main meals. And I'll be talking about the environmental impact and ethics of meat eating. If you're up for the challenge of eating four vegetarian main meals in April, please vote in the poll in the right-hand sidebar.

Grocery Store Wars

Our Sunday funny this week is Grocery Store Wars - a 5-minute video about buying organic, based on Star Wars. It's right up my street. Hope you enjoy it, too.

But if you don't - why not? If you'd prefer a video that's not as funny but actually contains some persuasive information and arguments about how our shopping choices affect the environment, try The Story of Stuff. Alternatively, if you'd prefer really funny videos about Star Wars set in a supermarket without the irritating environmental message, try Chad Vader.

Cartoon from Climate Cartoons. Click on the panel to read the whole strip.

Top Ten Uses for Apples

(The total lunar eclipse was a washout, with a thick layer of cloud across most of Britain. The alarm clock went off at 2:45 am, but when I looked out of the bedroom window all I could see was a bright orange glow caused by the street lights of Manchester bouncing off the unbroken low cloud, so I rolled over and went back to sleep.)

Here are ten uses for too many leftover apples, hanging around in the bottom of the fruit bowl and looking unappealing.

1. Tarte tatin

2. Gordon Tracy's Favourite Way of Eating Apples - bear with me. This is our family name for apples cored and cut into wedges, served with a dish of sugar mixed with cinnamon, for dipping. The name was a desperate attempt to trick Tom, then aged 2, into eating any kind of fresh fruit or vegetable at all. He was obsessed with Thunderbirds at the time, and his favourite character was Gordon Tracy. I offer the recipe to any parents who can't get their kids to eat fruit. Feel free to rename it with your own child's favourite fictional character.

3. Sourdough Apple Fritters

4. Cheese and apple toastie - cut an apple into quarters and grate it on a cheese grater. Also grate some Red Leicester cheese (or other cheese) and mix with the grated apple. Season with sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and ground cumin. Make into sandwiches with sliced wholemeal bread and toast (we use one of those electric toasted sandwich makers, but you can also do it under a grill)

5. Chutney

6. I often chop an apple into my porridge or muesli for breakfast.

7. Apple Spiced Muffins

8. Stuffed baked apple - Core an apple and stuff the hole with something nice - leftover Christmas mincemeat works well, my dad keeps a jar of raisins soaked in rum to stuff apples with, or just improvise a mixture of raisins, porridge oats, chopped nuts, honey, or whatever you can find in the store cupboard. Bake the stuffed apple either in the microwave (you don't need one of those stupid plastic doodads they sell in the Bettaware catalogues, just bung it in a bowl, for heaven's sake) or in a moderate oven until the apple has softened. Serve with ice cream.

9. Braised red cabbage with apple (recipe is near the bottom of the page).

10. Apple pie - Here's a little-known secret. The best apple pies are not made with cooking apples such as Bramleys. Cooking apples turn to mush when you cook them. They're great for applesauce, and that's about it. If you want large succulent pieces of apple in your apple pie, use eating apples. But let's start with the pastry:

You can use your own shortcrust pastry recipe, or ready-made pastry or a ready-made pie shell. Here is my favourite shortcrust pastry recipe for when I'm really pushing the boat out. It makes the best ever mince pies, for example. Sift 14oz plain flour into a bowl with 1 teaspoon of salt. Make a well in the centre. Add 8oz diced softened (really soft) unsalted butter, 4oz caster sugar, 8 egg yolks (sorry - this is not a frugal recipe unless you have your own chickens and plenty of eggs. But it really does make excellent pastry) and 1 teaspoon vanilla essence into the well. For apple pies I like to add some grated orange rind and ground cardamom, cinnamon or nutmeg. Rub everything in. In fact I usually heave it all into my food processor with a dough hook attachment and let it run until it looks like pastry. Bring it together into a ball and knead it lightly, then wrap it in clingfilm and chill it for at least half an hour before using.

Divide it into two, and roll one portion out, but it's a b****r to handle, so if it falls apart when you try to line your greased 9-10” pie tin with it, don't panic. Just smoosh it back together with your knuckles, and feel free to cover any holes with leftover bits of pastry and work them in until you can't the join. Put the pastry shell, and the unused portion of pastry back in the fridge whilst you sort out the filling. Oh, and turn the oven on low.

Peel, core and roughly chop about 2lbs of eating apples. Put them in a pan with the merest splash of water, 2oz sugar and a few whole cloves, cover and cook for a few minutes until the apples are tender but not mushy. Carefully drain the apples. Don't go banging them about or they'll go to mush. Carefully put the drained apples in the bottom of the pastry shell (I don't bother picking out the cloves, I rather like the burst of tongue-numbing flavour when you bite into one in your wedge of apple pie, but if you hate that you'll have to pick them all out - I advise counting them when you put them in so you can be sure you get them all). Roll out the other portion of pastry and lie it on top of the pie. Pinch the edges together to seal the top layer to the bottom. Make a couple of slits in the top of the pie to let any steam out and stop the pie going soggy or exploding. Sprinkle generously with golden brown sugar, and bake in a low oven until it's done (I don't know how long, it depends on your oven, how big your pie dish is, how thin you rolled the pastry etc. Check on it after about 25 minutes, but be ready to give it an extra 5, 10, 15 minutes or whatever until it looks golden and done. Also listen to your nose - if it smells done after 20 minutes then maybe it is. Have a look at it and see.)

Apple pie is nice hot or cold. Either way, serve with custard, ice cream, or whipped cream. But I love it best served cold with a big dollop of smetana.

Tarte Tatin

I don't want you to get the impression that frugal cooking is all about eating stringy burned meat just because I'm too stingy to throw it out. How about this tarte tatin? The kids were moaning they were hungry so I told them there were plenty of apples in the fruit bowl. But apparently the apples "weren't nice ones". I had a look - yes, they had been there a bit too long and were starting to look wrinkly and tired. There were also two cooking apples I bought a couple of weeks ago but I can't remember why. A recipe to use up cooking apples and eating apples? Tarte tatin of course.

Tarte Tatin

Peel, core and chop a couple of big cooking apples. Toss them in a pan with a splash of water and 5oz light brown sugar. Cook until they're soft, then mash them and dump the puree in a sieve to drain - save the liquid that drains off them.

Fling 10oz plain flour, 5oz fat (I used half Pura and half margarine), and 2oz sugar in the food processor and whiz until blended, then add a little cold water until it comes together.

Roll out the pastry thin and use it to line a greased quiche tin. Spread the apple puree in the bottom of the pie. Peel, core and slice a few eating apples and arrange them on top of the puree. If you have nice red eating apples you don't need to peel them. Bake at 200C for about half an hour.

Take the liquid you kept from straining the apple puree and boil it until it is reduced. Brush it on the cooked tart to glaze, and sprinkle sparingly with cinnamon.

If you think my glaze looks a bit lumpy, you're quite right but don't panic - yours won't be. Eleanor came in crying at a crucial moment because she had fallen over and skinned her knees. By the time I had cleaned and band-aided her and given her a cuddle, my glaze had begun to congeal. That's family life.

By the way, this recipe makes too much pastry for one tarte tatin, so use the leftovers to make jam tarts. Roll the leftover pastry thin, cut into rounds, and place them in a greased jam tart tin. Put a dollop of home-made jam in each one and bake for 15 minutes. If you put them in at the same time as the tarte tatin, they'll be ready to eat just in time for a little girl with skinned knees. Very convenient.

UPDATED: The little boy from over the road came to play, helped eat all the jam tarts, and then asked me to write out the recipe so he could get his mum to make them. He also said his granny made the best pastry in the world and it tasted just like mine. That's what I like to hear.