In the last few days I have managed pretty well with eating locally. I had a really nice game stew (packet of mixed game from Radwinter Game in Saffron Walden, bought at the Farm Outlet Shop on the corner of Lensfield Road and Mill Road) with carrots, onion and celeriac (my winter staples!), seasoned with salt, marjoram, ginger and turmeric. An extremely simple, but truly delicious meal was fried eggs (Angie and Brian’s free range from Cottenham, bought at their stall on the Sunday Farmers’ Market) on top of steamed purple sprouting broccoli – a perfect combination! (In case you’re wondering why I don’t mention anything like rice or potatoes at this point, it’s because I can’t mix high protein and high carbohydrate (The Hay Diet) without feeling quite unwell.) Another simple but delicious meal was baked potato with a salad of grated carrot, celeriac and sliced red onions, with a honey, oil and vinegar dressing.
OK but not great….
Here I must admit that not all my attempts have been quite as successful as the above! One of my favourite soups is leek and potato and it is just not the same without veggie stock cubes and ground black pepper!! Next time I must make more effort to do home-made stock – this time (lazily!) I just put carrot and celeriac in to see if that would help and it wasn’t enough. And my spicy veg stew (carrots, potatoes, onions, celeriac, ginger, turmeric, garlic and marjoram) wasn’t as spicy as I would have hoped. Next year I must dry some local red chilli peppers so I can have them in the winter.
The glories of porridge!
I have two confessions to make: I love my porridge so much and had missed it for so long, I ate it for supper one day as well as breakfast. The other is more calculated to make some of you shudder and I don’t know whether I dare write it: because I don’t have any local butter yet, I have once or twice eaten rice cakes (my first exception) spread with goose fat from Christmas – absolutely delicious, reminding me of the bread and dripping of my childhood. (And, actually, I read on the web that goose fat isn’t actually particularly bad for you. Does anyone know if that’s true or not?!)
Posted by Bev
