I'm back and I'm angry...

We are hungry.
How on earth can a nation with a "top ten" economy honestly call itself civilised when we have large numbers of people needing to go to Foodbanks in order to feed themselves and their children? The Foodbank movement headed up by such groups as the Trussell Trust is a lifeline to over 100,000 people in the UK and they are doing an amazing job but there is no joy to be found in the necessity of such organisations. How dare we allow the nation's children to go to bed hungry? There will always be those in society that do not have the ability to feed their children, however, the numbers of people having to face the very difficult decision to ask for help are so high that this cannot be a problem of some "under class."
If this is the "Big Society" then I, for one, am hungry for a different philosophy.

If you place the terrifying statistics about hunger next to the disgraceful numbers associated with food wastage in the UK then you have to wonder whether some kind of collective insanity has taken over the whole population.

We are at once greedy (check the national obesity figures if you doubt this), and reticent to talk about the food issues that face us as a nation. Jamie Oliver goes into school and highlights the problems and years later we are worried about a Primary School Child photographing and writing about her daily lunch in what was, largely, a very positive blog.
As a nation we demand such great "value" for our weekly shop that we have lost all sense of our own values. We pick up milk at a similar price to water and don't register the fact that it costs a farmer more to produce than he is paid.
In short we are hungry for change; genuine, positive, sustainable change in the food industry.

Its safe now, the rant is over - you can come out from behind the sofa.

The beautiful wife gave me Richard Bertinet's book Pastry for our anniversary earlier this month and, as with all his books, its almost impossible to read without reaching for ingredients and beginning to cook. So far I have cooked:

1. Plum tart- Puff pastry, (yes, I made my own!) franzipan mixed with creme patisserie, and plums from our veg box. (Based on a Apricot Tart recipe).
2. Pork Pies - Hot water Crust, a mixture of bacon, pork belly and shoulder, sage, nutmeg, and a jelly with added sherry.

Catch up

My tiny garden is keeping me busy with watering at the moment. We have had Strawberries and then Raspberries over our cereal of a morning for a few weeks. (My late raspberries have yet to flower!). Last week we emptied one of the spud bags and had a couple of day's worth of Pink Fir Apple Potatoes.
Most of my bizarre and varied Tomatoes are either in flower or have set fruit and the Courgette plant I was given will provide a meal later this week. In the hot box the assorted Chillies are flowering and seem to be loving the sweaty heat and the garlic (which I planted in October) is ready to be dug and dried.
The Beautiful Wife and I both like to see birds in the garden, and to this end we have various feeders to encourage them. The strange consequence of these feeders is that we have found ourselves grown some seriously agricultural crops. The ability of a family of sparrows to flick seed all over the garden is quite remarkable. So far we have grown (without planting) oats, barley, wheat, sunflowers and oil seed rape. I can't bear to cut down these impostors as the have such statuesque elegance.
On the subject of grains I am now using the Richard Bertinet methods of making bread and they seem to be working. More of this in a later posting.
And... on the subject of later postings, many years ago I promised an old colleague (the Recovering Vegetarian) that I would write at length about sausages this too will happen soon too.