Collaborative post Do you try to eat organic food where possible? The last fifteen years have seen a huge increase in the availability of organic meat, fruit and veg and dairy products, reflecting the growing consumer interest in the benefits of choosing organic food over conventionally grown alternatives. Those benefits include a healthier diet with less artificial additives, reduced impact on the environment from synthetic ...
My garden-inspired Cadbury Dairy Milk Bar – and how you can invent the next flavour!
Oh I’ve been having so much fun with this! I’ve had a chance to combine two of my favourite things: grow-your-own and all things chocolate. Sometimes my job is just so hard 😉 Have you seen the latest Cadbury Dairy Milk campaign yet? It’s a fab competition which invites the nation to ‘go madbury for Cadbury’ and create their very own Cadbury Dairy Milk bar to sit alongside the iconic range of faves such as Cadbury Dairy Milk, Whole ...
A winter feast at River Cottage
I'm sure we're all familiar with the River Cottage TV series, headed up by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and famous for championing seasonal, ethically produced food. There's probably a River Cottage cookbook or two on your kitchen shelf. But have you ever visited River Cottage HQ itself? This week I got to do just that. I joined the HIBS100 team for a fabulous day at River Cottage, exploring the wonderful ingredients they use in their food, ...
A Home-grown Health Kick
Do you grow your own fruit and veg? We started our grow-your-own journey a few years ago, and it has made such a difference to the amount of fresh produce we eat on a regular basis. We've found home-grown to be fresher, tastier and a really convenient way to manage a healthy diet. I've recently come across this great infographic from Premier Polytunnels, which has loads of ideas for getting more fruit and veg into your diet. There are some ...
Flower Sprouts: a new vegetable for family mealtimes
Finding vegetables that children will happily eat isn’t the smoothest of roads in parenting, is it? In the almost nine years that I’ve been a mum, there have been countless times when one or both of my children have fiercely resisted the presence of anything remotely resembling a vegetable on their plates. It can sometimes feel like such a battle, can’t it? And of course, we’re currently in Brussels sprout season, which in my experience ...
Tips and ideas for making the most of your harvest
If you grow your own food on any level, from a small patch in your garden to a full-on allotment plot, Autumn is very much the season of harvesting. It’s hard to beat freshly-picked produce, but the reality is often that we have more than we can possibly eat. For us this year the gluts have been courgettes and tomatoes, we’ve been pretty much up to our ears in them! For me, the pleasure in growing our own fruit and vegetables is not only ...
Ideas for preserving herbs
There’s a bit of a theme going on around here at the moment - harvest. At this time of year a lot of my ‘gardening time’ is spent picking produce and working out how to store it, cook it or preserve it. It can be time-consuming in the short term, but it’s so great to be able to enjoy your homegrown fruit and veg all year round. In this post I’m going to share some ideas for preserving herbs - they make such a difference to recipes and you ...
How well do you know your apples?
Is there a fruit that symbolises this time of year more than the apple? For me, apples go hand-in-hand with Autumn days; heavy fruit ready to fall from the tree in our garden, fighting the wasps for the juiciest ones, and of course cooking with our lovely harvest. I have to confess though, my knowledge of the hundreds of types of apples is limited to say the least. I suppose we’re all too used to the handful of varieties on sale in ...