Meet…
to celebrate food!
With Harvest, World Food Day and Apple Day all in October, there really is no better time. I’ve had many discussions with children this month about where our food comes from, the need for sustainability, fewer food miles, less plastic packaging. We’ve looked at how food is grown, which parts of the plants we eat, found roots, leaves, flowers, berries and fruit that are edible and that we eat everyday without thinking about. We’ve discussed hunger in our country and those father afield and decided that even if we don’t particularly like a taste or texture, it will give us something, do us good, help our bones grow stronger, muscles repair and build, body work better. We’ve said thanks for our food, considered others without, and tried to show appreciation for where food comes from and how it gets to us.
World Food Day reaffirmed these ideas and also gave us the opportunity to look at food from other countries. Apple day, however, is surely a very British idea with the Apple harvest coming around the start of October each year. Another chance to celebrate…a good harvest, crisp, crunchy textures, sweet flavours and a, hopefully, bumper crop. Lathcoats Farm always celebrates their huge harvest with many varieties grown at the farm itself. As well as apples to taste, it’s also an opportunity to buy other local produce, see the farm animals, play on the tractors, participate in games and activities and generally, have a great couple of hours out and about at the farm supporting local businesses. This year, the beginnings of their Pumpkin Fest have also been included with a chance to pick your own, although the festival games and other related activities began properly on Sunday 20th.
UPDATED: Exciting news for half term! For the first (and possibly the only!) time ever we are going to be offering PYO apples from Monday 28th October through to Sunday 3rd November -subject to availability of course. Park in the carpark and then cross the road as all the picking will take place in the orchards on the other side of Beehive Lane from the main farm. Varieties will include Pinova, Temptation, Honeycrisp, Braeburn, Topaz and Crispin. All the apples will be £1.50 per kg so you can pick and mix. Once picked the apples are for eating and enjoying in the next week or so, they will not be suitable for storing. Do bring your own bags and containers though we will have carrier bags available. To avoid disappointment please do check our website and social media for the latest news on availability. (Quoted directly from Lathcoats Facebook page)
Make…
a difference with eco-home swaps.
After trying to Ecobrik our unrecyclable plastic and realising it takes such a lot of time, care and effort to do it properly, I decided that probably the best solution was to make a really concerted effort to reduce the plastic we buy. I’m stuck at the moment as most of our unrecyclable waste is cat food pouches and crisp packets. These can of course be ecobricked, or sent to Terracycle to recycle, but it would be better for everyone if we didn’t buy them in the first place. Unfortunately, the cat can only eat this type of food and whenever I’ve tried her on tinned food, she becomes ill. They just don’t do the food she needs in tins. As for crisps, bigger, sharing packets would definitely go some way to reducing the plastic disposed of, but who wants soft crisps? It’s one I may need to balance out in other ways.
Looking around the house, though, I find most of our single use plastics in the bathroom and kitchen. I’ve already made some quick and easy swaps…once the girls’ body wash was finished, I gave them a buttermilk soap bar in a washing pouch instead. They both love it and fight over who has it first. I’ve also done this for the showers in house as the usual gels are finished up. I love the soaps, and the pouches keep all the soggy last bits together so you can still use them too!
In the laundry cupboard, I already use washing powder in cardboard boxes rather than liquid in plastic but have also tried out a home-made ‘conker’ detergent, as the shop-bought detergent is still full of chemicals. Horse chestnuts contain saponin, a soap-like chemical compound, so when you soak them, they release this and you can use the resulting liquid in a detergent as you would any other!
First chop and dry your conkers on a tray in an oven on a low heat. This means you can then keep these, store them and use and make up into liquid when you need it.
Take a cup full and run 250ml warm water over then leave to soak for an hour then strain. This is your ‘full strength’ laundry liquid.
You can do the same again with the used conkers but leave for a little longer. This liquid is less strong, but if your just giving the towels a quick wash, will work fine on a light load.
The conkers can be composted after too so it’s a win win solution!
I’m not sure long term use of the liquid on whites is something I’d advocate, as I can see them going a yellowy grey after a few washes, but it certainly works for the rest of the wash.
We have also made the swap to re-fillable washing up liquid from Ecover as Lathcoats now has a small re-fillable section of, not just liquids, but dried foods such as pasta and muesli, too. For a wider selection of eco-home products and refillable things, head up to the Reco store store just outside Tiptree. The range of both food and soapy products is huge and they have recently extended into two units making it much easier to get around and find what you need. They even sell toothpaste and deodorant in non-plastic packaging! The FitPit glass jar of deodorant is brilliant and smells gorgeous, but most importantly, it does the job well. I actually use the men’s version as I prefer the smell: it has coconut and a woody cypress. I’ve also changed to their shampoo and conditioner from Faith in Nature. At £1.50 per 100ml it’s a bit pricier than a basic, off the shelf option, even as a refill, but you pay for the ‘organic-ness’ of the product which uses naturally derived, cruelty-free, vegan ingredients. It’s still cheaper, however, than more specialist brands AND you don’t get the single use plastic.
It’s the ‘cupboard under the sink’ though that really bothers me. Loads of plastic bottles with all sorts of cleaners, scourers, sprays, disinfectants, ant-bacterial wipes, etc overflowing from the plastic basket they sit in. So my first job was to wait until those current sprays, etc, were finished. And rather than throwing them away, I’ve repurposed the containers into house plant-sprays, or for use in the greenhouse or the mud-kitchen! Yes Bebe sell a brilliant product from a little company called Iron & Velvet who produce concentrated cleaning liquid in dissolvable pouches that you add to warm water, shake and spray. The fragrances are lovely and they make both a normal and an antibacterial kitchen and a separate bathroom one. The scents are just lovely, and they do the job well. You might need to spray then leave it soak in to tougher, dried on food and give an extra scrub, but I’ve been more than happy with these. They are well worth the change.
I’ve bought amber glass bottles to put them in but you could just as easily reuse your current plastic spray bottles. Iron & Velvet also provide beautiful labels for your bottles so they’ll even look nice if you leave them out on the surface! Unfortunately, as it’s a small but growing company, they aren’t able to offer any discount codes, but at £10 for a mix and match pack of 5, which includes postage, it’s really not expensive. If you bought through Yes Bebe, you would be able to use their 10% code for friends of their fb page but only have the ‘set’ pack.
Munch…
Comfort food is becoming the order of the day chez nous and so, when choosing my birthday dinner out, I hesitated. I usually opt for something a bit different. I love Sushi Samba and last year we found a brilliant Peruvian place called Coya, which was stunning. But this year, I didn’t really fancy those flavours so, after asking fb friends to give me some suggestions in and around Soho, eventually chose Blanchette. It’s a small French restaurant which have a more tapas style way of eating. You don’t order for yourself, you order for the table and share. Now, usually, this is something I struggle with. Sharing food? Nope. Just a little? No way. Not even if I swap you a bite? Nuh huh. Luckily, however, I fancied a range of starters and two, if not three, of the main dishes so all worked out well!
The menu is classic, there are no surprises or questions to be asked as to what something may be. It does what it says. The food is cooked beautifully and is full of flavour. It gives the impression of very simple, classic french cuisine, but I’m sure that under the surface, there’s a huge amount of effort, careful seasoning, thought-out combinations that just work, and make it appear so effortless!
We had Rosette de Lyon salami, cauliflower beignets served on baba ganoush (which were really delicious) and cheese beignets with onion confit to begin. For mains, we had fish – Sea Bream – with a baton of ‘frittered’ courgette and a lemon vièrge, a creamy lemon sauce. From the sides we chose an endive, hazelnut and fig salad, which I could have devoured in one go it was so delicious. These were served together in the middle to share, then ensuite, once we had finished, came the steak. Served rare and sliced and deliciously full of flavour, with a fried egg and pepper sauce…not the usual creamy peppercorn one though, this was more of a dressing with a variety of peppercorns. It would only be just to choose, of course, the frites and a béarnaise sauce to eat alongside.
It seemed a lovely way to share the food: No little dishes, no ‘taking the last one’ and no complicated ideas. Good quality, well cooked, tasty food. What more could you ask?
We’ve previously been to Just So and Carfest but couldn’t face the crowds this year so opted for something smaller, and a lot less pricey. Tickets were only £95 per adult, for the weekend camping, including festivals tickets, and children were free. There was enough to do for a couple of days with two children, tractors and transportation was laid on to get your camping stuff from the carpark to the campsite and back again, and, for once, the weather held and we had a hot and sunny weekend.
The Chimney House 