Starhawk and pot luck

It’s not every day you meet a witch. The American pagan peace activist and writer Starhawk was giving a workshop on a nearby farm. We all bought a vegetarian offering for the shared lunch (see above).

Food brings people together and if everyone brings a dish, it’s not hard work to feed 30. The tastes may be pot luck but they miraculously get on well.

Starhawk shared with us some magical methods for keeping our spirits up while saving the world. She said, try to be in nature every day for fifteen minutes. Take time to wonder at how that leaf falls or green shoots burst out of a cracked pavement, and use your physical senses to ground you.

Radford Mill Farm was the perfect setting. We closed our eyes and heard the wind in the trees and the birds, calling. We opened them and walked barefoot on the wet grass. We felt the sun on our backs and saw the sky. I felt like a cooped-up chicken allowed to go free range.

Green activists live with the doom-reality of an impending environmental crisis but they are remarkably upbeat, probably because they are doing something to make the world a better place.

Starhawk’s talk was organised by Sarah Pugh, the Transition Bristol maven. Transition Culture is about getting self-sufficient so when supermarket shelves are empty and petrol pumps are dry, we have by this time learnt to grow our own veg (and guard our allotments from the marauding hordes?).

Our vegetables will have to be organic when oil is scarce. Non-organic farming relies on oil to make chemical fertiliser in factories. As oil prices rise, so does the cost of food. Organic farming has no need for gallons of oil. It makes its fertiliser on the farm, courtesy of the sun.

Radford Mill Farm is converting to organic and is set on making it a community affair. The official term is Community Supported Agriculture (CSA for those in the know). Originally from the US, it’s about sharing a farm’s responsibilities – and rewards. You commit in advance, with cash or in kind, and in return get a share of the harvest.

When the going gets tough, we will need our family farms more than ever. Adopt one now!

Below is a picture of Starhawk listening to Siobhan, a co-founder of Tribe of Doris, the UK’s most prestigious cultural festival. Here’s a tip for keeping cheerful: if you want to learn to dance or play music and can live under canvas for a convivial few days over the Bank Holiday weekend, then that’s the festival for you. (And don’t forget Climate Camp next week).

Food for free in Bristol

There is wild food for free in the city but you have to know what to look for. About 45 of us walked around Bristol’s inner-city St. Werburgh’s with Andy and Dave Hamilton, local eco-authors of The self-sufficientish bible. The “ish” is for people like me who don’t live on a farm.

Someone joked she thought the Food for Free talk would be about shoplifting. “Or stealing produce from someone’s allotment” bantered another.

Random weeds were revealed as herbs with stories, such as the greater plantain, held by Dave (above) and used by suffering soldiers in their shoes for trench foot.

Someone said he used its medicinal juice to help his hay fever. Must try this.

Dave said he has used the plantain’s leaves like spinach in saag aloo. Must try this too. (But crikey, would I be able to identify it from photo above? Supposing I picked a Poisonous Plant by mistake?)

Phew, on safer ground – this looks like a daisy. But it is not. It’s chamomile, famous for soothing jangled nerves. I use it in tea bags so it was like spotting an off-duty celebrity.

A propos, the talk was organised by Mark Boyle, founder of freeconomy. When he turned back from walking to India, it was international news. My media-self was impressed.

Mark (above) organised this Bristol walk as part of a reskilling programme, so we can learn forgotten traditional crafts, like baking bread or knowing what wild plants to pick without poisoning ourselves.

Watch out for a future Mark (and Claire) project in the autumn – Local Food Week when you pledge to eat local and see how easy – or hard – it is. They will add details in the comments section…

I picked some horsetail (above) and used it to clean the frying pan. A natural scourer, it broke up a bit but seemed to work – could be useful when camping.

Borage, also pictured on our inner-city walk, is another free food to try. You cook it like spinach or use its tiny blue flowers in a salad. Or a Pimms.

Known as borage for courage, it is an anti-depressant (so don’t use if you are on anti-depressants). Fifteen of its leaves make you cheerful. Sounds like my kind of free food.

Thank you Andy, Dave and Mark for an amazing walk-the-talk walk.

And everyone else, such as Eric with fat hen (below) who walked to France with Mark.

Buddhafield festival 2008

I ate the above every morning – a perfect no-cook nutrition-packed camping breakfast. From now on I will never travel without a spoon, a bowl, and bags of organic jumbo oats, dates, sunflower seeds, sultanas and pecan nuts. All dried so easy to store – just add water to bring them to life (plus a slice of apple or two).

I don’t know why people bother with expensive foreign holidays when they can go to a five-day long Buddhist festival in a Devon field. Its rigours test you, its strange culture intrigues while all around fellow festival go-ers are shaking off their everyday constraints.

Lots of interesting food to try such as the chapatti (above) cooked on an open fire and stuffed with homemade basil pesto and split-pea houmous (a must-try because quicker than soaking chickpeas).

And every cafe served fresh homemade chai, for me and the other two thousand people milling around in four fields.

Buddhafield cafe (above) was always busy, while other cafes such as the Organic Fallafel tent and the Indian Food tent did equally brisk business. As did Padma Pancakes which featured live music (including the unmissable The Wraithes who put classical poems to music).

Even the compost loos had their charms, with wooden steps as if unto a throne.

You could not do a thirtieth of what was on offer.

At night, there were live bands in every cafe, a cinema, DJs. A packed daily programme included talks on climate change, workshops in kung fu, lessons in Indian dancing, skilful flirting and sacred chanting. There were saunas in wooden huts, impromptu cabarets and Buddhist rituals with a butterfly on stilts (below).

And, just like the end of an exotic holiday, it was a culture-clash returning from Buddhafield to civvie street.

Beetroot, chocolate (and raw cocoa) brownies

I read about this recipe in the riveting Riverford Farm Cook Book I have been raving about, only I have customised it somewhat.

I have never thought about beetroot in cakes until I read Riverford’s recipe and then it was an “of course” moment – beetroot cake is the new carrot cake. The beets are sweet-tasting, easy to mush when cooked and not too watery. And plentiful, seasonal and grown-locally.

I used half the sugar the recipe called for, and also omitted its cocoa powder and baking powder. This was after eating the most wonderful date-and-walnut cake at Saturday’s party, baked by the Great Cake Company. Great, indeed. Cakemaker, Chris, generously shared her secret: rice flour, loads of butter and eggs. And no raising agents. Not necessary, she said.

Instant liberation! No more raising agents – just eggs. Yippee.

Going slightly off piste, I also added soaked prunes and raw cocoa nibs.

And here, thanks to the Riverford Farm Cook Book, is how I did it.

I melted a 150g bar of Green & Black’s cooking chocolate with 200g of butter, cubed, in a bowl, over a pan of boiling water.

The recipe calls for 250g but a 150g bar seemed to do it, plus I added 150g of raw cocoa nibs which are a natural stimulant and highly nutritious. Raw cocoa stays wildly crunchy and feels terribly healthy.

I had cooked the 250g beetroot the day before and now I whizzed the peeled purple beauties (and about 12 soaked prunes) in my trusty food processor, dating circa 1980s. The recipes calls for three eggs, but I whizzed-in four eggs (organic and free range of course), one by one. Then more whizzing with 100g of rapadura sugar (instead of the recipe’s 200g caster sugar).

Then with a large spoon, I folded in 50g of rice flour (which is gluten-free) and 100g ground almonds. All ingredients were organic, naturellement.

I miraculously found a baking tin of roughly the right proportions (28×18cm), greased it with butter and lined it with foil as I had no baking parchment. And placed it in the preheated oven at Gas 4/180 degrees C. It took half-an-hour. But don’t overcook it!

Omigod, were those brownies yum. Not too sweet, with crunchy bits and mousse-like lightness.

Andy’s vegan curry and a coincidence

When you are partying in a field, a warming bowl of aromatic vegan veg curry on a bed of rice is most reassuring. The field had been transformed overnight into a human encampment with dance tents, music and smoking fires. And a kitchen under canvas to which I gravitated.

Andy was catering. He had borrowed pots, hired gas rings and an urn, and was cooking at a trestle table. I have a gypsy fantasy of being a festival cook but it’s bloody hard work.

Anyway, we chat about food and he mentions a friend studying at the Slow Food university called Henry.

“Henry who?” I ask, thinking of Henry Hoffman

“Henry Hoffman,” says Andy.

This is the one and the same Henry who commented about my pics from Italy saying, quite rightly, my header pic needs serious attention.

The sages say there is no such thing as a coincidence. Here I am in a Somerset field meeting someone who was schoolboy pal and is fellow foodie with the unknown stranger-person who commented on my blog.

If I am to extract a deeper meaning, I would say I need a new header pic asap. And possibly help from Henry Hoffman himself.

Beetroot tops

I confess there was a time when I did not know that you could eat the leafy tops of raw beetroots. Now I have that knowledge, the next trick is to eat them when they are still dark green and fresh-looking.

I shredded the leaves and cut up the purple bits into a frying pan where I had heated olive oil and garlic. Cooking them in melted butter works well too. I fried spices but that is optional. Cook the leaves slowly enough until soft. No need for water. I also chucked in chunks of mushroom and served this nutritious dish with brown rice.

(It is pictured on my copy of the Guild of Food Writers‘ new-look magazine, Savour, where I learnt that Japan was a Buddhist vegetarian country until the 19th century.)

Whether you eat the leaves or not, do cut them off otherwise they draw out moisture from the beetroots. I learnt that fact from reading The Riverford Farm Cook Book – what a fab book, that is.

Written by iconoclastic farmer, Guy Watson, and the chef of Riverford Farm’s restaurant, Jane Baxter (who trained at the Carved Angel and the River Cafe), it’s a useful, informative and entertaining read.

Guy started farming organically in 1985 on the family farm in South Devon. Thanks to his brilliant idea of forming a cooperative with other local farmers, Riverford is now one of the UK’s largest organic growers with a veg box scheme that delivers all over the country.

I think cooperatives are the way to go, and especially for small family farmers – there’s strength in numbers especially when you are competing against agribusiness.

Guy says what he thinks, which is very refreshing. Quite rightly, he says the term “organic movement” sounds like everyone agrees with each other when in truth there is (healthy) debate.

The book is way-not pretentious. Clearly, Guy and Jane think the media-darling aspect of organics sucks.

Instead their voices are…well, down-to-earth. They give you a real grasp of how and when organic vegetables are grown, and basic yet tempting ways to cook them.

You know where you are with this book. I recommend it. Big time.

Roast organic chicken from Sheepdrove farm, half price!

A Merrier World inspired this blog, to raise awareness for chickens. Poor things. Prisoners on a factory-production line, they have turned into commodities. An organic chicken seems expensive in comparison because it gets to lead an ordinary life.

A cheap chicken is cheap because it does not lead a normal existence. Bred to quickly gain weight, it is sometimes too heavy to walk, and, kept indoors in a noisy shed with 40,000 other birds, it is denied its natural behaviour such as feeling the sun on its back, perching or stretching its wings.

“Poor people must have cheap healthy protein,” say the chicken-factory defenders. Hello? Cheap chicken is not exactly healthy – it is full of fat, antibiotics and is a food-poisoning risk, which is why it must be cooked so carefully. A false economy, if I’ve ever heard one.

Here are ways to eat organic chicken on a budget. Buy a whole chicken and serve it as a once-a-week treat. Use its carcass for soup and leftovers for future meals. Serve it with a plateful of other goodies as I did yesterday (see the above pic with its Better Food organic salad leaves, carrots and potatoes, kamut grain and non-organic broccoli) so a little goes a long way.

My chicken came from the Sheepdrove organic farm butcher shop in Bristol, belonging to Sheepdrove organic farm in Berkshire. Master butcher, Graham Symes, picked one out for me. “See its beautiful heart shape?” he said. “That’s the way a chicken should look with the breast falling over the legs (see pic below).”

Instead of £18 for 2.6 kilos, it was half-price because of a current surplus. You can get your half-price beauties here. Hurry while stocks last!

Sheepdrove organic farm is owned and run by the kind and visionary Peter and Juliet Kindersley. Peter has put his publishing profits to a good cause, developing top animal welfare systems. My favourite Sheepdrove fact: their chickens peck at healing herbs to self-medicate. Chickens are clever creatures when allowed to be their natural chicken-selves.

The Kindersleys have recently developed a terrific new safe way of feather-plucking on its on-farm abattoir. Usually the feathers are loosened by dunking the dead birds in a bacteria-infested hot bath. The new Sheepdrove method of steaming could dramatically reduce the number of bacteria for non-organic and organic poultry alike.

Our chicken was delicious. “It tastes like chicken should taste,” said my sister who is a regular Sheepdrove shopper.

Here’s how to roast a (preferably happy) chicken: allow 20 minutes of cooking time for every pound/500 grammes – and then 20 minutes extra. I smeared the breast and legs with olive oil, rubbed in paprika and salt, and slithered slices of garlic under the skin. I simmered the giblets in wine and water for stock, and made gravy with this and the cooking pan’s juices, thickened with my new discovery: an ounce of rolled oats.

A tip for the absent-minded cook: do not put a chicken – in a plastic bag – in the oven to get to room temperature, then forget it’s there and switch the oven on. Getting melted plastic off a hot oven is no fun. Trust me.

Quick lettuce soup

It was buy one, get one free at the organic supermarket in Bristol.

The Better Food assistant pointed out the bargain gem lettuces, fresh from the company’s Walled Garden.

I thought: oat-thickened lettuce soup. The perfect opportunity to share the quickest healthy-soup recipe I know. You basically boil water with butter, add oats to thicken and then the lettuce which takes seconds to cook.

Boil 1 pint of water with 1 ounce (30g) of butter. Add 1 ounce of rolled oats. Bring the water, butter and oats to the boil. Simmer for five minutes to cook the oats. Add a lettuce, chopped. Season with lots of black pepper but a little salt. Turn off the heat after several minutes as lettuce cooks quickly. And will carry on cooking in the water.

I think blending this soup makes it more unctious. I blended mine (see pic).

I came across it the other day. My mother was cooking it when I got back from the Guild of Food Writers Awards. Appropriately, the recipe came from the pen of one of our best food writers, the late Jane Grigson (mother of Sophie).

I love Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book, which has recipes for every veg from artichoke to yam. My mum made hers with spinach, but the Grigson original is Irish Nettle Pottage.

I have had this book since 1980 so why, oh why, did I not think to delve in, in my nettle-soup phase?

On the subject of mistakes, I broke one glass within ten minutes of leaving the charity shop with five (for a fiver). When I photographed the damage, it had beauty (see below).

I feel a moral coming on.

Mistakes are like jewels in the crown because we can learn from them.