Growing your own vegetables and fruit on an allotment is very rewarding, good for your health, and saves you money – very important in these difficult financial times. Initially you’ll need to work hard, but once the allotment is established you will harvest the rewards – literally. 1. Find an allotment or plot. Speak to your [more...]
An artichoke has been described as the only food you eat where you end up with more on your plate than when you started! We’re talking, of course, about the flower-shaped Globe Artichoke and not the root vegetable Jerusalem Artichoke. When you are served an artichoke, you will just see a large clump of petals. [more...]
January 25th is Burns Night, an evening for honouring Scottish poet Robert Burns. All over Scotland, and anywhere in the world where people celebrate their Scottish heritage, there will be Burns Suppers with haggis, poetry and whisky on the menu. If you’ve heard haggis is made with a sheep’s lungs, heart and liver chopped and stuffed [more...]
For beautiful and nutritious spinach soup, hold back half the spinach until after cooking. When you’re ready to puree it, blend the raw leaves with the rest. You get a tempting green that’s not too sludgy-looking, and you haven’t destroyed as many vitamins in the heat. For green pea soup, preserve the colour by not over-cooking. [more...]
Many words have different meanings when used in different contexts, and “vegetable” is one of those. There are some situations where a tomato can legitimately be considered a vegetable, but others where it is unambiguously a fruit. From a culinary point of view, a tomato is a vegetable. Sometimes it’s used as a salad vegetable, and [more...]
How you cook sweet corn depends on whether or not you like how it tastes! The traditional way method is to remove the husk (leaves) and silk (threads) then vigorously boil the cobs until the flavor and vitamins have disappeared. Fifteen minutes should do, or twenty minutes if you want to make absolutely sure. Drain the [more...]