What has happened?

Well a number of things really. Firstly we spent several months travelling around the UK WWOOFing with the intention of picking up hints and tips for gardening our way to self sufficiency at some undefined point in the future. Along these travels we saw animals kept in the respectful way they should be, children being brought up knowing exactly where their food came from, including the explicit gory details of the animals’ execution (which, by the way, didn’t seem to upset them in the slightest), we also thought a lot during that time about whether or not a strict vegetarian diet for the UK to feed itself was really possible. Can all those hills used for grazing sheep really be turned over to efficient veg production? No.

So, to cut a long story short, on one of our final WWOOFing stops our hosts offered us meat, and we ate it. First it was rabbit. By this time this was a relatively simple choice. The rabbits had spent their entire lives running around the fields surrounding the farm we were sat in. They led the ultimate free range lifestyle. They were not pumped full of drugs. They were not farmed intensively.  They did not suffer from unnatural diseases as a result of the way they were kept. They weren’t subjected to high levels of stress as they were not transported miles in cramped conditions to meet their fate at an abattoir. They were just rabbits, doing what rabbits do. Then one unexpected second they were no longer rabbit. They were, literally dead meat. Charged with the crime of feasting on the wrong vegetables and  too much frolicking they were shot just when they weren’t looking.

So that was the rabbit. It had wrangled it’s way out of our reasons for not eating meat and ended up in a very tasty rabbit and orange stew. Next came the pig.

But this is “Egg But No Bacon!”

I know, but this is what has happened, and it’s time I let the truth out. It was at the same farm we’d eaten the rabbit. On a return visit we walked into the kitchen to find our host salting bacon. “These are our pigs!” she said rubbing salt into the skin. It was all so matter of fact. To be sure they has been upset. We’d heard several of our WWOOF hosts tell us stories of the first time they killed their pigs. How sad they’d felt, for days even. Grown men crying. This is what responsibility feels like. But along with the tears comes a respect for the animal you could never have buying it shrink wrapped in a supermarket.

So they gave us the choice again. They were planning a roast for dinner. Did we want some? This seemed a step up from the rabbit somehow. I’m not sure why. I think it’s just the scale of it. Pigs are the size of a person. They look at you. They run over to you when you come to feed them scraps. They have personalities. They make odd noises. They are hysterically funny. So this was the choice. Did we want to eat another living being? Something that had lost it’s life only to end up here on the table covered in salt to be sliced, fried and served with an egg? Was this what we wanted?

After some deliberation we both decided to go for it. I’m not sure whether it was a full acceptance of the proposal that it is ok to eat living things, after 4 years of thinking I still don’t feel like I know enough to make a fully honest decision on that. This was more a taking of an opportunity. An experiment if you like. How would it feel to eat an animal that we know had been raised and killed in a way that we thought was acceptable?

So how did it feel? Honestly it was odd at first. I cautiously took a slice of meat from the carving dish and put in on my plate beside the usual pile of potatoes, carrots and peas. I kept looking at it, pushing it around my plate, preferring at first to eat the potatoes. Then, when I thought no one was looking (why?!) I quickly cut a piece, popped it in my mouth and chewed it up. Blimey it was tasty!

This meat was a million miles from the pork I’d given up. It seems like over time we’ve been conned into accepting dry flavourless meat. This home reared meat was completely different. So succulent, and the crackling was something else! So I had the results of my experiment. The dead pig proved everything I had suspected. Badly reared animals result not just in suffering for them, but also the actual flavour of the meat suffers.

So where does this leave me now? Am I destined to return to a diet of frozen chops, chicken fillets and Big Macs? No way. The original arguments still stand. In fact they have if anything been strengthened by these experiences. The intensive animal farmed in entirely unacceptable. I am more convinced than ever of this.

I can’t take on the supermarkets, but for myself my next step is to take as much responsibility as I can for any meat I eat. A neighbour recently brought around a rabbit and taught me how to skin and gut it. Soon I may go out shooting with him. We have bought a quarter of a pig from the farm we worked at. We bought into the pig when it was just weeks old. Beccy and Tony have raised the pig for us in a way we are happy with, and in a few weeks from now we will go to collect it, chopped and bagged up for the freezer. I imagine this quarter of a pig will last us a long time. But in preparation for when it does run out, maybe we should get our own pigs.

So “Egg But No Bacon”, will you be changing your name to “Bacon and Eggs”?

No. Well, at least not for the moment. There is a difficulty with this kind of ethical eating that I’m not sure how to deal with. People know now that we eat meat. What will happen if I go to someone’s house for dinner, or somewhere else I am not absolutely sure of the origin of the meat? I can’t say I’m not vegetarian but I won’t eat your meat. Well maybe I should if I feel strongly enough, it’s just something about it doesn’t sit right. It is guaranteed to turn people against you and anything you have to say before you’ve even began.

We need a new way of talking about meat eating. There is something about saying to people “I am a Vegetarian” that I was never comfortable with. To be honest I think it’s a meaningless term. As I see things you can not BE a Vegetarian, you are just a person and you choose not to eat meat. It is not part of your essential state of being. By saying you are a vegetarian it takes away responsibility and the need to think. If you say, “I can’t eat this because I am a vegetarian”, it doesn’t really mean anything, it is not an explanation. What is happening is that you won’t eat it because for some reason you choose not to.

To clarify and explain why I think the distinction is important I suggest that the opposite is also true. You don’t eat meat because you are a meat eater (or not vegetarian). You eat meat because you choose to. And with that choice comes the responsibility of thinking about what you are doing. Every time you eat a dead animal you take responsibility for how that animal has been kept. By eating the meat you are saying you accept responsibility for the death of the animal and that you approve of the conditions it has been kept in.

It is up to you what those conditions are.

Perfect!

It was a pretty amazing day really. In the space of an afternoon we managed to make a plain white loaf, a dozen rolls, bread sticks, a focaccia, tortilla wraps and some nachos! All turned out great. Rachel certainly was a natural – she has great baking hands. Watching Rachel and Andy’s synchronised dough kneading it was difficult to tell who was teaching who.

Synchronised bread making

Even the kids got stuck in. Beth helped cut dough into strips to make bread sticks, which Ellie then did a marvellous job of shaping and adding grated cheese to make them extra tasty.

Beth makes bread sticks sticks

Beth and Ellie make the breadstick shapes and sprinkle cheese

Even little Lily helped, she made the important decision that lemons were indeed too yakky to be added to the mix.

Lily discovers lemons are not as tasty as bread

Most of the recipes used came from The River Cottage’s Bread Making Handbook – a fantastic book, packed with great recipes, beautiful photographs all put together with style and enthusiasm that really makes you want to bake. Also all the recipes seem to work well. Who would believe that this was our first venture into Italian bread making?

Focaccia... Mmmm

Or that a 4 year old could really play a major part in producing some of the bestest ever bread sticks?

Breadsticks, millions of em!

Those expensive, tasteless, o-so-straight and boring tubes of tat will never again be spotted in the Cordingley shopping trolley (or there’ll be trouble Rach – I’ve got my eye on you!).

So the first Bread Making Workshop was a great success, we all learnt a lot, but I think the best thing we discovered is that you don’t need to be an expert to do this. It doesn’t take years of practice to make something infinitely better than what’s on offer at the supermarket.

Of course the more you bake the better your bread will get, but this was all of ours first attempts at making over half of the things we made and all turned out well. I believe the key skill in bread making is the determination to outwit the marketers who create your addiction to shop bought bread.

It is not necessary to have the most amazing kneading techniques, special equipment, years of practice and oodles of spare time, but rather you need to be able to resist the lure of colourful packaging, health claims and subtle hints towards your own incompetence – ‘you couldn’t possible make a loaf so light, crusty and tasty as this’. Well here is the proof that you can.

Once again, here it is, a thing of beauty – the first loaf from Rachel, Master Baker Extraordinaire (family baker for over 3 hours):

Perfect!

Reclaim the power! Bake your own bread!

Anyone who is interested in taking part in a bread making workshop, or having us come to your house to run one for your family and friends please contact me.

And so it began…

Just over a month ago now, on the Summer Solstice of 2009, a group enthusiastic picnicers gathered on Hoxton Square, London, under the red and white flag that was the symbol of the first event, “A Taste of Things to Come”. An anarchy symbol morphed into a picnic bench to spell out the intention – no longer were we fools to the robbery of overpriced bars and restaurants serving up expensive drinks and salads of limp lettuce and unripe tomatoes. No longer will we be slaves to the supermarkets. We won’t eat your pre-packed out of season processed food and snacks. We will reclaim the power of good, simple, local, seasonal food and show it off in fantastical picnic extravaganza!

At least that was the idea. As the man at the local offi pointed out after questioning the significance of our lovely little red badges, our choice of lubrication for the event was arguably off theme, “Ah a picnic to promote local food! Excellent idea… I see you have chosen 8 cans of Jamaican Red Stripe to compliment your food”. Hmm.. seems we still have some way to go. “But it goes with the colour scheme” is not a valid excuse.

The choice of the longest day for our first picnic was obviously a good move. A beautiful sunny day was spent lazing in the park and the long hours of sunlight encouraged us to stay out well past the intended 4 pm finish time until long after the sun had gone down.

So what was on the menu? Aside from the small oversight on the booze, the local food theme went pretty well. An impressive spread was enjoyed by all including some fantastic spicy green-bean salad, fine cheeses, homemade chutney, standard picnic-issue (but top quality!) egg and watercress sandwiches, and fresh, still-in-the-pod peas. Lovely jubbly. The bakers had been hard at it too – homemade too pretty to eat strawberry cakes and cherry topped buns with tea (not coffee!) icing both went down a treat.

Entertainment for the day was unexpectedly provided from travelling performance artist Nicola who joined us for a few hours and treated us with an outing of her “Dream Coat”. The coat has many individually decorated fancy pockets, each containing a dream. You choose a pocket, take out the dream and swap it for one of your own which then gets passed along. Fantastic. My plane crash dream was eagerly swapped for a story of a horse running and bizarrely I haven’t suffered any more terrifying plane crash dreams since. Magic. Should I feel guilty for the poor soul who will soon be treated to recurring dreams of planes exploding mid-air? Perhaps, but you’ve got to take your chances in the dream world. You never know what might happen.

There was also face painting and an impressive BMX (with basket) stunt display!

So as you can see “A Taste of Things to Come” was not just about the food. It was also about was getting together in a free space, to share good times and stories. It was great to see friends we’d missed so much while we’d been away. And while our main aim of promoting local, seasonal food may have slipped  into the background of catch up chats and Jamaican lager one thing shone through – that is that spending many hours loafing in parks with good food and good friends is simply a great thing to do. This kind of thing should be part of our day to day lives, not a once a year only if it’s boiling and you’re skint event. No more rushed dinner hours! Take your time over lunch every day. Sit in the park, chat to a stranger, offer them a sandwich. Don’t spend your weekends in shopping centres, go to the woods, sit by a river, pick wild blackberries and enjoy being outside. It doesn’t rain as often as you think it does.

Just one question remains. TLP? What’s that all about?… more soon.

I can’t believe it! I feel as if I have been being robbed, lied to and generally deceived. It’s a conspiracy. They know what they are doing and they do it anyway. I wonder how they thought they’d ever get away with it? Maybe I’m to blame. Maybe we’re all to blame. Who knows? But what is for sure is that it won’t be happening anymore.

What what what? What has happened?

What happened was this. Today we mixed some plain flour and some water in a bowl, kneaded it a bit, left it a bit, rolled it out and dry fried it. And you know what happened? We made lovely, fresh, soft, tasty tortillas. It was easy. AND they tasted REALLY nice. I’m MAD.

£1.69 it is for a pack of 6 Old El Paso tortillas. £1.69!!!!!
It cost us about 25p to make the same amount. GRRRR.

How can this have happened? At what point did we become so insecure of our cooking/baking skills and so dependent on other people making things to sell to us that someone worked out they would be able to sell something to us that is so cheap and easy to make yourself.

Seriously it would take more effort to walk to the shop to buy some. It’s almost like someone convincing people to buy water when everyone knows it comes out of the tap. Oh…

Well anyway, I’ve worked it out! Ha! You won’t get me anymore. And what’s more I’m going to make it my mission to tell everyone else too. You won’t get away with this for much longer.

If the ‘cheap’ and ‘easy’ tags don’t draw you in, check out this list of ingredients:

INGREDIENTS:

Wheat Flour, Water, Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Stabiliser: Glycerol, Salt, Raising Agents: E450a, E500, Dextrose, Emulsifier: E471, Preservative: E202, Flour Treatment Agent: E920

Mutant food!

I don’t even know what most of that stuff is! I reckon they could release a batch with deadly poisons listed in the ingredients and no one would pick it up. Glycerol?? Do I want to eat that? Really? I have no idea? It sounds like an explosive. And numbers, lots of numbers. I don’t want to eat numbers. I want to eat food.

Here is the list of ingredients you need to MAKE YOUR OWN TORTILLAS. Hurrah!

Makes 8

250g plain white flour (plus extra for rolling out)

2g salt

150ml water.

So easy it’s hardly worth writing a proper recipe, but I’ll tell you once and then you’ll be off.

Put the flour in a bowl. Gradually add the water mixing it around with your fingers until you bring it together in a ball.

Knead for a few minutes.

Cover and leave to rest for about half an hour.

Divide in to 8 pieces, gently shape in to a rough ball and then roll out to about 2 or 3mm. While you are doing this put a good frying pan on a medium heat to heat up (no oil).

When the pan is hot put a tortilla in the pan, watch as it starts to bubble slightly as the underneath starts to brown (approx 30 seconds) then flip over and cook for another 30 seconds.

Stack them up as you cook them in a dry tea towel to keep them warm (the steam of the stacked warm tortillas keeps them soft).

Eat straight away, or wrap in tin foil to eat later (can be reheated later wrapped in foil in a low oven).

That’s it! And this recipe somehow still makes it seem more complicated than it really is. Honest.

A couple of other revelations:

Chapattis are made in much the same way, only use wholemeal or chapatti flour!

Nachos are basically tortillas cut up and deep fried. Officially they should be made with cornflour, but we gave it a go with plain and they made an equally good snack. Bit of salt, bit of spice shaking and you’re there.

What will I ‘discover’ next? Can you really make your own pasta? noodles? pizzas? soup? Of course you can. I’m onto you. I’m going to get my revenge… watch this space.

Please let me know if you read this and then make your own tortillas.
New tortilla makers count as of 7th July 2009: 9

See more “make your own…” posts

“A Taste of Things to Come” is the first (hopefully) of a series of events I plan to organise with the aim not only of getting a group of friends together to have a picnic, but to bring people together in a space where they can share their ideas and hopefully inspire each other and the way they choose to live. This is an open invite event. All are welcome. Just turn up on the day, or there is a facebook event you can sign up to for more information.

Come loafe with us on the grass.

Join us for an afternoon of fun in the sun!

It’s a gathering of people bringing together good food and good conversation.

Bring food to share, drinks, your own plates cutlery etc, a nice rug and an open mind.

We have a lot to talk about.

If possible food should be home made, show off your marvelous cooking skills!

You lucky London people have lots of lovely markets to choose from so get some good local seasonal produce and cook up something special!

If you really can’t cook just bring some fresh raw fruit or veg to share. Everyone loves a few crunchy carrots!

Food markets:
http://www.urbanpath.com/london/food-markets/

What’s in season?
http://www.eattheseasons.co.uk/weekbyweek/26.htm

How to find us, Google “N1 6NU” for directions, when you get there, you’ll see us!

If it rains a lot,we have a Plan B,watch this space for more information.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

There’s also lots of information on there about what real bread is and why we should be eating it including what is wrong with industrially produced bread.

This campaign is not about making it easier for a few people to have the luxury of going out to buy fancy artisan bread. Bread is a fundamental part of our diet, three quarters of all people have it as part of their diet every day, and as such it is vitally important that the bread we eat is good for us. Industrial milling breaks the grains down in a way that destroys many of it’s nutritional qualities, so much so that vitamins have to be added back into the mix by law. These re-added vitamins are more difficult (or impossible?) for our bodies to take in than those that were originally naturally present but that the industrial process has removed. Other aspects of the way most bread is produced makes it all but impossible for some people to digest properly.

There’s also the issue of supporting local businesses. The Real Bread Campaign reports of a study that found that on average local businesses put more than three-quarters of their income back into their local community , thereby helping it prosper. Compare that to the big supermarket giants, where the money is sucked out of your community straight into the pockets of a few shareholders. I can understand why some people may find it hard to resist the pull of the supermarket, however I think it is important that if and when it is possible people should be moving towards supporting their local shops as much as they can.

Remember, every little helps. Or is that hurts?

It’s been going a few weeks now and more and more producers are being added all the time so you should be able to find somewhere near you. Or if you know a local producer that’s not on the map let them know about it so they can get themselves added!

For more on the problems with (amongst other things) industrially produced bread read Felicity Lawrence’s “Not on the Label”.

For more information why and how to bake your own bread read “Bread Matters” by Andrew Whitley.

Presented by Rebecca Hosking it goes through all the key points in a clear and concise way, opening with the lines,

“An approaching energy crisis will likely force a revolution in farming that will change the British countryside forever. It will effect what we eat, where it comes from and even the alarming question of whether there will be enough food to keep us fed.”

From an interview with a geologist comes the conclusion that what matters is not the exact timing of the peak, but that whether it is in 1, 5 or 10 years there will be a peak in the production of oil after which oil will become more difficult to extract, more expensive and that this will have huge implications for every aspect of our lives.

She uses a simple example of a ham sandwich. The oil needed to power the tractors to plough the wheat fields, plant the seeds and harvest the grain and the petrol based fertilisers that helps it grow. Then on to the meat, with a single pig consuming nearly half a ton of grain it is even more energy hungry. Even the small pieces of salad are currently highly dependent on oil, whether because they are shipped from abroad or grown here in heated green houses before being transported around the country in lorries. She sums it all up perfectly with a great quote that says exactly what it is hard for people to see, “this sandwich, like so much of the food we eat today, is absolutely dripping in oil”

But what’s great about the film is that it’s not all doom and gloom. There are lots of people who have recognised this problem and are working in inspirational ways that offer an alternative for the future.

She visits the Dixons in Snowdonia, who run a small holding based on permaculture principles, and an experimental forest garden in Devon ran by Martin Crawford that just looks incredible.

There’s also Fordhall Farm an organic beef, pork and sheep farm that relies on the quality of it’s soil and grass rather than chemicals to feed the animals. This includes one of the saddest parts of the film. A clip of a film from the 80s of a tractor plouging a field followed by flocks of birds draw to the unearthed worms and wildlife is compared to a shot of a tractor on the same land now – nothing ,no birds, no worms, the soil is dead, surviving to grow now only with the aid of chemical fertilisers. Makes you realise what we’ve done.

All in all it’s a brilliant film. It’s powerful introduction for people who might not know about the issues of peak oil and food security, but also an inspirational piece for anyone already aware of the issues that shows what can be done. Highly recommended. Watch it here.

For more on peak oil watch the film ‘The End of Suburbia’ and for more information on the transition from an oil based society see Transition Culture.

It has been our staple breakfast meal for the last 2 months. It would be a lie to say that we had eaten it every day, but I recon over the last 2 months we must have eaten this dish at least 40 times! Crazy. And we never got bored of it. In fact after only a few days in Cambodia we’ve found ourselves desperately hunting down an authentic Vietnamese Pho.

Each place has it’s own little variation on the dish, but the essential base is always the same. Flat rice noodles are heated in a big pan of boiling water and then popped in a bowl with some stock and sprinkled with chopped spring onion (or “onion leaf” – maybe chives?). The bowl is brought to your table along with a side plate of fresh herbs, bean sprouts, limes and chilis for you to add to taste. Amazing! It becomes a bit of a ritual. Before the bowl arrives you start picking the leaves off the herbs ready to drop into the soup when it arrives. Then it’s time to stir in a few bean sprouts, maybe a squeeze of lime, a dash of chili and then you’re off. It is such a refreshing breakfast. Even in the 30c heat we couldn’t get enough of the steaming bowls of spicy pho.

The stock itself is pretty damn tasty. The places that sell pho tend only to serve that one dish so you can be sure they have spent some time perfecting the saucy base.  I think this is the key. I always get suspicious if a restaurant has an overly long menu. How could they possibly cook all those things well? How could they have all the ingredients in fresh everyday? It’s just not possible. Here, where most of the stalls are actually based in or just outside a market, you can be fairly certain the fresh herbs, and crispy bean sprouts couldn’t be much fresher.

My favorite must have been the pho in Hoi An. They grow a special type of basil there, it has a slightly aniseedy/minty taste which was possibly addictive. Andy and I took a trip out to visit the farm that grew this stuff, Tra Que. It was pretty incredible. They used no chemical fertiliser at all, instead the land was fed with seaweed which broke down in just a few weeks giving them amazingly rich fertile soil.

I wonder how something like this could work in the UK? Compared at least to a cafe/restaurant at home the set up costs must be tiny! All the stalls are so basic, but after all, it’s just good, simple cheap food. What more do you need? A few small tables and plastic chairs, a couple of pans, some kind of heating equipment (normally fashioned from big plant pots by the looks of it) and a metal framed glass cabinet functioning as the preparation area, display, cash desk… This is why they can sell it for 40p rather than the £6 a noodle soup would cost you in the swanky surroundings of Tampopo. No branded napkins and matching crockery here. With plastic plates and bare plastered walls the food tastes just as good. It makes you wonder what it’s all about.

Here’s a small selection of the pho we ate. The more observant amongst you may pick out that some of these aren’t true pho, there are a few other types of noodle soup in there too. It’s guess the odd one out time! Extra points for identifying the type of noodle and name of that dish…

A trip in a small boat to the floating markets of Cai Rang on the Mekong Delta was to provide the setting for the next of our adventures in fruit (WOOP! Just realised what I have just written – how cool this trip is!!) .

These markets are incredible. The river was buzzing with life. Hundreds of boats gather piled high with produce from pumpkins and cucumbers to star apples and jackfruit. Each boat has a pole with a sample of the boat’s wares tied up high so it can be seen from afar. We spent some time drifting wide eyed through the boats.

We hired a guide to come with us so we could ask any questions as we were bobbing along. He told us a lot of the people lived on the boats. As we looked we noticed some were set up barge stylee with pot plants and deck chairs.

I’m sure it’s not all quite the jolly boating holiday though. These people have little money and live very simple lives. To me on a visit this traditional way of life that has gone on for hundreds of years seems like a beautiful treasure to cling on to. But it is impossible to know how the people themselves think and feel about it. What might their aspirations be? How happy are they? It would be incredible to be able to spend some real time with the people talking about their lives. But for now we had to make do with floating along with our romantic ideas and Nikon camera.

We stopped off along the way to visit a rice noodle “factory”. This small family run establishment was housed in a coconut leaf roofed barn in a little village by the river. 4 people were working at the various stages of production. Rice powder was mixed with flour and water into a batter that was spread on large heated disks like a crepe. This was peeled of laid out on racks and took outside to dry in the sun. Once dry something like an over sized pasta maker was used to cut the disks into thin strips.

In an amazing use of resources the disk cooking the rice batter was heated by a fire of burning rice husks. The ash from the fire was kept and put back into the land to be used as a fertiliser to grow food. Any “waste” from this process was fed to the pigs who lived in the barn next door.

Further down the river we stopped at an orchard which grew a jumbled mix of fruit trees. Mango, jackfruit, star apple, rose apple, pineapple, coconuts, water coconuts, papaya, bananas, lemons, oranges, limes, lotus flowers all grew together in an area we walked round of about an acre.

As you can imagine the fruit we tasted from the trees was some of the freshest, most amazingly sweet and ripe fruit I’d ever experienced. The jackfruit was a new one on us. I think we’d eaten it before (maybe cooked?) but it was completely different to the fresh version. This huge fruit grows in abundance on trees through out the area. It can sprout from any part of the tree and a tree laden with hundreds of these gigantic monsters (which can weigh up to 36kg!) is quite a sight!

The flesh inside is unlike anything else I have tasted. Yellow fleshy segments are separated from pips and a fibrous inside. They have a mild taste and an almost chewy texture. The flavour? Well I suppose it is just like a jackfruit. Hard to describe. The cooked jackfruit tasted like chicken, this fresh fruit tasted like erm… maybe like a drier version of a mango or pineapple.

Lets hope the roads here don’t “improve” too quickly. Once the way to transport things quickly up and down the whole country is paved the supermarket chains will swoop and all this will be gone. There is a Co-op Mart down the road from where we stayed, we went in for a look around. They were selling cereals and packaged fruit, like they do in Tesco. People were going mad for it.

Just in time for Easter, Egg But has gone all eggy. Be warned though, this is no quick peek while the boss isn’t looking post. It demands attention. It’s more of a magazine, only it’s printed on one long piece of none existent piece of paper. I suggest you print it off, take it home and sit and read it with a lovely cup of tea and a dippy egg.

Origins of Easter.

You all know about the Christian version of the celebration of Easter, so I don’t need to tell you about that. I also probably don’t really need to ramble on about the over commercialisation of Easter and the ridiculous amount of chocolate eggs that appear on sale soon after Christmas. Instead I’ll talk about what we used to do before Christian times, the original origin of Easter.

Eastre was the goddess of spring and fertility. A month equivalent to April was named after her and feasts were held throughout the month to honour her. At the first full moon after the vernal equinox (which is today!) there would be a special celebration. Eggs, a symbol of fertility and nature reborn, were painted brightly to represent the sunlight of spring and were given as gifts or used in egg rolling games. Another symbol of Eastre was the notoriously fertile hare. It is all sounding quite familiar isn’t it? As Christian missionaries worked to eliminate the pagan beliefs and traditions the festival and it’s symbols were taken over.

This year I suggest that rather than just using Easter as an excuse to eat poor quality, over-priced, over-packaged chocolate eggs (with meat in them), we should all remember that we are actually taking part in an ancient pagan festival. Go for a walk in a park or stand in the middle of a field and think about new life and the fertility this festival celebrates. Invite some friends to come with you and have your own Eastre festival. Roll eggs down hills, smile in the sunshine and celebrate the renewal of life.

If you are really addicted to the chocolate and just can’t do without why not make your own “Eastre Eggs” to give to people. Now that would be fun wouldn’t it?

Bigger is Better?

What sparked off this chain of eggy thoughts was not, as you may imagine, Easter. In fact it was instead an article I stumbled across about the size of eggs you should be buying.

I’d always thought that the bigger the egg the better. Small eggs were surely a sign that the chickens were having such a hard time locked away in little boxes that they couldn’t even manage to make proper eggs.

Then I read this article which said in fact it can be painful for the chicken to lay a larger egg and blood spots are often seen on the shells of big eggs.

Now I just can’t get the image of a chicken squeezing and squarking out of my head!

Evil supermarkets pay more for larger eggs so farmers are currently being encouraged to selectively breed larger egg laying hens regardless of the distress it may cause. Poor chickens. And bad me. I’m sorry chickens, I won’t do it again.

But still, I’m a little puzzled. When I looked after some chickens for a little while last summer their eggs varied in size, but overall I would say they were definitely large. I don’t know how you’d tell, but they seemed pretty happy. I assumed then they were laying large eggs because they were happy, which is exactly the opposite of what the article says.

What to do , what to do?

Maybe someone needs to make a chicken EEG machine. And then write a book about it. “The Chicken and the EEG”.

Organic? Free Range? What to Buy

I try not to shop in supermarkets. Now is not the time for a full on rant about their evil ways, for now I’ll just say I’m almost certain the world would be a better place without them. You can read more reasons why, specifically relating to the biggest nastiest beast of them all on the Tescopoly website.

I did go to a supermarket once though and the range of eggs they sell is insane. Organic, free-range, barn eggs, caged eggs, battery hens, corn fed chicken, freedom chicken. Each has a different price and related standards of welfare. But does anyone really know what they are buying? What does it all mean? Even within each label there are different certifiers with different criteria for certification.The Soil Association has a detailed article describing some of the differences in conditions between free range and organic.

At least this labelling exists though. The EU commission may soon scrap the legislation that requires the labelling of eggs according to farming method. This is a really bad move. The way people shop in supermarkets, buying meat and other animal products in such a sanitised distant way already means that people have little real awareness of what they are buying or where from.

People need to be made more, not less aware of where their food is coming from so they can make real informed choices which would hopefully lead to a demand for improved conditions for our animals. The labelling of eggs as being from caged hens led to a decline in their sales and to remove this is surely a step backwards. There is a more info here and a link to lobby the EU against this move.

Yet while moving towards free range organic is a good thing, preferable to buying eggs you know have come from badly treated birds it strikes me that as soon as big businesses are involved the first priority necissarily moves away from the animals welfare or healthy food production and instead is simply to make money.

Organic certification is prohibitively expensive for small scale producers. There’s no way Hilda down the road with her flock of ten chickens roaming around her back yard who sells a couple of boxes of eggs a week is going to pay hundreds or thousands of pounds to get the little stamp on her box, but I know which one I would prefer to buy.

The difficulty is finding Hilda. Having lived in cities most of my life spotting one of those little signs is a rare treat only experienced on day trips to the countryside. Keeping yourself supplied with eggs this way would be all but impossible for most. Plus all that driving around searching around streets and country lanes is no way a sustainable shopping habit.

Incredible Edible Todmorden have an amazing project titled “Every Egg Matters” . As part of it they have created a map so people who have spare eggs for sale can let there whereabouts be know. It’s brilliant. This is exactly the kind of project that should be happening in towns all over the UK. Not only is it giving people access to food produced locally in small flocks with better living conditions, but it also builds up a network of support for anyone interested in taking it a step further and keep their own chickens. Fantastic.

Keeping Your Own Chickens.

With environmental issues and peak oil meaning food security will become a major issue we should all be moving towards more local food which has less impact and gives individuals and communities more control over and awareness of their food supply.

Apart from growing some of your own fruit and vegetables, if you have the space keeping a few chickens is a great thing to do. Chickens are great recycling machines, they eat your scraps, poop them out to produce fertiliser for your garden AND they make eggs. Perfect. Infact they are better than perfect recycling machines; you get more out than you put in.

Apart from all that chickens are just brilliant! They’re so funny. Watching them leg it across the yard for scraps during my short stint as chicken keeper in Devon last year was one of the highlights of my summer.

For tips on keeping chickens on a budget, including how to build your own chicken house the Penguin book “Keeping Poultry and Rabbits on Scraps” sounds great. Originally released 1941 it has recently been republished as prices of second hand originals were going crazy due to new demand . Chickens, are definitely on their way back!

“Eggiwegs. I would like to….smash ‘em”

Probably one of my favourite lines in any book/film. It gets a mention just for that.

Knock Knock

Anyone who has made it to the end of this post deserves a treat. So here’s a joke for you. Lucky you.

Knock Knock

Who’s there?

Egbert

Egbert who?

Egbert No Bacon