Mmmm, just seen this recipe for nettle pesto on Joanna's Food. It looks amazing! I almost wish I was back at home to try it out. Nettles are packed full of healthiness, they grow everywhere (you could say like weeds...) and yet I've still not managed to get into cooking them myself despite being told years ago how good they are and how easy they are to cook with. This recipe looks really simple, so I'm thinking it must be a good one for anyone looking for an introduction to wild food. It is the best time for nettles in the UK right NOW. For the best nettles pick the young fresh green tips of the plant. Be careful not to pick from anywhere that is likely to have been sprayed with chemicals and pick as far from paths as possible (to avoid dog pee). I'm slightly gutted I can't do this myself this year, so can someone please make it for me and let me know how it is?... Nettle Pesto Nettles Mint (if you've got it, or other herbs, or none) Garlic Wholemeal bread Cheddar Oil Pick a colander full of young nettle tops (you'll need gloves). Rinse them, then plunge them into boiling water for one minute ...

Last week when I went to do my shopping at K+N in Birkenhead (top veg shop!) I saw they had a couple of crates of English tomatoes for sale at £2.99 each. £2.99!! The box was over 5kg! So that's less than 60p per kg or about £1 less per kg than normal price. I knew it was good, but I'd never normally get through so many before they went squidgy.  And then a flash of inspiration, I remembered seeing Hugh making tomato sauce for the year from his home grown yearly glut and decided this was my chance to do the same (shame they weren't home grown though). This is really good. K+N probably buy from wholesale market in Liverpool, which I assume works a bit like a normal market, only bigger. Often at the end of the day you'll get people practically giving things away, and they pass this on to their customers. Reminds me of I was walking through Kirkgate Market in Leeds a couple of weeks ago and a guy was shouting "Bag of bananas a pound! As many bananas as you can fit in a carrier bag a pound!" He had a hoard of ladies surrounding ...

When we moved away form Manchester we put our compost bin plus all it's contents on freecycle and it was snapped up in seconds. In fact loads of people wanted it. The guy that we chose to give it to arrived with a big smile on his face, an estate car, 4 bins and a shovel. It was a smelly job, hard work too, but obviously the he knew it was worth it. An estimated 6.7 million tonnes of household food waste is thrown away each year to rot in landfill. This creates a toxic sludge and gives off greenhouse gases which contribute to climate change. As well as looking at how to avoid wasting food by your shopping behaviour and meal planning the harm caused by any unavoidable food waste (eg peelings, cores etc) could be reduced or even eliminated by composting. If you have a compost bin, or wormery your food scraps are converted into a valuable resource. The food breaks down and the nutrients they contained are put back into the soil as part of a natural cycle renewing the earth. It is a potent natural fertiliser that in large scale non-organic farming is replaced by polluting oil ...

Blimey I've been eating a lot of pumpkin! Since the Hallowe'en party last week which left me with about 10kg of pumpkin to use I've made it a bit of a mission to try use the pumpkin in as many different ways as possible and have come up with this list of ten things to do with your Hallowe'en pumpkin. I've tried to make them all quite different, so there should be something to suit everyone so you'll have no excuse to throw your pumpkin away to rot. If you got a bit giddy like I did and bought the biggest pumpkin you could find you should have enough to make all these things. You'd also probably need to be a little bit insane to want to make them all, well at least all within the space of a week, so you might want to freeze some. You can just peel and chop the pumpkin as normal and then bag the bits and pop them in the freezer. I did this last year and they were fine to chuck into soups and things. No reason they shouldn't be good for anything else too. I can't quite believe how much we managed to ...

My new student is flying! Last week we made this amazing roast vegetable lasagne. I'd never made a roast vegetable lasagne so I was a little nervous about how it would turn out, but all went to plan and it was very tasty indeed. I'm a little worried I could be out of a job soon though, apart from putting together the recipe and a bit of advice on making sure the cheese sauce was smooth, she did the whole thing. Gonna have to do something really tricky next time or I'll be out! It could probably do with a bit more cheese, there wasn't quite enough saved for over the top, I like it  when you get a nice crispy cheesy topping. It still got 8 out of 10 Andy points, so a potential 9 I recon with this adjustment. Roast Vegetable Lasagne 4 cloves garlic, chopped Olive oil 1 red onion, cut into chunks and separated 1 aubergine, cut in half and sliced 3 courgettes, sliced 1 red and 1 yellow pepper, deseeded and sliced 15 mushrooms, sliced 2 x 400g tinned tomatoes, chopped 2tsp paprika 3 tbsp oregano Salt and freshly ground black pepper 8 lasagne sheets 8oz cheddar cheese, grated 2 oz butter 2 oz plain flour 1 pt milk nutmeg Pre-heat oven to 190°C, ...