There has been a reason for this period of silence though, or rather several reasons. The first of these is that most of my time spent at the computer these last couple of months has been devoted to the creation of the website for The Loop Project, which is an exciting new venture of Andy and myself into the unknown and the start of our transition to a low carbon future. Read the launch here.

Basically what we’ll be doing is a bit of what we used to do – web and graphic design (strictly for TLP approved customers) to keep ourselves afloat while we learn and pass on skills which will be important in a world which can no longer rely on cheap energy.

Expect to see a mix of exciting design for like minded groups like this and reports of our adventures in learning and teaching like this, as well as a few of our own “Public Information Campaigns” like this, How to Bake bread, the first of a series of retro style posters designed to promote key skills for resilience.

Download A4 PDF here to print out and stick up anywhere you see fit.

Anyway, that’s enough of a plug for The Loop Project (if you do want any work doing please do get in touch;-)), back to Egg But.

So what can you expect from your favourite vegetarian food blog in the next couple of weeks, what else has been going on?

Well after a near move to a small town half way between Leeds and Manchester Andy and I realised we weren’t quite ready to settle down and set off with our rucksacks again trailing around various farms WWOOFing, including a lovely place not far from Warrington, Ratcliffe Farm, there’ll be a somewhat surprising for some report about what we got up to there.

We went to Wales, got into Cider with Bill Bleasdale who introduced us to the lovely town of Llanidloes which is to become our new home! While we were there we went to a party at this place, a housing co-operative where we found out a flat was coming up for rent. With shared access to 14 acres of land including a 9 acre wood (providing all our firewood for heating) and space in allotment to get growing, we snapped it up! We’ll be there within a week and can’t wait! So Egg But will soon be more settled, but informative, hopefully you’ll come with us on our journey as we develop our veg patch, start keeping chickens and get into life in Mid-Wales. Hurrah! See you soon.

Actually though there are lots more reasons. Firstly I have a fond attachment to the fruit. I have a vague memory of being introduced to it on a holiday as a small child in Bulgaria. I was so in love with it then that I insisted we brought one back on the plane home with us. I can only imagine how ridiculous I must have looked as a skinny little kid climbing on to the plane with my arms proudly wrapped around the biggest melon I could find.

The next reason is that the experience of eating a ‘real’ watermelon is unlike any you ‘ll get from another fruit. I say real because I know, you can get watermelons at home, BUT believe me, they just aren’t the same. Watermelons you buy from a supermarket in the UK that have been shipped across the world are just enormous balls of hard, flavourless, light pink pap that are one of the things responsible for convincing people they don’t like fruit/vegetables/salad. It’s probably impossible to get a really good one, it won’t be ripened properly, it won’t be fresh and hence it won’t taste good.

On the other hand, get one from where it is grown and they are something quite different. You cut into it with a knife and the melon practically pops open as the juicy insides try to escape. You cut a slice and smile at the pleasing ripe reddy-pink colour with beautiful lines of black pips. You take a bite and your mouth is filled with one of the most refreshing, juiciest fruit sensations ever. It also has comedy value. No matter how carefully you try to eat it this fruit has an amazing ability to cover a person head to foot in juice. After the first bite it is running down your chin, by the end of the first slice it’s all down your arms, all over your face and probably dripping on your legs.

There’s a reason why Andy wasn’t wearing any clothes.

You’d ever guess it from the name, but these actually taste a bit like a custardy apple. Wow. Very sweet, creamy and delicious. Even the big black seeds that fill the inside don’t detract from this tasty treat. Well worth a go.

We had no idea what to do with it when we bought it, so we chopped it in half, here’s the inside:

You can then easily pick off the green skin and eat the fleshy inside, spitting out pips as you go. Yum.

The Coconut – Dua

I’m sure most people have seen and eaten coconuts when they are at their older brown stage, but I’d not seen these green ones before. It’s the same fruit, only younger, which means that apart from the obvious colour difference they have not yet developed the coconut “meat” and instead are mostly harvested for their drink, coconut water. It does contain a small amount of jelly like substance that is the beginning of the formation of the nutty stuff. This jelly can be scraped from inside and eaten along with the drink.

The amount of juice inside is quite incredible. Andy and I both got one and I’d say there was around two pints in each. I’d suggest just having one to share, it’s more than enough.

Coconut water is a great healthy drink. Amazing to be able to drink coconut juice directly from a coconut knowing there’s no nasties been added in a factory somewhere. One of the best things though is the fact that you can see the trees they’re from just a few meters from where they are being sold.

Anyway in a more adventurous moment inspired by the blogging by mail I was involved with earlier in the year we’d arranged to do a swap, I sent them some local delicacies (erm.. baked beans, salad cream, cream eggs and the like) and they sent me this amazing box of Japanese treats!

Now the first thing I have to say about when I opened the package is that I had absolutely no idea what anything was! Going on visual clues from the packaging they could have contained small toys, joke shop tricks, pop up snakes or firecrackers. It was great to try something with no idea of what you were about to put in your mouth would taste like. Must be like how small children feel every day.

The round pink thing seemed like some kind of squishy, sweet rice cake, pretty nice if a little odd. The various small packets turned out to be mostly small boiled sweets, usually cherry flavoured although I was convinced from the packet that the next one I ate might turn out to be an incredibly hot joke sweet.

My favourite item without doubt was the orange packet with black oblongs on (!?) which was some sort of crisp. I think it was small sheets of fried seaweed, with crunchy white stuff stuck to it, flavoured with wasabi. Hot hot hot!

There were four packs of what seemed to be beetroot crisps, and in possibly the biggest use of over packaging I’ve ever seen each pack only contained one crisp!

The pink box was ‘Meltykiss’, obviously a very romantic gift to give someone, sickly strawberry flavoured chocolate (or a mutant of).

Also in the package was a long kind of tea towel (probably actually a wall hanging?), noodle soup, a bowl to eat it out of, with chopsticks (fun) and this incredibly useful hat peg.

I wonder how I survived without it! Imagine, you’re walking along, a sudden gust of wind and before you know it your favourite bonnet has blown off your head and is tumbling over the side of a bridge heading for the river and out to sea, lost forever. I no longer have to live in fear of this tragic event. With my hat safetly pegged to my shirt collar I can stroll around town with a smile on my face safe in the knowledge that the hat and I shall never be parted. What a debt I owe to Paul and Kelly for equipping me with this item.

All in all it was a fantastic package. Loads of fun. Time for another round? Promise I’ll write up quicker next time.

I found it in a second hand shop in Campbeltown in Kintyre. It’s amazing! So funny. It’s the kind of thing you remember your Grandparents having when you go to visit as a child. I imagine I will have it on the dresser in my kitchen when I am on old granny and the grand children will come round and love it as much as I do. I wonder who’s it was? And how could they get rid of it?

I would advise you to scour all your local junk shops inthe hope of finding one of these little beauties, it will make you smile every time you look at it. If you manage to find one let me know.

Here’s a few egg recipes to keep you going as you happily fill and empty your egg head egg holder.

Spanish Omelette

Broccoli and Blue Cheese Quiche

Some kind of mix-up meant it took some time to arrive but a few days ago I finally got the slip saying I had a parcel to collect from the post office. Yipeeee. I think my original parcel had got lost in the post (booo) and it seems in the end the person who had actually organised the while thing ended up sending me something herself, which was really good of her. This is what I received:

Blogging by Mail Food Parcel

Having sampled most of the contents (quite an enjoyable process) I can now give you a run down of what was in the box.

The first thing I went for was the Clark Bar. It was some kind of peanutty thing coated in chocolate. Originally made in Pennsylvania. Very nice indeed. Anyone who fancies posting me another feel free.

Next the Mauna Lau Macadamia Nuts. Again coated in chocolate. Again very nice indeed. I’d actually had some of these before, the girl I used to work with’s Mum lived in America and had sent her some once. I think I’d ended up eating most of them (eek, sorry Danielle), and also kept the box on my desk for the rest of the time I worked there as I thought it was super cool, really retro, looks like a Hawaiian shirt. I was very happy when I saw them in the box.

There was a tiny bottle of Heinz ketchup. So common over here I’d always thought Heinz was a British company, by apparently not, it’s from Pennsylvania, so there you go. I used the ketchup to make Poor Man’s Pizza aka cheese on toast with sliced onions and ketchup on the bread before the cheese. Yum.

There was a little packet of purple sweets called Choward’s Violet. They were pretty much the same taste as Palmer Violets and I’m guessing they have the similar kind of “reminds me of being a kid” effect over there as Palmer Violets do here. The packaging appears to have been designed in the 1920′s and they have the kind of chalky taste you could only get away with selling still if there was some kind of nostalgia attached to it. I liked em.

Nutella, yum. I recently took two of my nieces camping and we had fun using this to make chocolate bananas which we cooked on the barbeque. This was something I’d last eaten when I was on Brownie camp aged about 8 probably. I don’t even remember that we made them ourselves, I think it was probably Brown Owl who put our bananas in the bonfire. Despite this Andy seemed to think I was something of an expert at it and asked me questions every 30 seconds. “How much shall I cut it?… How much chocolate shall I put in?… How should I wrap it up?… How long will they take?… Will they be ready yet?… Do you think they’re ready now?…” Really I don’t think you can go wrong, just put chocolate in a banana, make it hot, eat it, it will be lovely. I remembered that when we’d made them at Brownie camp we’d used Flakes, so we put lots of the Nutella in and also broke up a few of the squares of chocolate from the box and put them in too. We then wrapped them in tin foil and put them straight onto the coals of the barbeque we’d just had for about 10 minutes. They don’t look too great on the photo, but believe me, these are amazing. They ought to be a compulsory end to any barbeque.

There was some pop corn in there too which I have yet to try as it’s like a microwavable packet and as I am currently living out of a tent I don’t have a microwave, so these will have to wait. Sounds pretty interesting though- chili flavour, crazy

The Torani Syrup- a kind of vanilla flavoured bottle of loveliness- is going down well. We had some in a cup of coffee after dinner, a great addition. I’m wondering if it can be used to flavour eggs in egg custard or something as I have found myself in a situation where I have more eggs than I can possibly eat and am trying to think of new things to do with them (more about this later). 8 chickens + 2 people = too many eggs.

What else? Hmm… oh yeah, there was some of those little plastic swords people for some reason put in drinks. Looking forward to making cocktails so I can use some of these. There was also some small Tiki Forks. I have no idea what these are actually supposed to be used for, but they came in pretty handy when we made sweetcorn on the BBQ then realised we had nothing to eat it with. They were perfect. Although Ellie’s kept falling out.

All in all the whole thing is pretty exciting. It’s great to get post, especially parcels and especially when you have no idea what you might receive. Can’t wait for the next round. Thanks Happy Sorceress!

One more photo for you. Nothing to do with food, but this was so funny. I’d been telling Beth and Ellie we’d have a fancy dress party on our last night so after feeding the ducks on Wednesday evening we returned to the tent to get dressed up. Unfortunately I don’t have a photo of the best outfit of the fashion parade when Ellie came running out of the tent wearing only a pair of Beth’s pants pulled up to her armpits and a big giggly smile on her face, but I do have this one of Beth sporting a beautiful pair of flurescent leg warmers and Ellie in some enormous star glasses I’d been given on Karen’s Hen Do a couple of days previously. We had a great night although Ellie did seem slightly disappointed when she asked when we were going to go to the “Fancy Party” and I told her we were already at it, it was just us four. She soon forgot her disappointment and ran off to play with some children from across the camp site leaving Andy and I to enjoy a bottle of my Dad’s plum wine from 2001, a great year. Ahhh.

Just sitting at a campsite in Devon, looking out at at sun going down over the sea. We’ve just finished our first official “free” meal, and are now relaxing with a box of Weston’s cider and a game of scrabble. Ahhhh.

“Free” refers to the fact that I have now quit work and am free to do what I like with my time, rather than the food being free (although I do intent to make an effort find some free food on our travels).

For a while now Andy and I have been putting various plans in place so we could leave on a little adventure. First leg Britain. We’ll be spending the next few months traveling around Britain with a tent and a cinqucento, exploring the coast and the countryside, and generally being idle.

One of my plans though to distract me from doing nothing is to keep egg but updated with good camping meals. We looked for a books before we left, but couldn’t find anything quite right, specially for veggie camping food, so I thought I should do it. Hopefully over the next few months I’ll be able to provide you with a good few examples easy veggie camping food tastyness.

Here’s the first, started off pretty obvious and easy, but this is new for me too, so here you go…

Tomato and Olive Pasta with Spinach and Tomato Salad

Half an onion
1 clove of garlic
1 tin of tomatoes
15(ish) black olives
6 mushrooms
dried basil
pinch of sugar
balsamic vingear
olive oil

Finely slice the onion, and fry gently with the crushed garlic until soft and caramelly (about 20 minutes). Add sliced mushroom, and try til slightly browned. Add the tin of tomatoes, olives, basil, a dash of balsamic and a pinch of sugar and leave to simmer for about 15 mins or longer. Put the pasta on to cook. The pasta sauce should be ready by the time the pasta is cooked. While it’s cooking you can play a few moves on scrabble. Can’t remember who won this game.

So apparently a metal spoon would somehow contaminate or get moisture the spices, where as holding it over a steaming pan of food will not. It all makes sense now.

Last Saturday it was lovely clear sunny day, and I’d heard it was national chip week, so myself and a friend took ourselves off on a day trip for chips in one of the most beautiful, classy places in the UK … Blackpool! OK so maybe it’s not to everyone’s taste, but I have a a bit of a soft spot for our seaside towns, the cheesier the better for me. Blackpool must have the most flashy lights, rock, slot machines, donkeys and retro cafes out of them all. Brilliant. I just love red plastic vinyl seats and the big menu boards of wibbly lines of black sticker letters. And the fact that a cup of tea is only 50p.

We started the day with tea and cakes at Golden Mile Cafe. Steph had an apple pie and I had a lemon meringue pie. Both of which were illuminous. I’ve never seen such scarily bright food. God knows what was in them. But there was a lot of sugar that’s for sure. I went very odd about ten minutes after eating it. Far too much sugar and caffine. I could hardly string a sentence together and I felt dizzy and sick.We both felt really really bloated and sick. Somehow we decided the only way out of this mess was waltzers. There was only us and one other car full on the ride so of course the guys running it were stood constantly spinning our car faster and faster as we sang along at the top of our voices to a happy hardcore cover of Madonna whilst staring at a swirling blur of flashy lights above our heads, which were pinned down by the momentum to the back of the cart. Amazingly when we got off we both felt much better. So we went and got some doughnuts and had a pint.

We then spent the afternoon wandering around in an excited sugar rush daze playing on the slot machines and bingo. For tea we had chips on the beach to celebrate national chip week. All too soon it was time to head home, boooo. Can’t wait for the next time.

Golden Mile Cafe:

Luminous Food:

Chips on the beach: