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.

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 to blanch them and take the sting out of them. As soon as the minute’s up, tip them back into the colander (keep the water, it’s full of goodness and can be drunk like a tisane) and run under the cold tap to stop them cooking. When they’re cold, squeeze out the water.

Put a slice of wholemeal bread into the food processor. Add a chunk of cheese, a peeled clove of garlic and the nettles and a little mint. Blitz, then add oil in a stream. I used rapeseed oil. Keep tasting, adjusting the amounts. Hard to say how much oil, as it depends on what you are going to do with the sauce.

Sounds good doesn’t it? There’s so many other things they could be used in too. Generally you cook them in the same way as, and they taste like, spinach. So I’m thinking anything which is good with spinach must be good with nettles – quiche, pasta, omelettes, pies, on pizza, or just cooked simply with garlic. Mmm. You’ve got to give it a go! For more adventurous ’superfood’ addicts  go for a banana and nettle smoothie, the raw hit will give you maximum vitamin goodness.

After some debate over whether what we were finding really were chantarelles, or the similar looking, but rather less tasty and occasionally hallucinogenic false chantarelles we have finally given them a go. We’d gone to visit one of our friend Viv’s old lichen hunting grounds near Glen Coe and were clambering around old mossy woods near a disused crypt when we found a few good patches of them hiding in amongst the fallen autumn leaves. Luckily with our edible mushroom expert to hand we were able to confirm they were the real thing and gathered a few dozen to take home with us.

Chantarelles have to be one of the prettiest mushrooms there are. So brightly coloured, they can be hard to spot as they are alsmost the same colour as the leaves they hide in. They have a very distinctive fruity smell, like apricots. There are a few other distinguishing features, the gills separate into twos or three and occasionally rejoin, I believe doesn’t the false chantarelle gills ever rejoin. They also are a more irregular shape, although until I’ve seen a false one I’m not sure how obvious this would be.

As yet I’m still cooking the wild mushrooms I find simply so I can understand what they taste like before complicating things with sauces, so I just fried these in a bit of butter with salt and pepper and had them on scrabled eggs on toast. I believe they would be excellant for a risotto, or stroganoff, so next time I’ll give that a go. Hopefully we’ll find some more soon, although down on the Wirral we’re still experiencing a mushroom drought. I’m sure they’ll come soon. There’s been weeks of dry weather, but after I mentioned the other day I was hoping for rain to bring mushrooms it came. In fact it’s been pouring down a good few times a day ever since. I’ve heard this is ideal to set them off, so fingers crossed.

This is the final post from the UK tour, things will be back to normal from here, less of the random traveling waffle and a return to recipes and rants. Colonsay was the last island stop on our tour, we had intended to go further, but the WWOOFing season finishes earlier than we expected, we couldn’t find anywhere to take us on the whole western side of Scotland except for one week at the very end of September meaning we’d have a two week gap to fill. Unexpected stays at B+Bs, and a lack of wwoofing opportunities meant we were flying well over our budget, the weather just seemed to get worse and worse, we kept getting attacked by ticks, both picked up a nasty cough and decided something was trying to tell us to go home. Only a little earlier than planned and it means hopefully Andy should be able to get his thesis written before the new year, so it’s all good. Plus it’s been sunny down here. Hurrah! Although all I want it to do now is rain so the mushrooms will come, a woods we’d visited a while ago which was full of them was completely dried out, nothing but a few battered old russulas and big squishy brown things to be found. Boooo. Seems silly to be wanting rain after cursing it for weeks.

Anyway so Colonsay, absolutely lovely place. It’s quite small, so you can really feel at home after just a couple of days. We were wild camping (there are no official camp sites there at all) and the first night camped at Kiloran Bay at the top of the island, which is absolutely beautiful. A huge golden sandy beach, crazy cave systems which go on for miles and we only saw two other people there. I spotted a pond of watercress, which I’ve never seen growing wild before. We tried a bit which was very tasty, so spicy I don’t think you could eat too much of it, but it was incredible to see it all there. Considering you’d usually pay a pound for a small bag, here was a huge pond full of hundreds of pounds worth of the stuff. We also found some mint by the river that runs down to the beach and used some to make some mint tea. Something strange seemed to happen to us after we’d drank it, Andy was telling strangers to drive their car through the sea and we both got a bit giddy, kept giggling and pulling faces at each other. Very odd, good fun though. Must be special mint, maybe it’s like when you give cats cat nip.

watercress pond