Becky Bakes…

Honestly, I don’t see how we can manage that. The reason this recommendation has arisen is because the quality of our soil is so poor that the nutritional content of our fruits and vegetables is much lower than ever before. It seems that whilst many people watch videos and programmes about cooking, not many of the younger generation actually cook from scratch. I’d love to proven wrong about that, if I’m honest, having spent so long teaching Food Tech, but there we are. So, back to ten a day. To achieve that we need to be making vegetable soup, ratatouille and roasting vegetables alongside our sausages, for example. Then there’s fruit salad, crumbles and pies. How realistic is it when fast food is the order of the day?

For many years we’ve implored everyone to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables every day. All the pupils who passed through my classroom had those three words drilled into them ! Now it seems that unfortunately, most people in the UK probably only eat two or three portions. We know we need the vitamins, fibre and minerals provided by the colourful variety available to us, but whilst knowing their importance , we just don’t eat enough. In the news this week we learnt that our intake should increase to ten portions. I’ve recently been making Ratatouille to be boxed as two servings and frozen for later. The mixture of peppers, aubergines, courgettes and tomatoes with onions and garlic are such a good way of getting a variety of veggies. But we also need to know what a portion looks like – it’s as much as you can hold in your hand. Also it’s worth knowing that potatoes don’t count! This year they have been harvested early as the extreme heat and lack of rainfall means they’ve stopped growing earlier in the season, so they’ll be smaller than usual. As far as fruits are concerned ,berries are very valuable, so it’s a good idea to snack on blueberries, raspberries or strawberries to increase our intake. Happy eating!

We spent several lovely days in Somerset recently, meeting up with some of our favourite young people. I always feel we’re nearly there when we pass Stonehenge and was surprised to see so many caravans parked nearby but of course the solstice would have been a draw. Once Glastonbury Tor came into view I knew we’d arrived. Big mistake. The hotel was in the middle of nowhere, down the narrowest lanes I’ve ever encountered – not fun when you meet an eighteen wheel milk tanker, or a massive tractor. Anyway, the chef was excellent so we had a very good meal. Wells was beautiful, with babbling streams running down the sides of the roads, much to the delight of the pigeons. A little retail therapy was deemed essential, of course! We also had a magnificent steam train journey from Taunton to Minehead, waving to all the photographers in the fields as we trundled by. Lunch at the Crazy Golf was a risk but proved to be delicious and the return journey was at breakneck speed as we were late! What an adventure… 😉

There seem to have been quite a number of visitors to our little seaside town this week. Some of them have come with a party by coach and others just to have a day out, checking a place for the first time. Many of them are surprised that there’s more than the port, but a bustling main street too. We have lost important shops over the years, most significantly M&S, but also our banks and all but one building society. In spite of that, we still have many independent retailers – a delightful bookshop as well as a labyrinthine secondhand bookshop, a homestyle/giftshop, vintage and antiques as well as places to buy records, cd’s, textiles, yarn, cards, jewellery, fantasy collectables and much more. Let’s not forget our amazing butchers, bakers and greengrocers too. The challenge they all face is from internet shopping, “armchair buying”. That doesn’t help any of our “indies” who might have whole days without a customer. So please go shopping, in person and make life a little easier for those who have to pay rent, rates, utilities and wages 😉

Well, on the gnocchi front I’m afraid to admit defeat. I’ve tried several ways to make them more palatable and even hubby admits it’s not worth the bother! To get it really crisp you need to use a lot of butter in the frying pan, with a high temperature. Adding olive oil prevents the butter burning, but my apron looked very spattered by the time I’d finished 😉 One variation had paprika sprinkled on top which improved the flavour but still the texture was unpleasant. I’ve drawn a line under those blighters! Today we’re going to film another easy mid-week chicken dish and hope to have it uploaded soon. It has just 5 ingredients and is something I’ve been making for many years as it’s a favourite of all the family (healthy too). We had a Friday Foray to buy plants this morning and I’m afraid I experienced the worst cheese scone I’ve ever eaten from the bustling coffee shop. Great plants though. There should be a change to the seasonal page on the website too – obviously Autumn inspired, probably featuring all things apple related ❤

This is a date I will never ignore. We were living in Lexington, South Carolina, hubby was working in Manchester, New Hampshire. I’d taken the children to school and was helping an ex-pat friend make fabric pelmets for the tops of the windows in her rented house. Standing at the ironing board, the phone rang. It was her husband “Put the news on” I could hear him shout. She did and we watched in absolute horror as the second plane ploughed into the tower. She screamed. Their son was on a flight from England, was that his plane? She spent hours trying to find out where he was and thankfully his flight had been diverted to somewhere far away and she drove to collect him much later that day. I went home and turned on the TV. A ticker ran across the screen with updates of the school plans. They were locked down until it was considered safe to reopen, then every child came out of the door holding the hand of an adult – lunch ladies,teachers, caretakers, office staff, the school nurse… every one held on to at least two children. I remember phoning my parents in England, but I could barely talk. A terrible day.

Gnocchi ! (Pronounced “nyockey”) Try as I might, I find it hard to enjoy gnocchi – it’s that soggy, sticky texture that leaves me cold. However, recently I’ve come across a couple of recipes which looked quite appealing. So a trip to one of our bigger supermarkets meant I could investigate the range and found a brand which has to be fried, surprisingly, as well as the standard type which can be quickly boiled or roasted. “Rana” do various flavours as well as some with stuffing but I chose the plain ones so I could compare results. Frying “Rana” was disappointing as each little dumpling was very chewy and tough. Roasting the ordinary type was better but still not crispy even though I added olive oil with chopped peppers and onions. So my next experiment will be frying basic gnocchi with the addition of butter. Interesting but inconclusive so far. I’ll keep you posted – I’m hoping the results are worthy of a video 😉

There was very little in my diary when I checked last Sunday. That didn’t last long as we’d accumulated quite a number of items which needed to be delivered to one of our young friends – in Norwich. Always a treat to visit Norfolk and Monday turned out to be the day for a meander northward. Lunch was in a fascinating building which had been a bank in its’ previous life. The menu was quite small but we enjoyed a delicious lunch, strangely the real highlight came in the vault where we found a private dining room within an enormous safe door. The staircase walls were covered in hundreds of lovely pictures too, worth a visit for sure. Suddenly we needed to catch up with another of our young friends so Wednesday meant a trip to Harpenden for dinner which was quite an experience as we lived there many years ago. I kept expecting to see a familiar face but after thirty two years I’m not sure I would have recognised anyone 😉 A quiet weekend ahead? Who knows !

Obviously we’re all delighted to have seen some rain in our corner of East Anglia, but we need more please – the grass still looks like sand, just the weeds are green 😉 More worrying, though, has been the revelations about Salmonella in imported eggs – again. The eggs in our big supermarkets come from UK farmers whose flocks are certified as vaccinated and today I picked up a box with white shells which doesn’t bother me at all because, regardless of shell colour (brown, white, pink, blue, green etc) once cracked open the food value is the same. The eggs we import from Poland, Ukraine and elsewhere, which incredibly appear to be from hens which are not vaccinated, are used in mass catering environments. Which ones you might ask. Well, it’s schools, hospitals, prisons (and who knows where else), exactly the places where Salmonella is definitely not wanted. I once had a pupil whose chef-father made chocolate mousse with eggs from his own hens (unvaccinated) the old fashioned way – melted chocolate mixed with raw egg yolks then the whisked white folded in. She was very poorly and off school for several weeks, not ideal for anyone! Today we are being advised that lightly cooked eggs should be avoided when eating outside the home as the source of those eggs may be unknown. Stay safe ❤

Having had another week of high temperatures, it’s really difficult to think about cooking. Yesterday afternoon I needed to make cake for the Friday delivery to the beleagured shopkeepers, but it had to be something quick and easy, requiring very little thought. My immediate thought was Lemon Drizzle Cake as there would be enough for the ten recipients with just a slice left over for hubby, who sometimes misses out. We’re certainly eating plenty of salad in this extreme heat – the lettuce, rocket and pea shoots are all doing well. In the greenhouse the tomatoes, however, are a different story with some of them just not fruiting. The beef steak ones are fine, but it’s the ordinary ones – Moneymaker and Gardeners Delight – that are looking very sad. Even the peppers are struggling with no flowers yet. Never mind, I plan to do a rain dance this evening, so watch out 😉