Beth Eats Local

They say you should listen to your body because it will tell you what it needs.  Recently, my body has been telling me that it needs to  go on long country walks and read books about explorers.  What it hasn’t needed to do (it was very clear about this) was look at a computer.  No posts for a while then.   Wait a second…  my body just told me that- as of right now - it needs to be a responsible local food correspondent and that it will edit the two videos sitting on my laptop and put them up as soon as possible.  I’m not sure if someone coerced my body into saying this… 

I spent last week at my parent’s house in Lancashire celebrating my mum’s birthday.   Actually, I spent last week doing the aforementioned walking and reading, but told her that these were valuable ways of celebrating 60 years of someone’s life.  This was the longest time that I had spent away from home since the project started and I was expecting it to be more of a challenge than it turned out to be.  The rules that I have set myself state that I can take food from Brighton with me if I travel somewhere, but that I should try to source food from within 100 miles of where I’m going whenever possible.   Obviously, I had big plans to scour the internet for sources of Lancashire food, but time – my nemesis – galloped away from me and I found myself on the eve of my departure with little idea of what I was going to eat while I was up there.

Luckily, my mother had not been so indolent.  She had been to a local farm shop and found me honey, flour, and cheese (which I didn’t eat for reasons I’ll discuss in another post).  The dairy farm at the back of the house (literally at the back.  As a child, I would go to school with clothes that stunk of cow shit from being on the line on the wrong day) provided milk and eggs.  The rest of my diet was not so much 100 mile as 10 metre – veg from my mum’s garden.  I brought butter up from Brighton though it went rancid before I could eat it.  It usually does this and I usually eat it, but somehow, in my parent’s house, without the funny smells and fruit flies that I am used to, it seemed gross.  

My mum’s new hobby also provided some sustenance.  She’s volunteering for the BTCV at Haigh Hall near Wigan.  They’re getting the old walled kitchen garden productive again.  It provided me with both a pocket full of raspberries and a fix for my secret garden fetish.   I was pleased to note that they had planted a medlar tree.  As well as secret gardens, I have also become fixated on medlars despite not having ever tried one.   I was also pleased to note that I knew the difference between borage and comfrey when my mum didn’t.  Competitive?  Moi?

It’s a good job that my parents like me as I spent my week filling their house with strange smells and unknown substances.  They weren’t pleased when I dribbled sourdough starter all over the kitchen, despite me protesting that it was a joyful union of wild yeasts and bacteria.  It’s a good job that I didn’t take my ‘vinegar’ with me.   This vinegar is cider that I left for a month on the window ledge in a bottle.  At first all that happened was that it attracted suicidal fruit flies and I had to scoop them out and attach a tissue to the top of the bottle with an elastic band.  After that problem was solved, a thick gloopy goo started forming inside the bottle.  It looked utterly gross and I started to think that I was going to have to throw it away.  Instead of doing that, I swallowed down the bit of sick that was rising in my throat and sieved the goop out of it.  When I tasted what was left I had, would you believe it, vinegar!  A little research on the internet has told me that the gross gloop is in fact called ‘mother of vinegar’ and is a ‘form of cellulose and acetic acid bacteria that develops on fermenting alcoholic liquids’ (thanks wikipedia!).   I did it!  I am a successful vinegar maker.  Now all that I need to do is read the book I have just inherited called ‘Vinegar: Nature’s Secret Weapon’.  It also features two other chapters entitled, ‘Honey: Nature’s secret weapon II’ and ‘Garlic: Nature’s secret weapon III’.   Oh, and I also need to use the bumper crop of apples I am expecting this autumn to create more than a teacupful of this elixir.  Salad dressings, you are now within my reach…