Tree of happiness award

Just having a bit of a spring clean of my computer, and found, hidden away, from long ago, a lovely award given to me by Top Veg, the Tree of Happiness.

You have to list six things that make you happy:

1. all my family sitting round the kitchen table eating a delicious dinner
   
2. tulips
3. reading - a good book, a poem, a recipe, the newspaper ... not too keen on the cereal packet unless there really isn't anything else
4. the warmth of the fire seen through the window of the woodburner, the smell of apple logs burning
   
5. a delivery of fresh organic vegetables and milk from Riverford ... seasonal, delicious, and no need to go to the supermarket
6. winter flowers - snowdrops, the scent of witch hazel, sarcococcus, iris reticulata ... all of them tiny, fleeting yet intense pleasures

And six blogs, new-ish to me, which make me happy, & which get my Tree of Happiness award:

• A Pot of Tea and a Biscuit - does what it says on the tin
  
• Eco-Gites of Lenault in Calvados - an English family in France
  
• Cabbage Tree Farm - on the road to self-sufficiency
  
• Glanbrydan - cooking for the farmers' market
  
• La Recette du Jour - another expat in France
  
• The Sunday Roaster - cooking on his woodburner

Thanks, Top Veg!


PS Bridget, can't find your email address, but I know you'll find this anyway!

Blowing my own trumpet

The opportunity to blow my own trumpet today is too good to miss: my pasta with braised lentils - the one my lentil-hating husband liked - has been voted one of the best of 2007 ... it's a wonderful site, links to dozens of really good recipes from all over the world, and to lots of blogs both familiar and unfamiliar. I'm honoured - and proud - to find myself amongst them ... so THANK YOU Zorra, for all the work involved in hosting, and thank you, too, to whoever nominated me.

Happy New Year!

Best blogs of the year

It's nomination time ... and there aren't enough categories, a clutch of my favourite blogs just couldn't be squeezed in to the 2007 Food Blog Awards

Here's a list of blogs that make my day ...

Tanna, Hannah, Sophie, Pomiane, Sue, Celia, Fiona

And here are my nominations:

Best food blog, chef: The Slow Cook
Best food blog, city: Figs Olive Wine
Best food blog, family: Little Foodies
Best food blog, photography: Lucullian Delights
Best food blog, rural: Kate Hill's French Adventure
Best food blog, theme: Garlic Breath
Best food blog, writing: Bread Water Salt Oil
Best new food blog: Book the Cook
Food blog of the year: A Year in Bread

All of these are worth putting in your feed reader, worth exploring. Some of these bloggers I'm proud to call my friends.

Veg box awards

If you have a veg box, here's a link to the 2007 Veg Box Awards.

If you don't have a veg box, you may be interested to know that Guy Watson of Riverford has calculated that his boxes are often cheaper than the same selection of non-organic supermarket vegetables: last week's comparison with Tesco/Sainsbury/Waitrose showed you'd be out of pocket by 27% for a minibox, 72% for a small box, 55% for the medium, 74% for the large, 40% for the fruit and veg, 42% for the summer box. All this before we try to put a value on the freshness and quality. Which is light years ahead of anything I've ever bought in a supermarket.

Lots of people say they don't subscribe to a veg scheme because they don't know how to cook unfamiliar vegetables ... here are links to recipes at Riverford and the awards. But there's not much that's unfamiliar - and that which seems unusual often isn't really: I"m thinking particularly of kohl rabi, which I would never have bought because it looks so weird, and which supermarkets don't sell because it's the ugly duckling of the cabbage family .... but the taste is sublime, like a really fine and refined broccoli - and last year, I had a note from a man who drives long distances to stock up on kohl rabi during the season.

If you don't have a veg box, here's a good reason not often cited: it puts vegetables at the heart of every meal ... you think, what shall we have with the butternut?

Oh yes, and someone said to me that subscribing to a big scheme like Riverford was as bad as using a supermarket. No, no, no and no again. One, the local schemes round here were all oversubscribed when I tried to sign up. Two, Riverford doesn't airfreight anything. Three, it is much much more environmentally friendly to have one van doing a regular round to, say 20 customers, than to have those 20 customers all get into their cars and go to the supermarket. Four, Riverford grow vegetables all over the country. Five, everything is seasonal and organic. Six ... well, you get the picture.

Guess who I've voted for!


I'll get off my hobbyhorse now ... but DO give it serious consideration

Meme: change begins at home

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
Edmund Burke

Melanie at Bean Sprouts has very kindly nominated me for her new Change Begins at Home award. Those who live with me know full well how little I deserve this ... I have long thought that my blog makes me sound a lot further down the road than I really am. Smug, even (at breakfast this morning I read in a newspaper someone describe baking bread as a smug activity ... now I am fretting, but I suspect I should really be giving up reading newspapers).

I nominate Riana at Garlic Breath, whose year of no shopping has evolved into a slow food life ... find the post about the melons she scrumped, it's very funny ... and the one about the death of her father-in-law, no longer at the head of the table, which I found moving because it was so understated.

The award rules are:

1. Nominate three bloggers who epitomise "Change begins at home"

2. Link back to the person who nominated you, and link back to Melanie's original explanation of Change begins at home

3. When you receive the award, you may display the "Change begins at home" button on your blog.

Thanks, Melanie!