Wild, natural plants and fungi can be dangerous, potentially causing immediate harm and even death. Read Poisonous Plants and Fungi to know what to avoid.
Posted in food from the wild | Also tagged edible, foraging, fruit, fungi, health, mushrooms, number, plants, poisonous, toxic, wild food |
The UK government is at last waking from its long complacent slumbers and asking serious questions about food security. After enjoying an abundant supply of ever cheaper food for the last five decades, the developed world is beginning to realise that we can’t take the essentials of life for granted indefinitely.
Posted in food in politics, food matters | Also tagged agriculture, British, crops, defra, environment, food security, fruit, london, meat, resilience, Sustainable food |
Opportunties and approaches for growing food for London in or near the city, from domestic production, allotments and transformed public spaces to community food groups, city farms and the surviving working farms on London’s fringe.
Absence Still from Our Daily Bread – spraying sunflowers Loyal visitors to the Tracing Paper will have noticed a distinct lack of activity over most of the last year. I’m ashamed that I only just avoided a clear six month hiatus with a (very) brief post about the superb documentary on the modern food industry, [...]
Early August and the harvest of the winter sown oilseed rape (Brassica napus, its edible varieties also known as canola) is well underway in the UK. Rape is combine harvested to yield its tiny black seeds, destined to be crushed to produce oil for food, industrial uses and, increasingly, biofuels. A growing number of farmers are cold pressing the seeds themselves to produce extra-virgin rapeseed oil.
An essential field guide for anyone who wants to know about arable crops: their identification, cultivation, history and uses.
Less well known than ceps or morels, St George’s are amongst the finest wild mushrooms, with a firm texture, appealing mealy smell and distinctive flavour.
One of England’s forgotten vegetables, Alexanders are at their most magnificent in April, their stately stems thick and tall on verges and grassy banks. Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum) love the coast and often grow within a few miles of the sea, though isolated patches thrive even far inland. Cut and steam the stems and buds, ideally just before the flowers have opened, for an absolutely distinctive, even peculiar, vegetable, a little like celery or parsley.
The intense gold of cold-pressed rapeseed oil (otherwise known as canola oil) reflects the yellowing spring fields of oilseed rape. A few farmers are now producing distinctive cold-pressed rapeseed oil, with clear provenance, from their oilseed crops, but the oil itself deserves more attention.
No crop dominates the British arable landscape quite like rapeseed (Brassica napus, also known as oilseed rape, the edible variety as canola). From the very beginning of April, previously mundane green fields of this member of the cabbage and turnip family suddenly erupt into luminous flower. Across lowland England, great swathes of countryside are painted [...]
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