I have twin passions, both are closely related. One, as described yesterday is my garden and the other is food. I love food (as my size surely testifies) and I am evangelistic about "real food". I really don't want to eat pre-processed foods and never did, not even before reading books like "Eat your heart out" or "The vitamin murders". These books have just strengthened my resolve to cook from fresh ingredients and to try to always buy packet foods that only contain ingredients that I'd recognise from my own store cupboard.
So, if a pack has hydrogenated vegetable oil or E-whatever or inverted sugar syrup or aspartime or any other man-made "nasty" then it doesn't find its way into my supermarket trolley.
Of course this means that "convenience food" is almost impossible to buy. The only company whose products I trust totally is Covent Garden Soups. Read their ingredients and compare them to the wannabes in similar packs on shelves and in theirs you'll see real ingredients and in the wannabes you'll see toxic chemicals.
So, I cook.
I cook from raw ingredients and our diet is better for it. I make pasta from eggs and flour, bread from flour, yeast, sugar and water and sauces from fresh, seasonal vegetables and local cheeses.
Why then do I not "love" any of the telly chefs in the way I love Monty and Geoff? I don't know. I admire many of them - you can't fail with a Delia Smith recipe even though I'm appalled at her latest series, Jamie Oliver has some great ideas and is good at the simple stuff and Gary Rhodes is clearly a terrific chef, despite his somewhat dubious hairdo! Others I can't abide - you can put James Martin and Anthony Warrell-Thompson in this category. To me, they are the Alan Titchmarshes of the food world - they seem more interested in celebrity status than food.
So, this morning, when I was woken up by Antonio Carluccio using the phrase MOF, MOF on Radio 4, it stuck in my mind. Maximum of Flavour, Minimum of Fuss - yep, a good philosophy and a good way to remember not to get too clever in your food preparation, even if the English is a bit Italian if you see what I mean!
Depression has caused my passion for this principle to grow because I've been reading scary "save the planet" books although Claz, who has just gone home after a few lovely days here, says that I need to ditch them in favour of pulp fiction because I'm getting so disturbed by what I read. She's probably right so I'm going to go out and buy a pile of chick lit books and immerse myself in nonsense for a few weeks.
I've learned that food for the soul isn't always in the places you expect and that sometimes the "good and worthy" can be dangerous when you're already struggling to find a way out of the abyss.
Showing posts with label soul food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label soul food. Show all posts
Friday, 11 July 2008
Tuesday, 1 July 2008
Two nerdy anoraks!
....This post is made with my heartfelt apologies to Colin who has just been "outed" as a nerdy anorak alongside myself!
My dear friend Colin has spent the long weekend with us. Both Colin and I have been in need of nurture and kindness. You know at least a little about my reasons (and you can see more at www.pbase.com/lindarocks/2008 ) but Colin too has had a rotten year, in many senses much more so than my own trials and tribulations - his Dad died a few weeks ago, following a short but traumatic illness so he's understandably very low too.
Colin confessed to being a "borderline trainspotter" to me at the start of the weekend so I decided to give him some soul food and in the process some for me too by taking us off on a jaunt on the Tamar Valley train line. We drove to Gunnislake (for those who don't know this place, it's a town just inside Cornwall on the Western bank of the Tamar river, the border between the two counties), then we boarded a train that has a route that only the most cold-hearted of souls would consider anything less than spectacular. It trundles quite slowly along a track that hugs the side of the river, crossing the Tamar and the Tavy rivers, before arriving in Plymouth, the famous start-point of the Pilgrim Fathers journey to America. It's a beautiful, south-facing river valley that was once one of the country's premier fruit-producing regions. Sadly that is no longer the case, with most of our orchards having been grubbed up so the land could be planted with potatoes and grain in the Second World War. Apparently, it was once a popular holiday destination for Victorian people to come and see the fruit trees in bloom in the spring.
I was delighted to see a couple of small orchards still in existance and there are a few cherry and apple trees in hedgerows too. My own mini-orchard project was spawned from reading about this historical fact. At the moment, our mini-orchard contains two different Cornish apples, a Pigs Nose (no, I don't know why it's called that, all I can do is speculate and wait to see when it starts to bear fruit) and a Duke of Cornwall, which was the variety I found whose origins are closest to our home. The Duke of Cornwall was bred by a Tamar Valley breeder in a little village called St Dominick, very close to our own home. We've also got a Cornish Plum (Kea), a Devon Mazzard Cherry now planted alongside a heritage greengage and a purely self-indulgent Doyenne du Comice Pear, all of which were planted in the autumn of 2007.
Next winter, I intend to augment these trees with a few more Cornish plums, cherries and apples, along with a quince, medlar and blackthorn. They will sit alongside the sixty native trees we've also planted which are a mix of nuts (Cobs, Walnuts and Sweet Chestnuts) and other local trees.
Anyway, I digress. Colin and I spent a happy afternoon wandering around Plymouth's harbour area and its shopping centre, indulging in an al fresco lunch and an hour browsing the shelves of Waterstones. I reckon browsing bookshops is as good-a-tonic as it's possible to find. We wandered back to the station laden with books and both feeling extremely happy that we'd fed each other some quality peaceful time and indulged in our joint passions for trains and books.
This "being kind to myself" regime is bringing me quiet satisfaction and calm. I need both of these things to heal the rift in my psyche that depression has caused.
Post script: I was chuffed to bits to hear that a few of my pbase readers have found their way here already so hi to Teresa and to Karen (Karen - sorry I made you cry!).
My dear friend Colin has spent the long weekend with us. Both Colin and I have been in need of nurture and kindness. You know at least a little about my reasons (and you can see more at www.pbase.com/lindarocks/2008 ) but Colin too has had a rotten year, in many senses much more so than my own trials and tribulations - his Dad died a few weeks ago, following a short but traumatic illness so he's understandably very low too.
Colin confessed to being a "borderline trainspotter" to me at the start of the weekend so I decided to give him some soul food and in the process some for me too by taking us off on a jaunt on the Tamar Valley train line. We drove to Gunnislake (for those who don't know this place, it's a town just inside Cornwall on the Western bank of the Tamar river, the border between the two counties), then we boarded a train that has a route that only the most cold-hearted of souls would consider anything less than spectacular. It trundles quite slowly along a track that hugs the side of the river, crossing the Tamar and the Tavy rivers, before arriving in Plymouth, the famous start-point of the Pilgrim Fathers journey to America. It's a beautiful, south-facing river valley that was once one of the country's premier fruit-producing regions. Sadly that is no longer the case, with most of our orchards having been grubbed up so the land could be planted with potatoes and grain in the Second World War. Apparently, it was once a popular holiday destination for Victorian people to come and see the fruit trees in bloom in the spring.
I was delighted to see a couple of small orchards still in existance and there are a few cherry and apple trees in hedgerows too. My own mini-orchard project was spawned from reading about this historical fact. At the moment, our mini-orchard contains two different Cornish apples, a Pigs Nose (no, I don't know why it's called that, all I can do is speculate and wait to see when it starts to bear fruit) and a Duke of Cornwall, which was the variety I found whose origins are closest to our home. The Duke of Cornwall was bred by a Tamar Valley breeder in a little village called St Dominick, very close to our own home. We've also got a Cornish Plum (Kea), a Devon Mazzard Cherry now planted alongside a heritage greengage and a purely self-indulgent Doyenne du Comice Pear, all of which were planted in the autumn of 2007.
Next winter, I intend to augment these trees with a few more Cornish plums, cherries and apples, along with a quince, medlar and blackthorn. They will sit alongside the sixty native trees we've also planted which are a mix of nuts (Cobs, Walnuts and Sweet Chestnuts) and other local trees.
Anyway, I digress. Colin and I spent a happy afternoon wandering around Plymouth's harbour area and its shopping centre, indulging in an al fresco lunch and an hour browsing the shelves of Waterstones. I reckon browsing bookshops is as good-a-tonic as it's possible to find. We wandered back to the station laden with books and both feeling extremely happy that we'd fed each other some quality peaceful time and indulged in our joint passions for trains and books.
This "being kind to myself" regime is bringing me quiet satisfaction and calm. I need both of these things to heal the rift in my psyche that depression has caused.
Post script: I was chuffed to bits to hear that a few of my pbase readers have found their way here already so hi to Teresa and to Karen (Karen - sorry I made you cry!).
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