Pets, Vets & Unexpected cherries

So I know I shouldn't let him, but the dog really loves running through the wheat. And he seems to merely pass through it rather than crashing it all down. The only evidence he is there is a ripple passing over the top as he choffles through at speed, nose down hot on the scent - any scent. The problem with stopping him will be forgoing the look of utter joy that is a springer spaniel 'wheat sharking'. But there we go. I know I shouldn't be letting him do it.

My internal tussle came to a head yesterday after I spent time I didn't have and £50 (ditto) at the vets having a rather viscious spike of grass removed from the dog's ear, so this morning, we avoided the wheat and headed up to a gorgeous little plantation of trees that sits up on the Downs to the north of the village.

Well, it's beautiful up there, shady, cool, green. I go up there in all seasons and it's wonderful at any time, but seemed particularly lush this morning, not least because I stumbled upon cherries. Now, I know that there are cherry trees up there - crab apples too - but usually I see them in the early stages of fruiting, and then they are all gone - the birds have them. I reckon the birds must have sunstroke this year, because there were hundreds - ripe and luscious. Far too good to pass up.

I might not have had a conventional picking receptacle, but being the good, responsible dog owner that I am, I had dog poo bags (unused), and while the dog took advantage of the shade, I picked. I only stopped because I thought I'd better save one bag, you know, just in case...


So 1.5 kilos later, and I am a happy Recipe Junkie. My head is reeling with the thrill of the forage, and the prospect of what I might make with my pickings - and of course, I will need to go back and try and get some more later on.

I'm thinking jam, clafoutis, cherry bakewells, cherry vodka - so much choice...

What should I make?

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Delicious Marshmallows from Little Delicious - A Review

I'll cut straight to the chase. Marshmallows are not where I tend to go for my sugar fix. I'm more of a dedicated chocolate kind of gal. But all that might be about to change.

You see up to now, I have only know marshmallows of the pink and white kind. The kind you burn your mouth on after over-enthusiastic campfire toasting; the kind that don't really taste of that much other than sweet (or burnt if you eat them how I tend to - see above); the kind that are pretty good with chocolate in S'mores; the kind that you can play 'Chubby Bunnies' with (Google it. And buy in the wherewithal for mojitos. That's all I'll say on the matter).

But all that may be about to change. I have been enchanted some truly delicious marshmallows, made in Southampton, not that far away from me. 

They are heavenly. 

They are Little Delicious handmade gourmet marshmallows.

Lin at Little Delicious sent me  raspberry, passion fruit and caramel peanut heaven to try.

Everything about these is luscious. They taste of the flavours they are supposed to taste of - the raspberry ones in particular, but there was no fake flavour tang knocking around in any of them. And while my menfolk weren't so keen on the caramel peanut heaven variety, Pink and I were more than happy to finish off their share. 

They didn't last long, I have to tell you.

Divine light mouthfuls of loveliness. These are not marshmallows to be toasted, combined with chocolate and crackers or ... (no I told you - Google 'chubby bunnies'. I'm NOT going to repeat it here). These are marshmallows to be savoured. After dinner marshmallows. Real treats.

And the good news is that while they are stocked in a few Hampshire outlets, you can buy them on line. Oh yes. And in more flavours, too - lemon meringue, coconut, minto choc chip to name a few. But if you want a recommendation, well, I commend the 3 flavours I tried to you. 

Chocolate. my friend, your days are numbered...



_________________________________________________________________
Oh yes! Lucky me - I was sent the marshmallows by Little Delicious to review, but I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions expressed here are my own. Try them, you'll understand.

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The Parsonage Farm Spring Market - see what's out there!

One of the things I love about where we live is that there seems to be such a vibrant local food scene. Producers everywhere, support from a Community Interest Company, Hampshire Fare, which offers PR advice and networking opportunities for local food businesses (not to mention organising a huge food festival in July), famers markets, and, increasingly, smaller but no less important events bringing together food, drink and craft. It's a really great way of highlighting what's going on in the local area, and encourages people to think about whether they could get what they need from somewhere other than the supermarket or the internet. 

My friend, Peter Lane (he of the amazing pork pies) told me about the Parsonage Farm Spring Market when I met him a few months ago, and the date went straight into my diary. Parsonage Farm is, in their own words "a family-run business offering a warm and friendly service to all. We sell local, quality meat from animals raised on-site using natural, environmentally balanced and sensitive farming practices." Not only is the meat reared in a great environment, it is slaughtered at the Laverstoke Farm Abbatoir which is just down the road, and means that the animals hardly travel any distance when they finally get the chop. It's where Peter gets most of his meat from, and when you visit the farm and see the quality of the meat on offer, you can see why.

Not only do they sell their own meat, though, they have diversified in a number of ways, one of which are regular markets. Now, of course, it would have been rude not to check out their meat first (Peter having sold out of his pies by the time we actually managed to get to the market). We visited the butchers, where Mike the butcher was demonstrating his skills.

Mike demonstrating his butchery skills

Not only do they sell fresh meat, they have recently branched out in to charcuterie, and let me tell you, if you are into that sort of thing, it really is utterly delicious. We tried fennel & garlic, coriander, and red wine & garlic and couldn't decide between them so bought a bit of each one while we were there. Not that they will last long...

It wasn't just about the meat though. There were lots of fantastic foodie and crafty stalls and demonstrations going on. In particular, I was interested in The Hampshire Jam and Chutney Company . The stall was run by Sue Rockhill, and the jams and chutneys - well, sometimes I wonder why I bother sweating over my own jam pan...

I couldn't resist a pot of 'Dumpsie Dearie' jam made to an old Herefordshire recipe (with Hampshire ingredients), as it happens. Apparently if it had blackberries in it, it would be called High Dumpsie Deary jam. Fantastic name. Fantastic jam.

As you can imagine, I always have more than a passing interest in any cake stalls that are knocking around, and the Blackberry Cottage stall caught my eye. Not just cake, cake with hidden ingredients: beetroot, courgette, carrot, swede, spinach (yes, I am here to tell you that the spinach brownie I tasted was delicious). Alas, there was no swede cake left, but a beetroot chocolate loaf made a very excellent birthday cake for me to share with some friends

What's even more brilliant, there's a book coming out soon, so all those unloved veg box swede can be turned into more than mash or soup.

I will be looking out for that one.

While I was dribbling my way around the food stalls, the Husband and the kids were drawn magnetically to the woodturning skills of Chris Allen

While the children (and the Husband) were fascinated watching the man at work, I was talking traveller bouquets with his willing assistant. You can't really see them very well in the photo (on the shelving, in the pic above), but these are beautifully crafted wooden bouquets traditionally made by the traveller community from pieces of wood, peeling back thin strips in the same way as you might curl a ribbon when wrapping a present. There's a better pic on Oneday Woodcraft's facebook page. Simple and beautiful. I decided in the end to buy myself a spurtle, though. For porridge, and possibly rolling out pastry, although Pink thought it might have its place as a defensive weapon...

Finally, after all that nibbling and chatting, what better way to quench ones thirst than with a quirky cup of coffee. Actually the coffee wasn't at all quirky, but the cafe was. Allow me to present Colonel Grumpy's Coffee Bus:

Like everyone I spoke to at the fair, 'Colonel and Mrs Grumpy' have a story - and what a story! 

Colonel Grumpy (I forgot to ask his real name, so I shall assume the moniker he has assigned himself!) ended a distinguished career in the army spending 5 years as the Defence attache to Guatemala. Not wanting to return to a life of boredom, and wanting to do something to help the people of Central America, they bought an old bus from Indiana (yes, in the USA) on Ebay (yes really!), drove her to Guatemala, where she was renovated before they shipped her back to the UK where she now serves as a travelling coffee shop, selling Guatemalan coffee and crafts.


It was a fantastic afternoon - and so inspiring, talking to people so passionate about their products and what they do, be it a sports therapist now making and selling cakes after a chance conversation with a client whose daughter wouldn't eat veg, to a couple having a high old time selling coffee from a refurbished bus and raising awareness of Central American issues.

More importantly, though, coming to an event like this makes you appreciate what is on offer locally. As I get more and more insight into what's available around us, it has occurred to me that the supermarkets have achieved the greatest PR stunt ever - convincing us that we should buy from them rather than from our local suppliers. There is some fantastic produce out there (not just food, I hasten to add) and it is actually pretty easy to get your hands on it - local producers will deliver, or you can find their produce for sale in smaller retailers or from more regular markets. The vicious circle of the supermarket is that we never get the chance to see what is actually out there locally, so we carry on buying from them.  

I would be lying if I said that I have stopped buying from the supermarket. I don't always have access to a car, and a delivery of some products in some cases, where quality isn't necessarily an issue, does make economic and practical sense. However, with the help of organisations like Big Barn - with its handy postcode finder to show you where you can buy local produce, some investigations of my own and tip offs from friends, I am finding it much easier to buy my fresh food locally - and if the produce itself isn't local then using local shops to source it: fish for example, which I now buy through the butcher.

The thing is, that however much this Spring Market conjures up some kind of rural idyll, some kind of 'olde Englande', and however enjoyable it is to mooch around and taste a few things here and there, there's a serious point behind it. If there's something similar in your area, I'd really encourage you to make the effort to go - you might discover a whole world of amazing stuff being produced on your doorstep - be it meat, jam  - or spurtles

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Rapeseed Oil - all the flavour, none (well fewer, any way) of the miles

Have you come across rapeseed oil yet? It's being billed as the British answer to olive oil - tasty, and healthy. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall champions it.

Rapeseed oil is great stuff. I get bottles of Pratt's Rapeseed Oil from the Winchester Farmers Market - the rapeseed is grown and the oil produced only a few miles from us on the Hampshire/Wiltshire border, and this, to my mind, is reason enough to buy it (for me, obviously - I mean if you're in the north of Scotland, there's probably a more local producer you could find).

However, local or not, I wouldn't buy it if it wasn't also delicious. It's got quite a strong flavour, really nutty and quite complex in the same way that olive oil can be, although it's a different taste. The other good things about rapeseed oil are that it has a high burn point which makes it really good to cook with because you can get it hotter. It's also got only six per cent saturated fat and is high in Omega 3. A good alternative to olive oil, from right here at home. Recently, as well as using it generally in place of olive oil, I've embraced it stirred into crushed new potatoes as an alternative, healthier topping for fish pie.

What are you waiting for?


Disclaimer: I bought my bottle of Pratt's Rapeseed Oil at the Winchester Farmers' Market, and this post is totally unsolicited. In fact, they don't even know I've written it. Hope they like it...

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Who are your food heroes? Meet Peter Lane - more than just pork pies

What is a ‘food hero’? There are of course the Hughs, the Jamies of this world, not only cooking great food but using their status to highlight issues such as school dinners, hospital food, the catastrophe that is the fishing industry. I think this is fantastic work, and these high profile individuals are worthy of the title ‘food hero’.  However, for me, there is another category of ‘food hero’ - those who get on with the business of producing and promoting great, honest food. 

I was introduced to Peter Lane through his pork pies:

 Pies to dream about: meaty, well-seasoned, amazing pastry:
 

They form part of the Hampshire Tapas that I wrote about a few months ago.

 

 Peter falls fairly and squarely into my ‘food hero’ box: he’s all about fantastic food, honestly made, whether he’s filling a freezer for a busy family or preparing curry for 80. His business is ‘I Cook - You Eat’ - I think the name sums up what he does impeccably. 





In cooking so his clients can indeed eat, he is fuelled by the desire to cook fantastic food using locally sourced ingredients. 

“I believe in good hearty, wholesome food.  Food that is not simply there to feed you, but engages, nourishes and brings family and friends together around a table.  Food that encourages and then satisfies your hunger.”

Chicken & Tarragon Pie - I can smell it from here...

He grew up eating his mother’s good but traditional food. What really sparked his interest was his father returning from travelling to places like Italy and China, bringing back new and interesting flavours and dishes. Despite “playing hard and eating hard” (his words!) while he was growing up, and cooking from an early age, Peter’s journey to making a living from food has been an interesting and unusual one via music college, the organ at St Giles Cripplegate in London, Oddbins and the Civil Service. Already running I Cook You Eat on a part time basis, he took voluntary redundancy from the Civil Service in 2011 to concentrate on food full time. The influences of the food his father introduced to the family is much evident in the food he offers. As comfortable with the exotic as he is with the traditional: from freezer filling for busy families, to preparing canapés or dinner parties, he draws on global food inspiration, revisiting dishes to recreate them with top quality ingredients sourced as locally as possible to his north west Hampshire home: veg from the garden, local meat. He’s planning chickens and pigs of his own, but until then, most of his meat comes from a local farm:

“I get to drive a few miles to a beautiful farm in a stunning area where I can see the pigs, chickens and beef steers that will all go into my cooking. Everything is properly hung…I use very simple ingredients to make really fantastic food”  

Not that it’s easy running a food business from home: “I have to be really organised, and sometimes I just have to get out of the kitchen. It can be madness preparing 5 dishes, or cooking dinner for the children at the same time as some baba ganoush”, but he clearly practises what he preaches at home as well as in his business.

“At my son’s first birthday party, we had 24 people sat at a big long table in the garden. We ate broad beans and chorizo, home shot pigeon breast salad, courgette souffles and our own home made pizzas. All the ingredients came from the garden or nearby. … The children love hearty tasty food – Mediterranean based or traditional English food. Of course they have fish fingers, but often we’ll cook them something like smoked mackerel kedgeree, pasta they love, cottage pie, spag bol. Recently they surprised me by eating a sardine and leek gratin. We’ll have a fry up on a Sunday – but the children don’t consider it to be a proper fry up unless there’s black pudding involved.”

Clients of ‘I Cook You Eat’ can expect fantastically tasty home cooked food which Peter can provide fresh or frozen. He marks his meals with a ‘made on’ date and takes a pragmatic approach, in conjunction with the environmental health officer, to food safety. Take his pies 

“The whole point is to preserve the meat, and a properly made pie should last 10-14 days. There’s not much advice on the internet, but a big pie is simply too large to cool down in a fridge. I explained to the EHO that I left the big pies to cool out in the kitchen, and she agreed with the common sense approach I was taking.” 

It seems that his clients agree with this approach. “I often get very effusive feedback, but occasionally I won’t hear from a client, and I will worry if that happens, but then very often, a few weeks or months later, they will get back in touch to arrange a repeat order. There have been no complaints yet.” 

In these days of food confusion, where we are reeling from what feels like daily revelations about the gruesome nature of our food industry, it is reassuring to meet people like Peter who are prepared to quite literally put their money where their mouth is, using local, traceable produce from producers he trusts. In terms of a food manifesto (if it could be called that) Peter suggests that if we all took a little more time – may be half an hour a week to look for a local producer, to go to one place and buy one thing, we could all feel better about the food we eat. Personally, I know I don't always get the chance - or make the time - to do this, but I definitely agree with him, and it's my aim to be better at doing this. And who knows where that could lead to?

Peter’s website, I Cook You Eat has more details about the food he cooks and the service he can provide. He provides private catering, but can also be found at the food markets in the North West Hampshire area. You can find him in the twittersphere at @petesporkpies and on Facebook .

Important blog disclaimer thing: Just so we're clear, although Peter agreed to talk to me about his business, and let me use his photos, I wasn't paid to write this post; you'll understand that when a girl gets to eat a pork pie that good, she has to shout about it - that's all!

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Friday night's gonna be alright - at The Wellington Arms

It's exciting times here. Exciting but busy. For various little reasons, I have been up early and going to bed later than usual. Come Friday evening, I was just about ready to sink onto the sofa and stick my head in a bottle of wine, but it was not to be.

'Dinner with the boss' - the Husband's boss and his new wife, to be precise, has been on the cards for a few months. A 'thank you' to the Husband for his hard work, and to me for putting up with the travelling, the last minute changes of plan, the general embuggerance factor that his work adds to our lives. There are plenty of bosses who wouldn't even recognise this, let alone do something about it, and, let's face it, it makes a change to be appreciated.

Various dates for this happening had been selected then discarded for various reasons, but 8th of February suited him and us. Sorted.

A couple of weeks earlier, the Husband brings the subject up. "We have to book somewhere". That's him using the 'royal we' to mean ME. I have never met the Husband's Boss. I have formed a picture of him in my mind based on snippets from the Husband. I am not quite sure what picture he might have had of me in his mind, but it is to him that I served, via the Husband, the nipple cakes.

Hard to know, then, what sort of place to book. The Husband gave me vague parameters, which basically set me somewhere between Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons (not so far away from us) and Nandos in Basingstoke.

Let me tell you that last night, there was not enough Origins GinZing in the world to make my tired eyes look instantly alive. The Husband and I were both shattered, but we girded ourselves and headed out. 

We got a little bit waylaid by the twisty lanes in the dark and didn't make it quite as early as we'd hoped. The Husband's Boss was already there by the time we arrived - they'd had been there for some time, as the delights of the Premier Inn, Basingstoke (where they were staying the night) had not held them enthralled. We were all tired - on a Friday night, I don't think any of us were at our best - but if the conversation flagged occasionally, we need not have feared, for the venue and the food - my goodness: AMAZING.

The Wellington Arms in Baughurst, on the Hampshire/Berkshire border, has been on my secret list of places I'd like to have dinner for quite some time. It has been voted No.2 in The Times 'Best Places to Eat in the Countryside', and Jason the 'Best Pub Chef' by the Good Food Guide. The accolades that drift gently across their website come from people such as Giles Coren and Diana Henry. A couple of friends have recommended it, and they make the chutneys that accompany the Hampshire tapas served at our friendly local wine merchants.

Having discarded both Le Manoir and Nandos as options (for very different reasons), I don't think I could have picked a better place. Physically, it's a very pretty pub (oak beams, Farrow & Ball, crackling fires). They keep bees and chickens, sheep and pigs and most of the veg comes out of their own kitchen garden. Ingredients that they don't produce themselves are sourced as locally as possible (local farms, local produce, fish driven up from Brixham). Totally fabulous. The atmosphere was relaxed, so when our own conversation faltered, the chatter and sounds of other people enjoying their evening carried us on. Having been unable to resist the lure of a couple of quick tweets before the evening, when we arrived, Simon, one of the owners, discreetly enquired who was the Recipe Junkie. I like that. I like that someone has taken the trouble to put 2 and 2 together. Wonderful, gentle hospitality.

You'll appreciate that taking photos of the food would not have been appropriate, so I didn't and you'll have to conjure up some mental pictures here. What I can say, in no uncertain terms, is that is that it is utterly to die for.

I had an amazing twice baked cheese souffle (a friend who's eaten there before had recommended it, and the waitress said that it had been on the menu since the place had opened) followed by mussels in coconut milk and yellow curry with fantastic thick cut chips. Not perhaps taking advantage of the locally sourced meat, but I had a real hankering for the mussels and I wasn't disappointed.They were creamy and the soup was fresh and full of chilli and coriander. The souffle was filled with leeks and was creamy and cheesy but not at all heavy or stodgy.  I had a brief flashback to a cheese souffle I once served up at a dinner party, and cringed. The Husband had an Ox tongue terrine which I didn't try because I just can't do tongue, but I have it on his good authority that it was delicious, followed by a steak. Both the Husband and Boss had the steak. One was rare, and the other was medium, as requested. I tried the Husband's rare steak and it was that 'melt in the mouth' thing that people talk about. Really really luscious. The puddings looked fantastic, but I couldn't fit one in. I was contemplating trying, but then I saw that they did handmade truffles as an option. So a really good hot cup of coffee and a heavenly dark chocolate truffle and I was more than happy. Husband's Boss had a treacle tart which was so amazing that he bought another one to take home with him.

It was truly fantastic. Didn't stop me being as tired as a dog, but I was thoroughly cheered by the time we left. Thank you Simon, and Jason, for a wonderful meal. We'll be back.

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Foodie Finds and Fails in Stockbridge

So the SNOW has been replaced by the RAIN, but Saturday last weekend was glorious, and after a wholesome, 'stacking the log pile' type morning (don't tell me it's not going to snow again, I have logs - I will burn them), we headed off to Stockbridge, a very pretty (if slightly gentrified) town about 10 miles away from where we live).

First stop, Stockbridge Down to run the children and the dog into quiet submission before a mooch round the town. It's a beautiful area of downland, one of the highest points in the area and on a clear day like Saturday you can see other high points. Being Nazi National Trust (although actually we didn't have to pay for the carpark), the whole are seemed very well fenced so I risked letting the dog off the lead - something I don't normally do in a place I'm not familiar with, and even he behaved himself.

Stockbridge itself then. As I said, a pretty, if gentrified town west-ish of Winchester. One of those towns you can imagine Jane Austen passing through in her horse-drawn coach on her way somewhere. A wide high street with many beautiful and clearly old buildings on either side, and history seeping out of every brick. Ignore the fact that those who know say that people living on one side of the high street don't talk to people on the other side, and enjoy the typical Englishness of it all. Clearly, the rumours (as above) cannot be true. This is a genteel and well bred place. The kind of place where perhaps it's not the done thing to take your clearly very muddy spaniel with you when you are mooching round the shops (a clean one would be OK). Nor, perhaps the kind of place where parents shout at their children in the street for playing lightsabres (without actual lightsabres) resulting in one child punching the other one in the nose and an enormous nosebleed...

No, it's a good job we don't LIVE in Stockbridge, but it's lovely to visit.

We did have business there. A couple of years ago, I was lucky enough to be given for my birthday a pair of those leather wellies that adorn 'country folk'. I don't pretend to aspire to the country folk look, but the boots are very, very warm and very, very comfortable, and when your daily routine involves walking many rural miles in hot pursuit of a well bred but wayward dog, warm and comfie is good. Anyway, the soles had started to come off the warm and comfie leather boots - and for the price that I know was paid for them, this just should not have happened - so, nosebleed dealt with, back to the shop we went.
  

I was also keen to visit Thyme and Tides, which is a bistro/deli/fishmongers which opened in 2010, and although we've had a couple of trips to Stockbridge since then, I've never managed to actually get in (probably because of the children/dog combo causing havoc). Anyway, enough of my bad parenting, and defective boots, on Saturday I actually got inside - not to the cafe which was absolutely heaving even if I'd been in the market for a table - to have a lovely browse of the deli and a good chat with the very friendly fishmonger. It's crammed full of loads of lovely things: bottles and packages promising deliciousness at every turn. 

Fortunately, I had some money given to me at Christmas with the strict instruction to spend it on myself. Is it deeply sad that I spent it on a bottle of lemon olive oil...

... a tin of stuffed vine leaves...

  and some Spanish cooking chorizo?

So judge me. I don't care

Purchases completed, I rejoined the Husband who had kindly taken the children and the dog off my hands, but had failed to complete any shopping he might have wished to do (a birthday present for his dad) because he couldn't work out how to lock the retractable lead in the retracted position and thus tie the dog up outside a shop. I took the dog and Pink back to the car, deposited the dog and went to visit my second favourite shop in Stockbridge - the Kitchenware Store (I'm so predictable). 


There was a sale on. I had some of my Christmas money left. There were lots of things I wanted to buy. I was pondering a Leon cookbook and some rather fancy cupcake cases when I heard the sound every parent dreads to hear - the sound of object hitting floor and a quiet 'ooohhhhhh, sorry Mummy'.

So yes, there were loads of things I wanted to buy, and lots I could have bought, but I ended up with a plastic flower tea strainer, with a broken petal.

You can't win 'em all, I suppose.

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Grow your own Watercress??

Did you watch the Great British Food Revival last week? I missed most of Michel Roux junior doing his thing for strawberries, but I did catch James Martin championing watercress. I love watercress. We live on the edge of watercress country in North Hampshire – if you saw the programme, the watercress producer Mr Martin visited is but a few miles down the road. Watercress is a big feature of local farmers’ markets, and every year, the lovely little town of Arlesford hosts a watercress festival. Watercress is healthy (really healthy – it’s classed as a superfood) but for me it’s all about the peppery taste. It’s great in soup, sandwiches (I am quite partial to watercress and crunchy peanut butter – honestly, it’s lovely), and a host of other dishes, but I am not here today to give you any recipes. If you want some watercress recipes, you can visit the watercress website Instead, enthused by Mr Martin, and in the wake of some advice gleaned from Gardeners’ Question Time, I am here to report on growing our own watercress.

Years ago, unencumbered by children, the Husband and I often found ourselves driving places on a Sunday afternoon. Feeling hungover tired and jaded, we would tune in to the soothing tones of Radio 4 and it became a standing joke that if we were driving anywhere on a Sunday it would always be around the time of Gardeners’ Question Time. How times have changed. We now tune in specifically to listen to the undemanding repartee, the slightly pleased with itself advice, the soothing responses to queries about leaf mould, blight, and what to grow in a bed with poor soil against a north facing wall…

The other week, one of the questions on GQT (as it's known) related to the wisdom of converting a garden to veg cultivation as a means of beating the recession. One of the panellists suggested growing watercress and we thought we’d give it a go. It gives me great pleasure to have salad leaves growing in the garden – rocket in particular, so expensive in those packs from the supermarket. If we succeed with the watercress, I will be equally thrilled.

I should point out that it is in fact the Husband who has the green fingers in our house, and it is his efforts that I am now reporting back.

1.     Take a couple of sprigs of watercress from a pack and trim leaves off the stalk, leaving some leaves at the top. We used organic watercress as it won’t have been treated with anything.

a delicious sprig of organic watercress*

bottom stalks removed

2.    Fill a jam jar with water, make a ‘lid’ out of a piece of clingfilm or plastic bag for the jar and put a couple of holes in the top. Attach the lid to the top of the jam jar using an elastic band and pop the watercress sprigs through the holes, and leave on a window sill.

3.     Within a couple of days, you should be able to see little white roots growing from the places where you took off the leaves from the stalk. Quite quickly, these will be long and vigorous and filling the jam jar. At this point you need to pot the plants up into soil.

check out the little roots - you can just see them

rooted sprigs, potted up and looking good

Now obviously, in my enthusiasm to blog about this, I can’t yet tell you whether or not it will be a success. What I can tell you is that the Husband has 2 pots each with 2 plants that have been rooted in this way, and looking healthy, with another couple of sprigs on the way (see photo above). He's advised me to tell you all that they need lots of water, and if your pots have holes in them, then you should line them first with a plastic bag to ensure that they retain water rather than it leaching out.

I’d love to hear from anyone else who grows their own watercress, with any tips for successful cultivation – and of course, your favourite watercress recipes. Obviously, once we have our own abundant supply, I’ll be reciprocating…

*quite a lot of watercress was consumed in the preparation of this post...

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