BBC Good Food/Gardener's World live show Birmingham

WARNING: GARDEN NERDY POST AHEAD!

I didn't mean to make this a post about plants, seriously. I have loved food festivals/fairs all my life, even more since working in events, and specifically now that I can claim visiting them is skill enhancement for my job ;-P Plus, in spite of the gourmetness of the situation, there are usually lots and lots of vegan free samples. With my current gardening obsession, it was only natural that I got myself a ticket for the BBC Summer Good Food/Gardener's World show in B'ham last month.

Sadly, it was quite a disappointment. It all started with Birmingham being Birmingham, especially Digbeth (the area around the coach station). Bleurgh. I do love me a Brummie accent and the locals are wonderful, but I can't begin liking this city.

Then, not only did the driver not tell me where to get off the bus as I had asked, so I took an impromptu trip to Coventry where I was rescued by an incredibly nice Irish lady... who told me how she worked in Selfridges in the 1950s selling underwear, and also that the next pope must be a paddy (no, I do not make up these stories about crazy old ladies I meet in random places. They just always appear, like the one who showed us the way into the woods at last year's Beltane festival).

When I finally arrived at the venue... after a long time... I cursed the NEC just for the sake of the NEC and many things that are wrong with it, or at least were done wrong by BBC this time. Seriously, burying the show guides in giant bins with no signs on them whatsoever?! I won't go into further details, but it was an event organiser's nightmare.

Next big disappointment: the food. There were about 12 sausage stalls, 25 pastry stalls, and 80something cheese and salami stalls. To be able to try some of the wine/drink samples, you had to first buy a special 'show tester glass' (crappy plastic champagne flute) for 4 quid.

I cannot speak for the cooking demonstrations - I didn't book any tickets as TV chefs are not too famous for their vegan food, anyway, maybe they made up for all of this. But meh.

The ticket also included entry to the Gardener's World show. While plants were mostly ridiculously overpriced, I managed to get a few quite rare seeds (Japanese herbs! Purple beans! Wohoo!). And then I went to the flower parlour and then outdoor area... and yes, I am aware I sound like I am at least 65, but the displays were gorgeous, especially the show vegetable patches. They caused major courgette envy in me (as I am writing this, 3 weeks later, the plants in my garden are showing the first tiny blossoms)! And ohhhh, it was so pretty! See for yourself:


There was a garden theme competition that was truly amazing. There was an Alice in Wonderland garden that I was looking forward to more than anything else. When I got there, it turned out that some schoolkids had designed the thing and it looked like utter chaos, but not in a Lewis Carrol kind of way :( So I didn't take any pictures. But I loved this Indian garden:
















"Salad bar garden", very Islington.

The supposedly Swiss garden - it was a Ricola marketing thing, not a good one. I was deeply saddened that the promoters were Midlanders, not Helvetic :(

"The wild classroom" - I loved this, especially the screens... I have many more pictures but couldn't be bothered to upload them onto my computer yet.

Last but not least... a Japanese inspired garden. Not bad for one designed by a Westerner, if you ignore the middle aged people and weird wooden boards... and yay, Japan. I'm leaving for Osaka in 5 days, I've never been so ready for a holiday!!!

Quiche and my very first harvest

I don't know about you, but grew up not liking quiche very much. Quiche was what our French teacher made us cook (yup, we cooked in our French lessons) when we actually couldn't cook or what I was served on family holidays in Belgium. It was always fatty, soggy and generally bleh. The fact that I've always hated everything with an eggy texture didn't help much.

When I worked in Düsseldorf, everybody would bake something for the others for their birthday, and I was in pieces when our 60-something omni accountant made a wonderful vegan quiche only for me. (damn, I must make the butter "chicken" seitan from that post again!)

So last week I was blessed with a giant bag of Swiss chard and we had 2 packages of silken tofu in the pantry for weeks (which my flatmate urgently needs for...something. Men.) and I had time to make pastry from scratch. On top of that, my first batch of baby salad leaves was ready to harvest. They made a whole tiny bowl full of salad, with a tomato thrown in - it's too cold in this country this 'summer'. The recipe I used was the basic quiche recipe from The Urban Vegan cookbook, except I threw in the swiss chard and some sun-dried tomatoes and also sprinkled some Mozarella Scheese on top.

Quiche verdict: I loved it and will be buying a quiche pan to make bigger ones, regularly.

This weeks veggie box brought me fresh mint, so I'm drinking lots of Morrocan-style mint tea :) My garden mint is doing so-so as the slugs love it. I didn't know mint had any natural enemies.
Also in this week's box: green peppers, lettuce, lemons, mushrooms, garlic, aubergines, broccoli, cherry tomatoes and a cucumber.


To be honest, I'm thinking about changing box suppliers or not getting boxes anymore at all. I get my box from Just Organic, based in Stoke Newington, so essentially, it's a local business to me. The guy who own it is a lovely chap in the early/mid-Thirties and he goes out of his way in terms of customer service. He delivers in the evenings and is just wonderful when we have complanints. But to be honest, lately I've had a lot of complaints. I know how to store veggies and I know that organic stuff doesn't last as long as supermarket pesticide-laden veg. But when you get a tomato on Thursday night, it shouldn't be mouldy by Saturday morning. The same happened with this week's aubergines and many many of their lemons :( I've never seen a mouldy lemon before I got their boxes.

Plus, while they don't air-freight, the boxes do not really show the change in seasons and I don't get to know what comes from which country.

If you live around London, have you got any recommendations?

I bring you: cats! (HELP?!)

It's been a while again... April has probably been the craziest, busiest month in years, full of visitors, birthday parties, gigs and deadlines.

Since late March, I've all nerded up about gardening and am trying to make our little space resemble an actual garden. At the moment, we're still somewhere in between a suburban jungle and public cat litter tray. I hope that in the next few weeks, I can get some nice pics.

For today, I bring you something incredibly rare on this blog of mine: a cat!
Yes, as I said, my garden is the new in spot for all cats of the neighbourhood. I'm not a cat person to be honest, but not mean enough to chase them, although they poo all over my garden.
For now, I have scattered some rose bush cuttings around the flowerbeds, which has helped a little, but not completely. What is your trick to keep them away?

I'll try to take pictures of all of the criminals. If you have seen the cat above, please let me know. We have named it Three-Coloured-Cat. It likes to lounge on the fire ladder outside my room and its favourite toilet spot is between the radishes and carrots.

On a more delicious note, I have fallen in love with our Mediterranean box again. As I am typing, I am waiting for this weeks' box which will hopefully bring me lovely asparagus.

Another find is Celtic Bakers... they do amazing, organic rye bread that is all... well, Germanic.
Yes, there you have it. I said I would never be that clicheed German bread snob but the 'selection' of 'bread' in British supermarkets makes me weep. Yes, even the fancy shit from Marks & Sparks und Waitrose (although they have quite nice focaccia).
So, Celtic Bakers are awesome, and they have stalls on quite a few of London's farmers markets. I buy their bread at Earth in Kentish Town, although Bumblebee in Tufnell Park and that tiny shop on Holloway Road stock their bread too, at least sometimes, if you're quick. And that's only my neck of the woods.



I'm in a bit of a French food mood recently, and was amazed to actually find tomatoes that tasted like tomatoes at this time of year. What to do if you're out of basil for a killer tomato salad but have some sad looking filo pastry in the fridge? Quick tomato tarte! Rub the pastry with a little olive oil and half a clove of garlic, add sliced tomatoes and bake for about 15 mins. Don't share.


The other day, I made onion and red wine gravy for the first time in my life, inspired by a fellow blogger (and I forgot who made it, gah! sorry!). With extra sticky onions. Why has nobody told me how amazing this is? How daft was I, putting red wine into everything but never even thinking about this? And: what's not good when served with sausages and garlicky mashed potatoes?