Very simply, buying organic is a sure-fire way to ensure quality and to know that you’re buying into an ethical and sustainable food chain. For a food to be certified as organic means that there are fewer pesticides used in its production; no artificial additives and preservatives, and there’s been no routine use of antibiotics or any GM ingredients.
Pull up a pew, grab a cup of coffee, and settle in, because if you’re reading this blog, the chances are you are as interested in food and drink as I am, and you’ll be curious to find out what happened when one of this country’s most respected tea and coffee producers (Taylors of Harrogate) gathered some of Instagram’s most inquisitive and creative women to give them a fast-track in speciality coffee and a crash-course in flavour.
At this time of year, it’s so nice to have some recipes up your sleeve for dishes that are comforting, warming and nourishing, but also – more crucially – that don’t take hours and hours to prep. With Christmas just around the corner, we’re all going to have so much cooking to do, and subsequent kitchen fatigue, it’s a relief to find some dishes that hit the spot and only take a matter of minutes to rustle up. Dal is one of the few things I could genuinely eat every day – it’s both satisfying and interesting, not just in the context of curry, but as a vehicle for eggs, poached or fried, and a side for all manner of proteins.
Tea, travel and stories: the three are inextricably linked. We don’t often think about it when we sip our daily brews, but there’s an incredible, extraordinary journey behind the tea leaves that bring us to life in the morning. And there’s a fascinating story to tell in our teacup.
Reporting on the food and drink of a particular place is a sure-fire way to cut through the tourist trap cliches and get to an authentic local experience, and I was lucky to find myself in unlikely places enjoying delicious things – be it eating freshly caught whelks at a plastic table at the corner of Rungis – the legendary French Food market; or chewing garlic and fish sauced-laced pork skewers, cooked for me by an elderly Vietnamese woman crouching on her haunches in the Street in Hanoi.
Autumn is absolutely one of my favourite times of year. It’s just a glorious sensory overload – all those crunchy burnished leaves, the smell of bonfires, the bulbous pumpkins and squashes, the ripe orchard fruit. I can’t get enough of it, and thankfully we really live in the best spot to make the most of it. Walking the dog along the canal and across the marshes every day we can’t help but enjoy all the colours and smells, and – despite the golden sunshine we’ve been blessed with these past few weeks – the distinct crispness in the air that just makes you want to come home and make a crumble. And put on some lovely autumnal dinners…
Back in July, I was chuffed to bits to be asked to take part in a fun campaign called Organic Feed Your Happy with the Organic Trade Board that saw me cooking dinner for radio DJ and foodie Sara Cox and her friends, using beautiful organic ingredients.
I think it’s important and empowering to understand how the way we shop, cook and eat effects the world around us, as well as our own health, and being aware of where our ingredients come from, and how they’re produced helps us to make better decisions
A couple of weeks ago, my tagline really could have been “I ate all the pies”. If you follow me on Instagram you will have seen that – lucky for me – I had a really good run of pie-based activity, including feasting on one of Jeremy Lee’s superb specimens at Quo Vadis (duck and […]