Hi Everyone
First, it was the financial crash, then came Covid followed by Ukraine, inflation, and the energy crisis and now we have tomatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce. Apparently, very unusually cold weather in Morroco and Southern Spain is to blame this time as we gaze at the empty shelves in our supermarkets. Added to that, our home producers are hanging back on planting this year's crops until the weather here gets warmer as they cannot afford to heat their greenhouses. Us amateur gardeners have all our seeds at the ready but it will be at least two more weeks before we even put them in the soil so there is no chance that we will have lettuces before June and tomatoes and cucumbers before July. All is not lost however as our Minister of Food has suggested that we should learn to fall in love with an English root vegetable - turnip. Now what the connection is between turnips and tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce is beyond me but in any case, a member of the agriculture industry reminded her that turnips are not available at this time of the year. I hope that I am not being disrespectful but I think that our Minister of Food might have indulged herself on turnips in the past unlike the Senior Partner when I was a child at the Fruit, Vegetable, Flower, Game, and Lolly shop. As the errand boy, every other order would contain a turnip but we never ate turnips ourselves. This was a mystery to me as she was the shop owner and could take anything from the stock to cook for our meals and as turnips were a very basic and cheap option and with her reputation for being tight with money, it seems to me as a missed opportunity to be even more frugal. As far our Minister of Food is concerned, you could just not make it up.
The next foray apparently occurred this week when, on a national TV breakfast programme, someone cooked a squirrel which outraged some viewers. The Exmoor Squirrel Project is trying to persuade people to eat grey squirrels to help to protect and promote red squirrels as the aggressive grey squirrels have driven the reds off their patch to such an extent that there are few red squirrels left. I enjoy experiencing new cooking flavours but I am not sure that I would be tempted to try them if I saw them on a restaurant menu. It did remind me however that as a small boy, I would go at 7-00 am on Tuesday morning in the school holidays with the Junior Partner to a nearby country estate to collect 150 rabbits from the gamekeeper's cottage to sell in the Fruit, Vegetable...........shop. At that time on the estate, you would see hundreds of rabbits roaming wild. He would skin and prepare them for sale and we would repeat the trip on Thursday morning for 150 more rabbits and by Saturday night they would all be sold. That was because the rabbit was the basic low priced meat with chicken considered a luxury. Unfortunately that all came to an end in the 1950s when the disease myxomatosis wiped out millions of rabbits and even now 60 years on you rarely see rabbit meat on a menu or in a shop. Also back in the 1950s, you would occasionally see a wealthy lady with squirrel skin draped around their neck. As fur is now banned and I do not detect much appetite to eat what are in effect rodents, I think that Cyril the Squirrel is safe to roam at least until our Minister of Food gets on the case. It's enough to make a rabbit hopping mad.
This week just one sheep escaped from a field in the South of England and found itself on a busy dual carriage road which is unusual as we are led to believe that the rest of the flock would follow. Anyway, it was finally caught by a lady bus driver on her first day at work, put on the bus even though it didn't have a bus pass, and delivered back to the farmer. The bus arrived at its destination just one minute late. Two things occurred to me - you don't always have to follow your leader, just have a driver that you can trust. Ewe just couldn't make it up.
Just a Thought :
Anyone who thinks that onions are the only vegetable that makes you cry has never dropped a turnip on their toe.
A friend of mine has just started a new trendy Squirrel diet - It's just nuts.
What do you call an old sheep? Pasture Prime
Wrap up in your woollies for a cold week.
Brian.
Comments