Tag: vegetables

Viva Vegetables

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Viva Vegetables medium tote bags

Win one of these gorgeous tote bags – they’re from the Viva Vegetables range, one of the new Spring 2015 collections from the folks at Talented.

Even if you’re a complete carnivore, you’ll love this quirky range of colourful canvas bags. They’re both attractive and versatile.

Talented is an eco-company based in Sheffield specialising in creatively driven, sustainable accessories and tote bags. The brand celebrates the bag as an art form and collaborates with upcoming British artists, designers and print makers on a seasonal rotation.

Viva Vegetables is designed by American crafter Leslie Astor who now lives here in the UK. Leslie’s four designs pay homage to a few of Britain’s favourite vegetables. Large-scale prints of broccoli, carrots, beetroot and asparagus adorn the colourfully dyed canvas tote bags. Viva Vegetables small tote bags

The collection is inspired by the farmers’ market at Grand Army Plaza in New York City. When Leslie lived in Brooklyn, she and her family would visit the market every Saturday.

Leslie said:

“A tote bag gets out and about and exposed to a lot of eyes in a lot of different contexts: the subway, the office, the grocery store, the park – maybe all of those places in a day. Given that fact, I wanted my series of totes to be conversation starters, and I think they are.”

Viva Vegetables are made and printed at a fair-trade certified factory in India and are available in 2 sizes – medium tote bag and mini tote bag. They’re available to buy from the doodle bag website.

For your chance to win one, just comment below telling us which size & design you’d like and how you’d use it. To carry your lunch to work? A school bag for your child? To pop to the shops? Something else entirely? 🙂

Viva Vegetables tote bag

Allotment Diary: Clearing up, winding down

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cabbage, apples and potatoes from our allotment

Autumn is well & truly here – and our weekend visit to the allotment certainly proved it.

ripening tomatoes on our allotment

It was a beautiful sunny day, but the unmistakable signs of nature winding down for the year were all around.

collecting fallen leaves into a wheelbarrow

We picked a few remaining crops and cleared fallen leaves & beech masts.

robin on our allotment

Within seconds, our canny little friend appeared to snack on freshly uncovered worms & insects.

chilli apple compote made from windfall apples

Justin didn’t go hungry either – he rustled up an evening meal from the last of the vegetables and windfall apples.

pork chop with veg and apple sauce made from produce from our allotment

Pork chop with an apple & chilli compote – baby potatoes & cabbage with balsamic vinegar. Ready, Steady, Cook – eat your heart out! 😉

Allotment Diary: Lots of weeds!

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old ceramic sink where we're growing salad, full of weeds

It’s been a whole three weeks since we’ve last been to our allotment. Whenever we had the time to go, it was pouring with rain; when the weather was fine, we were busy with other commitments. We entered the plot with trepidation – in what kind of state was it going to be? This old sink we’d planted with mixed salad seeds was quite typical – what’s salad and what’s weeds? This scene was repeated all over the plot.

pea seedling and sunflower seedling

Weeds were our main problem, but pests had taken their toll too. Of the half dozen apiece of garden pea and sunflower seeds we planted in this bed – once we’d finished weeding around them – only a single specimen of each had survived some phantom killer! We definitely can’t leave it 3 weeks again!

wheelbarrow of potato plants to be transplanted

We discovered some (unplanned) potato plants that had erupted in some of our beds. We dug them up and transplanted them into a big black bin that we’d inherited from the previous allotment custodian. We don’t know if they’ll produce anything, but thought we’d give them a chance.

unripe currants

One thing that we didn’t need to worry about were our fruit bushes. We certainly won’t be short of berries to pick in a couple of months time. There are about a dozen shrubs full of young fruits – red, white and blackcurrants. A bit of research into interesting berry recipes will be needed!

Beet It!

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close up view of freshly dug up beetroot

I don’t think we’ll ever win any prizes for our fruit & vegetable growing. This was our second attempt at growing beetroot. This year the roots were slightly more bulbous than the previous, but still not what you’d call monsters!

freshly dug up beetroot

But we didn’t despair – we decided to make best use of what (little) we had. We used some of the leaves in salad – they look & taste much like spinach, but with beautiful, burgundy stems.

freshly dug up beetroot in an antique Billingsgate Market oyster trug

The remaining leaves & stems made a lovely, earthy winter soup – garnished with a little flourish of cream.

home grown beetroot pickled in balsamic vinegar with whole mixed peppercorns

The (baby) beetroots themselves were pickled in balsamic vinegar with whole peppercorns – and they were absolutely delicious served with a selection of cheeses and a salad!

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Will Forage for Soup: Gourmet Soups from Wild Greens

Will Forage for Soup: Gourmet Soups from Wild Greens is a foraging experience and how-to cookbook rolled into one. This digital book includes:
* The most common greens for foraging, their flavor, and resources on where to find them.
* How to clean greens for soup.
* Preserving your bounty in the freezer with very little space required.
* Combining greens in soup for best flavor.
* Blanching versus boiling your greens– nutritional considerations.
* How to make a nutritious and flavorful soup base with vegetarian options.
* Tips for bringing out the flavor in your soup’s seasonings.
* A resource on spices so that you can create your own signature soup.
* Six recipes using common foraged greens.

Click here to view more details