Chicken soup cures a cold…and is good for the soul!

Apologies for the lack of posts this last week. I’ve been ill in bed with the flu!

I haven’t been this unwell for over two years, when we were packing up our life in London, moving home, country and continent to live in Africa for four months.

All the stress of London living and the busy schedules got to me and I ended up with a chest infection that lasted most of our Ugandan trip.

Thankfully, this time round I’m in wonderful peaceful Oxford, where I can put my feet up and rest for the entire bank holiday weekend secure in the knowledge that my friends understand that I’m too sick to be my usual sociable self.

And to help me on the mend there’s nothing better than a large bowl of steaming hot chicken broth noodle soup to get me back into fine spirits.

According to scientific research, there is more to chicken broth than just a cold comfort. In fact, home made chicken stock contains the compound carnosine which helps the body’s immune system fight flu. I love adding other extra viral fighters – including plenty of garlic, ginger and greens – to create an all in one health elixir.

Chicken soup is not only good for the body and soul, it’s cheap to make too. Simply simmer your leftover roast chicken bones with two pints of water, a chopped onion, 2 garlic cloves, celery sticks, bay leaves and salt and pepper for about 2 hours. Strain off the bones. To the stock add a portion of your favourite noodles, a tablespoon of grated ginger and another of grated garlic plus a handful of greens and simmer for 2-3 minutes. Serve in a generous bowl with a sprinkling of soy sauce to season. Absolutely delicious. I can feel my sinuses clearing already!

Dandelion leaves and their culinary uses!

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In many countries across the world dandelion leaves are considered a delicious and nutritious vegetable consumed for their high content of vitamins, minerals and iron, as well as their medicinal qualities. However, in the UK they are usually considered an irksome weed and pulled or poisoned out of the lawn.

They are potassium-rich and have a strong diuretic quality, that is fantastic at helping lower blood pressure. They have long been used to treat digestive disorders as well as arthritis and eczema.

In the Mediterranean, many people pick the tender dandelion leaves that emerge in early spring to use in salads, soups, or as a sautéed side dish. There, you can even buy cultivated dandelions which still have the same unique bitter and peppery flavour in many of the local grocery stores.

In the UK, they are in abundance at this time of year. In fact they seem to be taking over our lawn. So my husband Alex set aside an afternoon to de-dandelion our garden, and I dutifully researched ways to use the FREE lush greens to make some healthy meals.

We added some to our favourite frugal curry recipe, and used them as a substitute for spinach in Saag Aloo. We intermingled them with other leaves to make a fresh salad and reserved some for blending with cheese and nuts to make an iron rich pesto.

But my favourite recipe was simply sautéed in garlic with a sprinkling of lemon juice! Here’s how –

Ingredients:

1 Large Bunch Dandelion Leaves
4 Tablespoons Olive Oil
Salt & Pepper
1 Large Clove of Garlic

Method

Remove any brown ends and rinse the dandelion leaves really well.
Squeeze out the excess water and cut into pieces.
In a large, heavy saucepan or frying pan, add the leaves, crushed garlic clove, and the oil.
Sauté for 10 minutes or until the greens are soft and tender.
Season with salt and pepper and serve with a sprinkling of lemon juice.
They go really well with any meat or fish dish.

Congratulations to Oxford Food Surplus Cafe!

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Did anyone make it down to the pilot of the Oxford Food Surplus Cafe at East Oxford Community Centre last Saturday? We certainly did, and what a success!!!

The Oxford Food Surplus Café was an event were wonderful volunteers, some from the Cultivate Oxford team are reclaiming surplus food and transforming it into delicious healthy meals for everyone to eat.

Using the pay as you feel system, customers are able to contribute/donate either what they can afford or what they think the food, space and idea is worth. The hope is to create a place that encourages the community to engagement and reconnect people with the food they eat.

The wonderful menu that was invented on-the-spot to incorporate all the donated ingredients, included a delicious vegetable tagine with brown rice, scrumptious black beans and a freshly foraged nettle and potato. I hear there were also some yummy puddings too. Here you can see my daughter Melissa tucking into the healthy delights.

I believe the event was a total success – feeding around 500 people. Here’s hoping it’s the start of many! WELL DONE EVERYONE!

Cultivate Oxford Veggie bag

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This week I’ve been trialling a new and wonderful veggie delivery scheme from Cultivate Oxford.

If you live in Oxford you’ll know who I mean, as you’re bound to have seen their VegVan situated at various points around the City from Thursday – Sunday offering local, seasonal and organic fruit and vegetables. Well, the same motivated people are now offering a delivery service to various pick up points (PODS) over Oxford.

Cultivate is a cooperative organisation which is owned and funded by the community. They have an established new market garden on 10 acres of land just outside of Oxford on the Earth Trust farm. Here they grow the majority of the fruit and veg found on their VegVan and delivery fruit and vegetable bags.

I was extremely excited to pick up my veggie bag from my local POD in Florence Park on Thursday, and find out what goodies were in it.

There was a cauliflower, a large bag of Spring greens, leeks, carrots, Swiss Chard and a huge bulb of garlic. All the vegetables were vibrant, lush and fresh, as though they had been picked that morning. Perhaps they had?

I always plan my weeks menu around my veggie delivery and I was thrilled so see the makings of some wonderful family meals.

I made cauliflower pizza crust with the head of the cauli, spicy spring greens spaghetti, a garlicky Swiss chard omelette, carrot and cauliflower leaf soup, honey glazed carrots with my roast chicken and I’m planning leek and chicken pie for tonight. Absolutely plenty for many delicious dinners.

The new delivery PODS stretch far and wide over Oxford. Here are the locations – Abingdon, Charlbury Green Hub, Kidlington, The Deli Sandwich Bar (Didcot), East Oxford – Florence Park, Rose Hill, East Oxford, Rusty Bike POD and SESI Refill POD, North Oxford – Summerhill Road POD, Warborough and WOCA POD (West Oxford). There’s bound to be one near you.

All you need to do is go online here from Monday to Wednesday and place your order. Then by Thursday or Friday (depending on your chosen delivery POD) your glorious fruit and veg order will be ready for pick up. Easy!

If you would like to contact Cultivate Oxford you can do so here –

Email: info@cultivateoxford.org
Address: Pipers Wait, The Ridings, Stonesfield, Oxon, OX29 8EB
Website: cultivateoxford.org/

Sweet Potato Falafel

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These tasty morsels are deliciously wholesome and cheap to make. They are the perfect Summer picnic lunch or evening family meal. Jazz them up with a wholemeal pitta, salad and some mint and yoghurt dressing and kids will love them too.

Here’s the recipe

400g cooked chickpeas (1 can)
250g baked sweet potato (about 2 medium)
Juice from 1 lemon
2 cloves of garlic
2 handfuls of spinach
2 tsp cumin
1 handful of chopped fresh coriander or parsley
Salt and pepper

Bake the sweet potatoes whole until soft and tender (around 40 minutes). I soak my chickpeas over night and boil to cook, but you can also use a tin for ease. Bash the cooked baked potatoes and the chickpeas with a potato masher until roughly combined.

In a frying pan, cook the garlic in a little olive oil and then add the cumin and the spinach plus a dash of water. After a few minutes, when the spinach and garlic have cooked and you can smell the aroma from the cumin, remove from the heat and add to the sweet potato and chickpea mash mixing thoroughly.

Season with the lemon juice, salt, pepper and chopped coriander. Taste to make sure you’re satisfied with the flavour. Now form the dough into balls – I made 17 with this quantity. You can place the falafel on a lined baking tray, pressing it down ever so slightly, and bake in the oven for 20 minutes (gas mark 6). Or if you prefer them crispy like me, fry in a little olive oil for a couple of minutes on each side.

Serve with Tahini and yoghurt sauce made by mixing 2 tbsp of natural yoghurt with 2 tbsp of tahini (peanut butter works well here too), a crushed clove of garlic, 1 tsp of tomato ketchup, salt, pepper and chopped fresh mint. Summer heaven.

Black bean & Brazil Nut Fudge Brownies

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Sounds like a strange combination but bare with me…it works. I’ve been searching for a brownie recipe that is both satisfyingly naughty but guilt free and healthy too. This recipe fits the bill. It’s Feel Good Food at its best.

Instead of using sugar – dates create the sweetness, as well as providing 15 different essential minerals and B vitamins. Black beans add texture as well as complex carbohydrates and protein to make you feel fuller for longer. Brazil nuts provide selenium and essential fats which have both been proven to lift the mood. And chocolate – well that’s just for pleasure. It’s a well known fact that chocolate stimulates endorphins in the brain that make you feel fantastic! The Ultimate MOOD FOOD!

Here’s the recipe –

200g of dates
1 x 400g tin of Black beans
100g cocoa powder
4 tbsp of butter melted
2 farm eggs
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla extract
60g chopped Brazil nuts

1) Soak the dates in water for 1 hour. Strain, keeping the soaking liquid to one side. Blend the dates and add some of the liquid until they turn into a smooth thick paste (you’ll probably need about 2-4 tbsp liquid).

2) Rinse the beans thoroughly, especially if they’ve been stored in salt water. Blend the beans with the date paste.

3) Add the melted butter, eggs, baking powder and vanilla, and blend again until all smooth. Now put everything in a bowl and fold in the cocoa powder until thoroughly mixed.

4) Lightly grease a 9×9 baking tin with butter. Pour in the brownie mixture and smooth with a spatula until even. Scatter the chopped Brazil nuts on top and gently press them into the mixture.

5) Bake for 35-40 minutes on gas mark 4 or until firm to the touch and a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool before chopping into delicious chunks! Enjoy!

Stinging Nettle Pesto

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Spring time is the perfect time to harvest nettles. Cooked nettles have a very similar taste and vitamin content to spinach, but as they grow in the wild they are absolutely free. When foraging for nettles, make sure you wear thick gardening gloves and pick from an area far away from the pollution of a busy road.

Choose just the young leaves from the top of the plant. Harvesting the terminal (top) bud will stimulate lateral bud growth causing the plant to become more bushy and allowing you to harvest continually from the same plant.

Ingredients

100g young nettles
1 crushed garlic clove
75g strong cheddar, grated
50g cashew nuts
Juice of half a lemon
1 tbsp of natural yoghurt or olive oil

Method

Again, making sure you are wearing gloves, rinse the nettles thoroughly and discard any thick stalks. In a pan gently fry a crushed clove of garlic until golden brown. Add the rinsed nettles and a tbsp of water to the garlic and cook for a couple of minutes until the leaves have wilted. Switch off the heat. Transfer this mixture to a food processor or use a hand blender to blend the nettles. Add the grated cheese, cashew nuts, lemon juice and yoghurt and continue to blend until you have a smooth green paste. You can add more yoghurt or olive oil if needed. Now simply stir the nettle pesto through some cooked pasta or spaghetti, season with plenty of black pepper and serve with fresh salad leaves. The pesto will keep in an airtight jar in the fridge for up to a week.

The Roast Dinner and leftovers….

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There’s nothing more frugal than cooking the way our parents used to, by roasting a chicken on Sunday, eating it with jacket potatoes and salad on a Tuesday, turn the brown meat into a curry on a Wednesday, then boil the bones for a delicious soup on Thursday.

As I’ve been experimenting over the last 3 months with ways to save money on food – and I’ve discovered that our parents (and grandparents) really did know best. No part of the chicken was wasted. Portion size of meat may have been less, but this usually meant that more vegetables were eaten – which research has shown to be healthier in the long run.

With Easter approaching, there’s some fantastic deals on local meat. I bought a joint of local Top Side beef for just £7.99 a kilo at Q Gardens (which would be £13 a kilo in Tesco’s). Local Butchers have got in this seasons lamb, and there’s always the humble free-range chicken.

One of my favourite use-everything-up recipes at the moment is my leftover roast dinner soup. It’s simply some extra roasted roots that I’ve cooked on the Sunday (usually parsnips, sweet potato, carrots and potatoes), blended with stock made from the bones and giblets of the chicken. I add in some roasted garlic and rosemary to jazz it up a bit and serve it with some homemade foccacia – it’s delicious and hearty.

If you’re after a simple frugal curry recipe, check this one out. The base is made from blended onions, tinned tomatoes and creamed coconut.

You can add in a couple of handfuls of cooked chickpeas to bulk it out if you’re short on meat. Simply serve with rice.

Q Gardens Steventon Oxfordshire

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My daughter Melissa’s at home with me on Tuesday’s, we like to get out and about and do some market research for the blog.

I stumbled across Q Gardens in Steventon just south of Abingdon, Oxfordshire. I took a fancy to the name as I’m a huge fan of Kew Garden’s in London where I used to work in a little health food store for a few years.

Q Gardens Farm Shop specialises in seasonal produce that has been grown, reared or made as locally as possible – including fruit from their own orchards (notably yummy cherries) and meat from their own farm just a couple of miles away from the shop.

They also stock bread, dairy products, a wide range of local beers and wines. They have a huge display of locally milled flour, cakes and biscuits, honey and preserves. But the crowning glory was the refrigerator full of home made ice cream – I couldn’t resist a sample of the raspberry sorbet. The fruit in the ice cream is grown on the farm too!

I splashed out on a joint of Top Side Beef for Easter Weekend. It was only £7.99 a kg, and is large enough to supply at least two meals for our family. The equivalent joint is £13 a kg in Tesco’s. An absolute bargain.

We’ll be back in the Summer to sample the strawberries and famous cherries! Can’t wait!

Here are the shop details –

How to find Q Gardens
Milton Hill, Steventon, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, OX13 6AB
01235 820988 info@qgardensfarmshop.co.uk

On the A4130 just a few hundred metres from the Milton Interchange of the A34. At the roundabout take the Wantage exit, go through both sets of traffic lights and we are the cream building on your right hand side.

Top 10 tips on feeding your family for £100 a month

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We’ve been feeding the family for just £100 a month for the past three months. As you may guess, we’ve learned a lot about penny pinching, saving on food waste and budget buys.

Here’s my TOP 10 TIPS of feeding a family for £100 a month

1) Love your leftovers
When I cook a family meal I purposefully make extra so there’s enough for lunch the next day. It saves at least a fiver, which would normally be spent on work canteen food. Plus it’s often healthier too.

2) Boil your bones
There’s nothing nicer than soup made from real stock. If you think that making your own stock is a faff then think again. All you need to do is put the bones in a litre of water with salt and pepper and boil for a few hours. If you’ve got some, chuck in a few discarded carrot peelings, onion and garlic skins, cabbage heads or celery leaves – they add some additional flavour and goodness.

3) Get your veggies local
I’ve always been a fan of getting my veggies delivered to the door and used the more popular nationwide box delivery schemes. However, since shopping local I’ve discovered that many farms nearby also deliver, and that these are often cheaper and have to travel shorter distances to my door – good for me, good for the planet.

4) Go find your nearest farm
The healthiest and tastiest eggs are from chickens that roam free. You can tell a good egg by its thick hard shell and bright vibrant orange yolk (brittle pale eggs are not good). I’ve also found local free range eggs to be cheaper than supermarket free range – and the quality is really quite different.

5) Make friends with your freezer
I never fully understood the value of my freezer until I started feeding the family on a budget. But now I freeze leftovers for when I can’t be bothered to cook. Also if a food’s about to reach it’s sell by date I’ll freeze it until needed – it has saved us a fortune.

6) Learn to make do
When you have to make do with what you’ve got, you learn to improvise. This process can be fun and often results in something quite interesting. I found that beetroot juice makes fantastic pink icing, and that roasted pumpkin is a fantastically moist substitute for butter in a chocolate cake.

7) Re-use and recycle
There’s nothing more frustrating than a child that refuses a meal – what a waste! I found I could feed my daughter’s leftover porridge back to her later in the day when I turned into oatmeal and raisin biscuits. Leftover rice makes awesome rice pudding too! Waste not want not.

8) Re-think the contents of the food waste bin
If you look carefully, you’re throwing away edible stuff. I made gluten free pizza crust out of broccoli stems. Cauliflower cheese soup, from the discarded leaves of a cauliflower. Potato skin crisps from potato peelings, and a food waste soup from vegetable odds and ends.

9) Buy in bulk
There’s certain staple foods that we eat again and again. For us it’s rice, porridge oats and potatoes – look out for deals on bulk buys. It can save you a fortune – like this 25kg sack of potatoes from Rectory Farm.

10) Get a bargain
If you want to visit Farmer’s Markets – go at the end of the day when everyone’s clearing up. At this time there’s always a bargain to be had. Like a large Savoy cabbage or Spaghetti Squash for just £1. Where does the leftover fruit and veg from the markets go? Find out!!! I found a Monday Shop that sells just that for donation only – they don’t want to throw it away.

11) Don’t be scared to get your hands dirty
I know I said just 10 top tips, but I couldn’t resist this last one. There are cultivation projects around the country that need volunteers to work the land. This could mean an hour or two on a Sunday afternoon. It’s worth finding out about, because you get to take some of the harvest home as payment. You don’t have the commitment of an allotment, yet is an fun afternoon out and an enjoyable way to educate children about where your food comes from.

Any more tips from you – please feel free to leave them in the comments below. Thanks for reading!

Feed a Family Oxford

Promoting budget healthy eating using local organic produce

Chicken soup cures a cold…and is good for the soul!

Dandelion leaves and their culinary uses!

Ingredients:

Congratulations to Oxford Food Surplus Cafe!

Cultivate Oxford Veggie bag

Sweet Potato Falafel

Black bean & Brazil Nut Fudge Brownies

Stinging Nettle Pesto

The Roast Dinner and leftovers….

Q Gardens Steventon Oxfordshire

Top 10 tips on feeding your family for £100 a month