Jottings from Lancaster - Wholemeal Drop Scones

I haven't talked at all about our visit to the River Cottage Canteen in Axminster but I need to here as I have been making wholemeal drop scones - actually spelt drop scones - which was exactly what I ordered the morning we walked into River Cottage Canteen for the first time.

We were on holiday in Devon in October and I was half aware that there was a River Cottage thing at Axminster. I expected some out of the way little fancy restaurant instead of this big, bold frontage right in the middle of the tiny town. We had parked in Tesco and you could conveniently walk from there into the town through a rather picturesque little ginnel right on to the main street. John went off to the bookshop (Archway Books - highly recommended) and I popped my head round the door and decided immediately that we would have to go there for coffee. 


So when John eventually emerged from the bookshop with some interesting acquisitions I dragged him off. Inside it was a lovely deli and a somewhat rustic cafe with wooden tables and trendily unmatched wooden chairs. It was almost empty, it being Monday morning. The coffee menu looked amazing. They did rather nice breakfasts but having resolved not to eat anything at all, all that strong will crumbled under the thought of spelt drop scones with honey. John had toast and we ordered 2 coffees. And then we waited. It was a nice enough place to sit and wait. But when the coffees came and still no sign of the food we began to get a tad restless. Of course, being English, we sat for far longer than anyone in their right minds would. And then we gave up - we just went to the till and offered to pay for the coffees but explained that the food hadn't arrived. The girl was really nice about it and offered to go off and get the food for us and bring us another coffee each, but by then we needed to get on as we had planned a day's geocaching on Golden Cap (the highest point on the south coast).


But they were so nice - she was really kind and apologetic and we didn't even end up paying for the coffees. And by then the spell of the spelt was wearing off and I was being seduced by the deli pies. So we turned to the counter and from their amazing selection bought a ham hock and pea pie, along with a chicken and leek pie. And then a chocolate tart and a pear and almond tart. The former were for tea back at the cottage where we were staying and the yummy sweet tarts to eat with our picnic lunch on Golden Cap. And they were good - I mean REALLY good. Scrumptious pastry and tasty fillings. I couldn't begin to describe the chocolate tart it was just so... 


Anyway, the guy serving us on the deli counter was really kind and wrapped up everything well so that it wouldn't crumble in the back of the car or my backpack on our walk. He had heard of geocaching, but never done it so it was fun to talk to him. So surprisingly, our first encounter with River Cottage was very good but somehow the longing for the spelt drop scone never quite left me.

Drop scones cooking on top of the wood burning stove

River Cottage Canteen and Deli was bristling with books by Hugh, including his new veggie one. You could buy them there signed, but in the end I decided against. Like Heather, the thought of another almost unused cookery book on the shelves was an extravagance too far. At that time I knew nothing about HFW except that he lived at River Cottage somewhere in the West Country and he grew his own veggies. I had seen him on enough TV trailers to know what he looked like but that was the sum total of my knowledge. Still, even knowing so little, it was exciting to be in Axminster. But then a few days later, whiling away a little time in Honiton while John was sampling some of the best 2nd hand bookshops for miles around I noticed that W H Smith had an offer on - all TV cookery books were £9.99 and if you bought 2, the second was £5. Just because, for no reason at all really, I decided to buy the River Cottage Everyday book as I thought it looked really nice. And as we were on holiday and looking for little holiday presents, I bought a second one for £5 for Heather. After all, I had only spent £14.99 and had 2 books which I might have paid £25 each for. And if Heather wasn't bothered, at least we hadn't spent much. But in fact I LOVED the book. I loved the recipes, I loved the pictures and little drawings and I loved the foreword. 


The nice man at the deli counter told us to return for a meal in the evening, but we decided then and there that instead we would go for lunch. What happened when we did that is a blog for another day. Meanwhile the spelt drop scones were calling so here they are.

Ready to eat!

The recipe is really for wholemeal drop scones but I thought it would work just as well with spelt flour - as indeed it did... I even put honey on them. 

Jottage from Lancaster - Fried Fish Fillets with Herbs and Lemon

Fried Fish with Herbs and Lemon

I had the rainbow trout I had bought from the worst Sainsburys in the world - Morecambe - and it really needed eating. I decided to have a shot at the Fried Fish Fillets with Herbs and Lemon. I had remembered to buy capers at last and so the vital ingredients were all to hand - I even had the right herbs and a lemon. I decided to roast some carrots, baby potatoes and parsnips with it - making a nice veggie accompaniment. Hugh has had a big influence on me this - I rarely use only one vegetable and more often than not, potato takes a back seat. However this wasn't an unqualified success. I should have added some nice green veggies like leek or cabbage, which would have gone better, I think. And the herbs and lemon mix was very lemony. I'm not sure it was the best thing to have with the Rainbow Trout - it seemed to need thick fish to take up the real lemoniness of the juices. But even with these reservations it was very nice and I am pleased with myself for cooking fish twice in 2 days. I should have cooked the trout in foil and the haddock with the lemon and herbs and a more experienced fish cook would probably know that. I'm planning to buy more fish on Saturday and will try this again.

Jottage from Cambridge - Curried Fish Pie p 176

There were few things I dreaded more when I was growing up than having to eat soggy Weetabix. However there were a couple of other dishes which competed for the accolade. One was semolina (a staple pudding at my primary school), and the other was fish pie. The thing about fish pie which I loathed the most were the hard-boiled eggs which my mother always added to what I think would otherwise have been quite an acceptable meal. But I happen to love fish, and I always seem to have lots of potatoes in the house that need eating up so, when I finally moved in with my husband and had to start cooking proper meals (the pans and cooking pots which were bought for us from our John Lewis Wedding List provided another incentive) a fish pie seemed like an obvious thing to make.

Fish Pie (without boiled eggs)

Before I acquired Hugh’s Everyday book I found a couple of fish pie recipes which, although listing hard-boiled eggs, had that golden word for lazy cooks, ‘optional’, written by the side. I discovered that, without the egg, fish pie was indeed delicious so I was excited to make the recipe on page 176. I used pouted fillet and trout and, instead of curry powder, I put in a couple of teaspoons of cumin. The end result I considered to be something of a triumph – see photo. 

Heather with the Fish Pie

I served it up with mashed potato and peas, and for pudding we had the Apple and Walnut Crumble (p.378) which my mother had made and brought up from Lancaster. (My mother can’t come to Cambridge empty-handed, and I anticipate what she’ll decide to take out of her fridge that needs using up, and the bits of food that she’ll inevitably buy for me when they have a motorway stop. This time – and clearly now in a meaningful relationship with Hugh – she bought a packet of chorizo and a couple of packets of spelt.) I put all the leftover vegetables (which had been used to flavour the milk) in the blender, along with a few pieces of fish, and served up to Tristan the next day. He had no complaints.

Apple and Walnut crumble

Jottage from Lancaster - A Tale of 2 Veggies

When Hugh calls his book River Cottage Everyday, you sort of assume that these recipes are good for, well, every day. And indeed they are in so many ways. Especially if you have fennel seeds, coriander and cumin as well as rapeseed oil and tins of white beans just there in your cupboard. (As an aside, I cleaned out my food cupboard completely yesterday and tracked down 4 bottles of wine vinegar, 3 bottles of soy sauce and an embarrassingly large amount of cocoa - don't ask). 


However, the sticking point for me isn't always the more obscure cuts of meat as we have a very good butcher nearby. It's the fish and the less obvious veg. I am a stranger to buying fish that aren't in packets (see my previous blog on this) and we don't have the big supermarkets up the road to sell us the likes of okra, durian and those big white radish things. But then I remembered that Sainsburys had opened a big new branch at Morecambe and I was sure that not only would they have a fish counter, but they would sell the amazing choice of veg I was looking for. Sainsburys do have a shop in Lancaster which isn't too bad, but it's an old branch and quite suffocatingly stuffed too full with narrow aisles added to which it's only half the size of most modern big box grocery stores. I haven't shopped there in years because I just don't like it somehow. The Morecambe one is big with wide aisles and free parking (unlike Lancaster). So off we go for a Saturday morning shop. 

'May contain bones'

It was built on the old Morecambe football ground - Christie Park. Surprisingly, the car park was barely a quarter full and the shop had a few desultory people wheeling trolleys around but it was almost empty. I went straight to the fish counter ready to be taught how to buy fish. I saw some Tilapia and I had heard of that but it was apparent that Zoe - who was our server for the day, didn't want us to buy it. I came away with a tiny piece of boneless, skinless haddock ('warning - may contain bones') and 2 rainbow trout - which I thought was really adventurous. Zoe confided in us that although she worked at Morecambe she shopped in Sainsburys in Lancaster. This seemed rather strange but it soon became apparent why she had decided to work in one store every day and yet she travelled the 6 miles to shop in another.

Not one fennel bulb - but TWO!

Celeriac

Sainsburys executives must have swept up the dross from the ruins of Christie Park and judged from the wrappers strewn about exactly how to stock their brand new store. Fruit and veg took up less of the floor space than crisps; and yoghurt selection was dwarfed by the seeming miles of aisles of beer. The shop actually had a very minimal stock of food we might want to eat - in fact much less than our tiny local Tesco. Increasingly furious about this, I flounced about desperately trying to find fennel and celeriac. I have to confess that John did find the fennel eventually but celeriac, a vegetable that is after all in season here, eluded us. Celeriac-less we ended up in afternoon in the pouring rain at Booths in Windermere buying the knobbly veg. Hugh will have us eating celeriac and fennel if not every day, then certainly every week so we will need to find some good stockists of these 2 worthy vegetables for next time.


Our little trip to Morecambe Sainsburys  ended at the till with a very pretty little girl and her dad behind us. They were buying 2 big cardboard boxes of pizza, a Fruit Shoot and a 6 pack of lager. I don't think we will be going there again. 

Jottage from Lancaster - A Fishy Dilemma 2

I decided on the Roast Fish Fillets with Roast Potatoes in the end. I had (almost) all the ingredients and I could add mushy squash as a vegetable (but with sweet potatoes instead of squash - it is Thanksgiving after all). The results were rather good. The sole, lemon was melting and the potatoes as crisp as you could wish for. I didn't cook as many potatoes as on the picture in the book - and in the end I forgot that bay leaves were still on my shopping list from the time I didn't buy the capers but here is the result. Definitely one to make again.

From the book

Mine

Jottage from Lancaster - A Fishy Dilemma

Fish as a subject is something I don't think too much about. Whilst being vaguely aware that eating fish is good for you, we don't actually do it much. I always have this resolution in mind to eat it once or twice a week, but I can't say that I have ever kept to it. 


I don't really know much about buying fish or cooking it. But I was very tempted by the Foil Baked Fish with Fennel, Ginger and Chili, even though the picture in River Cottage Everyday looks to me as if the fish is raw but the veggies cooked. I cooked it and it was blissfully easy to make and really succulent. Buoyed up by the triumph I thought I would try another fish recipe from the book. I had in mind Fried Fish Fillets with Herbs and Lemon. However I had forgotten that I had finished off my ancient little bottle of capers for the lamb chops with garlic, thyme and capers (really scrumptious), and so I had to remember to buy some more. But I had totally forgotten and the chances of the local village shop having some were so minimal that it just wasn't worth getting the car out. So I was searching for another recipe and the foil baked fish is probably the best I can do - but I don't have any fennel. So I might substitute tomatoes - or I might just try roast fish fillets with roast potatoes.


But those dilemmas are nothing compared to actually buying a bit of fish. Ever keen to expand my culinary knowledge, yesterday I got round to reading the Fish Forever preamble to the fish recipe section of River Cottage Everyday. And here I first encountered what I should have known before; Hugh has a real thing about fish. I know he goes fishing as I have seen him do it on the telly - and I now know he is deeply concerned about all sorts of fishing-related issues. So it was with some hesitation that I stood in front of the fish display at Marks and Spencer (I know I should have gone to a proper fishmonger but yesterday just wasn't the time or the place). There seemed to be a bewildering amount of choice and I was desperately trying to remember Hugh's list of fish to avoid/fish to eat more of. All I could remember was that cod-bad and mackerel-good.

Packet of sole, lemon

In the end I came back with a pack of lemon sole and with some trepidation turned to page 138 to see if it was on the black list. In fact it didn't mention sole of any kind - good, bad or indifferent (although Megrim and Witch, members of the sole family, are, suprisingly, good). So I turned to the website www.fishonline.org which Hugh assures us (on page 139) is 'very easy to use'. I found myself well out of my comfort zone here as I typed in 'lemon sole'. I was very confused to find that there were no results found. Perhaps this was some kind of fish that didn't really exist - a kind of chicken kiev of fish - a ready-meal I didn't need to prepare in any way. But no, this 'very easy' website wants to to put in 'sole, lemon' (note the all-important comma which is a vital part of this creature's name otherwise 'no results found'). Hmmm - not such an easy site then. But then it got more complex as there are 3 sole, lemons. 2 of them were probably OK and one was rated as a no-no; 'based on available information these species should probably not be considered sustainable at this time'. Ah.

Forever Fish (albeit fuzzy)

All I knew from the packet was that it was caught in the North Atlantic but it was labelled 'Fish Forever' which is some new kind of M and S initiative to keep up fish stocks (so they say). But on the M and S website it says 'Lemon sole has not been certified by MSC'. So what does that mean? Does MSC mean the Marine Conservation Society with a bit of a typo? In which case it may be that it doesn't quite meet up to the standards of someone like Hugh? I have no idea what it means, but it seems to me that if you are buying fish, because the situation with fish stocks and fishing methods changes all the time, you are better befriending a good fishmonger and keeping away from supermarkets. 

Fish Forever

Meanwhile I haven't considered buying the River Cottage Fish yet - but even now I am thinking that maybe one day....

Jottage from Cambridge - Soggy Weetabix or How to Start Weaning

The word ‘weaning’ in the context of babies is incredibly annoying. It seems to imply that they’re coming off something, so you could easily assume that, sometime between four and six months, you should stop feeding them milk, and exclusively offer solid food. Nothing could be further from the truth. Milk remains the most important source of

nourishment for babies until they’re at least a year old, and probably even beyond. So, when Tristan was five months old and I decided to start weaning I didn’t confine my feeding bras to the back of the wardrobe, but rather thought more carefully about the best time to
give Tristan milk feeds so that he was hungry enough to eat three meals a day too.
If you haven’t waited until the baby is six months old then you’re bound to start them off on baby rice and pureed carrot or, if you’re feeling really adventurous, both mixed together. There was quite a build-up of excitement to giving Tristan his first meal, and my husband and I both eagerly awaited his reaction as we launched the
Tommy Tippee spoon into his mouth. When I put the first spoonful of carrot in his mouth he gave me a terrified look, certain that this orange coloured mush was going to poison him. However, somehow the second spoonful wasn’t quite as bad as the first, and an ice cube sized portion of carrot was demolished within a few minutes. Of course the same meal took much longer the next day, but that’s just how weaning goes. Some days your baby’s inner Popeye comes out and he can’t get enough spinach, and then you’re worried that he’ll only ever eat mangos which are a particular shade of yellow. 

Overall my experience has been very positive though and Tristan, so long as he’s not too tired (note that overtiredness is the reason why most babies start yelling and arching their backs at the first sight of a spoon) eats pretty much everything, with the exception of lentils which, quite understandably, he absolutely loathes. The ice cube trays so beloved of Karmel and co. have now been replaced with little pots
(note that all the mummys in the know get their Tupperware from Poundland), and generally Tristan eats good sized portions. Within a few days I had moved on from carrots to butternut squash soup (with
extra cumin to give it a nice warm flavour), and really any combination of the following: spinach, potato, sweet corn, courgettes, baked beans, peas, and peppers, mixed up with meat or fish. So, now at
just over seven months, a typical day looks like the following:
7am: milk
8am Breakfast: Bowl of porridge mixed with grated apple or mashed up
banana, or Weetabix with milk. For us breakfast is always the easiest
meal, mainly because Tristan adores porridge. Weetabix, which I used
to dread having to eat as a child, I now consider one of the greatest
inventions of the last century.
10am: milk
11.30 Lunch: I generally do baby-led at lunchtime which is usually
something on toast, such as cheese and apple, (see Baby & Toddler
Cookbook p.175) sardines, cream cheese or baked beans. Unless you
weigh the food before and after your baby has spent time with it
(Hugh’s advice is that meals should last no longer than half an hour
which I think is just about right) it’s impossible to know how much
they’ve eaten, and indeed it’s incredible where you find half-eaten
bits of bread. Therefore I often give Tristan banana mixed with
full-fat natural or Greek yogurt afterwards just to make sure that
he’s eaten enough.
4pm milk
5pm Teatime:  I used to make a special meal for Tristan, but now I try
and give him the leftovers of whatever my husband and I have eaten the
night before. The only real no-no for babies (besides honey which is
the latest fad thing to avoid as it’s been associated with botulism,
and certain types of fish which contain lots of mercury) is salt
(sugar too isn’t allowed). Low-salt stock cubes are the answer (I
apologise Hugh but, however much time I might have to spare, I will
never bring myself to make my own stock), and unsalted butter. So
Tristan happily eats minced beef, risotto and any kind of meat stew
for his dinner. If the latter is a bit watery, which it often is after
a spell in the freezer, I add baby rice or baby pasta to thicken it
up.
7pm milk

Despite eating all this food and, since you’re no doubt wondering, I’ll tell you that Tristan still doesn’t sleep through the night, but demands a couple of night feeds, usually around 11pm and 3am. However,
although I moan all the time about the fact that my baby still isn’t sleeping through, there is something quite nice about touching base with Tristan during the night. We snuggle up together while everyone else is sleeping and think about all the lovely things we’re going to eat in the days ahead.

Jottage from Cambridge - Spelt

What is this obsession with spelt? This strange ingredient has
suddenly appeared on supermarket shelves, presumably in response to
all the food writers who seem to adore what Wikipedia introduces as a
‘hexaploid species of wheat’. According to the same source you’ve been
able to buy spelt from the supermarket for nearly five years now,
although products made from the stuff can only really be bought from
health food shops. I couldn’t wait to try Tristan on the Spelt and
Apple Stars (note that organic baby biscuits are horribly expensive,
even more so when you consider that half the biscuit will end up as a
crumb on your nicely hoovered floor) in the Baby & Toddler Cookbook
and, although my mother was sure that any old flour would do really, I
determined (this time) to follow Hugh’s recipe to the letter. Living
within walking distance of an Asda, Sainsbury’s and 24 Hour Tesco I
thought it would be piece of cake finding what Hugh specified as
‘unrefined spelt flour’. My quest was unsuccessful however, and
although I did manage to find spelt flour at all three supermarkets,
the place to buy ‘unrefined’ spelt flour remained something of a
mystery. Anyway I didn’t need to look any further than Arjuna on
Cambridge’s Mill Road.


Arjuna is the kind of store that I used to run a mile from, assuming
that they only stocked muesli, incredibly expensive organic skincare
products and everything either gluten, wheat or taste free. However on
the day I decided to make the short walk from my house down Mill Road
to Arjuna (note that my previous pram wouldn’t actually fit through
the door very easily so the trip was only really possible when I had
invested in a lightweight buggy) I was in for a huge treat. I spent at
least twenty minutes in there, eyeing up the different kinds of flour,
chocolates, and lovely baby foods (I don’t especially like muesli so
their display was wasted a bit on me). Most things were much cheaper
than in the supermarket too – this was clearly the place to buy herbs
and spices, as well as porridge oats and exotic juices. Of course I
found my wholemeal spelt flour too and, after I had been to buy a
star-shaped cookie cutter (I told you I was following Hugh’s recipe
diligently this time), I rushed home to make the cookies. Tristan
loved them, and I decided to take them to his swimming lesson so he
could share them with his baby friends. They naturally gobbled them
all up so I had to make another batch. Thankfully though I now have
enough unrefined spelt flour to last until he’s old enough to eat and
enjoy custard creams.

Jottage from Lancaster - Chachouka

"This spicy North African pepper and tomato stew with eggs baked on top makes a lovely, lazy brunch or supper"


If you are feeling a bit queasy after one of those 24 hours bugs then something tasty and delectable is just what you need. So a bit of left-over Chachouka in the freezer with an egg seemed exactly right for lunch today. Heather has talked about Hugh making you feel that you can be free and adaptable with his recipes, and with this chachouka I was careful with the spices but reckless with the amount of veggies - just using what I had waiting to be eaten up. I didn't have a chili but everything else was there to be chopped up and the cooked and eaten. I even used up the rest of my 5 year old saffron. I don't suppose it had any saffron-like qualities left - but I threw it all in anyway.


The thing that has really impressed me about the River Cottage Everyday book was that somehow I could make things and they came out like the pictures. 


So here is Chachouka from the book...

and here is my lunch (cooked, incidentally, on the top of the wood-burning stove)...


Actually, I think mine looks even better!

Jottage from Cambridge/Lancaster - Baked Chicken Curry

The thing about cookery books which puts me off the most is the long
list of ingredients required to make the meal, usually tantalisingly
illustrated opposite the very detailed, and occasionally wordy,
method. Who has fenugreek, turmeric or chilis on hand? Well,
strangely, and given that I now have a baby to feed who probably
shouldn’t be fed custard creams – note that there has never a custard
cream shortage in our household – I do have all of the above in our
larder. (Note that Tristan doesn’t need a teaspoon of fenugreek on his
banana porridge in the morning to make it go down, but I generally
spend much more time in the kitchen now, and I’m out and about more so
I have built up an impressive selection of herbs and spices.)


So, picking up a recipe book now doesn’t seem quite so daunting, and
when I turned to page 223 of the Everyday book the Chicken Curry
seemed like quite a straightforward dish. Of course I didn’t quite
have everything, but I thought that I probably wouldn’t be able to
taste the fennel seeds so why add them?, and a wilted red chilli which
had been in the fridge for a number of weeks would work in place of
the green chili specified in the recipe. And that I think is what
cooking is all about – knowing when to leave things out, and making
substitutions wherever possible. For a kick off this means that every
time I make the chicken curry it will taste slightly different, and
also I’ll hopefully end up throwing away less food from the fridge.
But cookery writers are loathe to admit that their recipe will still
work without that all important spoonful of cornflour, or that two
garlic cloves will work just as well as three. However Hugh (my mother
and I now refer to him by his first name as we feel that he is already
part of the family) does start off the method with the line … ‘If
you’ve got the time, toast the cumin etc.’ which does seem to imply
that if you want to knock up a chicken curry between the end of
Neighbours and getting the baby prepared for his bath then it’ll
probably taste just as nice. However, if your way of winding down is
by spending time in the kitchen then why not? – you might just end up
tasting that moment of extra trouble.


Well, how did it taste? It was just delicious – the chicken swimming
in a rich turmeric stained liquid and, like Hugh, we served it with a
neat pile of white rice. In fact my chicken curry looked exactly like
the picture in the book! I blended up a few of the leftovers and gave
it to Tristan the next day. He had no complaints either, though I
think he thought I should have added an extra teaspoonful of fenugreek
which I’ll make sure to do next time I turn to page 223.


I am adding a postscript here as I made the Chicken Curry after Heather tried it. We both made enough for two nights and she didn't think it was as good the second night - but we loved it just the same. As Heather says - it comes out exactly like the picture in the book...


Heather's Chicken Curry

My Chicken Curry...

The picture in the book...

 Amazing!!!!

Jottage from Cambridge – Season and Unseasonality

Food is not something I know much about. I have never been one of those people who buys fruit and vegetables in a particular season – I’ve even been known to eat Cadbury’s Cream eggs at least two months either side of Easter. So, when my mother gave me a copy of River Cottage Everyday I thought it would sit snugly with my other reasonably untouched cookery books. It still might be between Jamie Oliver and Delia Smith but for the fact that suddenly food has become much more important in our household. This is all down to ‘weaning’ – that very daunting process between your baby only consuming milk and them eyeing up the sweetie counter at the supermarket.


My sister assured me that weaning was great fun, and indeed I have loved every minute blending up bits of carrot, sweet potato, butternut squash and all the other amber coloured vegetables that Annabel Karmel (the guru of weaning) suggests you puree into a mush and feed your baby. However the market for blenders has no doubt been damaged irreparably by Gill Rapley. Rapley is synonymous with ‘baby led’ weaning - the latest fad of new mums who assemble with their Pumpkin Patch kids at the Cambridgeshire Childrens’ Centres. In fact the first question anyone asks now after that all important ‘is your baby sleeping through the night?’ is ‘are you doing baby-led’? Anyone who hasn’t heard of this latest phenomenon is looked at disdainfully, and an assumption is made that their baby will be an impossibly fussy eater who won’t be able to hold a spoon until their second birthday (Rapley claims). 


There are great assumptions made for ‘baby led’, and I was certain that Tristan would be the perfect candidate. However, owing to the fact that at five months he was still waking every couple of hours, I was advised to start weaning early to save my sanity. Because baby-led means that you only give your child solid food (you can give them soups, yogurts etc. but you never give them the instruction to open their mouth while you shove a spoon in, instead they take the spoon from you and feed themselves) – which they don’t have the ability to digest until they’re six months old – I began to puree instead. When Tristan hit six months I began to give him solid foods, although still relying on my blender, and very rarely having the courage to let him take the spoon for fear of the walls, carpet, furnishings etc. being forever porridge stained in our rented accommodation. 


My freezer is now full of little pots (I have become fairly obsessive about Tupperware recently) of lamb stew, minced beef mixed with baby pasta and salmon risotto. New inspiration came with the acquisition of the River Cottage Baby & Toddler Cookbook which sits beside River Cottage Everyday not on a dusty shelf, but within easy reach on the kitchen counter. I have got through a huge number of recipes already, and Tristan just as easily wolfs down the Chicken Curry (see p.223 of Everyday) as the Apple & Spelt Stars (see p.234 Baby & Toddler). So, food is now very important and the some of my trials and tribulations of feeding my baby son will be recorded in this blog. In addition I hope to tell our readers about the amazing food stores on Mill Road, a thriving shopping street to the east of the city centre.

Jottage from Lancaster - rapeseed oil

When you get home with HDW's weighty tome River Cottage Everyday the first thing you encounter, apart from the lively pictures and somewhat quirky drawings, is a reference to rapeseed oil on almost every page. As a cook who tends to slosh in Tesco generic 'vegetable oil' which may well be refined engine oil as far as I know, and who thinks that olive oil is the height of gastronomic chic, this needed a little searching out at our local Booth's supermarket.


My well-used bottle of rapeseed oil...

I was actually quite excited about going off to buy this very exotic ingredient and rather hoped that the good people of Carnforth may well be deeply impressed - but of course no one noticed - and why indeed would they?

Rape flowers

Rapeseed oil is apparently very good for you - even more so than olive oil. It's deeply yellow, being derived from those unbelievable fields of rape that scatter the English countryside in early summer. Just as an aside, the word 'rape' derives from the Latin word 'rapum' meaning turnip, but the Americans, with their characteristic prudishness, call it canola oil.


So I return home clutching my bottle of bright yellow oil as happy as I might be if I had a fancy bottle of wine. It's now about 6 weeks since that day but every time I slosh some into the pan I love to see its buttercup yellow colour, I love the way it colours everything with a pale wash of saffron and into the bargain it's supposed to be good for me. Even though the bottle was nearly 4 quid I reckon that's a bargain!




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Jottage from Cambridge/Lancaster

We just thought of it - one Friday night; to write a blog about our experiences cooking using the River Cottage Everyday recipe book and the River Cottage Baby and Toddler Cookbook.


How this came about and our thoughts and experiences along the way will be the subject of this blog and we are just writing it for our own amusement.


Firstly Tristan's lunch of cheese and apple on toast....

and Tristan eating it...

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Location:Cromwell Rd,Cambridge,United Kingdom