Can we reduce the amount of sugar we use when cooking rhubarb? Well, we can try adding an orange. But oranges come from Spain if not further afield. How do we know where sugar comes from, I mean whether it's cane sugar from the tropics or sugar beet from East Anglia? We are also trying adding small quantities of a herb called Sweet Ciceley which we have growing on the allotments at Orchard Street. But how many spoonfuls of Sweet Ciceley equals one spoonful of sugar? Ah, so much we don't know about the food we eat.

Des Harris has arranged a series of five food/land visits for the summer. They will all – except the herbal walk – leave from the Badcox car park at 2.00 p.m on a Sunday (although three of them will be walkable and one cyclable), and they won’t cost you anything except two or three hours on a Sunday afternoon.

Here they are:

1. SUNDAY MAY 25: Vallis field – the home of Chris and Cordelia’s project and the Vallis Veg box scheme.

2. SUNDAY JUNE 8: Innox Hill private allotments – Tricia will show us round this lovely and lesser known allotment site.

Apple, Source and Ciderland, Wednesday 9th July, 7.30, Rook Lane Arts Centre, Frome, with James Crowden (poet and countryman) and Sue Clifford (Common Ground), with cheese, apple juice and cider tastings.

This event is part of the 2008 Frome Festival.

Seventeenth Century Feast, Monday 7th July, Lamb Inn, Frome, 6pm, world premiere of the Food Frome film about dining in late seventeenth century England.

This event is part of the 2008 Frome Festival.

The past couple of years, I have been working hard to try and secure a better spread of vegetables through the year on the allotment. I have been using a makeshift cold frame - an old floor-board, 8 galvanised nails and an old window from the house next door to the allotment site - to grow lettuces. We have kept the window slightly open except in coldest weather so that the air doesn't get stangant. I am experimenting with a few different varieties, but this week we had a 'Valdor' with chives and salad burnet, also from allotment.

....as well as Food Frome, Frome has enjoyed the Frome and Selwood Slower Food Convivium for many years now. [We used to be in SlowFood, but we got thrown out for being too small and in many ways too slow......]

APPLES TREES, APPLES, JUICE, VIRTUAL ORCHARDS…..
THIS IS A CONVERSATION THAT WAS ON EMAIL AND I FELT MIGHT GET A BROADER INTEREST IF POSTED HERE……

1ST EMAIL REFERS TO A Co-op of apple pickers and eaters who have been going from Frome to west Bradley to pick and collect:
Dear all,

Squash

We grow a lot of squash, and have experimented with many varieties, but have decided now to stick with butternuts, for their good yield of orange flesh and ease of preparation. They, along with most of the winter squash family are usually good keepers, but this year we have lost quite a few and have resorted to freezing some which is pre-prepared.

We have found several recipes that make delicious use of this vegetable or maybe it's a fruit?

The Real Cost of Food, a presentation by Kath Dalmeny of Sustain from the Somerset Food Partnership meeting last November is available for download (PDF format).