Memories of childhood

We've just run a competition with The Secret Seed Society who promote growing vegetables and cooking for young children. We asked you to tell us about your early memories of growing and cooking. Here are some of the responses.

Grandparents are often the people who get little ones started. Sarah told us

"My earliest childhood memories of gardening were of my school summer holidays spent in Lancashire with my green-fingered grandparents. They rented a beautiful allotment from a local farmer and grew every traditional vegetable going. I would help my Grandmother pick peas and would pop open the pods and eat the the jade green beads raw. I remember thinking that they were the best tasting peas in the whole world."

Elena also learnt from her grandparents:

"My first childhood memory of growing things was digging up potatos in my grandmother's garden, and eating peas from the pod. I'm now doing the same for my daughter!"

But sometimes Dads are involved too. I remember my late father getting me started with a packet of Clarkia seeds and my own little strip at the bottom of the garden. Seeing them grow and then enjoying all the flowers made me feel really proud and with a huge sense of achievement. 

Likewise Elizabeth:

"My earliest memory of growing veggies is of myself and my twin brother helping our dad on his allotment. I remember helping to dig up potatoes, dad would put the fork into the ground and turn it over and me and my brother would scrabble around hunting out the spuds in the earth. I remember he had a funny little skinny shed on his plot which looked like a sentry box you see outside Buckingham palace! It was crammed full of tools and plant pots, and we'd huddle inside when it rained. Happy days"

Mustard and cress is a popular first seed for tinies to try. Karen remembers:

"My best memory of growing seeds as a child was decorating egg shells with faces and growing cress in them. I remember being amazed at being able to see the growth in seedlings from day to day and it kept me interested and the best bit was being able to eat them too."

As for cooking, again grandparents and jam tarts are often the catalysts to a cookery passion. My Mum made them regularly and let me help by spooning in the jam and then making my own freeform shapes with the pastry off-cuts. Here's Heather:

"My earliest memory of cooking is with my nan. We didn't make anything amazing, just jam tarts, but it was still ever so much fun! She is the reason why I love cooking now."

The Secret Seed Society is a great way to encourage kids to get into cooking and gardening. They produce storybook and seed packs. Each pack costs £5.50 but Make it and Mend it members get a 10% discount - just enter Cook it as the discount code at the checkout. >> Buy here

Right now they're running a competition for grownups to win a dinner for two by coming up with some interesting celebrity seed characters - Tina Turnip and Parsley Bussell among them. >> You can enter here

>> For some tips on encouraging children to cook and develop a sense for flavours 

>> Find out more about Secret Seed Society

How much power do your home appliances use?

I just found this really interesting page from GE (General Electric). You can find out how much electricity your home appliances are guzzling and even check out the annual costs (in US dollars). If you are from the US it's even more useful as you can compare costs by state.
>> GE Home Appliance Energy Use

For us Europeans it's still very helpful from a comparative point of view. The annual cost of using a hairdryer is more than curling irons or a vacuum cleaner. As I expected the tumble dryer is way up there in terms of electricity consumption and annual running costs. What did surprise me though was how costly fridges and freezers are, behind only furnaces (boilers?), water heaters and the deadliest of all - air conditioners. Other high consumers are plasma TVs, ovens and dishwashers

By clicking the menu the little appliance visuals rearrange themselves so you can check wattage, gas use, cost per year and kilowatt yield. I was also very surprised at the cost differential by state - a staggering annual cost difference of almost $2500 if you used all the appliances and live in New York ($4134) rather than Washington state ($1720). Go have a play!
Related links:
>>  Blog Action Day - Hang your Washing out!

>> Save energy - starting in the kitchen

Free gardening event at Wisley

I popped into the RHS garden centre at Wisley, Surrey on Saturday and noticed a flier for a free Royal Horticultural Society event on Saturday 5th and Sunday 6th June. 

Adrian Bloom who is an author, plantsman and  many times gold medal winner at Chelsea will be giving talks and signing copies of his new book, Bloom's Best Perennials and Grasses at 1.30 pm and 3 pm on both days. The talk is Take 12 Plants - the key to a successful garden. Worth combining with a browse round the garden centre - or even better a whole day at Wisley Gardens.

While I was browsing for plants, I overheard a husband and wife conversation which amused me. Husband spotted a plant and declared passionately "I love these. Let's get one!"

She replied, very testily, "How many times do I have to tell you that's not right for the theme."

He shrugged his shoulders, looked very peeved and said "I don't understand the bloody theme anyway."

"I've told you it's Seaside garden and that plant is English Country Garden. How many more times..?"

I wouldn't be bothering to save up for the Silver wedding  present! 

It  made me feel a bit sad for the way so many TV gardening programmes have made many people think it's all about rules and sticking to a rigid design. For me one of the beauties of gardening is the way the garden evolves in its own way over time. And it's always a shame when real passion for a plant gets subjugated to the desire to conform to a pre-ordained plan (assuming of course the soil and conditions are right for it).

Clare F

Not a scrap of common sense!

We all hate it when somebody says I told you so, so I won’t say it, but rest assured I am doing my silent I told you so dance.  Why, because the car scrappage scheme has got to be one of the worst thought-through UK government initiatives for a long time.


Months ago we mentioned our concerns about the financial and sustainable credentials of this scheme and it seems we were right.  These pictures which appeared in the Daily Mail show this former airfield in Thurleigh, Bedfordshire, one of a number of 'holding areas' packed with vehicles sold through £400million scrappage scheme.
Who in their right mind thought this would be good for the individual, the country or the environment?

Not only have unscrupulous dealers taken advantage of the situation putting up car prices to cover their losses or make even more profit, but we now also have the motorised equivalent of the European butter mountain!

It seems we now have over £28 million worth of perfectly serviceable cars lying around going to waste, merely waiting to be crushed.

Surely it would have been more effective to have given us the cash to have our elderly cars serviced and made more road worthy rather than being coerced into buying a new car that we didn’t really need, plus having to get a loan to pay for it.
>> Read the original piece Would you scrap it or save it?

Hilary B

Get off your butt and get cleaning!

It's that time of year and while we may feel less than thrilled about the prospect of doing it, the after-effects of Spring cleaning are worth the effort. Not only do you have a shiny new home, but it also dramatically lifts the spirits. The big problem is getting started. We asked our friends on Facebook for their top tips and got some great ideas from them.

Rock 'n roll your way through it! Music seems to have the desired effect in getting lots of you going. And it's not surprising. There's loads of evidence from gym workouts  that people push themselves harder and achieve more when there's a throbbing beat to drive them forward. Everyone has their favourite musical recipes from Erasure to Bollywood, from country to techno - but there seems to be a common consensus that it has to be VERY LOUD!

Clock on and off. Some great tips here about setting some time parameters:

• Set yourself a manageable time chunk - like 30 minutes and challenge yourself to see how much you can get done in that time. This has the added benefit of encouraging yourself to do it more often - as you see how much you can accomplish in a short and relatively painless period of time.
• Set the timer and do 15 minutes a room - like the tip above - but even more frenetic and with the benefit of adding some variety.
• If you have kids, set them to work in the commercial breaks of their favourite TV programme - or they don't get to watch the rest. This lovely Macchiavellian tip was from Karen Grevatt - and seems a fantastic way of getting the kids to take all their junk upstairs, empty rubbish, tidy toys away etc. 

Use the power of shame! Inviting guests is a sure-fire way of encouraging yourself to get the place cleaned up. The imminent arrival of friends is a great incentive to get the mop and bucket out.

However you do it you're bound to feel better afterwards. Do you have any other motivational top tips? Leave a comment below.

For loads of advice on cleaning - including making your own natural cleaning products >> on our website

>> For some insights into the history of Spring cleaning

Thanks to Desiree, Sarah, Jules, Wendy, Sharon, Cherise, Jenny, Adele, Kathy, Jane, Skinny, Karen and Kate for your input.

The caffeinated car

As part of a BBC science programme, Bang Goes the Theory, a car powered only by roasted coffee granules is being driven from London to Manchester. The idea is to show how fuels other than petrol and diesel can power vehicles. The car, a converted 1988 Volkswagen Scirocco bought for £400, has been nicknamed the Car-puccino.
The coffee is heated to 700 degrees C in a charcoal fire and breaks down into carbon monoxide and hydrogen gases which are fed into pipes on the roof and cooled down and put through a couple of filters housed in the boot, then the clean gas is fed through to the bonnet to power the engine. the Carpuccino will do up to 60 mph.



But before you rush round to your local KwikFit, at a kilo of ground coffee just to do 3 miles, this is not going to save you any dosh at the pumps! Getting up to Manchester will require about 70 kilos of coffee - so even with a cheap brand it'll set the licence payer back around a cool £1000 (sorry can't resist) - and if you're picky about your brand of espresso it could cost around 50 times the cost of good old gasoline.

If you want to save the planet, stick to drinking the stuff - or go for the chip fat solution >>read our piece on chip fat powered cars

In praise of old gadgets

Do you ever think back fondly to an electrical gadget you used to have in the pre-tech age and wish you hadn't sent it to the dump? There was a period when there were electrical gadgets for all kinds of things and our parents had a houseful - then as we got all post-modern and sophisticated we started turning our collective noses up and consigning them to oblivion (or more accurately to landfill).

I was thinking about this as I had my shower this morning: a very laborious process involving the application of plastic carrier bags and bits of elastic to cover the cast on my fractured wrist. A particular challenge is washing my feet - particularly as since falling I'm very unsteady on them. I fondly remember the electric foot bath someone gave me for Christmas but which took up loads of space, then gathered dust in the back of a cupboard till one of my regular clutter-clearing days brought its death sentence. How I wish I had it now.

Another classic, now long gone, is the electric carving knife which my Dad wielded proudly every Sunday lunchtime to make short work of the roast. My MIAMI colleague Clare O'Brien has actually still got one - bequeathed to her by a family friend. It makes a hell of a racket but it cuts meat beautifully and quickly and beats everyone hanging around with cooling plates while someone curses and cuts themselves - or my usual routine of importuning some poor guest to do the honours. No one ever does it willingly - but what man can resist the opportunity to recreate their Texas Chainsaw fantasies on a joint of beef. I had a trawl through the Lakeland catalogue but alas this official rescuer of defunct kitchen tools seems to have eschewed the charms of the electric carver. Doubtless there is now an 'Elf and Safety diktat preventing their sale for fear that child crack gangs will be carving up each other and posting it on Youtube.

As to the once ubiquitous hostess trolley, it was clearly aesthetics rather than function that brought about its demise - and is also causing its rumoured revival - don't tell me all those Retro fashionistas are buying it because they're throwing large dinner parties. My parents swore by theirs - and with five children, it was another stalwart of Sunday lunchtime. Not the most practical use of precious space though - and boy was it ugly. I just came across a website called Hostess Trolley World so someone still loves them!

We never had a teas-made in our house - but my Uncle and Aunt had one - but then they also had beige plastic clip-on trays attached to their armchairs to hold their cups of tea - so a brew was clearly an urgent imperative in their house.

My pressure cooker was one of my favourite pieces of kitchen equipment - but it used to terrify my then flatmates so I stopped using it. I don't know when that found its way to the charity shop? It wasn't to make way for a slow cooker - they passed me by the first time round - although my Mum had one. They are very much back in vogue - but as I work from home anyway I haven't yet seen the point of yet another large piece of kit to find a home for in an already overcrowded kitchen.

What gadgets do you love or wish you could still get your hands on?
Clare F

Cash for caulis!

If you live in London and want to grow your own veg, you'll be interested to hear about the £75,000 that's on offer for community groups interested in growing their own food in under-used areas of the capital. This dosh comes from the Capital Growth scheme, managed by the London Food Link and supported by the Mayor of London.

Groups can submit an application onlline at www.capitalgrowth.org/apply. Grants between £200 and £1500 are up for grabs to help you turn a neglected plot of land into a veg plot. If you find a concrete plot they'll let you cultivate on it using cotainers or growbags. As well as the money, there's advice and training etc to support your group's efforts.

The cash injection follows an earlier one of £75k last December. It was snapped up to create 95 growing spaces by housing estates, schools,universities and others. Commenting on the success of the scheme the Mayor said

 “Creating lush patches of fruit and veg is catching on, judging by Londoners’ enthusiastic response to Capital Growth. We’ve already helped to create dozens of new growing spaces at schools, housing estates, at homeless schemes and at three of the city’s universities. The scheme is helping to make the urban environment more pleasant and cared for, as well as providing a cheap, fun way to grow grub.”. 

Boris, in conjunction with London in Bloom has also created a competition to encourage primary schools to create food gardens. There are 3 categories 'Bugs and Slugs', 'Collect and Create', and 'Climate Cool'. The top schools in each category wins a visit from a celebrity gardener, £500 cash prizes, plants and wormeries.

Related links:

>> Incredible Edible Todmorden - a whole town goes for sustainability

>> Grow your own veg - you can do it! - top tips for beginners

>> A great software tool for planning your veg garden - we LOVE this!

>> Dig for Victory - see the wartime video - still full of good advice

>> London Food Link

>> Allotments Regeneration Initiative

The packed lunch debate: it's about food quality

Good Lord! Once again parents are being targeted for their negligence. This time its parents who send their children to school with packed lunches which, we’re being told-off, are nutritionally inadequate.

Nonsense. What’s inadequate here is the argument and the results? A complete lack of common sense from the Government agencies and reporters looking for headlines rather than delivering informed guidance.

If you’ve not caught up with the story, the facts are that research from The Leeds University Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics (funded by the Food Standards Agency) and hi-jacked by The School Food Trust (TSFT – setters of the exacting nutritional standards for cooked school dinners post the Jamie Oliver campaign against turkey Twizzlers in 2006) has been used to highlight that only 1% of packed lunches taken into school meet these standards.

Well rest easy. These standards assume that children would not by any other means obtain the ‘right’ nutritional benefits (ie breakfast and evening meal) from their daily food intake. Reading a little deeper into the research findings it’s clear that most packed lunches from homes that care about what their children eat (the majority, surely) are perfectly adequate. In some cases perhaps replacing a sugary drink with water or adding a piece of fresh fruit or including a few carrot sticks, would help. But that’s not the message from TSFT who think that all children should switch to school-cooked lunches. Nor is it what the headlines have been screaming at us today (eg from The Telegraph: 48% of packed lunches are un-healthy).

Undoubtedly the majority of school-cooked lunches are now well balanced – some are even delicious and excellent. But they’re still pricey. And undoubtedly there are kids sent to school with little more than packets of crisps, chocolate bars and sugary drinks. But by and large, parents do care about what their children eat are doing a great job producing packed lunches from their own kitchens.

If you’ve not already spotted it, our Anne Caborn has launched a home-made packed lunch revival  full of hints and tips to inspire us to make the most of what we have at home (see below) so you don’t have to rely on the food manufacturers flogging us lunchbox-sized over-sugared and fatted food replacements for our kids lunches.

Basically, children will eat what’s packed for them, including fresh and dried fruit, chopped vegetables, creatively up-cycled leftovers, and definitely home-made cakes and bars. They get hungry at school. It’s a well known fact. And as part of an overall balanced diet – which most parents strive towards – yes, we do care and can manage our families’ diets – a packed lunch can usually consist of simple things that don’t need a nutrition or culinary degree to produce. And kids will eat it.

Let’s shift this argument to what’s really going on here. 1) Having set-up standards for school-lunch nutritional standards, the Government wants all children to pay for a school-cooked lunch. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but not everyone can afford it. 2) Bereft of a ready market for turkey twizzlers, food manufacturers have switched attention to the lunchbox. This has all happened very quickly. All we have to do is not buy rubbish processed food – stuff like cheese strings and expensively packed sugary bars. Instead we need to make or prepare food that children will eat and enjoy from fresh and not necessarily expensive quality ingredients.

I make banana bread, cherry loaf, flapjacks and even, occasionally, rice-crispie mallow bars for sweet interest to follow a protein and salad seeded-wrap with pesto or mustard and mayo and chuck in at least two pieces of fresh fruit. Not a morsel wasted or the slightest worry she’s being nutritionally short-changed.

But you know what? According to TSFT even this kind of balanced food doesn’t meet their exacting standards for a ‘balanced’ meal and my carefully prepared home-made food does not fit their idea of a nutritionally adequate packed lunch. Why? Because there’s no dairy included. For heaven’s sake! She has milk on her cereal in the morning (and often when she get home from school) will occasionally make herself a milky drink and we use dairy products the rest of the time in a normal balanced manner. She gets enough dairy and way more than your average Japanese or Chinese student who, amazingly enough, have completely dairy-free diets!

By the way, we’re currently running a competition to win one of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s new Everyday cookbooks. You just need to let us know your healthy and cost-saving lunchbox tips, so follow the link below for your chance. Bring them on. ClareOB

Links:

In praise of packed lunches 

Packed lunch tips competition  

Brrrr - but a warm feeling inside

I was listening to the radio this morning when somebody reflected on how you don't have to go that far back to remember a time when people wore balaclavas in bed and used drills to get parsnips out of the ground in the really cold weather - now there's invention for you!

Certainly in the UK we've got used to relatively mild winters. It came as a complete surpise to my 18 year-old daughter that an "adverse weather warning" meant, well, a warning of adverse weather. (The end result was she took a train to visit a friend out in the countryside and was trapped there for a couple of days.)

The lady on the radio was harking back to the winter of 1947, a bit too far back for me personally. But I remember the cold of  1963-64; giant icicles glinting like daggers on the trees, frost on the insides of windows and the smell of slightly warm milk in my junior school cloakroom as staff valiantly tried to defrost crates of frozen-solid, half pint bottles of milk on the radiators. They had only  been delivered earlier that morning.

Now, inside our centrally heated cocoons, we lead rather charmed and warm existences.

But the recent periods of harsh winter weather have also bought out the best in people. Complete strangers stopping to help you get your car out of the ice. Neighbours digging routes down frozen pathways for older residents. Now that gives you a really warm feeling - on the inside.

Here at MIAMI Towers, Hilary emailed to say it had taken 4 people an hour and a half to dig a path to the top of her drive, but in the process they'd met new neighbours and lots of people walking down the main road. "It was a real Blitz spirit."

I've also noticed a lot of smiling faces. We Brits love to discuss the weather and we've taken to new ways of describing degrees of cold with enthusiasm.

Yet, under it all, there is a thoughtfulness. Suddenly Mother Nature's reminding us who has the upper hand - central heating or no central heating.

Chances are you all have stories to tell and tips to share. Anybody got a knitting pattern for bedsocks? And what should we do about frost blighted vegetables?

In the meantime we've got some cold and flu remedies, tips for keeping your home warm and fuel bills down and if the fridge is looking a little bare because you can't get to the shops, now is the time to start cooking with leftovers.

I've got to go. I've just heard my daughter's key in the lock and I haven't seen her for a while.

Anne

Sew far not sew good!

There was a snippet in the Mail this weekend that caught my attention.

Lauren Booth explained how she had bought a sewing machine for her daughter for Christmas.  A great choice of present and a fantastic way to get our kids into sewing, but….and here is the big but, none of them could work out how to use it.  As she pointed out, the new fax machine was ready and assembled and sending and receiving faxes all over the world and yet here was a seemingly simple piece of equipment that seemed to be destined to remain a mystery to them all.

One of the main complaints she had was that none of them could work out how to thread it properly or how to manage the tension.  She wanted to know why the sewing machine industry hadn’t kept pace with technology….a fair point.

She's not alone.  Only the other day a friend of mine admitted to throwing her sewing machine away because it kept chewing up the thread; she assumed that it was broken.  It hadn’t entered her head that it might be a problem with the tension or a mismatch with needle, thread and fabric.

It seems to me that this is a widespread problem.  Lots of people out there want to take up sewing, but are being put off by the problems they encounter with their machines.

So what to do? I'm looking for people to share their hints, tips and experiences on getting started with a sewing machine.

1. Do you have any pearls of wisdom that you think would help the novice seamstress?
2. Did you encounter problems when you first started sewing?
3. How did you overcome them?
4. What sort of projects did you start out with?

Please let us have any comments, ideas, stories, examples, answers by commenting below or emailing us at info@makeitandmendit.com
Let’s get people sewing again!

Hilary

A proper homemade Christmas!

I was given this gift for Christmas by my brother-in-law and I think it's the nicest present I received. He made it himself from an old fallen willow tree in their garden.

He commutes to London everyday - a 3 hour round trip on the train with a car trip to the station and a long walk or tube hop at the other end. He also has a pretty pressured job. The fact that he took the trouble to hole up in his shed with his tools and varnish to make this for me makes it a very special present indeed.

I asked on our facebook page who had been given handmade gifts and there was quite a response - although it seems more people made them than received them. Those who were lucky enough to be recipients of some homemade largesse certainly seemed to appreciate it. Here are some of the ideas:

• A little Christmas bag with sweets and a tiny bottle of wine and home made mince pies. Brilliant!
• Home made mince pies, gingerbread men and bath stuff. Lovely!
• Vodka infused with Indian spices & bottled beautifully.
• 2 jars of chutney...well done sis!
• My stepdaughter bought a plain T-shirt for me and hand painted a beautiful kingfisher on it! Lovely.
• My teenage son and daughter made myself and their dad promise books. One promise a month e.g our son promised that he would help his dad on the allotment in june and our daughter promised to cook all the meals for us (each weekend) through feb. So I'm a very lucky mum as I now have 24 different promises from my kids.
• My friend Fiona knits ipod covers and I received one in a lovely mixed blue cotton.
• My sister knitted me a lovely necklace, I crocheted her a scarf.
• I got THE NEATEST pillow and stitch markers from friends.
• Received fab earrings and made bath bombs, sachets and lavender pillows.

I used to be a bit embarassed about giving homemade gifts - would people think me a cheapskate? Being on the receiving end made me look at it very differently.

Why Kirstie missed the point with her Homemade Christmas

Some insights into the psychology of gift giving

Clare Flynn