By Isabelle Low Come spring, the winter crops of cabbage and kale and leeks have bolted and the stores of potatoes, onions and roots are running out. Spring vegetables have only just been sown and won’t be ready to harvest until May and June. Eating in the hungry months in medieval times was both hard and uninspiring – a diet dominated by old potatoes, cabbage and wormy apples. PresRead More…
Are you
doing Veganuary? Good for you! A few
suggestions. On a vegan diet, it’s
really important to make sure that you eat a balance of 50% vegetables and
fruit, 25% protein (beans or nuts) and 25% good carbohydrates (wholemeal rice or
wholemeal pasta) plus a bit of oils (olive is best). Please
consider carefully before you buy out of season or exotic plants which have
beRead More…
By Isabelle Low Whether your
centrepiece is a turkey (hopefully organic and free range) or like me a stuffed
portobello mushroom, there needs to be a lot of traditional vegetables as
supporting cast. Let’s first
think of a huge tray of roasted root vegetables. Parsnips: so good
chopped length wise and roasted. Beetroot: ideally
multiple varieties, quartered and roasted
Read More…
By Isabelle Low Lots of
potatoes being lifted this month in our Edible Campus gardens. To keep
them fresh for as long as possible,
clean off as much soil as you can, and let them dry off completely. Then store somewhere dry and dark and cold. Potatoes
come in 3 groups: first earlies (small and tasty and ready by June or July);
second earlies (a bit bigger and ready over the Read More…
Isabelle Low Our Edible Campus gardens are currently awash with runner beans. They are one of the superheroes of any vegetable garden: reliable to grow, prolificly productive, no significant predators or diseases, plus they give a payback by setting nitrogen into the soil. Their only drawback is that they need to be planted out only when the risk of overnight frost has passed so Read More…
It’s February and the community gardens still have food in them, including Brassicas, the cabbage family plants. Kale, cabbage, and brussels sprouts are still green and seem to shrug off the snow and frosts and even keep growing (all be it slowly). So what tasty treats can we make with these? One of my favorites is Kale Chips. For Kale Chips, all you need are: some kale leaves- washed, the tRead More…
This post is written by Seth Nolan-McDonough, a first year studying Psychology, Social Anthropology, and Ancient History. Seth has been a keen garden volunteer, spoiling us with different species of chilies, and helps with general Transition publicity. As the days get shorter and the cold sets in, we unfortunately no longer have the delicious tomatoes, courgettes and other summer vegetables tRead More…
With all the recent activity in the gardens, there’s been a lot of preparation for the coming months – what we’re going to grow for our summer salads, autumn crops and for storing over the winter. We can get a bit preoccupied with the never ending battle with the weeds, but at this time of year some of these weeds are the tastiest crops around! Spring was traditionally known as the ‘hungryRead More…
Hopefully you noticed that last weekend the clocks went back, which may have meant an extra hour in bed, but also sadly marks the start of proper winter. Some of our international students might be forgiven for thinking that winter started months ago; the summer of 2012 was remarkably brief, even for Scotland. Back in June, I had higher expectations for sunny weather and invited visitors to theRead More…
Regular readers of the Transition blog know that I am very enthusiastic about reducing our carbon footprint in the kitchen. So when Ali asked me if I would like to trial Transition’s new Wonderbag, which claims to be ‘saving the planet, one stew at a time’, I jumped at the chance! Aesthetically it resembles something between a piece of 1970’s furniture and a large tribal-print turban and, whilst IRead More…
