On Monday afternoon we were joined by the famous Fife Diet to learn how to cook exciting (some might say ‘weird’) vegetables!

Mike and Lisa cooked us some deliciously simple celeriac soup and a selection of root vegetable salads. They were completely scrumptious and almost entirely locally sourced.  Recipes can be found here. They also regaled us with some of the exciting work being done by Fife Diet including more cooking classes; local food shows; recipe sharing and a community garden.

Many of you already know about the community garden which is part of Transition University of St Andrews (an excellent source of local veg) but did you also know that St Andrews has a community orchid too? I didn’t until I met the very enthusiastic Henry at Saturday’s Sustainability Fayre. Click here for more information on the St Andrews Community Orchard Group.

Today’s event, however, was all about the vegetables. We learnt that celeriac is  a very tasty substitute for kohlrabi; jerusalem artichoke is quite like water chestnut when eaten raw and that fennel grows very well in these parts! All of the veg is available from Pillars of Hercules or Bellfield Organics. We discovered that availability wasn’t always the issue and some participants just felt overwhelmed by how to prepare these new veg. For those of you who couldn’t attend the class, here are some youtube videos to enlighten you on preparation of some of this season’s weird veg .

If you’d like to sign up for one of our other classes, the current schedule is available here.