When I was a child, my family had a vegetable garden. I can vividly remember the dark green feathery tendrils of the carrot tops and the paler green ripple of the lettuce leaves, poking out from their bed of straw and compost. I took it for granted as a normal part of life, though if the truth be told I don’t think I was especially interested. When I was very small we had chickens as well and one of my favourite jobs was fetching the eggs, which always seemed like a mini Easter egg hunt (though with less chocolate).

Having a garden is a virtuous circle because, as well as helping to feed yourself - lovely fresh food with an infinitesimally small carbon footprint - you also have a green way to dispose of food waste, whether by composting, keeping a worm farm, or feeding to chickens. Food waste sent to landfill is a major environmental problem because it rots anaerobically and produces potent greenhouse gases like methane. By contrast, food waste that is returned to the soil in the form of compost actually locks CO2 into the soil, in a natural form of carbon sequestering. Some local government areas have separate food waste collections but this is rare.

In yesterday’s The Guardian, Michael Pollan, author of In Defence of Food, has written a passsionate riposte to the ‘why bother’ brigade - the argument that our environmental problems are so insurmountable and the actions we take as individuals are so futile that we’re all doomed anyway and may as well just enjoy the time we have left. I really like Pollan’s piece firstly because it’s inspiring rather than just plunging me further into despair and secondly because I think it advances quite a strong argument for the difference that individuals can make. There is the ripple effect - the idea of inspiring other people and creating a chain reaction of individual responses - and also the salient point that, while fixing the problem takes laws and money, it also takes changes to the way we live. Governments won’t act in any meaningful way until we do. It reminds me of the old Margaret Mead quote* about changing the world that invariably gets trotted out in arguments like these but it’s no less true for that.

In particular, Pollan suggests that as individuals we should make a single, meaningful contribution to the solution, and goes on to make the case for a vegetable garden. Did you know that during World War 2, victory gardens supplied as much as 40% of the produce Americans ate?

I recommend reading the piece in full but I have extracted a few quotes. He writes:

“Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do - to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind.

“A great many things happen when you plant a vegetable garden, some of them directly related to climate change, others indirect but related nevertheless. Growing food, we forget, comprises the original solar technology: calories produced by means of photosynthesis. Years ago the cheap-energy mind discovered that more food could be produced with less effort by replacing sunlight with fossil-fuel fertilisers and pesticides, with a result that the typical calorie of food energy in your diet now requires about 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce. It’s estimated that the way we feed ourselves (or rather, allow ourselves to be fed) accounts for about a fifth of the greenhouse gas for which each of us is responsible.

“Yet the sun still shines down on your garden, and photosynthesis still works so abundantly that in a thoughtfully organised vegetable patch (one planted from seed, nourished by compost from the kitchen and involving not too many drives to the garden centre), you can grow the proverbial free lunch - CO2-free and money-free.”

He goes on point out there are physical and psychological benefits as well:

“You will probably notice that you’re getting a pretty good workout there in your gardenburning calories without having to get into the car to drive to the gym. (It is one of the absurdities of the modern division of labour that, having replaced physical labour with fossil fuel, we now have to burn even more fossil fuel to keep our unemployed bodies in shape.

“Still more valuable are the habits of mind that growing a little of your own food can yield. You quickly learn that you need not be dependent on specialists to provide for yourself - that your body is still good for something and may actually be enlisted in its own support. If the experts are right, if both oil and time are running out, these are skills and habits of mind we’re all very soon going to need.”

Finally:

“The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.”

It’s been many years since I have been involved in growing my own food. The closest I have come in recent years has been keeping a few pots of herbs on my kitchen window sill that died when I went away for a month. However, it’s certainly a family tradition. My mother and several of my aunts keep extensive vegetable gardens and two of my aunts are trained designers and teachers of permaculture - a type of organic gardening that relies on design to mimic natural eco-systems and create self-sustaining systems. One runs an organic gardening supplies, Green Harvest, based in Queensland, while the other has a garden design business in Cardiff, Edible Landscaping. My aunt in Scotland also has a rather lovely garden near Inveraray on the West Coast and last year I went up north to pick blackcurrants and make jam.

Currently I live in a rented third-storey flat in London so the opportunities for me to either grow my own food, or avoid sending waste to landfill are limited. Friends of mine in north London have recently acquired an allotment, a UK scheme to give city-dwellers a patch of land for growing their own food. I don’t think I could devote the time to an allotment - it’s a major hobby - and I don’t drive so it would have to be literally around the corner from my house in order to make it feasible for me. But I am hoping that my next home might have a small courtyard garden or balcony so I can at least grow some herbs and flowers and keep a worm farm for my food scraps.

Sinc I don’t have a garden, I do possibly the next best thing, which is to buy locally grown, organic fruit and vegetables. I order a weekly box from Abel and Cole and I’ve always had a very good experience with them, both for fruit and vegetables and also for dairy, bread, coffee, meat and fish, cleaning products (I could almost do a complete weekly shop with them!). It’s very reasonable - we spend £25 a week with them and our total weekly grocery bill for two people is about £40. I particularly like that I can set likes and dislikes - useful in winter to control the amount of potatoes, parsnip and swede I let them send me! I’ve heard very good things about Riverford Organics as well

Do you have a vegetable garden? Do you grow any of your own food? What environmental factors, if any, do you consider when shopping for food?

* The Margaret Mead quote I am referring to is of course: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” I’m sure you’ve heard that one before.

Make the most of the all-too-brief English asparagus season by devouring the succulent green stems by the plateful - plus some cool trivia about ’sparrow grass’

It’s a foodie cliché to declare your love for asparagus, particularly here in Britain where asparagus lovers are so passionate they even have a two-month festival devoted to it. English asparagus is widely considered to be the best in the world - though I rather suspect the secret is freshness and it’s good anywhere as long as it doesn’t have long to travel from plate to fork.

But cliché or not, love it I do. And whether it’s the Englishness of the asparagus or its freshness, I won’t have any truck with imported asparagus in the depths of winter, because apart from the nasty business of food miles, it’s just not the same. At this time of year, the markets and shops are positively bursting with bunches of fat spears of asparagus. I buy as much of it as I can afford and eat as much of it as I can. I never seem to get sick of it but the asparagus hit is enough to keep me going until next May.

There are many recipes involving asparagus and of course it’s good with butter or hollandaise sauce (what isn’t?) but I usually eat it very plain - lightly cooked and sprinkled with salt and pepper, often with scrambled or poached eggs at breakfast time. I don’t really see the point of an asparagus steamer since it can’t be used for anything else (if you saw the size of my kitchen you would understand why). I either simmer it in a few inches of water, or if it is particularly thick and woody I cut it in half and cook the tips in a steamer and boil the bottoms in the same pot (which is basically what an asparagus steamer does anyway but without having to cut the stems). Asparagus is also good barbecued, which I only recently discovered at Sunday lunch at my friend Emme and Jon’s house. If you want inspiration for some fancier recipes, then look no further than May’s In the Bag seasonal cooking blogging event. There’s a further 26 asparagus recipes on the official British Asparagus website.

Now asparagus is never trivial but it is associated with some cool trivia:

• * Asparagus is also a member of the lily family, along with onions, and has been cultivated since ancient times. The name “asparagus” comes from a Greek word meaning “sprout”.

• * It’s also called ‘Hadley grass’ or just ‘grass’, particularly in Massachusetts. ‘Grass’ is sort for ’sparrow grass’, a 17th century corruption of ‘asparagus’. The best stuff was grown in the Mass town of Hadley (and still is, if you live in New England).

• * It can make your pee smelly funny. About half the population experience strange smelling (and sometimes green!) urine after eating asparagus due to sulphur-containing amino acids in the veg that break down during digestion.

• * Asparagus can be purple or white as well as green, but the white effect is achieved by growing it in the dark. The white type is popular in mainland Europe but can occasionally be found in the UK - be warned it takes twice as long to cook. I think the white stuff is nice but the flavour is more intense with the green variety, so it depends whether you prefer a more subtle or vibrant flavour. I prefer the green stuff, personally.

• * Asparagus grows from a crown planted a foot deep in sandy soils and in ideal conditions it can grow 10 inches in a day. Oh and it has virtually not calories or fat and is full of vitamins and minerals.

Cupcakes have been very chic ever since the Magnolia Bakery moment in Sex and the City. There’s usually a queue around the block at this unassuming bakery in Lower Manhattan. There’s a spin-off further uptown, not to mention a host of copycats like Little Cupcake Bakeshop in Brooklyn and the Buttercup Bake Shop in Midtown. London is right on trend with the famous Hummingbird Bakery in Notting Hill, which my friends in West London swear by, or Treacle in Tower Hamlets, near the Colombia Road Flower Market.

Cupcakes are everywhere in the blogosphere as well. In the past week alone, I have seen rich chocolate cupcakes with vanilla bean icing on Love and Olive Oil, ice cream cupcakes and raspberry almond cupcakes with chocolate ganache on Joy the Baker, Persian love cupcakes on Gigi Cakes, and After Eight mint chocolate cupcakes on Rosie Bakes a Peace of Cake.

I think one of the reasons they are so popular is that they are just so damn cute! See these coconut lemon curd cupcakes on Cafe Lynnylu to see just how photogenic they can be.

But to me, it’s totally a matter of style over substance. I am committing food blog heresy here but I think cupcakes are totally overrated. Surely I can’t be the only one?

They look pretty but they generally taste rather boring - dull and dry with excessive amounts of icing to compensate. I have had cupcakes from these famous bakeries and I have had well made homemade cupcakes and my attitude is the same. Give me real cake any time.

Proper cakes are far more interesting - they are usually much moister and have greater complexity of flavour and texture. Cupcakes have their uses - they’re great if you are catering for a fifth birthday party - and I’m not saying they actually taste bad (if I had to pick a favourite flavour it would be red velvet). However, there isn’t a cupcake on the planet that wouldn’t taste better as a full-size cake.

If you want individual serves then muffins, tarts or cookies are fine. But miniature cakes just defeat the purpose - assuming the purpose is to taste good, rather than look pretty, that is.

Spring is well and truly here in the northern hemisphere, which means that we suddenly have a whole lot more fresh, locally grown food to choose from. Here in the UK we are coming into asparagus season, which is very exciting. English asparagus has a worldwide reputation for its succulent texture and strong, fresh flavour. Its harvest season is very short but it’s worth gorging yourself on it for a couple of months and then not bothering with the imports at all, which may be inferior and will certainly be less fresh.

Right now it’s all about spring greens - as well as asparagus, there’s spring onion, peas and beans, and we’re still getting purple sprouting broccoli. I love the look of this spring ragout on 101 Cookbooks. It uses fava beans, which is what we call broad beans in the UK and Australia. Last year I got a lot of broad beans in <a href=”http://www.abelandcole.co.uk” target=”_new”>my organic vegetable box</a> so I’m looking forward to that.

The seasonal ingredients in April’s In the Bag event on A Slice of Cherry Pie were watercress, feta cheese and Jersey royal potatoes. There is a small but excellent round-up of creations on the site - my personal favourite is the watercress soup with feta, potato and thyme bread from The Pie Times.

I didn’t enter this month - I was away for half the month and have been really busy with work since my return. Instead I took inspiration from the event and used similar ingredients for a simple packed lunch. I didn’t find any Jersey Royal potatoes but I steamed some lovely new potatoes and served them cold with a thick fillet of spicy smoked salmon, a handful of watercress, a couple of spoons of natural cottage cheese, and salt and pepper. It was heavenly! It spent a couple of hours in my lunch before I ate it, which actually enhanced the flavours because it meant the juices had time to run into each other and marinate. I would definitely make it again - it would also work with smoked trout or mackerel and perhaps with different greens such as rocket or baby spinach.

Everyone is familiar with Mexican food in some guise but usually what we get in the English speaking world and Europe is actually Tex-Mex - an Americanised version of Mexican food. I’m told that nachos, for example, is not traditional in Mexico, that the burritos are usually smaller and skimpier on the fillings, and that tacos have soft shells.

In Sydney, nachos were ubiquitous on café menus throughout most of the 1990s, though the trend seems to have died off now. They might not be traditional but they were very good - a rich spicy red kidney bean stew, crunchy corn chips, melted cheese and spicy homemade guacamole. Imagine my disappointment when I went to the United States for the first time and encountered the liquid cheese horror of Taco Bell!

That is not fair, of course. The US has some fabulous Mexican - or Tex-Mex - food. I encountered it in Brooklyn, in Mexican Town in Detroit, and of course, in California where the cuisine really comes into its own.

In London, one of my favourite places for a burrito is the Daddy Donkey cart on the Leather Lane street market in Clerkenwell. It’s not cheap - it costs around £5 - but they keep the quality of their ingredients very high. You can get either a wrap or a salad bowl and they have chicken, beef, pork or vegetarian options. The meat is always tender, the salad crisp, the guacamole fresh and tangy, and the black beans and rice marvellously satisfying. Buy it to take back to your desk or grab a seat on one of the picnic tables beside the van.

Restaurant Review: Taqueria

Sometimes you want to sit down for a meal and the sad truth is that London is starved of good Mexican restaurants. Enter Taqueria in Notting Hill.

I have never been to Mexico but I’m pretty sure that the food here is as authentic as you’ll get outside Mexico. It’s quite unlike any Mexican food I’ve had anywhere else, with homemade tacos and light, fresh toppings.

The website says the restaurant makes everything from scratch, from Mexican chorizo to the hot chocolate, which is ground in house. They go to great length to source Mexican ingredients - the parent company, Cool Chile Co imports dried chiles and herbs, masa harina (tortilla corn flour), corn husks and pozole (a stew made from hominy - a type of dried maize) directly from Mexico, while the Mexican chiles are from Dorset-based Peppers by Post. They use organic chickens, British meats and cheeses to supplement the Mexican ingredients.

The food is very good indeed. The best thing to get are the tacos, which come in pairs. If you have a group of people you can order an assortment of tacos and try a few different flavours. The portions are not huge so you will need 2-4 tacos per person, depending on whether you have appetisers or dessert as well. Flavours include “carnitas” (shredded slow-cooked pork, green salsa, diced onion, coriander), “spinacas y queso” (browned cheese with spinach and red salsa on large tortillas) and “camaron” beer-battered prawns, avocado mash, chipotle mayonnaise, Mexican salsa, limey shredded cabbage, doubled tortillas. Vegetarians are catered for but the selection is not overly large.

For the drinks, I recommend the Horchata, a rice milk drink flavoured with almond and cinnamon. It’s sweet and smooth and quite delicious. The Flor de Jamaica, or hibiscus juice, is quite nice as well, tasting, not surprisingly, quite like hibiscus tea.

It will be difficult to leave without doing dessert as well. My favourite is the “plátanos con cajeta”. A banana split by another name, it features fried plantain (cooking banana), coconut ice cream, cajeta (goats milk toffee) and toasted almonds. It is simply perfect. There is also a hibiscus pudding, ice cream or sorbet, and the classic option of churros (doughnut sticks) with Mexican hot chocolate.

The service is occasionally patchy but generally good and it’s always friendly. Aside from a slightly overdone taco on my last visit, the quality of the food is exceptional.

Taqueria
Address: 139-143 Westbourne Grove, London W11 2RS
Tel: +44 (0)20 7229 4734
Web: www.coolchiletaqueria.co.uk

Mexico is my third country to feature on my UN food challenge, after Ghana and New Zealand. There are 189 countries to go…