TARRAGON & THYME

I buy a sack of potatoes - one that I cannot lift but which is carried home for me by one of the owners of the veg shop that I frequent.  They are very obliging; I know that this varies from shop to shop but I would encourage you to buy a sack for about £6 to £7 (that's all I have been paying recently) and I keep it under the stairs.  We as a result have a constant resource in that I always have potatoes in the house and that I am not constantly wittering whether or not I am going to have enough potatoes in.  Stored like this with the top kept closed up to keep the potatoes in dark the potatoes keep well and I usually for two of us during this time of the year go through a sack in about six weeks.  They rarely go off and in fact potatoes are clamped by the growers the year before and  are at least a year old when they are brought out of the clamp to pass on to the consumer.  Potatoes a simple ingredient out of which so mu...

I really do not like wasting food.  I think it stems from the fact that during my childhood both my Nan and my mum never wasted anything and my Nan was expert at making something out of nothing in any event when it came to food.  Even the peelings were boiled up and put with the bran to make mash for the chicken's evening meal of a winter with fresh supplies of cabbage and other veggie stems stalks and leaves. There were sometimes some odd combinations but a meal was to be had and generally a good one. I think this stemmed from the war years when it was an offence to waste food and for which you could be prosecuted.  My Nan was one of the NAAFI Cooks at RAF Fiskerton and later a school cook at the village school.  Nan and Pop always grew their own veg and had the apples and fruit and the pigs and chickens and then the wild fruits from the hedgerow and I believe that this is where it has stemmed from for me i.e. good practices and husbandry being ...