From across the Pond

Whoever checks the customer shopping statistics for Sainsbury's must worry that the Honeysetts are not getting their "five a day", since so few items of fresh or frozen fruit or vegetables ever find their way into our trolley.  Generally, it's just mushrooms and the odd bag of carrots (one day I'll explain why we buy carrots; it's a long story...).  We'll need to start buying our apples soon too.  But that's about it.

The reason, of course, is that we grow and store so much of our own.  Right through the winter, as long as the ground isn't too frozen to get them out, we have root  and leaf vegetables we can bring in fresh from the garden or the allotment, or from our store room.  We have easily enough potatoes to last us until the first earlies are ready.  We have access to more Jerusalem artichokes that is socially or environmentally responsible, considering they can cause significant emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly methane.  

It's a matter of particular pride on my part that we have had fresh salad leaves from the garden, cold-frame and greenhouse throughout the winter.  The mild weather has helped tremendously, but I think I can fairly take a lot of the credit for this, with good planning, regular seed-sowing and good use of unheated crop protection.

Our current crop of winter salad leaves are quite a spicy, peppery-tasting mixture of rocket, mustards and mitzuna, so it might have seemed odd to find me buying a packet of watercress a couple of weeks ago.  Even though the packet in question had a yellow reduced-price sticker on it.

Everyone has their own method for doing the weekly shop.  Some make a list and stick to it.  Others systematically trek up and down every aisle, hoping to be reminded of what they need as they pass it.  Then there are those people who seem to have come to the supermarket with no clue as to what they want, and are continually taking orders from home by mobile 'phone; "Hi!  Yeah, I'm by the yogurts now - they've got low-fat organic, or pro-biotic, or there's a new one with fair trade muesli and pomengranate..." 

Apologies for offending you if you are reading this and you are that person, but if you are standing there talking and blocking my way to something with a yellow reduced-price label on it, you're closer to having your phone snatched from your ear and ground into tne supermarket floor by a size 9 1/2 than you could possibly know.

My personal food shopping style is something akin to a barn owl quartering a pasture at twilight, drifting slowly back and forth across the aisle, listening for potential quarry ("Dave, should I mark these free-range chickens down now - they're use by tomorrow?"), large, round eyes seeking out the flash of a yellow sticker.  And not one of those annoying security ones on the bigger meat joints either, which are approximately the same size and colour.  Please change those now, Sainsbury's; they're confusing me! 

I digress - back to buying watercress.  I like watercress a lot.  I had got fresh trout for dinner (more osprey than owl there, perhaps - and yes, there was a yellow sticker on the pack) and this would be perfectly complemented by a sprig or two, and a few 'Pink Fir Apple' taters.  But what really clinched it was that some of the watercress stalks clearly had little roots on them. 

What really amazed me though, as someone born in Hampshire, where watercress is still extensively cultivated in beds fed by the chalk streams from the Downs, was that the watercress in the sealed plastic bag with the yellow sticker had been grown in the USA! 

This is the bit where I get on my high horse and have a rant about sustainability and food miles.  As a crop with a relatively short shelf-life, it must have been flown across the Atlantic.  It's a light but relatively bulky crop, as it cannot be squashed without being ruined, so you're actually transporting at least as much air as watercress when you fly it over, and yet I find it impossible to believe that you couldn't grow it effeciently in the south of the UK, with little more than a polytunnel for protection, for most of the year.

Well, I'm going to have a good go at finding out.  The stalks with roots are florishing on the kitchen window sill right now (see photo) and have made good top and root growth, so I'm going to get them planted up in some soggy compost shortly, take regular cuttings for fresh plants, hopefully eat the stuff all summer and with no more protection than an unheated greenhouse find out if we can grow watercress here all year round.

Hopefully, the answer is "Yes, we can!"