Sugar Rush

I was casually listening to the radio the other day.  Geraldene Holt, an internationally famous food writer and author of the unambiguously titled “Cakes” was making a carrot cake.  An ambitious idea for the radio you may think.  Anyway I had only a passing interest as she and the presenter discussed whether the inclusion of carrots made this a healthy option.  (The answer, in case you needed to be told, is no!)  But then, as she ticked off the ingredients one by one, she said something which did cause me to stop and pay more attention.  ““Lovely natural Muscovado Sugar,” she purred, “now this is healthy of course.”  The presenter clearly shared my skepticism about this claim and, barely managing to control her splutters of incredulity, she challenged the writer on it, causing Geraldene to change her assessment, “Well, I think it’s healthier for the environment; it’s not sugar beet.”  That is of course an altogether different point, but it got me thinking, and I quickly realized how little I really knew about this everyday product which is eaten by almost everybody.  Where does sugar really come from?  Is there a difference between beet sugar and cane sugar?  What are the social and environmental impacts of growing and producing sugar?  Since then I have been on something of a journey of discovery which is going to provide the theme for the blog over the next few days.

History

Sugar Cane

Sugar Cane (Saccharum) seems to have originated somewhere in the islands of what is now Indonesia and New Guinea.  For possibly thousands of years the cane was grown and chewed raw to unlock the sweetness before anyone thought of processing the plant to extract crystalline sugar.  The first written mention of sugar, is in the 1^st century AD in Rome where it is described as a medicine for the stomach, bladder and kidneys  produced from ‘reeds’ in India, obviously sugar cane.  Its production is first documented in India during the Gupta Empire around 350 AD.  The very name sugar is derived from a Sanskrit word sharkara meaning sand or gravel, which reminds us that the refining process was less efficient in those days.

From India it travelled to China around 630 AD when the Tang dynasty emperor T'ai-Tsung sent special envoys to the Gupta court to learn the art of sugar making.  Shortly afterwards it spread to the Arab world and was carried west by the Muslim expansion of the seventh and eight centuries under the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates, reaching the whole of North Africa and Moorish Iberia.  It was a very popular trade item because, in a world where goods were transported by camel caravan, sugar’s price relative to weight or volume was extremely high.

For over 1,000 years the cost ensured that sugar remained a luxury item, a ‘fine spice’ available only to the super rich. Mainly this was because of the labour intensive nature of cultivating and processing sugar cane and that is also why sugar production has always been inextricably tied up with slavery. The Venetians began growing sugar cane in Cyprus in the 10^th century, using slave labour imported from the Black Sea region, but output remained low until around 1450 when the Catholic kingdoms of Portugal and Castile began production using African slaves, particularly in the island territories of Madeira and the Canaries. By 1490 Madeira had become the largest producer in the western world.

Workers on a sugar cane plantation in Louisiana

Sugar then was well placed to make the next hop across the Atlantic to Spain and Portugal’s new territories in the Caribbean and Brazil.  Some accounts say sugar cane plants were even carried by Christopher Columbus on the Santa Maria.

The Spanish began growing sugar as early as 1501 in Hispaniola and shortly thereafter in Jamaica and Cuba.  Over the next hundred years sugar plantations were established from Brazil to Florida and almost every island of the Caribbean.  In addition to the Spanish and Portuguese territories, Dutch, French and English colonies were established to produce and process sugar cane.  The native peoples of the Americas however succumbed readily to European diseases such as small pox and influenza, leading once again to labour shortages.  Sugar producers turned at first to indentured workers from Europe, but they proved equally susceptible to tropical diseases such as malaria and yellow fever.  The solution was to import slaves from Africa, resistant to both old world and tropical diseases, and so the infamous triangular trade was established.

This increase in output finally brought sugar within reach of the ordinary citizenry and they loved it. It must have brought about something of a revolution in European cookery.   By the end of the eighteenth century sugar accounted for 20% of all European imports.  In money terms from 1750 until 1820 sugar remained Britain’s biggest single import.  The average per capita consumption in Britain in 1800 was 20lbs per annum.  The historian Niall Ferguson says “The rise of the British Empire…had less to do with the Protestant work ethic…than with the British sweet tooth.”  The British Empire, he claims, was launched on a “sugar rush”.

Sugar beet

Unlike the maritime powers of Western Europe, Prussia didn’t have an overseas empire.  Instead they had Franz Karl Achard.  Achard studied physics and chemistry in Berlin and went on to become a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences and a favourite of King Frederick II, who took a keen interest in his research.  Having carried out ground breaking work on the acclimatisation of tobacco to the German climate, in 1789 Achard turned his attention to producing sugar from beets which could be cultivated in a European climate.   Silesian White Beets (Beta vulgaris) used for cattle feed, had been known for some time to contain sucrose, but Achard developed a commercial process to refine and extract it.

Sugar Beet

Sugar beet received a huge fillip due to various embargoes, blockades and other interruptions to the Atlantic trade resulting from the Napoleonic wars, in Germany and also in France.

Today 30% to 35% of all sugar is made from Sugar Beet and beets are grown in Europe, Canada, USA, Russia and the Ukraine.

Meanwhile cane sugar is grown throughout the world in tropical and sub-tropical regions.  The biggest producers are Brazil, India, China, Thailand, Pakistan and Mexico, but sugar is important locally to the economies of many other countries from the Caribbean to the Philippines.

Sugar is now one of the most basic foodstuffs in the world.  It is a key ingredient in baking, brewing, soft drinks and almost every other processed food from ketchup to breakfast cereals to ice cream.  Increasingly it is fermented to produce ethanol for biofuel and is even used in a wide range of industries from leather tanning, inks and dyes, textiles, pharmaceuticals and precast concrete.

It's been an extraordinary march towards world domination for this humble condiment.

One potato, two potatoes...

When I said I enjoyed growing food I suppose what I really meant was that I enjoy the way food grows itself.  When I grew a lot of flowers I always favoured natural looking gardens in the Gertrude Jekyll style, but if I’m honest that is at least partly because I have a limited tolerance for continual weeding, trimming and dead-heading etc.  So it is with vegetables.  I am unlikely to start growing leeks anytime soon.  All that transplanting, hoeing and earthing-up sounds too much like hard work.  Potatoes on the other hand are my kind of crop. 

It was late in the season when I arrived back in this country in mid April, and frankly I would not have thought about growing much in the way of vegetables had I not been given a bag of seed potatoes by a friend’s dad.  This bag, which was surplus to requirements in his own garden, was not entirely promising.  All the potatoes were sprouting vigourously and the skins were soft and wrinkled.  By the time I had let them lie around in my kitchen for a couple of weeks they were even worse.

Nevertheless I didn’t want to look ungrateful, so eventually I prepared some ground and got around to planting the seed potatoes, more in hope than expectation.  First I cut off all the shoots leaving only one on each potato. Then I planted them with the remaining shoot facing upwards, in rows about 18 inches apart.  The only other thing I did for them was to keep them watered during the driest weeks of the summer.

After about 10 days they started to show above ground. Fourteen spuds came out of that bag and all fourteen plants came up.  After 8 weeks they flowered.  This is the point at which the tubers really start to swell and ideally you should start administering a liquid feed. I didn't have any available and my nearest garden centre is about 12 miles away, so I didn't bother. You can start to harvest the potatoes from this point on, but they do continue to grow for some weeks depending on conditions. I generally wait until the leaves begin to turn yellow.

The only reason to lift potatoes is if you are worried about slugs or disease.  My soil is exceptionally quick draining alluvial sand.  Digging is a joy and slugs are not a problem, so I left them underground for a couple more weeks. I finally harvested them yesterday.

Simply stick a garden fork in to the ground a few inches to the side of the plant and prise the soil and the plant up and over to reveal the potatoes lying in the loose earth.  It still seems like magic to see beautifully formed potatoes lying where there were none a few weeks before.  Make sure you get all of the tubers out, even small ones, or they will rot and may encourage blight which would infect future plantings.  I used to get the children to rummage in the earth looking for them.  Their excitement at upturning a straggler was every bit as intense as my own when I was their age and helped my own father on his allotment.

I think my potatoes are Cara, which is a popular maincrop variety noted for being blight resistant and storing well.  I have grown them before.  They are a very versatile potato tending towards the waxy end of the spectrum and with a rich savoury taste.  I harvested 10lbs which is a decent return from my 14 seeds considering I didn't feed them.  I put them in a hessian sack in the garage where they will be both dark and cool and they should last me well in to the autumn and maybe beyond.

Now I’m not suggesting that this is the best way to grow potatoes. I am led to believe that I may have been quite lucky in avoiding pests or disease, and perhaps by feeding and earthing-up I could have improved the crop, but it does show how you should never let ignorance or fear put you off getting stuck in to the garden. After all, what’s the worst thing that can happen?

"Say, is there Beauty yet to find?"

The circumstances that brought me to live in Suffolk were entirely fortuitous.  It was not premeditated and frankly I knew almost nothing about this corner of England which lies well off the beaten track.  Since then however I have discovered a number of extraordinary things about my new neighbourhood.

First is something I might well have guessed if I had not discovered it online.  Suffolk Coast and Heaths is a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB).  It is a remarkably unspoiled landscape with enormous variety.  There are coastal dunes and heaths, extensive wetlands and large areas of forest, including a fair amount of ancient woodland.  There is even a type of landscape I had never heard of before.  A carr is a unique habitat, a sort of waterlogged woodland with its own flora and fauna.  The whole landscape is dissected in several places by deep tidal river estuaries which impede lateral transportation and accentuate the sense of isolation and peacefulness.  The overall effect is of a prewar landscape quite different to the extensively managed environment found in much of East Anglia today.

Comma, a woodland butterfly

The second thing I noticed, almost from the first time I went walking in this district, is the amazing biodiversity.  In any landscape you notice the plants first, they don’t hide from humans, and so it was that I first realized that I was struggling to identify some of the trees and other hedgerow plants.

But after that I began to notice the sheer variety of birds, butterflies, and other species.  Of course part of that is related to the variety of different habitats. If you hope to see woodland birds, wetland birds and sea birds all in the same afternoon, it obviously helps to have woods, marshes and coast in close juxtaposition.  But diversity alone is not enough, those divers landscapes have to be healthy to support a wide range of wildlife.



Swans with cygnets in a dyke

There are six native reptiles in the UK and two of them are now extremely rare.  Yet I have seen an adder, grass snakes and even a common lizard, making three out of a realistically possible four species, all within five miles of my house.  I have also seen a tawny owl and a marsh harrier, as with other birds of prey these are considered bellwether indicators since they sit at the top of the food chain.

Hares, Grey partridges and frogs are so common as to barely warrant mention, yet they are all threatened in other parts of the country.

The next thing I noticed about the countryside here is the wide variety of land use.  I have lived in a farming area for much of my life.  Cereals, sugar beet, oilseed rape, cattle and sheep are as familiar to me as the names on any high street.  But down here you can find all of those ‘crops’, plus, pigs, fruit orchards, potatoes, onions, parsnips cauliflowers and even sunflowers.  There are large areas of managed forest, both coniferous and deciduous, and maybe most important a large amount of uncultivated land including wetlands and coastal heath.

The intellectual leap, and in all honesty it’s not a very big one, is to recognize that these three observations: a beautiful landscape, a healthy and diverse ecology, and varied, relatively low intensity agriculture are all directly related.  Suffolk is known for the quality of its food.  Farming here is as efficient and modern as anywhere.  Yet they produce delicious produce in a manner, and in an environment, which is kind to wildlife and to people alike.    There are lessons here to be exported along with the food.

Top 10 Herbs for Growing and Eating

There is no more local food than that which you produce yourself in your own home.  If you really want to live the good life and go for self-sufficiency you will need a fair bit of space. Some people estimate around one acre of fertile land is enough to grow food for a family of 4 or 5 for a year.  But even if you only have a window box there are things you can do to save money and start producing tasty produce.

The most obvious starting point, both from a horticultural viewpoint and also in culinary terms, is of course herbs.  They are easy to grow, essential in any style of cookery and expensive to buy.  Also, fresh herbs taste so much better than the dried ones.

Since I tearfully waved goodbye to my parents’ house and set off to make my own way in the world, I have lived in at least ten different homes, and in most of them my legacy has been a well stocked herb garden.  In some cases bushy shrubs were interspersed with hardy perennials in the herbaceous borders.  On the other hand, in some of the more modest establishments that I have called home it amounted to little more than a crowded tub outside the back door.  But whatever the possibilities, I always start by getting some culinary herbs established as a top priority.

If you peruse the garden centres there is a seemingly limitless number of herbs available for planting.  Many are used in herbal remedies or simply to provide colour and fragrance to your garden, but for a basic guide to the most useful herbs for the kitchen, read on.

I always start with the magnificent seven easy to grow herbs that figure prominently in my own cooking.

The first three are shrubs or small trees, although they can be grown in pots they are likely to want to grow quite big and may need to be repotted from time to time.

Bay leaf

Bay  (Laurus nobilis) grows in any type of soil in full sun.  Pick the leaves as you need them. The taste is unique and quite delicate, sweeter than most herbs.  It’s a core ingredient in any bouquet garni and I use it in most braised dishes or whenever I make stock for soups or gravy, or other bouillons.

Rosemary

Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) is another strong growing bush.  The leaves resemble pine needles and provide a pungent coniferous taste which should be used sparingly.  It is best used on strong meats like mutton or lamb but also goes well with poultry.  Add it to roast potatoes or other roast vegetables. It can also be added as a flavouring to homemade bread.

Purple Sage

 Sage (Salvia officinalis) is actually a large family of plants ranging from small trees to leafy perennials but most usually as a woody shrub.  It has many medicinal properties but its culinary use is mainly as a key ingredient in sage and onion stuffing, which in our house is an essential accompaniment to roast chicken or pork. The leaves can also be strewn over roasts or added to homemade bread.

After these space hogs come four smaller perennials.

Thyme and Marjoram are pretty flowering plants and if grown in their preferred thin, chalky soils will stay reasonably compact.

Thyme

Thyme (Thymus vulgaris) is one of the most widely used herbs in the world.  I add it to stocks, soups and casseroles of all kinds.  It goes particularly well with chicken, and it’s another key ingredient in bouquet garni.  I used to grow it between slabs in the garden path.  On a warm sunny day walking on the path would release the aroma to flood the garden with beautiful Mediterranean smells.

Marjoram

Sweet Marjoram (Origanum majorana) is a variety of Oregano more suited to British climates than its Mediterranean cousins.  Too much water makes the plants leggy but then again if you crop it as regularly as I do you can keep it in check.  Use it in any Italian cooking, especially tomato sauces, pizzas or whenever the recipe calls for mixed herbs.

Mint

Mint (Mentha) is the terror of the herb garden.  It grows strongly and spreads by way of underground runners sent out from the roots.  For this reason it is best planted in a small pot which you then bury in the herb bed.  This prevents the runners from spreading.  There are numerous types of mint; peppermint and spearmint are probably most popular.  For some people it is the taste of summer, an essential flavouring for new potatoes or fresh peas.  Personally I find it rude and overpowering when used that way.  However I do make mint sauce to accompany lamb dishes, and I add it to yoghurt to make cooling raitas whenever I cook curries.  I use the leaves as garnish on Summer Puddings or other fruit creations, and a few sprigs are crucial for making jugs of Pimms or homemade Mohitos on a hot summer evening.

The last of my magnificent seven is Chives.  Chives (Allium schoenoprasum) are strictly speaking not a herb at all, rather they are the smallest member of the onion family.  The bulbs grow quietly in any soil and propagate by division. They come up year after year and the subtly flavoured leaves make a perfect addition to salads, potatoes, omelettes and other eggs dishes.  The flowers are edible too and look pretty in the salad bowl.

All of these seven herbs are no-nonsense, low maintenance plants.  Position them in full sun and you can pretty well leave them to get on with the job of growing.  The essential oils protect them against most predators; it’s why many of them have reputed qualities as antiseptics or insect repellents.  You will only need to water them in the driest spells.  An annual feed will keep the lush green foliage coming instead of hard woody growth, and an occasional trim to keep the shape is all they will ever ask for.  The final three must-have herbs are altogether different.

Basil and Coriander are annuals.  They are best grown in containers so you can keep them out of rain and wind and away from pests.  Basil in particular is a magnet for snails and slugs and other leaf eating predators, and you won’t want to share these precious leaves with anything. To keep a supply coming all summer you will need to sow at regular intervals.   Both are prone to bolting so pinch out the tips after they reach a certain height.  Although with Coriander you will probably want to let it flower and set seed in the end.  This may then be harvested and stored for use as a spice.

Sweet Basil

Basil (Ocimum basilicum) is the herb of love and it’s easy to see why.  It is utterly seductive in Italian or Indian dishes.  An essential ingredient in most pasta recipes it is also delicious tossed straight in to a salad.

Coriander

Coriander (Coriandrum sativum) is used in huge quantities in Indian and Mexican cooking, where it is often called by its Spanish name, cilantro.  Nothing else comes close to the rich, sweet flavour of fresh coriander, and again it is a delightful addition to a summer salad. Coriander roots are more strongly flavoured than the leaves and feature in Asian cooking, particularly Thai recipes.

 Parsley (Petroselinum crispum) is not so demanding, but it is a biennial plant.  That means it completes its lifecycle in two years and then dies.  Many people simply grow it as an annual and sow fresh plants every year, but if you leave it alone in the herb garden it will self seed at the end of year two.  If you are not too worried about order in the garden, and for me the effect of herbs all jostling and tumbling over each other is part of the pleasure, then this is an easy way to keep a constant supply.  Parsley requires no extra protection or care.

The commonest form of parsley grown in Britain is the curly leaved variety mainly because of its decorative quality.  Italian, or Flat Leaved, Parsley tastes very similar, is reputedly more tolerant of both rain and heat, and probably has a somewhat classier image these days.

Whichever one you choose, parsley is maybe the most widely used herb of all.  Add it to fish, meat or chicken. Put it in rice dishes, on potatoes, or in pasta sauces.  It’s another key component of a bouquet garni and essential in bouillon and many stews and casseroles.  It is also widely used as a garnish.

Foragers' Diary - Part Five

This is my first summer living in Suffolk and I haven’t yet worked out where the best fruit for foraging is to be found.  Blackberries for instance are quite plentiful everywhere but the size and quality of the berries is very variable.  Some are big and compact, others seem to have no real shape and are impossible to pick, others again are small and mean looking. I put this down to local factors like soil type, or how much sunshine the plants receive, but then I read a very informative piece in the Guardian this week explaining that what we know as the Blackberry (Rubus fruticosus) is actually made up of no fewer than 350 ‘microspecies’ in the UK alone, and perhaps as many as 2,000 world-wide.

Apparently blackberries are apomictic, meaning they reproduce by cloning instead of good old sexual reproduction employed by most flowering plants.  Anyone who has ever tried to uproot a bramble bush from the garden will know that those long, lateral branches it throws out take root whenever they touch the ground.  In this way, over time the plant actually produces genetically identical copies of itself, hence the ‘normal’ hybridization doesn’t occur and each plant becomes its own microspecies.  So when you find a good site the best thing is to keep it in mind for future reference.  So far I have a found an ‘adequate’ supply, and for obvious reasons I won’t say exactly where, though I am still on the lookout for somewhere better..

Anyway, in about half an hour of picking yesterday, before the combined attacks of thorns, nettles and a rather determined wasp persuaded me to call it a day, I collected 2 lbs of delicious fruit.  That was enough to put me into preserving mode and so out came the preserving pan, the muslin cloth and the other paraphernalia of jam making.

When it comes to blackberries I prefer a clear, strained jelly to a traditional jam made with the whole fruit.  This is because the thousands of little pips in blackberries get in between my teeth and annoy me.  Bramble jelly is easy to make and the sweet, unctuous taste seems far too good for it ever be a free food.

Start by washing and picking over the fruit, discarding any stalks, hitchhikers etc.  Put the fruit in a large pan, I use a specialist preserving pan.  For 2lbs of fruit I added about 1 pint of water and the juice of one lemon, the pips fell in too but that is ok. They add more pectin which helps the jelly to set, and they get filtered out later along with the blackberries.

Simmer for about an hour then pass the whole concoction through a muslin cloth or jelly bag if you have one.

Squeeze the cloth carefully to get all of the delicious juice out.  You can discard the strained fruit.

Stir in 1 pound of sugar for each pint of liquid you have, in this case it was one of each, and simmer again in a clean pan until the liquid becomes thick and sticky.  Turn a desert spoon through the liquid until it coats the back of the spoon.

Alternatively put a drop on a clean saucer and watch how it starts to set.   How runny you make the jelly depends largely on taste, but don’t over cook it or you’ll get a black sticky mess.  Make sure your jars are sterile.   When you’re ready carefully pour the jelly into the prepared jars and seal them as soon as the jelly is cool enough and stops steaming.

That’s it!  You have now captured some late summer sunshine to be brought out throughout the winter months whenever you need a luxurious treat!

Eating Out

A short while ago I used to live in Hong Kong.  Now for anyone who has never visited the former British colony, it is a shopper’s paradise.  No matter what you want to buy, no matter what your budget, the choice is enormous.  There is a place to fit every taste and every wallet from the seemingly endless number of high-end malls selling designer labels, to the famous open air markets laden with cheap tat, silk ties and knock-off watches and handbags.

When it comes to food the same divide is evident.  The wet markets sell a profusion of exotic fruits; all kinds of freshly cut veg (well actually it more or less comes down to about 15 different types of Chinese cabbage but it’s colourful); freshly butchered meat; fish so fresh it is still gasping in two inches of water; poultry so fresh it is only slaughtered when they get a buyer.  Freshness, you might gather, is something of an obsession with the Chinese housewife. On the other hand, animal welfare, carbon foot-print and dare I say, additives, feature somewhat lower in the goodwife's consciousness.

Wanchai market, Hong Kong

However, if you want to know more about your food, well then the Western supermarkets will supply, not so fresh but perfectly labeled imports, which no doubt look just as exotic to the locals.  For only slightly less than the price of a small car, you can buy hydroponically grown cucumbers from Holland; grass-fed beef from Australia, reared without use of growth hormones; USDA approved, corn-fed, organic chicken from the United States; and spotlessly clean Japanese onions.

So there’s your choice, fresh produce from somewhere in China potentially including melamine flavoured milk, heavy metal rice and porkchops that actually glow in the dark; or limp food with so many food-miles it could retire and fly business class for the rest of its shelf life.  But at least you had a choice.  Of course most expats opted for the latter and covered their eyes when the supermarket till roll came out.  But when those same consumers ate out at any of Hong Kong’s reputedly more than 11,000 restaurants, they had no idea at all about what they were eating.  What is the point of spending a small fortune to eat healthily and ethically at home, and then to go out at night and eat whatever the restaurant manager can get most cheaply?

What we needed was a Hong Kong branch of the Sustainable Restaurant Association.  The SRA describes itself as “a not for profit membership organisation helping restaurants become more sustainable and diners make more sustainable choices when dining out”. They also help keep sustainability on the news agenda at a local and national level, running campaigns on issues such as finding more sustainable fish supplies, reducing food waste and advancing energy efficiency.

The SRA is a response to concerns of both diners and restaurateurs, many of whom share the same environmental concerns.

They recognize that consumers, like the animals they eat, do not all fit in to the same box, so they have produced a 14 point definition of sustainability covering issues such as Sourcing, Environment and Society.   They are supported by a wide range of bodies including the RSPCA’s Freedom Food, The Rainforest Alliance, The Fair-trade Foundation and others.

 Participating member restaurants can be identified by the SRA logo, and they are encouraged to apply for an independently audited star rating. This indicates how well they are doing in achieving the goals of the organisation and allows diners to “choose a restaurant that matches their sustainability priorities”.

Members of the public are invited to sign up as Friends of the SRA, to receive the free newsletter and help spread the word to their own favourite restaurants.

Why not join today? Oh, but one thing.  I read through their directory of member restaurants on the web site and I haven’t noticed any Chinese restaurants yet!

Foragers' Diary - Part Four

Windfall Apples

Friends who were away on holiday were kind enough to lend me their house in London at the weekend for a late summer break.  Looking out of the kitchen window on their small urban garden, I noticed that the lawn was covered with apples and pears from their neighbours’ fruit trees.  So of course I happily gathered them up and brought them inside.


When I mentioned this to my friend he told me that one of his neighbours had actually come round and specifically given him permission to make use of any windfalls that fell over the wall.  I must confess my first reaction was to laugh.  It wouldn’t have occurred to me to do anything else than to use fruit which had landed on my property.  But then I got to wondering what the legal position actually was.

It seems the neighbour was quite right.  Under English law, specifically the 1968 Theft Act, the trees and any fruit belong to the person who owns the land where the tree is growing. Even if the fruit hangs over your side of the fence, even if it falls off and lands on your ground, it still belongs to the owner of the tree.  If it’s causing a nuisance you are entitled to collect it from your property but then you are required to offer it back to the owner.  Hopefully most people get on better with their neighbours than that, but it is worth bearing in mind the next time you see a tempting little bounty hanging over the hedge.

If you are lucky enough to have some windfall apples or pears, use them quickly.  They invariably get bruised when they land on the grass and this small blemish will rapidly spread to ruin the entire fruit.  Then you know what they say about one rotten apple spoiling the whole barrel?  Well apparently it applies to apples too!

Windfalls spoil quickly

If you have too many to use all at once, stewed apples (or pears) can be easily frozen.  It may seem like a chore now when there is a glut, but you’ll be glad of them in the winter.  Alternatively, if freezer space is limited, apple sauce can be bottled and keeps perfectly well in sealed jars.

Apple Sauce has many uses

Apple sauce is an essential accompaniment to roast pork.  It also makes a healthy and delicious dessert served on its own or with cream or custard. 

It can be added to breakfast cereals or pancakes and a friend of mine likes to eat it on toast.  As a child I remember my mother making something called Apple Snow.  I'm not sure I appreciated it back then, but it may be worth a second chance after forty odd years.