(C) Robert Knapp www.modernartphotograph.com

In a previous post I mentioned that coffee grounds were great compost for acid loving plants such as heathers. It turns out I was wrong. Contrary to popular belief the grounds are not acidic as the coffee making process takes most of this away. The result however is that you have a very good all round compost or “green” for making your own compost.

It was only a couple of weekends ago that we managed to get some new heathers planted at home and get a good layer of special purpose compost on the bed. One compost heap was fully used on the garden and two bokashi buckets dropped into another for use later this month.

If the cold snap eases off then it could be time to start planting some herb plugs and maybe sow a few seeds. The only snag is after the winter break … remembering to water everything.

Most composting systems are fairly passive. Neither yourself nor the system does any work, except for maybe a small army of worms. Some modern composters help Mother Nature along a bit.

For the home user:

This first unit is literally a kitchen composter. You hide it in a kitchn cupboard and connect it to mains electricity, of which it uses very little. There are three sizes of Nature Mill from an 8 litre per week capacity upto 15 litres. Food waste is put into a hopper along with an equal volume of compressed sawdust pellets. This is the same mixture of green and brown that standard garden compost bins should work to. After some days the waste is turned into compost. All the work is done by the Nature Mill gently moving the waste around to speed up the composting process.

For more information Nature Mill website opens in a new window

For commercial use:

The Wiggly Ridan works in a similiar manner but is designed for outside use and is powered by turning a handle. The ridan will handle 200 litres of organic waste each week. This again is an equal mix of food waste and brown materials such as paper, wood chips, leaves or cardboard. After a short while it will create ready to go compost for your garden. This solution is ideal for restaurants with kitchen gardens or for schools. It is estimated that about 80% of the volume is lost in the composting process. This equates in the long term to an average of 40 litres of compost production each week. This may not sound much but think of close to 160 large bags of garden centre compost (125 litre) per year at full capacity.

For more information the Wiggly Wigglers website opens in a new window

These splendid devices are bokashi bins, a form of kitchen waste processor. The picture above was taken during the first snowfall of 2012. Bokashi bins can be used as the catch all of kitchen composting. Whilst we cannot put meat, fish, dairy or citrus fruits into a wormery, they will work well in a bokashi bin.

Bokashi is a mixture of effective mico-organisms (EM) or helpful bugs to you and me. These are mixed with molasses, water and a few other ingredients to ferment. This mixture is then combined with bran to produce an almost sawdust type substance. The idea is that the bran would react anaerobically with food waste to kick off a fermenting reaction. Contents of the bin are going to be pickled over a period which then makes them suitable for breaking down elsewhere.

To start with bokashi all you need is the bin, some bokashi bran and an old potato masher. Add your food in about an inch layer, press down with potato masher to remove air and scatter with a handful of bran. If the food has a higher level of protein, eg fish, add a little more bran. Keep going like this when you have more waste to feed the bin. From time to time check the tap at the bottom. This contains a liquid run off which can be used to combat drain smells or is diluted to become a fertilizer. Once the bin is full, leave for two weeks to ferment. After this the contents can be either dug into trenches in the garden or added to the regular compost. Wormeries like small quantities, but the risk of wiggly genocide is on balance, so maybe best to add to the bigger compost bin.

You can pretty much add any food but bones, liquids and packaging should be avoided. Even though bokashi bins have a unique odour they are much preferable to the stench of kitchen bins and wheelie bins full of old food.

To use an empty bin all you need is some

Worms are one of the most efficient ways of converting kitchen waste into something you can use in the garden. Worm compost is a very rich source of nutriment for young plants and in it’s liquid form for top dressing the garden in general. The wormery above was bought from our good friend Heather at Wiggly Wigglers and of course Farmer Phil. Basically you start with three trays, a base which holds the liquid sump, a lid, worms and a bedding mix. The worms supplied are chosen as the most suitable for composting rather than others which can be bought for earth working.

The wormery can handle a variety of food waste but is best to go for vegetables, fruit and peelings. Contrary to popular demand, worms do not eat meat, that’s a maggot diet. They are not too keen on dairy produce either, but you can add bread and rice. Citrus fruits should be avoided at all cost as the oils are poisonous to the wormery. In fact you can change the balance of the colony with putting in too much of anything which is acidic or caustic. Too much onion can turn the wormery sloppy and acidic, much like the effect it can have on the human stomach.

To keep this in check, lime can be added to change the acid balance and handfuls of shredded paper. Wormeries are also excellent places to get rid of old egg shells. Simply dry them in the oven and then break them up in a pestle and mortar. Add a handful from time to time.

Harvesting the compost is done from the lowest tray first. Swap this to the top and leave the lid off and the worms should descend into the tray below. The compost collected is perfect for potting and for nourishing containers. One final tip, the worms are not to be encourgaed as a fishing bait by your father in law !!!

Every year the UK wastes over 7 million tons of food. What can we do about it? The maxim is “Reduce – Recyle – Reuse”. We can reduce the amount of food we buy by keeping an eye on sell by dates, planning meals and freezing. Some items can be reused as leftovers or as pet food. Reduction was rumoured to be one of the origins of charcuterie and was charged to the garde manger to make what he could of scraps or waste. Once all these options are covered there is either the land fill or recycling left. The good news is that nearly all food can be recycled or broken down naturally in the garden.

The tradition view of composting is the bin or heap in the garden. These are great for receiving garden waste and veg cuttings but after that your other food waste can be used elsewhere. If the compost heap can be thought of as two types of waste, green and brown then it becomes easier to get to grips with making best use. Green waste is quick decomposing and often becomes mushy. Brown waste is slow to rot and retains a lot of structure. Both of these together, almost in a lasagne type build of thin layers of each, form the optimum mix. The green encourages the brown to break down and the brown prevents it going gooey. Typically this would be fresh grass trimmings and leaves / stems. Much of your kitchen waste would be classed as green. What is left over should be crumbly fresh compost.

Other options are available and pretty much specific to food composting. First is the wormery. Basically a layered set of trays with small holes in the bottom of each. The waste eventually turns to worm compost which is great for potting and a liquid which, when diluted down, works as a top feed for plants. Second there is the bokashi bin. Food is put into the bin in one inch layers and then covered in a thin layer of treated bran. The food is pickled for want of a better word. Once full and then fermented, the contents can be dug into the general garden or added to your main compost heap. A liquid is produced at all times which can be used as a diluted feed or poured down drains to neutralise odour producing bacteria.

There are other options out there and these will be covered in the next few days as well as a more in depth look at wormeries and bokashi.

What is the difference between gravadlax and smoked salmon? The obvious one would be the lack of smoke on the gravadlax. Another difference is the subtlety of flavours. Gravadlax is cured fish. whereas smoked salmon is cured and smoked. With the more traditional recipes the cure would also include something like fennel herb, but there are some contemporary twists with vodka and beetroot etc.

At one end of the spectrum is the raw fish served up as fresh as possible as sashimi or sushi. One misconception is that sushi is raw fish but it’s actually rice and anything goes with it. Sashimi is the sliced fish on it’s own. Next could come cerviche which is a quick cured raw fish. Often the cure is something as simple as lemon or lime juice which almost cooks the fish. For these type of dishes you would be expecting to make them live on the day. For gravadlax and smoked fish you are preserving your ingredients for another time.

So while all the chat about gravadlax? Coming this spring we will be starting our own range, these things take time to develop and perfect. If you have any ideas for recipes or flavours, please leave a comment.

In the flurry of reports of the findings of a meta-study in the British Journal of Cancer a few of the journalists got it right. However, what sticks out is one from a better British paper who did not do their homework. No-one is going to get names here, but they did an equal job of botching reviews of TV food programmes last week. Somehow they had come up with the “fact” that 1 sausage is equal to 2 rashers of bacon and has a higher risk than red meat. This hack had grouped sausages together as processed meat rather than as red meat.

One aspect of the study was that there was a theoretical risk from nitrites which are used in cures for preserving meats such as bacon or salami. Again, this was a theoretical risk taken from studies of lab animals and there has never been a real life correlation. As we make both sausages and charcuterie, we know our ingredients very well. There are no nitrites in fresh sausages which goes for the vast majority of sausages sold in the UK.

So where did the equivalence  of sausages to bacon come in and when did they get grouped into “processed meats”. Most sausages contain only about 5 ingredients; meat, rusk/crumb, water, flavour and the skin. In all quality sausages these ingredients will be natural. The flavours will be real such as pieces of apple or sage. This is not processed meat just in the same way that a good burger is not processed.

Most of us know the risks of red meat consumption, but it’s useful if journalists write with accuracy on the science. The research paper is available free and the findings do not group sausages into processed meat except for one study. In this paper the researchers put ham and sausages together as a single meat group, but only covered 222 patients.  The overall findings of the metastudy is that an increase in consumption by 50g per day increase the risk factor for processed meats and 120g per day for red meat.

So why Lady Justice above? The sword for justice, the blindfold for objectivity and the scales of evidence. In this case someone failed to do justice of the evidence and produced twaddle which was not objective. This means that a proportion of the UK population will now see sausages as a higher risk because of poor journalism in their preferred daily paper.

It was announced last week that a daily bacon roll could lead to a 19% increase in pancreatic cancer. The findings came from a meta study of 11 other studies of 6000 pancreatic cancer patients. They found a link of an increase in 29% or more in men who consumed larger quantities of red meat. The link with women was not there, so this area was called into doubt. On the subject of the suspect ingredient in bacon, nitrates, the researchers said that a link was “biologically plausible”. This was their opinion as it was a powerful carcinogen in lab animals, the human link not being proven. When analysts have commented on the findings of this paper with terms such as “maybe” “suggests”, it does call into doubt whether we really know yet?

Pancreatic cancer has been linked to risk factors such as diets with high fat or high sugar, low vegetable intake, low fruit intake and a generally sedentary lifestyle. These are risk factors that indicate an increase in occurances rather than absolutes as no-one is immune to any cancer in reality.

If we took something like the humble cup of coffee, what have we been told about it? Caffeine can increase your risk of cardiac arrest, the sugar is bad for you, the artificial sweetener will give you cancer and milk contains bad fats. Then on the flipside we hear that the caffeine is actually a preventative. Amazing how science is not well errm … exact.

Do you remember all the good news about the healthy properties of red wine? It turns out that one of the main voices behind the research had faked much of his evidence:
“After a three-year investigation, the university [of Connecticut] concluded that Dipak Das, a professor of surgery and head of the university’s cardiovascular research centre, “is guilty of 145 counts of fabrication and falsification of data.” “

The Mediterranean diet is rich in olive oil, red wine, fruit, veg and of course preserved meats. Most things in moderation it seems are OK, but over consumption has its risks. A healthier breakfast of bacon, poached eggs, wholemeal toast, real sausages and grilled tomato has a balance to it, but not everyday. Grill the bacon rather than frying it, don’t let it burn and trim away the fat. An alternative is get more familiar with the produce you use. Read the labels and find out what the various ingredients are there for. Not all bacon is created equal.

Once you have caught your grey squirrel what to do next? At present there are some pockets of red squirrels left in Scotland, Anglesey and the Lake District. Apart from these, there are few left in the wild. A once controversial solution offered by some of the preservation bodies and a few MPs … recipes. Grey squirrel is available from some game butchers, either whole or portioned. A friend of mine, Robin, mentioned yesterday that a restaurant near Morpeth in the North East serves squirrel curry.

For years rabbit and wood pigeon have been hunted for the duel purpose of pest control and food, so why not the grey squirrel? The country economy is often bouyed by this kind of activity and it is the incentive for some of the hunters. Should some of the quangos get there way then sales of wood pigeon by shooters would be unlawful. Would there be any incentive for shooters to help out the farmers, as they do now, if an income stream is cut off?

Once you have a prepared squirrel, what can you do with it? Squirrel is a fairly dry meat like chicken or rabbit, but probably best to think of rabbit in terms of the relative anatomy. The main portions are the legs and the saddle. All of this can be casseroled or stewed. A real restaurant dish would be bone the saddles, stuff with leg meat and trimmings etc. Wrap in parma ham and tie. This can be cut into slices and pan fried.

If you want something quick and easy, then there is Southern Fried Squirrel. Legs and portioned saddle is floured, dipped in egg, rolled in breadcrumbs (or your own propriety coating) and then deep fried. You could even go as far as curing this and hot smoking on the barbecue.

Is grey squirrel meat the ethical award winner? It is free roaming, naturally fed and a pest species, so maybe not far off the mark. The only downside with grey squirrel is that it is believed to be higher in cholestorol.

We have looked at the pest problem of the grey squirrel. The real difficulty starts when you decide you want to do something about it. First they are fast, second they are cunning and third there are plenty of them. If you keep within the various laws, you have a few options available when trying to rid yourself of the scourge of the grey squirrel.

Trapping. You can use snares if you think you know the route a squirrel takes but these noose like traps are really only best in hedges or under fences. Squirrels tend to prefer high altitude unless they are scavenging on the ground. Any trap that uses springs to capture or kill animals are pretty much illegal unless it’s for mice. So the last option is a humane cage trap. You bate the back of the cage with nuts and check every day, as you would a snare. If you have a squirrel in there you have two choices, kill it or re-home it. Re-homing means you have to take the cage to an animal sanctuary or similiar for them to take custody of the squirrel. At that point you get your trap back. As they are a pest species you cannot release them into the wild many miles away from home. To kill a squirrel you have to be humane, now is not the time for torture or revenge. Either grabbing it by the back and swinging its head onto a hard surface or a quick gun shot will do it.

If you are more in need of a spontaneous response, then the only solution is a firearm. Bows, catapults or crossbows are not allowed and to be honest you need to check your motives if you use any of these on quarry.  An air rifle has enough power to quickly and humanely dispatch, but not an air pistol due to its low power. While you can soup up and license an air rifle as a firearm the same thing with an air pistol creates a prohibited weapon. If you have access to a shotgun and it’s safe to do so, that is another option. A minor point here is in an open field a shotgun does not do much damage except maybe to the rabbit or pigeon. Most of the time a squirrel is not going to be on the ground but on the fence/wall or up a tree. If you stick to the air rifle there is little risk of getting it wrong. Squirrels have a habit of staying stationary on trees when they are being chased, they feel safe there against ground predators. This is the ideal time to take a carefully aimed shot. Even if you get the perfect shot the grey squirrel goes into a reflex spasm which looks like they are still alive.

The object of any form of hunting is pest control or food, anything else is morbid wrongness. Today we covered pest control, tomorrow …