Food, Glorious Food

There’s nothing like home grown vegetables. I can’t see why everyone doesn’t do it. All you do is pick a small plot in the grounds, plant, pot, water and of course wage a constant war with pests, frosts, the elements, frosts, cats, frosts, over-watering, under-watering, worry about the effect of lacquering the plant with pesticides and, of course, frosts.

The benefits are two-fold. The first is that in terms of food-miles (this years obsession) the food has traveled from your back garden to your kitchen, so we’re talking food yards.

It also means you are sticking it to the supermarkets, surely a good thing.

The real benefit though is the taste. Tomatoes are basically sunlight and water - and that’s what they taste like. It’s like having summer on your tongue. Like a tomato should taste. A supermarket tomato, though lovely normally, tasted different by comparison - it tastes of lorry and packing material, of underpaid picker’s hands, pesticides and profit.

Still, stick enough ranch dressing on it and it is, if I’m honest, usually fine.