UK would run out of food today

It was just the crispy noodles I liked

I wouldn't like to go back to the Vesta curry days either, but I do hope that we can up the production of home-produced food. We seem to import a lot of fruit and vegetables from Holland and I wondered why as their climate cannot be much different to ours.

As for importing from poorer countries, that is a difficult question. Are we right to import food from them and therefore give some people a wage and provide education and a future for their children, or should we be helping them to grow food for their own populations, some of whom could be starving?

Find out how to make your own crispy noodles at home with this simple recipe - great as a topping for lettuce wraps, stir-fries, salads, soups, and more! These crispy noodles are made with regular supermarket rice noodles (the skinny kind), but you can easily use the same technique to make crispy chow mein noodles as well. ENJOY!
Prep Time: 3 minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 13 minutes

Yield: As Much as You Want!

Ingredients:

1 package thin dried rice noodles, from your supermarket Asian section
3/4 to 1 cup oil for frying such as canola, sunflower, etc...
pinch salt
Preparation:

Separate rice noodles by pulling apart the various sections into manageable amounts. Using scissors, cut the noodles into 4-5 inch lengths. Now place oil in a wok or small to medium frying pan (the smaller the pan, the less oil you will have to use). Heat oil over medium-high heat for a minimum of 1 minute.
Tip:The key to making crispy noodles is having the oil hot enough. Be sure to test it before dunking in the noodles, or you'll waste them. To do this: Take a few longer noodle pieces in your hand and dunk in just the ends. When the oil is hot enough, the submerged parts will 'bloom' within seconds into puffy, crispy noodles. If this doesn't happen, remove the submerged parts and cut them off. Wait a little longer for your oil to heat up, then try again.
Now gently drop handfuls of noodles in the hot oil. Have a utensil at the ready to quickly flip them once, then remove. The actual cooking time is only a few seconds. Set puffed noodles to drain on paper towels and shake over a little salt, if desired (I like mine this way). Continue frying the rest of your noodles, reducing heat as you do so to medium (or just above).
Use your crispy noodles as a topping for lettuce wraps, soups, salads, and other Asian dishes. Crispy noodles also make a great snack (kids love them!). ENJOY!
Storing Crispy Noodles: Try to eat them up the same day, or store them in tupperware containers overnight or longer. How long they will stay crispy depends largely on the climate and level of humidity where you live.

And me I think you can make them by deep frying the flat rice noodles.

I liked Vesta Chow Mein, especially when the noddley things crisped up and went curly [nostalgic emoticon]

I'd love to know what species you have Mishap- with pink flesh?
How are the apples set around the branches? Years ago, I got fed up with the birds eating all our cherries. I am happy to share, but only to a certain extent ;)

I got some cheap net curtains from charity stores and made some sleeves which I put on some branches and tied at each end with raffia- so at least we would have a few cherries for ourselves. Perhaps an idea?

We had 2 huge bramley apple trees in the UK and twice every single apple was stolen and branches broken- by, I suppose, market traders, who parked on our drive and did the deed, whilst we were at work- we were truly furious!

I agree that we should try to be more self sufficient and air miles should be a concern but I would not like to go back to the days when something a little more exotic for a Friday night was a Vesta Chow Mein.

The wasps eat most of our apples - we try - we have two wasp traps (constantly full of dead wasps) but we can't get to eat them much as by the time they are ripe enough to eat, they have been chewed to bits from the inside out. It is a shame as they are wonderful apples with pink flesh. Sigh.

I once tried campaigning for the big supermarkets who do online shopping to create a section on their website for British produce, so that those of us who do not want our food to clock up lots of air miles could shop exclusively there. Only Tescos showed an interest - but it needs a concerted campaign from lots of internet shoppers to get any progress.

I get very frustrated when I go to the village shop and they have, alongside the beans that Joe Bloggs down the road has grown, other stuff from other countries. So I can't even get it right when I shop locally.

Then poor pickers across the globe would probably say that they would rather have a small wage from picking crops for export than none at all. We are stuck with a global economy and I do not know how you can retreat from that. Boycotting foreign goods harms the economies and incomes of poor families who grow them - damned if you do and damned if you don't.

But I do agree with the idea that we should try and be more self-sufficient in food. Relying on imports is a bit dicey if the exporting country decides to fall out with us. Same with fuel/energy.

Grannyknot, I remember a friend who had an orchard and loads of rhubarb too- who would walk 1 mile to the shop to buy tinned apple puree, etc- for her toddler. Said it was too much hard work to make your own ??? And was skint at the time too. Mind boggles sometimes.

What about the TTIP? Isn't that a way of putting a group in overall charge? The group with the most oney. It's also very secretive, which is wrong.

Been out this morning so just coming back to this. In answer to roseq's point about it being good if historic trades could be renegotiated...yes, in theory that's a good idea, but in practice it wouldn't work because no-one is in charge of all the differeny selling and buying that goes on between people of various countries. Here is where I shove in a political point that follows from that statement: I don't think anyone should be overall charge. I don't think that sort of totalitarian control is a good idea. I think we just have to accept sometimes (often even) that human interactions are messy. That's how it is and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that.

... apart from the cinnamon in the recipe As you were.

Okay I'm convinced. I'll be back there this evening with a basket for picking them.

Also just received this one bowl apple cake recipe from my SIL in the US:

Very moist one bowl apple cake

Ingredients:
2 eggs
1 3/4 cups sugar (adjust sugar to your liking)
2 heaping teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 cup oil
6 medium apples
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°. In a large bowl, mix the eggs, sugar, cinnamon and oil. Peel and slice the apples and add to mixture in bowl (coating as you go to keep apples from turning brown.) Mix together the baking soda and flour and add to the ingredients in the bowl. Mix well (best with a fork) until all of the flour is absorbed by the wet ingredients. Pour mixture into a greased one 9x13 or two 9″ round pans. Bake for approximately 55 minutes.

(Oops, completely off topic).

We grow Bramleys, Blenheim Orange, Egremont Russet (my favourite), Cox, Laxton Superb and Crispin (Japanese)

We make apple wine which makes wonderful spritzers and fill the freezer with pie and crumble filling - a Chinese takeaway plastic container is the exact size for an apple crumble and they stack in the freezer.

A local cider maker takes our surplus and we get a couple of flagons of cider at Christmas in return

The chickens eat the fallers.

Well I'm eating British tonight. Spinach and feta pie. Ok I know it's a Greek dish but the spinach, eggs,onions,filo are all British grown or made, and the feta is Greek style MADE IN BRITAIN. ( isn't it time we got rid of these Scottish smileys? Or are they staying until the referendum?)

Veggie meal sounds delicious GK!
We have a mixture of French and English apple trees. Cox, Reine de Reinette, Boskoop (is that Dutch?) Laxton, Canada Gris (cooker). They are all groaning, especially as I was a bit hopeless about thinning them out. The Conference and Comice pears are heavily laden too.
Mind you if we can't grow apples and pears in Normandy it would be a bit hopeless.

I only have 8 apples on my tree this year. Just as it flowered there was a huge gale, and they all disappeared during one day. This was before any pollinators around, so I am pleased to have 8.

Use those apples, Grannyknot. What a bonus. A pesky squirrel has swiped all my Bramleys - bit into them and discarded them under the tree. I envied my daughter's MiL's tree full of massive Bramleys when I visited a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday, she was lamenting that the weight of all the apples had caused the trunk to snap. She's gathered them up to cook, but now has to replant and says she will never allow too many apples to remain on a dwarf tree in future.

About Bramley apples ... we've just bought a fixer upper house - husband's plan for my retirement - near where we live and I've been poking around in the overgrown garden (in fact I can't stay away from there so maybe husband is right about the project) and there's an apple tree at the bottom of the garden, and I am certain the apples are Bramley's. Shall I just take a chance and use them or might I poison us? It looks like a Bramley apple, I bit into one, it tastes like a Bramley ...

There are indeed excellent French apples- but they are not the ones imported by the xxxx tons to the UK commercially- and even so- with so many delicious English apples- why import any in season? I admit to eating apples all year round though- much easier to say than to do- of course. But there is no harm in giving it a damn try and supporting local produce- to the largest extent possible. Makes sense to import cinnamon- as we can't grow it- common sense, or curcuma, and other spices.

Of course an awful lot of land is used to produce hops and grapes, etc- and nobody complains about that ;) (not me either).

Bramley Apples. Can't get these cookers here, so I grow my own. They're in great demand from friends.

Cox's Orange Pippin - can't get these here either, so hoping to plant a tree soon

I've found some French apples delicious.

Potatoes: I've bought Israeli potatoes in Lidl, and grown a few Cornish ones in my little patch.

Variety is the spice of life - oh, and I loath cinnamon.

I think we're all extremely fortunate to have such a choice and range of foods from across the globe from which to pick and choose. I enjoyed BBQ-ed Plantain just a few weeks ago when in London. Delicious.

Mamie unintended positive consequences indeed. Our guerrilla allotment has had the effect of people who would ignored us for years, greet, nod or acknowledge us in some way. Interesting.

I agree with all of the above comments re food waste and you make a very good point about behind it being the drive for processed food, and of course that fresh food can be made quickly too.

My SIL has been staying with us and she is vegetarian so I have had to be a bit more creative (when I have vegetarians here we all eat vegetarian all the time). I made a noodle dish the other night with thinly sliced fresh ginger, stir-fried as the basis, I added whatever vegetables were in the fridge, added broad beans from the garden, added a splosh of soy and sweet chillli sauce, finished by adding finely sliced raw red salad onions (also from the garden) on top. It took less than 5 minutes to assemble and cook.

The cox, without a doubt. Le granny and le golden are abominations imo.
Actually where my DD lives in Kent the supermarkets do have a lot of local produce, which is proudly marked with the supplier. Waitrose is the best, of course.
Don't know about anyone else but our apple and pear crop looks very good this year. The plums did, but they are rotting quickly.

BTW what is your favourite English apple?

Same of course for pears, plums, damsons, etc, etc. Traditional orchards, with their huge benefit for bio-diversity and especially bees- will have all disappeared by the mid 21C if we don't do something about it. Buying British fruit would be a start- why not insist on it?