UK would run out of food today

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.

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.

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.

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?)

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.

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).

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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?

It was just the crispy noodles I liked

Might try the crispy noodles (are they imported? )

Why do we import so much veg from Holland? The Dutch government provides cheap natural gas to heat their green houses.

In the 1930s we imported two thirds of the food we eat. The growing problem of imported food being cheaper than home production began in the 1860s and was the cause of the major UK agricultural depression that lasted from the 1870s until WW2, despite a short lived boom during WW1.

In other words, there is nothing new about the current situation and we are actually producing far more of the food we eat than we did 100 years ago. So, if imports were suddenly stopped we would manage, firstly with rationing, secondly by an expansion of intensive farming and, as in wartime, ploughing up down land and moor and pouring on fertilisers. We would also all be growing our own in every public and private space we could find.

In other words, as in wartime, we would manage but would have to accept a degradation of the countryside and having to put much more effort into growing fruit and veg at a domestic level than we do now.

I think it is a variety of James Grieve apple granjura. It makes lovely pink juice - if you can rescue enough apples from the wasps!

I think I will start to pick them now - a bit early - and cook them down for the freezer, or they will just go to waste.

Our wasp traps are revolting - solid with dead wasps within 24 hours, with flies feasting on the bodies - a daily joy!

Thank you for that post Flickety. Very interesting, I had not realised just how much food we used to import.

I just found this:

www.westerndailypress.co.uk/Farmers-performed-heroic-role-war-effort-100/story-22082869-detail/story.html

Flickety, Ecotricity imports green gas from Holland, because there isn't any here.

What is 'green' gas? The gas used in the greenhouses is natural gas from large resources under mainland Netherlands.

My local sewage farm produces methane from sewage fermentation and feeds it into the main gas grid most anaroebic digesters produce gas as well. Doesn't this count as 'green' gas?