Seasonal Veg

Much as I detest Therese Coffey, she's totally correct that we should be eating more seasonal veg, rather than relying on food that a) involves an extraordinary amount of fossil fuels to provide out-of-season and b) has to be transported a phenomenal distance to reach our plates because we don't grow it ourselves.

You can't, on the one hand, castigate the oil industry for promoting fossil fuels and, on the other, bemoan the lack of summer fruit and vegetables in the middle of winter.

Had Jamie Oliver or Jack Monroe had come up with this suggestion it would have been applauded. There's plenty of beetroot, Brussels sprouts, cabbage - red; savoy; white, carrots, cauliflower, celeriac, celery, horseradish, Jerusalem artichokes, kale, kohlrabi, leeks, mushrooms, onions, parsnips, potatoes, rhubarb, salsify, shallots, spring greens, spring onions, squash, swede, turnips, etc. 

I detest turnips and much prefer Swede. Mind you, I'm not keen on salads - it's not as if many have starved for want of salad. I dare say many have starved because there's nothing but salad.

We've become molly-coddled by the availability of out-of-season stuff we can well do without, harming our own farmers in the process.

"So what about the dieters," I hear you say. Can't they just eat nothing and lose weight faster? You may as well eat nothing as eat a bloody salad anyway.

Yes, Coffey made a very valid point, but could have used a better example than turnip, which the continentals use to feed their pigs, eating only the leaves on top. 

It's probably the only thing she's done, as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs,  to support farmers and the environment.

What I find rather hypocritical and an egregious example of Greenwashing, is supermarkets extolling the fact their meat is locally sourced, when in the next aisle you have cut flowers flown in from Kenya and out of season veg trucked in from Italy.

How about a meal of endangered animal with out of season vegetables?