Friday 11 January 2019

Not this year!

This is something I came across yesterday when I was looking through my desk.   I took the photo several years ago when we had heavy snow and the farmer was feeding some of the sheep.   I had it made into a Christmas card for the next year and this must have been a spare one.   Sorry for the poor rather blurred image but it has obviously gone through several processes before it got to here.   It is lovely to look back on times like this, although obviously tinged with sadness.   I remember the day well. 

I took another photograph which I intended to put on just above this part of the post but sorry, it refuses to move.  But the other night I made a salad for my tea (feeling virtuous) - I made it look really pretty on the plate by dividing the plate into sections - wild rocket, feta cheese, cous-cous, piccolo tomatoes,pecan nuts and pineapple.   I sat admiring it before tucking into it - the French dressing bottle in my hand - when it suddenly struck me how 'foreign' this salad would have been to my parents.   They were keen salad eaters, but it all came out of our garden - lettuce, tomatoes from the greenhouse, radishes, celery.  I looked at the packaging on all the things I had used for my salad - every single one of them had come from abroad - Morocco, Italy, Greece - (I try not to buy salad ingredients from Spain having seen a TV programme showing thousands of acres of greenhouses and the immigrant workers who work in them for very poor pay and in very poor conditions.)  No doubt some of you will be appalled that I should make a salad like this when I could use English salad ingredients (have you ever tasted a tasty English tomato at this time of year?) but I happen to like all the things on my plate.   I enjoyed the salad very much as it happens.  

31 comments:

Derek Faulkner said...

I love the photo of the farmer and the sheep - hard times.
I'm sorry to be a party-pooper but that salad, as well as looking very uninspiring, wouldn't fill me for more than half an hour - where's the beetroot, the hard boiled eggs, the cold meat, etc.

Rachel Phillips said...

You have mixed the dessert up with the first course. Where is the salad dressing and the round of bread and butter?

donna baker said...

I'd say that is a most healthy dish. The perfect addition would be a hard boiled egg and a couple of carrot sticks. For some reason, I only like room temperature food in cold weather so I have been leaving my salads out on the counter before consuming.

Granny Sue said...

The salad looks delicious, and such a pretty meal too. And the photo of your farmer--no words to say how perfect it is, so nostalgic.

angryparsnip said...

This looks like something daughter would make and I would love.

I love the winter photo with Farmer and the sheep. Wonderful !

cheers, parsnip

John "By Stargoose And Hanglands" said...

Seeing those two photographs together I can't help but wonder what the Farmer would have said if you'd served up salad when he came in from the snow - some frank Yorkshire opinions might well have been aired, I imagine. Personally I live on salad during the summer - particularly last summer - but don't touch it in the winter, though yours does look tempting.

Cloudia said...

Wonderful photo, and it is lovely to enjoy greens in Winter, yes <3

Joanne Noragon said...

The world is the universe now, so I wouldn't be too concerned about salad sourcing. My mother's salad would have been a leaf of iceberg lettuce, a ring of pineapple, a spoon of cottage cheese in the center of the ring, and a red maraschino cherry topping. I learned what to cook from my mother-in-law.
Your photo is priceless.

Heather said...

That snow scene is so beautiful but I am too old now to enjoy such a heavy fall. Your salad looks beautiful too and must have been very tasty. I have been so pleased to be able to buy English tomatoes with flavour much later in the year than normal. I think they came from Kent and only stopped appearing on my supermarket's shelves in November. I try to buy produce that is as local as possible, but quite often it is from other countries.

Sue said...

That's my kind of salad - I love to have fruit and nuts added, and cheese of any sort makes anything taste better. Funny thing about salads though, is that they always seem to taste better when someone else makes them! Thanks for sharing the photo of your husband and the sheep in the snow. It's just beautiful. I enjoy the two sheep that turned around to look at you!

Living Alone in Your 60's said...

Your salad looks very appetizing. You took a cracking photo of the horrid white stuff. I really don't like it, hope it stays away this year.

Bonnie said...

Love the picture of the Farmer. That looks like a big snow! We have had snow all day with more tonight and tomorrow. Well, it is January. Your salad looks good but like Rachel I might add a little bread and butter.

The Weaver of Grass said...

Derek, on the whole I am not a great meat eater. This was not my main meal of the day - I had already had a good lunch. This was my tea time meal which is never very large. As far as eggs are concerned I had had two boiled ones with bread and butter the night before for my tea time snack. I have that as a tea once a week - my favourite way for eggs.
Rachel - I had French dressing on the whole thing. The roll and butter is just out of shot.
John, I eat salad all the year round because it is one of my favourite foods. If I want it as a heartier meal then I would add perhaps a tin of sardines, a hard boiled egg and some hot salad potatoes.
Heather - the surprise for me this year was strawberries - I ate English ones right through until late September = laterly from Kent - and they were full of flavour.

the veg artist said...

The photo is a beautiful depiction of a farmer taking care of his livestock, and the sheep knowing that he would come with some food. Making it into a Christmas card was a lovely idea.
The salad looks good - I try to have a side-salad at least once a day, home grown when I can!

Derek Faulkner said...

Both yourself and Heather touched on a point that has always grieved me, the fact that there are so few seasons now for food - strawberries all year round being one such example. It ised to be such a joy to get to a "season" for produce, such as strawberries and cherries in early summer, sprouts in winter - having such things all year round spoils those little events.

Rachel Phillips said...

For me food seasons still dominate and I only eat what is seasonal here. I ignore everything else. It is quite easy to carry on this way Derek, or at least I find it so, and still look forward to the short English asparagus and strawberry seasons, for instance. I was watching Rick Stein in Japan last night and the Japanese are very strict about adhering to the seasons in the food they eat..

thelma said...

It looks a delicious supper, an 'English' salad in days gone by, would have been ham, lettuce tomatoes and cucumber with maybe radishes. French dressing no way, Heinz mayonnaise would have added the flavour. A special Sunday treat...
I like the mix of your eclectic salad, the fact that sweet and sour and salty are all represented.

Marie said...

Italy and Morocco have the same slave system for the growing of vegetables and fruit :'( I am resorting to mostly Dutch produce because they have a very mechanised system of greenhouses...one can but hope!

Librarian said...

I was going to say what Marie said about e same horrible conditions you saw on TV about greenhouses in Spain applying to Italy and other countries. Nonetheless, your salad is my kind of food! I love fruit, cheese and nuts in my salads and often have something like that for my tea. Seasonal ingredients can still be bought in time with the seasons - it is up to us what we choose, isn't it. Thankfully, Aldi is 5 walking minutes from my house, and they have a good (seasonal!) range of organic produce which I usually buy.

Derek Faulkner said...

On the subject of huge greenhouse complexes, your strawberries from Kent will have probably come such a place. In Thanet, near Ramsgate, there is a huge greenhouse complex that seems to grow a large amount of the salad stuff sold in this country, plus some soft fruit. I'd be very surprised if foreign labout wasn't involved as well.

From A Worcestershire Hill said...

A lovely photograph of the farmer feeding the sheep. Your salad looks delicious, but is not a meal I would eat in the winter. Regarding the taste of English tomatoes, the local WI had a talk from the joint owner of a tomato farm this week. All the tomatoes are grown under glass nr. Fladbury and they tasted wonderful. I tried to buy tomatoes locally and I could only purchase those grown in Spain.

A Heron's View said...

So Weaver who do you think picks the English grown products. Certainly not the native English. For your delightful english grown foods are picked by the migrants and given the same conditions as those that you condemn in Spain. Don't take my word for it though, just wait until brexit really kicks in and nobody travels from abroad to pick your crops.

Rachel Phillips said...

We have always had foreign pickers from Eastern Europe in Norfolk. Arrangements existed well before the Common Market, the EEC and the EU and so they can and will again

Derek Faulkner said...

I haven't problem with foreign pickers in this country, they do a job and earn money that our labour force can't be arsed to do. That's why car cleaners in supermarket car parks are mostly all Eastern European. Too many of our youngsters are paid benefits to sit at home playing on their smart phones.

coffeeontheporchwithme said...

I think the picture of the farmer and his sheep is beautiful, serene. I always love winter scenes with sheep in them. -Jenn

Rachel Phillips said...

Keep buying your Moroccan tomatoes and all the rest of it because they have a job and if they don't have a job they will end up as economic migrants crossing the Med. Don't believe every bit of misery that Simon Reeve shows you, you know his agenda, you have discussed it with me in the past.

A Heron's View said...

Britain's post-Brexit immigration policy with a salary threshold of £30,000 for visa eligibility will hit the migrant pickers and others across the board.

Rachel Phillips said...

There will be exemptions to this for essential occupations.

The Weaver of Grass said...

Thanks for your reply Heron. I really don't think the conditions here are comparable with the ones I saw in Spain - at least I sincerely hope they are not. I agree with Rachel, we have always had foreign pickers - I come from the Lincolnshire Fens with their acres of crops when I was a child - many foreign pickers. And my mother used to speak of Southern Irish potato pickers when she was a child.

Thanks everyone.

Rose said...

I just have to comment and tell you I love the Christmas card shot!

Cressida de Nova said...

https://seachurn.blogspot.com/2019/01/sheep-may-safely-graze-bwv-208-js-bach.html

An inspirational Christmas card.