Swiss Chard and Goats Cheese Quiche (using Soy Cream)

Yup it's time for another seasonal recipe, and this time we're focusing on beautiful Swiss Chard. Swiss Chard comes in different colours and looks absolutely incredible. It's also incredibly tasty, very much like spinach, but even better in my book. It's also very easy to grow and is a nice source of fresh greens at this time of the year. It brings colour, texture and freshness to the winter diet and it's very good used in a quiche. And quiches are so very easy to make, the pastry of course can be bought in most supermarkets and then you can choose whatever seasonal ingredients are available, and we often also use leftovers in it. Even though a quiche is normally made with ordinary cream, we're using Soy Cream for this recipe. One reason being that I myself have a cow's milk intolerance, so I can't use ordinary creeam that often. But I do love a good quiche and was looking for a cream substitute and have used Alpro Soy Cream for this recipe, which is very versatile, easy to use and it keeps very long in the fridge. The texture of this quiche is a bit more eggy, you could only use 2 instead of 3 eggs if you prefer your quiche being creamy. All in all it's a very easy and versatile recipe, perfect for customising. And do consider using soy cream, as it is perfect for people who are lactose intolerant and such, but it's just a nice ingredient in general.

Thanks for watching!!!

European Week for Waste Reduction in Belfast

AC and I were part of Root & Branch Organic's commitment to waste reduction this Thursday, as part of the European Week for Waste Reduction. We set up a stall in the Black Box in Belfast and offered organic smoothies made with 'waste products' from Helen's Bay Organic Gardens.Pretty much every food business produces waste, and even though Helen's Bay Organic Gardens compost their waste it is of course nicer when perfectly edible produce is eaten and apprecitaed by people. The smoothies were really delicious and it's such an easy thing to do with over-ripe fruit and veg. All in all the event was really fun, we had lots of delicious 'waste' food and we met many interesting people!

The big message however should really be that we all should take a moment and think how we can reduce waste, especially at home. We met two people from Belfast City Council and had a really interesting talk about waste managment. Whether you might think or not, Belfast City Council like many other councils are actually very keen for people to recycle more. Not only is it better for the environment and local waste reduction helps meet European standards, but there is also a huge difference in cost between getting rid of normal waste or recycled waste. A ton of normal waste costs the City Council about £80, whereas a ton of recycled waste only costs £8! And even your waste from brown bins comes to a cost of around £43 per ton, so still a lot cheaper. The Council thus wastes millions of pounds every year because people don't use their blue and brown bins enough, but just chuck everything into their black bins.

Of course we wouldn't be telling people how to, if we didn't do it ourselves, so we'll tell you how we reduce waste and recycle at home, and hopefully these ideas will make you think about your own waste  and how to reduce it.

1) Every organic matter is pretty much composted in our house. We have two compost bins in our garden, so fresh kitchen waste from fruit and veg usually goes in there, mixed with cardboard from egg boxes and waste from the garden to create a balanced compost. And then for any cooked food waste and animal products, we use the City Council food bin, which then goes into the brown bin and then gets turned into compost as well. This is a really good second option for us because we can't put cooked food or animal products into our normal compost bins as it would attract pests and might even create harmful bacteria.

2) Paper and cardboard is either recycled by putting it into the blue bin, or because we have a wood burner we often just use it to start the fire. Anything else that can go into the blue bin also goes in.

3) For anything else that can be recycled, like glass, drink cartons etc, we're quite lucky because our recycling center is just down the road from us. We tend to just have 2-3 small boxes in our yard that we take to the recycling center every two weeks and that only really takes 20 minutes of our time. What is really important is to break the habit of just putting everything in the bin. Check what you can recycle at your local recycling center and many forms of packaging will tell you whether it's recycable or not. So now whenever we have something that can be recycled we just throw into one of our boxes, easy peasy. It really doesn't take up anymore time than just throwing it in your bin. You just have to make that initial thought and break the habit.

4) Old clothes, books, gifts and whatever else can often be given to recycling centres who then send it on to charitable organisations, or you can go straight to a charity shop of your choice and give unwanted items which other people might want. This is not only good for waste reduction but also for the charity shops who can thus make money for their charity. And don't be afraid to give torn clothes and old fabrics as these are sent on to companies who use it for compost.

5) What to do with plastic bags? Well for a start we use reusable bags so that we don't get that many plastic bags, but of course we still end up with our fair share. For the most part, we reuse plastic bags as bin bags. For us this makes perfect sense because we don't produce that much waste that goes into our normal bin and most of it is really plastic packaging, which unfortunatelly is not being recycled in many countries, even though it could be used for making bio-diesel. But plastic bags can also be used for all kinds of craft projects. Plastic actually makes for really good stuffing in handmade teddybears, pillows, you name it, as long as it's clean and dry obviously.

So this is how we reduce our waste at home, and we think that probably over 80 % of our waste is in some way or another reused, composted or recycled. The only waste we really have is loose plastics like wrappers and packaging, which could be used for better things besides landfill where it doesn't really decompose at all.

We hope that by reading this guide to waste reduction at home you might get a few ideas that change your approach to waste. As I've mentioned, most of the work is really that initial thought of how you can change your approach and then it's really just all about getting yourself organised and breaking the habit of throwing everything into the bin. It really doesn't take up that much of your time, especially whenever it becomes part of your daily routine. But of course all these suggestions should really work for you or else you can make them work according to your lifestyle. And obviously these things just take time, as it did for us, to find the perfect solution. However, we are confident that anyone can, if they want to, reduce their waste enormously. Even if it's not to the extent that we do it, it's always good to try anyway and not too feel bad about what you waste but feel good about what you save!

So let's all become a bit more conscious about what happens to our waste, which in the end is good for the environment and for us all who have to pay the taxes to get rid of the stuff!

Red Velvet Inspired Cake (with Beetroot)

Now this recipe is really cool! You may have heard of Red Velvet Cake before. It's quite famous in America and it's is said to be from New York, although some people say it's a classic recipe from New Orleans. Anyhow, whenever we saw most video recipes we thought that it's not actually a very spectacular cake. It's basically a nice vanilla sponge with a tiny amount of cocoa powder and food colouring, which seems to be the real reason for the cake's popularity. We instantly thought that we should change the recipe a bit and that we should substitute the food colouring. A lot of people don't like using food colouring because it is essentially made out of crushed beetles and some people are even
allergic to it. The substitute for this problem was an absolute no-brainer because we use it all the time in the kitchen: fresh beetroot! Really good fresh beetroot is incredibly sweet and very versatile to cook with, and it dyes everything dark red! It also adds a depth of flavour to the cake and adds moisture and texture, which makes it similar to carrot cake. And it goes so well with chocolate! We added a lot more cocoa powder to the cake, and it simply tastes amazing, almost like a really good browny, but with the added flavour of the beetroot and the vanilla. And having made an effort with the actual batter, we just couldn't make a usual buttercream frosting. Instead we made an incredible white chocolate frosting which tastes like the most amazing vanilla ice cream! And together, the cake and the icing are a real experience! The flavours and textures compliment each other so well.

If you like Red Velvet Cake, then try this recipe, and if you don't like Red Velvet Cake, then even more reason to try this recipe! Honestly, we should all be making more of this cake, it's that good...

Thank you!

The title says it all: Thank you! Thank you to all our subscribers and our viewers, we hope you enjoy our videos and that you appreciate our hard work. The videos are fun to make and we love to read your comments! We obviously hope to grow in the future and to get more subscribers and more views so we can share our recipes and our ideas with even more people!
Thank you for your support and please keep watching!

Hugh's 3 Good Things Challenge: Beetroot Pesto

We're really excited about this video, obviously because this is a recipe we love and want to share with as many people as we can, but this is also our entry video to Hugh's 3 Good Things Challenge. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who's famous for his River Cottage programs and his approach to Slow Food and sustainability, has recently started a new show called Hugh's 3 Good Things. In this program Hugh demonstrates how the concept of 3 good things on a plate is an excellent and exciting way of cooking and preparing food. The first episode shows how versatile beetroot can be and hugh's challenge for the first week is to make a great dish with beetroot and two other key ingredients. So our recipe is Beetroot Pesto, a fantastic dish that is sweet, creamy, nutty and incredibly fragrant and it can be used in so many different ways, for pasta, bread, soups etc.

We really believe this recipe's a winner and hope that we win the prize, but regardless, we think this is fantastic video and a fantastic recipe!

For more information on Hugh Fearnely-Whittingstall and River Cottage see the link below:

http://www.rivercottage.net/

Easy and Tasty Wholemeal Bread

So here's our newest bread video, and we think it's our best one yet. This bread is really fantastic, incredibly tasty, incredibly easy and very healthy! A complete joy to make and eat. The two crucial factors for this success are spelt flour and our kitchen aid machine. The organic wholemeal spelt flour we're using is incredible, so tasty, very light and easy to use. It makes for fantastic bread dough and is perfect for beginners. It also has less gluten than normal wheat bread so it might be an interesting option for people who have a gluten intolerance. 

Spelt flour is experiencing a real revival in the last two decades. It's actually a type of grain that was already used by the Romans and it is an incredibly hardy grain, that's why it's so often used in organic agriculture. But the yields are lower than modern wheat varieties so that's why it hasn't been very popular in the last 100 years. Anyway, it's an incredible flour to use and it's an incredible feeling to eat a type of bread that would have been similar to the bread the Romans ate thousands of years ago. We got our flour from Doves Farm in the UK and you can check out their website for more information: 

http://www.dovesfarm.co.uk/

The second important factor was using our kitchenaid! They aren't the cheapest piece of kit for the kitchen but they make homemade bread a real joy. Instead of kneading the dough by hand for 5-10 minutes, you just let the machine do it for you. Then you can proceed as you normally would, shaping the dough, letting it rise etc. It's such a quick, easy and clean way of preparing your dough for breadmaking.  

We hope you found this video interesting and useful! Thanks for watching!

Real Harry Potter Butterbeer!

Ever wondered how to make butterbeer when reading harry potter? Well you're not alone. Butterbeer has become a hugely popular drink, especially at the harry potter theme parks and there are many butterbeer recipes online that are all variations of this theme park recipe. However, the problem we have with this recipe is that there is no beer in it! It's actually a very uninteresting drink which doesn't taste or feel the way it's described in the harry potter books. But we did find an original recipe of authentic butterbeer as it was used to be made hundreds of years ago. Our recipe is really a form of mulled ale, which is an old tradition in many parts of Europe. Not only did people put the typical christmas spices in their mulled ale, like ginger, cinnamon and clove, but they also used to add eggs, cream, and butter, which of course gives its name to butterbeer. And that is what we did and it makes the mulled ale incredibly creamy and heartwarming, perfect for halloween and christams and the cold and darker days of autumn and winter. And of course for watching Harry Potter movies :)

We hope you enjoy our video!

The Three Sisters Planting Guide

The 'Three Sisters System' is quite well known in the veg growing world. It originated in Latin America and is still used there today as a traditional system of companion planting that benefits each of the three plants, or sisters. The sisters are sweet corn, squash and beans. The idea behind it is that the squash with its big leaves covers the ground and prevents weeds from growing, the beans nurture the soil by extracting nitrogen from the air and releasing it into the ground, and the sweet corn make great climbing poles for the beans. This is companion planting at it's best, the plants nurture each other, reduce weeds and support each other's growth. Traditionally the three crops would have been harvested at around the same time and planting the three crops in the same field also means you get the highest possible yield for the amount of land being used. It is no wonder that this brilliant high-yield but low labour system was invented by peasants whose lives after all depended on the success of their crops.

At Helen's Bay Community Garden we planted the three sisters in our polytunnel. We customised the rules a bit in our case, and that is really what anybody should do when considering the three sisters system. You can use the concept of the system but use slightly different plants, either in the same family or with the same purpose. Instead of using squash or pumpkins we planted different varieties of courgette that are giving us a continuous crop of multi-coloured courgettes every week. Moreover, we planted runner beans, mangetout and french beans in the same row as the sweet corn so that the plants would climb up the corn. These three varities of the legume family will give us a varied crop and they all have different coloured flowers which makes the whole system even prettier. The sweet corn has been planted in rows and the squash is planted in the middle. This gives us one long and very productive bed. The reason we planted the three sisters in the polytunnel was because we started our corn and squash plants a bit late and the added heat and cover of the polytunnel just guarantees a better chance of success, particularly in Northern Ireland where the climate isn't very dependable. 

As you can see in the picture, the beans really do climb up the sweet corn! We did add a few bamboo canes though just to ensure that there is enough space for all the beans and mangetout to climb without cramping each other.

Our verdict is that this system has definitely been a success and that it looks very attractive in a polytunnel. The only thing is it has to be watered regularly, especially in warm weather, for the plants to produce good crops. We will probably try the system again next year, but outisde this time, and we urge everyone to give the three sisters a go!