No excuses for loving what you do!

I've been watching a movie - we do alot of those here - especially as the nights draw in. I don't know if you know it 'Julie and Julia' - about a girl who starts to blog about cooking her way through a famous American ladies cookbook. Alot of butter - alot of unconventional cooking (for today). I like the movie because it is about passion, cooking, life and following your dreams. Mines is to cover the world in flowers (edible ones a day at a time!) and to eat alot - I do like my food. Picture of me helping to cover the world in flowers and eating too much, a well needed rest!

A brilliant scene in the movie,  is about her cooking a lobster - having to deal with live food - for many of us is a bit scary - on whatever level - but if we eat meat/fish/poultry - we normally don't think about it - nor do we kill our own? Or do we? I don't know - but I find it hard. I think we should be eating nothing without respect (meaning food), absolutely nothing with pain, nothing wasted, nothing eaten here that is disrespected nor used as well as it could be, down to the last scrap. And, to be honest I'm not talking about all living walking around food - not just the animals in my life, those with roots, shoots and leaves. Who could disrespect food, whether it be vegetable based or anything produced by such lovely girls whether its boiling an egg they've laid or something else.......like carrots...............

I feel the same way about gardening and food - I love to cook as much as I love to garden. In fact its one of the reasons I love to garden, to be able to cook. I feel a real fraud talking about gardening and growing veggies to my class as I'm merely a gal who loves to grow and eat -  whilst I''m also cautious that I'm on a budget. Whilst money counts, which it does - we have to respect what we can actually acheive on a bit of budget. And everyone is.......so we compromise where we can. Thats why we buy reduced food etc - to be able to buy staples for us where we can, to not compromise elsewhere where we can. Part of our good life compromise!

And, speaking of which - I picked up some shallots tonight which are lovely for both - they are sold for cooking - but actually they'll be going into the gardening box - banana shallots from a national company called 'Lidl'. 79p a bag - perfect for cooking about 12 in a bag, but also perfect for growing - shallots require a decent size bulb for growing to get alot of shallots - so a decent bag of supermarket shallots will indeed grow you a lovely crop of shallots for your garden - everyone planted will give you 10 fold in return.

Now that is very good news - buying shallots at 79p to grow instead of 2.99 feels a bit more acheivable for me - that way when I cook I can have lovely ingredients which don't cost me too much.

Bon appetite!