Eating seasonally

As I've mentioned, one of this year's challenges is to try to eat most of our meals seasonally, from the garden. The night before last I managed this by cooking kothu roti (a Sri Lankan dish) of left-over roti, a red onion bought from someone else's garden, our own stored potatoes, green garlic tops and cabbage leaves. I'd have added carrots if we had any, but the remaining carrots want to grow a bit more before I harvest them.

Last night's meal was a mixed bag. We treated ourselves to fried okra and plantain fritters (both probably flown in, big bad), but our main course was a Vietnamese tofu dish. The vegetables in the dish were green garlic tops, leeks, spring onions, the last of the cabbage leaves plucked from the cabbage gone to seed, and a handful of purple sprouting broccoli. The sauce was from the last of our canned tomatoes from last year. We're having the leftovers for lunch with a sprinkling of fresh salad burnet leaves and spring onions on top.

I suspect I'll give in and buy tomatoes again before the new ones are ready...

Coincidentally, I've noticed that Cauldron Foods, which used to make the most readily available tofu in UK supermarkets, no longer sell their tofu as organic. They've replaced it with a softer, lower-quality non-organic tofu, in larger quantities, packaged in plastic (rather than the cardboard the UK version used to come in), and made in the US. Talk about adding food miles. I'll be going out of my way to go to the food store for alternatives now. And maybe replanting those soya beans the mice ate, to grow and make my own.

Planting things? I've failed sadly this week, although tonight I intend putting the next crop of squashes in the heated propagator.