Low Carbon Cookbook - 22 March

These are dried field beans grown by William Hudson, Norwich FarmShare’s key advisor. They’re part of the Food & Farming group’s Beans, Oats and Flour project that’s looking at crops that can be grown in the UK as the constrictions of climate change and peak oil hit our fossil-fuelled food system. They’re also called cattle or tick beans and are a popular staple in Egpyt. Right now in fact when we’re not feeding them to cows we’re exporting them to Egypt where they are known rather more appetisingly as ful medames. In the next Low Carbon Cookup, we’re going to be exploring the future with this down-to-earth relative of the broad bean, as we get on down to the business of writing a Transition cookbook. We’ll also be looking at the production of oils – reporting back on the olive, sesame, rapeseed, hemp and other essentials of our low carbon store cupboard. This week on the blog in our LCC Transition Themes slot we have invited Joanne Brannan to write about a foraging for wild leaves at her innovative low carbon farm in Suffolk. Joanne runs a CSA (with Transition Ipswich) and is a Guardian gardening blogger, so keep an eye out for her post on Friday. Last month those peppery, bitter and sour green leaves were definitely entering our month-by-month vegetable calendar and springing up amongst the root veg in our shared feast – sorrel, lovage, rocket, chickweed, nettle, endives, radicchio, fennel, lamb’s lettuce, bittercress. MMMMmmm. Can’t you just taste that Spring! Have a good one! Charlotte Du Cann Worth a Handful of Beans by Mark Watson