In Singapore the central shopping street is called Orchard Road. But the orchard is long gone. To the north west a major landmark or routing point for taxis will be, turn off at Dairy Farm road. No more cows to be seen.
No dairy in Dairy Farm, no orchard in Orchard Road. We would have fresher food and less carbon footprint if we grew more food. Some streets have fruit trees. Roll on 3030 - the Singapore government plan, for when we are growing 30 percent of our own food by the year 2030 in Singapore.
In the UK in Hatch End every garden on the housing estate had a row of apple trees. The houses still have an abundance of apples, which are often shared with neighbours. We also had pear trees. The pear tree died and we have not cut it down or replaced it. I did plant a triple apple. I did not know which variety to plant. I thought that if I bought a triple apple, at least one variety of the apples would be a success.
Some of the apples are sweet enough to eat. Others are sour and need cooking. What can you do with all those apples?
Dice them into your yogurt at breakfast time for a healthy start to the day. Have a slice instead of cake for elevenses (the eleven o clock morning break) and/or at tea time. I have been losing weight consistently with three methods. a) fruit instead of cake for coffee breaks. b) Skimmed or semi-skimmed milk in coffee. Keep moving all the time. If I wake in the night I do exercises for an hour.
Now let's go back to the apples. After lunch or dinner, you can bake an apple in the oven. Slice it around the equator so it does not burst out of the skin. Remove the core and replace with mincemeat from a jar or to cut down on unknown ingredients and sugar, make your own filling of sultanas and currants and come grated apple and honey or ginger in syrup, ground almonds, flaked almonds, or poppy seeds or or any nuts or seeds which you have.
If you are not on a diet, or not fussy, even breadcrumbs from a stale loaf, or biscuits. Try two or three mixes and note which are most successful.
The traditional UK tart is apple crumble. Before I learned to cook (and cooking is just mixing and heating) it was all a mystery. I thought crumble was complicated and clever. On the contrary, it's easy. It is just rubbing the pastry into bits with your fingertips, instead of going to the trouble of ironing it flat with a rolling pin.
And pastry is only flour and water. To make bread or crackers or cakes. You can add milk or oil or eggs to get different results.
To make holes you add yeast. To make layers, you flattern it with a rolling pin and fold it over several times. for savoury, add salt, for sweet, add sugar. You can make a pie base, a pie topping, a bread, fried or baked, or a cake with an egg and milk.
The simplest cake is the French quarte quart, four quarters, equal amounts of four ingredients. Add apple and you have apple cake. Add banana and you have banana cake. Add carrot and you have carrot cake. Best to start with the simplest recipe to get it right first time. But if you have an orchard or a tree, you just keep trying different things.
In Singapore at every festival they have little trees with what look like miniature oranges. We rescued three trees which other people had thrown out. Two of them died. The third one was a success and produced two crops a year. We asked a neighbour to water every couple of days, and planned to give him whisky, after questioning him at length about what he liked to drink and eat.
The orange tree had bitter oranges. No good for eating. Eventually we realised that seville oranges are bitter and we had used them years ago to make marmalade.
If you were afraid of cooking, once you grasp that, and think of eating instead of saying I don't cook, say I love eating, and take the ingredients and think when you will eat or surprise the family.
If I were in charge, I would make it a rule that for every three trees or plants that you plant, one must provide fruit or nuts. I would make every seller of houses or flat give a potted edible plant, or three, for the balcony or garden, and a herb for the kitchen windowsill. If the whole world did this, nobody would go hungry.
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Please share links to your favourite posts.
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