We Have No Budget Yet...

I wasted 20 minutes of my time the other day applying for what was presented as freelance work with an outfit called Foodtripper. The reply had a variation on the theme 'We have no budget to pay you as yet, but...'. It really is about time that the Gorkanas and Travmedias of this world made those sending such alerts come out with it upfront. Foodtripper, however, will be flooded with pitches from eager young things keen to submit pieces for nothing.

'Everyone is a writer now' is a phrase that I've seen several times about the demotic nature of the internet. But it is wrong. Some can write, and others throw rubbish together. It would be more correct to say everyone thinks they writers now.

They have good reason to feel they can emulate many of the supposed professionals. I did some subbing a while back at a Sunday paper, and was horrified at the trash that came in as copy. One piece submitted by a showbiz 'writer' was the worst of a bad lot: sentences left incomplete, without flow, without style, it was drivel punctuated with the names of soapstars. Subbing there meant a total rewrite. A big name chef (or, if I am any judge, his PA) wrote a Valentine's recipe for an intimate meal - for four people. Cue exchange of mails and another rewrite. A showbiz profile got the name of the 'actress' wrong throughout. But at least they had the back-stop of sub-editors.

Writing is as much a craft as an art, where you learn the tricks of the trade, study how it is done, and take an interest in the tools you can use. You polish words, rework, try different things, and with sweat and luck and thought end up with something more than readable. A good writer too should read and read and read. Look at a few pieces on the sites of certain online publishers and you'll see the output of those who have bypassed the learning phase, and don't read anything except Hello, or Vogue for the real highbrows. And if they have sub-editors it doesn't show.

Grow Your Own and Then Some

If the media are to be believed then Britain is undergoing a renaissance of grow your own, and even raise your own, as back gardens fill with chicken coops. But why is this?

There are so many reasons that a list is the best option here:

• It's economic and times are tougher. I have calculated - back of the envelope style - that we save about £1000 a year by growing our own fruit and veg, and that was before we got chickens. Next year I intend from January 1st keeping a diary of what is spent on seeds, compost etc, and what the estimated price of the produce we get to eat would be, to prove the economic case.

• The fantastic variety: with what we have growing now on our allotment and in the kitchen garden here we have, depending on how you score the thing, nearly 40 different vegetables (I count things with different uses, rather than varieties, so radicchio, Catalogna chicory and sugar loaf count as three, but the eight or 10 different lettuces is one). On top of that we have more than a dozen fruits.

• That variety means we get to eat stuff that never makes it to the shops - Hamburg Parsley roots, asparagus chicory, Chinese artichokes, cima di rapa, loads of different chilies, Swiss chard, fresh borlotti beans, tiny broad beans (the shops go for biggies which are bitter and mealy) quince...

• It is great exercise. For a couple of years I had a gym membership, and loathed the tedium of machines and the narcissistic people using them. In the end my £25/month meant one reluctant visit over that period. Digging, carrying, pulling etc etc take it out of you, but with a purpose that obviates the need for posing mirrors.

• We control what we put on our plants, so can be confident that our salad has not been sprayed with noxious pesticide and stored in an unpleasant gas.

• The supermarkets choose veg for looks (so they sell) not taste, and for keeping quality. Not taste is an important thing. If you grow your own then keeping quality is secondary, as the bulk of the stuff you produce is harvested and eaten the same day or within two at most. The difference between our own new spuds and the ones bought from Sainsbury's is incredible, especially if we dig, cook and eat them within an hour.

It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times

We are having the finest summer for six years, though given that means about one week of sunshine that's more a reflection on the vileness of the weather in previous years. The spring though was, in Britain at least, the coldest for half a century.

Combine those two phenomena and it is making gardening a bit of a bugger, which for those of us who enjoy eating food we grow is beyond annoying. We are at least three weeks further back in the growing year than we would normally be, and now the ground is exceptionally dry so to prevent everything running to seed or dying off watering is needed.

In a spare moment the other day I calculated we had 44 different fruits and vegetables on our allotment (and you can add to that another two or three like fennel grown in the garden but not the plot). That isn't counting different varieties of the same thing either. So in spite of the conditions we can hope for some plenty to come, which is probably one definition of the allotment gardener.

Lettuces for Less

Not sure if this should go in the Austerity Cook blog or here, but given it is about growing food rather than cooking, and concerns saving money, here it shall be.

We have a friend to thank for this tip. Thanks Louise.

Supermarkets sell cartons of 'living salad' for (in the case of Sainsbury's at least) £1. Buy one, harden the plants off with a few days outside and nights inside, then separate and plant them. We got 19 plants from one such container, all of which have proven healthy, and about half of which have been eaten already - they give you a quick start while your own seed-grown stuff is still on the way.

Another money saver that some gardeners won't be aware of: when you harvest a lettuce like this, leave a few of the outer leaves on the root, water it, and with luck you'll get a second plant in a few weeks.

Lettuce forms the basis of so many great things other than salads, so it's one of the must-haves in the garden. Cook peas fresh or frozen with a few leaves of green lettuce, some butter, and scraps of bacon fried till crisp and you have an approximation of petit pois a la francaise, a vegetable course in itself. They braise well in the oven too, again with a bit of bacon plus some stock to moisten things.

When you pay £1 a piece for decent lettuces in store such things can seem a bit extravagant; but when you have effectively paid about 5p for the growing salad jobbies they're a bargain. And if they are grown from seed we're talking a lot less than 1p each. Get growing.