Local, Seasonal Fruit and Vegetables

I like tomatoes, I really do. I love their sharp sweetness, the way those little cherry tomatoes burst under the roof of my mouth. I love beef tomatoes, sliced thickly and layered with mozzarella or onion. I can't understand that people don't enjoy them. It's something to do with the texture, apparently.

For me, there's something about the deep red (or orange, or tiger-stripe) of tomato fruits that evoke summer; I can see the colour of the sky as I think about eating tomatoes outside. And there's something about the smell of tomatoes that transports me to my father's greenhouse in my childhood house, green fruit swelling on the plants; and to my own greenhouse, where the thick dark-green stalks with their downy covering exude that intense aroma.

But I can't and won't eat tomatoes when they're watery and tasteless. I asked my wife, not so long ago, if she remembered eating the last tomato she'd had, if she had tasted it. When she remembered eating one that she tasted.

She couldn't.

After that, we agreed not to buy tomatoes out of season, from foreign shores. We've made the same agreement for asparagus and strawberries and all those other vegetables that it's possible to get year-round,  but which taste best of all when they're in season, and grown locally (meaning they're picked and sold in short order, still fresh).

So last week I was pleased and surprised to find the local supermarket had tomatoes ostensibly grown in Britain. And they were tasty enough, even if they're doubtless grown with the help of lots of heated greenhouses rather than in the heat of the sun. A guilty pleasure at this time of year.

This week, they did not. Oh, they had tomatoes, from Spain and Holland, from Morocco and the Canary Islands. Too far afield. Too well-travelled. No tomatoes for me this week.

But they did also have Cox's apples and Conference pears, both from the UK. So this week I have no tomatoes, but I am knee-deep in apples and pears. The break from tomatoes will make them more special when they're available again. If I can wait for asparagus, I can wait for tomatoes. Especially when I've got apples and pears to console me.

The Pleasures of Winter Cycling (and my Winter Soundtrack)

Cycling in Winter Has its Own Pleasures

It's easy to say that cycling is more fun when the weather conditions are right, particularly during the warmer seasons in the middle of the year. But there's something special about the still, clear mornings at this time of year, when the sky is red before the day dawns properly and the cold gives a tingling crispness to the air.

The pace of the seasons is more obvious now, with the dawn and dusk shifting gradually about my regular commuting times. As the days get a little longer, the ride home becomes a little lighter each time, the twilight gloom gathering a little later in the ride, a little closer to home. It's nice to have this connection with the seasons, to see the world changing day by day, revealing different faces during the morning and evening ride. Oh, I love the regularity of the summer commute, all daylight and green trees. But during winter my rides are more variable, so much more interesting.

Last week, on the way home, about half an hour before sunset, the mist was just starting to rise on the fields. About waist-high when I left, as I moved through the artificial lakes and flooded gravel pits of the Cotswold Water Parks, through the water meadows, the mist gathered and rose. By the time I was on the last couple of miles before home, swathes of it were spilling across the road, twice the height of a man.

And behind it all, the yellowing sun making silhouettes of trees and church steeples. Moody, dramatic. Wonderful.

And it's not only me: over at The Trusty Steed, Girl and Steed described her own Winter Wonderland this week.

My Winter Commute Soundtrack

I've been putting the finishing touches to my Winter Soundtrack. It's always interesting to trial the music that plays so well in the car, and find that it just doesn't work in the noisy environment of the bike ride.

There's some lovely stuff by Tinie Tempah that's got a good thumping high-BPM heart rate-raising quality to it, so that's staying on the playlist. But some of the Nick Cave songs don't play so well; moody and mysterious they might be, but they're not quite right for the bike. Similarly, some of the Dizzee Rascal tracks that I thought might be fun aren't appropriate. Dizzee spits so fast that it's lost in the rush of wind and wheels.

Once the final list is confirmed, I'll share it.

How to Make Sloe Gin (and Damson Gin too)

It's that time of year where the beautiful berries of the blackthorn can be seen cheekily gleaming from the hedgerows, and I sally forth to harvest a few to make my habitual ode to seasonality: sloe gin.

The fruit has been peeking from the hedgerows for the last couple of weeks in varying states of ripeness, and although I normally try and wait until September 1st, this week the temptation (and fear of losing a good crop to another picker!) was too much. As it happened, the first wild harvest was not sloes, but damsons; about the size of grapes, but heavier due to the weight of that big stone inside, and sporting that distinctive bluish blush.

The heavy work done, I sat down to make the first damson gin of 2010. Here's the trivially simple process so you can try it yourself.

What you'll need

• Gin, as much as you fancy. It generally comes in bottles
• Sloes, about equal in volume to your gin
• A decent whack of sugar
• A tight-sealable jar about twice the volume of your gin
• A pointy thing, such as a cocktail stick (I use a wooden one).

How to do make sloe gin

• Pick
• Prick
• Pour
• Pause
• Partake

Having picked and washed a quantity of sloes broadly equal in volume to a litre bottle of gin, I took a two-litre Kilner jar. Using the cocktail stick, I pricked each sloe a number of times and dumped them into the jar. This helps the juicy berry goodness to infuse in the gin, which is the whole point of the exercise.

When the jar was about half full of sloes, I poured in the sugar until the berries were pretty much covered, shaking the jar from time to time so that the sugar filled all the gaps between the berries. I used Fairtrade Golden Granulated sugar, but you'll doubtless choose sugar appropriate to your personal ethics and tastes. Or whatever is in the cupboard.

After a final shake, of the sugar and berries, I added the gin and gave it yet another good shake. The whole gin-berry-sugar concoction is now sitting in a dark cupboard. I'll give the jar a bit of a shake once a week or so to help the sugar dissolve. After a while, it'll have magically vanished into the by-then deep-purple liquid.

It'll take a fair while for the flavours to infuse properly, and you should expect to leave it three, four, or even six months before you strain off the fruit and begin sampling. The advantage of making sloe gin so early in the year is that it might just be ready in time for a Christmas tipple. Slurp!