It is almost the end of British Sausage Week (it ends tomorrow, 9 Nov) and if you have not had a chance to celebrate real british sausages, then go out and it now!

We had some great sausages from our wonderful local farm, Foxbury, last night. They bred and raise a whole selection of livestock, including some wonderful pork, which they turn into amazing sausages - I would recommend that you try the Old Spot Sausages. If you are in Oxford and cannot get them from Foxbury (they do free home delivery on Thursday), then you can always get quality sausages from David John in the Covered Market or from the Big Bang, the 3rd best place to eat in Britian under £50 (actually most of the dishes are well under £20).

Also, for those who may be slightly cash-strapped, the Big Bang is currently doing a “Credit Crunch Lunch” of sausage & mash for £4.50! If you stop by the Big Bang, make sure and support our local breweries by buying a pint of Hook Norton or Cotswold Lager!

The South Devon Chilli Farm staff are the UK’s leading experts on chillies and chilli growing. They started in 2003 and today, they grow over 10,000 plants. Not only do they have a great variety of chilli seeds, but they also have an extensive selection of chilli-based products … including chilli chocolates, dried chillies, and chilli growing equipment. I have had their products before and all of them are of top-quality! If you see them at a store near you, I would recommend that you pick up at least one to try.

In addition, if you are looking for an easy plant to grow, my experience with chilli plants shows that they are easy to grow and, unlike many other plants, they last longer than a single season. We are currently surrounded by potted chili plants in our flat because nearly every plant survived from a seedling (and most of them have fruited multiple times). On a slightly different note, they do make quite nice house plants.

Chilies are a wonderful winter food … they add a ray of sun to otherwise bland dishes!

Even with our small patio and limited sun, I have been able to grow some food … needless to say it was only some tomatoes, blueberries, and some peppers. Once I have a somewhat larger garden, then I will want to expand the variety of food grown. As I have posted before, there are a lot heirloom tomoto varieties available, but what else is available for your backyard?

TreeHugger regularly posts stories about gardening and recently, they posted an article about a nursery that specializes in edible perennials called Edible Landscaping, based in Afton, VA (about 1.5 hours west of Richmond along I-64). They have a whole range of plants - from Asparagus to Wyeberries (a type of blackberry). If you live in their general area (VA, MD, or NC), they even sale large fruit trees in up to 45 gallon buckets.

For those who want something now, they are having a Fall Sale, with up to 50% off!

We bought some Tracklements Red Pepper & Chilli Jelly and it is great! So far we have used it for two completely different things …

First, we had it as an accompaniment to some sausages & mash that we made for dinner. It matched perfectly the Cajun Smokey sausages that we got at David John’s in the Oxford Covered Market. So, it is great as a condiment, but it is also useful as a cooking ingredient …

Second, we used it to glaze some chicken. It was quite a simple idea - just fry off some chicken pieces in a pan and when they are basically done, add a little water and a couple of spoons of the red pepper & chilli jelly … quite a tasty & quick meal! Just wish that we had made more, so that I could have had some leftovers for lunch this week.

I have a new favorite all-around oil to use when cooking: Farrington Oils’ Mellow Yellow. It is a cold-pressed rapeseed oil - in the USA, you find rapeseed oil labeled as Canola but it is hot-pressed (meaning above 40C). More importantly, the canola oil does not have the flavor that Mellow Yellow has! Also, it is high in both Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids, plus it has a high smoke point with the added benefit that heating does not affect the flavor or other characteristics. This means that it can be used for a whole range of things that you cannot use nicer olive, nut, or other seed oils to do. One of my favorite uses for it is to make roast potatoes, and it can also be used as a butter replacement when baking.

Rapeseed oil is better known as a source for making bio-fuel because many of the standard varieties are slightly toxic to humans - they contain erucic acid. Beyond that, it is still one of the most widely used sources of standard vegetable oil and is a high-protein animal feed.

Like with other types of oils, it all depends on how it is processed. Mellow Yellow, like extra virgin olive oils, is cold-pressed which helps to guarantees that it is only the best oil that comes out of the seeds … but what does this mean? It produces an oil that is one of the most versatile cooking oils around and it takes a proud place in my kitchen arsenal!

For more information (and suppliers) of cold-pressed rapeseed oil, see The Time’s Food Detective on it

Baby Tomato & Chilli Plants:

Okay, I have enjoyed growing some tomatoes from seed (they are actually Tumbling Toms - both red & yellow). And, Jill has enjoyed eating them … but in the future, I want to grow some slightly different tomatoes, like these heirloom varieties from TomatoSeed.net:

<- Japanese Black Truffle Tomato

<- Mr. Stripey Tomato

<- Snow White Cherry Tomato

Don’t those look better and more interesting than the ones that you see in the store …

The craziest part of the story is that they refer to industrial farming practices as “conventional.” I thought that conventional cattle farming would be grass-fed, free-ranging cattle … not locked in a shed and force fed M&Ms, potato chips, and fermented corn.