FARM-Africa help alleviate poverty and hunger by supporting lots of small farming families all across Africa.  They help by giving grants and advice, and build networks for knowledge sharing, so farmers can be sustainable, profitable and self sufficient.

Read all about FARM-Africa and how you can help here.

Together, we ran a competition.  Decorate a welly, win a goodie bag of FARM-Africa stuff was how it went.  Here are the spectacular ten winning creations. 

Elsie

Aurora

Alexandra

 Selena

 Daniel

 Daisy

Rosemary

Rachel

Leon

 Jade

It’s also why our Ugly Juice is ugly.  No weird colour stabilisers, you see – that would be a third ingredient.  No weird anything, actually, and that goes for our Beepple Juice, too.  Although, yes, the names are a bit weird. 

Easy squeezy

Our juices are made by pressing.  The fruit and veg is popped in a big concertina and the juice is squeezed out.  Simple as that.

An aside for the curious:

The other way of getting juice out of fruit and veg is by a centrifuge, which causes a lot of air to be whipped in, which breaks down the nutrients in the juice faster. No thank you.  We’ll stick to the press.

Andrew, our juicing wunderkind, says, “The joy of doing it in small batches is the bits that you see – with bigger fancy bits of kit, it’s harder to get juice with bits in as it settles and blocks some of the finer working parts.  Lots of juice has a very processed feel about it whereas this stuff you can feel the juice as you drink.”

That’s Andrew, midway up Ben Nevis in the 6 Peaks Challenge a few years back.

Top notch

Brilliant inside and out, even the bottle tops are clever.  Coloured plastic looks nice, but can mess things up in the recycling process.  Our bottle tops have less pigment in, which means they’re easier than most to recycle.

Juice Oddity

As the seasons ch-ch-change, so do our juices.  Different varieties grow at different times of year, which is why, when we used in-season Rosemarie pears in our Ugly Juice last week, the juice was a lot less ugly looking – it went clear.

Thousands of people ran the London marathon on Sunday.  Sarah from Cocoa Loco was one of them, and she raised over £2500 for charity.

This is Sarah.  She started Cocoa Loco in a little converted barn after the success of her ebay truffle business meant the family had to do a truffle shuffle through her chocolate-filled kitchen. 

As you can see, it rained on marathon day.  Sarah’s amazing, so she did it anyway.  What a multi-talented chocolateer she is.

And especially to our winners… Hazel Rah, Kimberley Pendleton, and Sheffield Scenestar

From Kimberley Pendleton

From Hazel Rah

From Sheffield Scenestar

So now onto next month’s recipe!

Try out the Gorgeous Pink & Green Salad, find out how here – http://www.abelandcole.co.uk/blog/2012/04/mays-recipe-photo-competition/

Gorgeous Pink & Green Salad Recipe

Enter our monthly recipe photo competition and win ingredients and a bottle of wine hand picked by our wine buyer, Nick Mason, for the following month’s recipe.

Beetroot and watercress are heavenly together – the sweet, earthiness of the beautiful crimson beetroot compliments the mustardy, fresh green of the watercress. Nutritionally it’s excellent too. And it looks pretty.

Ingredients:

• a glug of olive oil
• 1 lemon
• a bag of watercress (about 4 handfuls)
• 1 beetroot, peeled and coarsely grated
• sea salt
• freshly ground pepper
• fresh red chilli, finely chopped (optional/to taste)

Step by step:

Every lunchtime, our Martin (he of wild garlic picking fame) does a quiz.

This week, Clare invited Paul Ward along (he of delicious apple growing fame).

Turns out Paul’s a dab hand at quizes.  Much to Jamie’s delight.  Maybe it’s all the salad and fruit Paul eats – he doesn’t eat much else.

Martin gets his quizes from this website, and this website, if anyone fancies starting their own quiz club (completely nothing to do with Abel & Cole, apart from the fact that Martin forages for his quiz questions there).

When Keith Abel’s kids started at primary school, his wife Chippy naturally wanted to do her bit.  After a couple of fêtes, a fortune spent on cake ingredients, and a close call with some fiery fairy cakes, they put their thinking caps on.  

Click here for more info on Farmer’s Choice.

Our Spanish fennel, broocoli and pepper grower, David, came to visit this week.  He brought tales of mountain biking and a rather excellent tortilla recipe.

David’s Tortilla

2 big or 3 small artichokes
5 eggs

1. Peel the artichokes and cut the heart of the artichoke in slices.
2. Fry them with a little bit of oil in a saucepan.
3. Beat the eggs and add the artichokes.
4. Fry the mix of ingredients in a saucepan with a little bit of oil.
5. Leave it for 3 or 4 minutes to medium-high temperature and flip it with a plate and cook the other side (like you do with a Spanish “tortilla de patatas”) and it’s ready to eat!

We’ve been cooking up a storm, too.  Fred says:

Last night I roasted some red pepper, butternut squash and mushrooms. Mixed them through some wild rice. Added all the herbs I had in the house (mint, parsley and chives). Mixed it all together with a little balsamic vinegarette and crumbled a bit of goats cheese over the top.
It was mighty fine.

Emma has had a run of amazing tasting meals:

I had carrot and coriander mash, PSB, with pan fried scallops and chorizo last night, delicious!
And the night before, I made an asparagus, mascarpone, chorizo, Portobello mushroom frittata.

Tell us about your recent culinary triumphs in the comments below.

Enter our monthly recipe photo competition and win ingredients for the following month’s recipe.

Cook: 10-15 mins

Serves 3-4

Ingredients:

• 1-2 duck or chicken eggs per person
• A bundle of asparagus spears
• A pack of pancetta, prosciutto or Parma ham
• A slice of butter
• Sea salt and black pepper
• A drop of white wine vinegar (optional)