I Love The Lizard, Cornwall

This is my 100th blog post.  Wow.  I was delighted to write my first piece for the Guardian about great places to eat on a budget in North Devon.  Busy busy.  To celebrate I'm going to indulge in a couple of photos of one of my favourite places in the world: The Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall.  These places are all within about 10 miles of each other.

 This is The Lizard Point, the most southerly part of mainland England.  I met a friendly forager here who tempted us to nibble a couple of the local plants.  From this position there were about seven different wild edible plants within four feet of us.

 This is Mullion harbour

Cadgwith

The archetypally Cornish fishing village of Cadgwith.  Beautiful thrift in the foreground.

It is beautiful, rugged, remote and  just a very relaxing place to be.  

I have previously described some of my favourite things to eat there including the sinfully divine Hope's Cinnamon and Pecan Buns, Polpeor Cafe and Ann's Pasties, but actually you can't beat a little rustic picnic featuring Hope's gruyere and cumin bread, spiced pears, Helford Blue cheese (plus Tesco olives, Cornwall haven't got around to producing those....yet)

The Guardian: Exeter and Topsham's 10 Best Budget Eats

Well this saved me a lot of hard work - this is a fantastic guide to budget eats in the Exeter area, published today in The Guardian.

I agree wholeheartedly with what the article says about Boston Tea Party, The Real Food Store, The Georgian Tea Rooms and Avocet Cafe (I love their 'savoury' cream tea with South Devon chilli jam).  All the other places look like great places to try - thanks for bringing the Exploding Bakery to my attention 'stellar baking at bargain prices'. And I really like the sound of Petit Mange in Magdalen Rd (hopefully avoiding the knife -wielder that was running amok this week)

Thanks to the Guardian for doing such a well-researched piece on my home turf!

And what's even better is that they've produced an interactive map for budget eats for the whole of the UK.  Very kind.

Kippers!

I popped in to Marks and Spencer yesterday looking for something cheap, tasty and easy for dinner and spotted a pack of kippers for £1. Took them home, boiled them in the bag for 12 minutes (drained off most of the buttery sauce to save our arteries) and served them with wholegrain mustard mashed potatoes and a mixture of peas and chopped green beans.

According to Wiki:

"A kipper is a whole herring, a small, oily fish, that has been split from tail to head, gutted, salted or pickled, and cold smoked.
In the United Kingdom and North America they are often eaten grilled for breakfast. In the UK, kippers, along with other preserved fish such as the bloater and buckling, were also once commonly enjoyed as a high tea or supper treat; most popularly with inland and urban working-class populations before World War II."

Well there we go: kippers have a history of being working class food, frugal, but definitely not breakfast fare for me.

The mustard mashed potatoes were reheated potato from the night before mashed with some Extra Virgin Olive oil and French grainy mustard.

The result was surprisingly delicious. Kippers are smoked herrings (oily fish, so counteracts the butter they were smothered in) and served warm they have a melting, comforting taste that is reminiscent of childhood. I remembered that they used to stink our house out when Mum cooked them, but these ones were fine - perhaps as they'd been boiled in the bag rather than grilled.

Currently on a mission to use up the contents of my freezer and larder (merely to make room for fresher, newer ingredients). Spring clean for my kitchen! In Nov 2009 Nigel Slater wrote in The Guardian that he was using up all his half packs of old pulses and grains that are half spilling out in his cupboards. I'm doing the same thing and it feels re-assuringly frugal and creative. Something out of nothing.