As a new little section on the blog I thought I would post any delicious recipes that I find on my travels around the interweb!

Here is the first that I spotted in the Independent this weekend for a really delicious winter salad!

2 medium carrots, peeled and cut into batons 4cm by cm
1 small half-head of swede, peeled and cut into batons 4cm x cm
1 parsnip, peeled and cut into batons 4cm x cm
1 small or half-head of celeriac, peeled and cut into batons 4cm x cm
ltr or enough vegetable stock to just cover the vegetables
100ml olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2tsp winter savoury or thyme
1tbsp cider vinegar
1tsp Dijon mustard
A handful of dandelion leaves or small tasty salad leaves, washed and dried

Put the carrots and swede in a pan with the olive oil and vegetable stock, season, bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes, add the parsnip and celeriac and continue simmering for another 3-4 minutes, then remove from the heat, add the savoury and leave to cool in the liquid.

While the vegetables are cooling, skim off the olive oil into a bowl and whisk in the mustard and cider vinegar and season.

To serve, toss the vegetables and dandelion in the dressing and arrange on serving plates.

Simple, yet divine! Let us know if you try it or if you have any favourite recipes for us to post!

Source: Independent

Hopefully by now most people realise the important role that bees (and many other insects for that matter) play in our every day lives.  It may suprise you however to know just how big a role they do actually play.  In the UK alone bees help to pollinate commercially grown crops with an economic value of hundreds of millions of pounds every year.  This doesn’t even take into account the countless allotments, gardens and window boxes that they visit around towns and cities.

Put simply these little stripey fellas are essential to our lives and your family’s food, be it shop bought cornflakes or your home grown tomatoes.

There are many ways that you can do your bit to support bees in your area:

1.  Plant bee friendly plants and shrubs where you can and use insect friendly products (ie fertilisers etc).

2.  Buy honey from your local beekeeper – this has the added benefit of possibly helping if you suffer from certain types of hayfever.

3. Support the many different charities and causes that help bees, from the Bumblebee to the Mason Bee.

4. Learn about bees and insects in your area and teach your children about them, just enjoy watching them do their thing in the garden.

5. You could even become a beekeeper yourself and take one of the many courses around the country to learn how to do it.

This is obviously not an exhaustive list, but hopefully its enough to get you thinking.

Our friends over at LoveBees.co.uk have created a site that hopes to celebrate the bee and make people appreciate all the good work that they do.  They are building information sections that should help you to learn about different species of bee, how to spot them and things you can do to help.  They also have an innovative “Love Wall” where you can post your appreciation of why bees are important to you.

Here are a few of the many examples on the site:

“Im Alergic to bees so have to be careful but I do love honey!! Help the Bees!”
Paul

“Because with them Burts Bees wouldnt exist!”
Hannah

“Because I love Honey!”
Jim

Their site can be found at www.LoveBees.co.uk – Support them by adding a bee Twibbon to your Twitter picture by clicking on the widget below:

We are pleased to announce that we have added a forum to the site.  It can be found at http://www.veggietrumps.com/talk.

It’s a very simple little forum that is nice and easy to use, infact you can even log in using your Facebook or Twitter login.

This is the place where you can leave comments and feedback about any part of the site or just say hi!

We look forward to seeing you on there.

I decided this week to give Graze a go after lots of my friends raved about them.  For those who don’t know Graze offer a service that mails you tasty, healthy treats each week.  It costs just £3.49 a box including the postage and packing.

If you know anyone who uses the service then ask them for a code, otherwise you can use this one J483NRCA and you will get 1 box free and the next half price, with no tie ins!

This is what they look like:

I have these delivered to me at my day job and it really is a treat!  They are adding new treats all the time which can be viewed here – http://www.graze.com/products

I’d really recommend trying them – the olives are simply to die for! http://www.graze.com.

Now, where was I…….

From all the guys at Veggie Trumps we’d like to wish you all a happy new year and all the best for 2011.

We hope to achieve some great things with Veggie Trumps this coming year and we look forward to sharing it all with you.

Thanks for the support so far

It looks like all this bad weather we have had has finally taken it’s toll.  The cold snap across the UK has meant caused frozen crops impossible to harvest the ususal way.  Can you imagine? No sprouts on the biggest sprout eating day of the year!

Supermarkets are already looking at alternatives and it looks like we will see an influx of brussel sprouts from abroad.

It looks like this could finally be the year that you can turn down those sprouts and feel no guilt, unless of course like me you love the little things!

Do you like sprouts? Whats your favourite Xmas veg?

Do you like bananas? Do you like to test your knowledge of bananas?  Then you will love our new Veggie Trumps Academy Module “All About Bananas” – it’s a medium level quiz.

Let us know what you think about it, we’d love to get your opinions.

We have finally launched the Veggie Trumps Academy where you can learn more about fruits and vegetables by taking fun little quizzes that test your knowledge.

There are 2 modules live already and we are hoping to add more as often as we can, so watch this space!

If you fancy trying the modules then head over using the link above and try either the Basic Fruit Recognition module or the “All About Apples” module.

We’d love to know what you think so do please let us know.

Here’s an interesting one I have just stumbled across, apparently an old lady in Stockbridge had £60 stolen by a man disguised as a salad filler!

The ridiculous image was justified by someone official who said”while the hair on this image may not be of the best quality, it takes nothing from the overall clarity of the facial features”.

Hopefully the (lettuce) man will be caught soon!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-11380834

I just found the mother of all vegetable shows whilst browsing this evening!

I present the The 25th annual Llanharry Giant Vegetable Showin Wales.  Man alive there were some impressive crops on show, including a 125kg pumpkin and a 45kg cabbage and this whopper of a Leek!

There was apparently a £1000 prize on offer for anyone who could grow a pumpkin weighing over 1000lbs!

Have a look at some of the impressive photos here.