Brexit food shortages

[PaulT]

So Britain is only 61% self-sufficient. But how much does the UK not use. From animals such things as tripe (ok may have a point here having been reacquainted with it recently in a restaurant in France), brains (apparently, I loved these when a kid), how many people will eat liver or kidneys etc. Funny shaped vegetables are rejected by most supermarkets so what happens to those - landfill?

So perhaps by eating most if not all of the animal and not rejecting odd shaped vegetables how sufficient would Britain be if it eat what is devoured in, say, France?

[YCCMB]

Bit late to the party, Paul. One of the foodiest of all foodie things to do over the past few years has been to get into "nose to tail" eating (cf . Chef Fergus Henderson's 2004 book of that title) and a sneaky peek at Masterchef or whatever will demonstrate how little of most animals is actually wasted these days in high-end cooking. Similarly, if we are to believe everything we hear, the lowest end of the food market is willing to use every bit of the animal in order to describe its output as "meat", so realistically there's already a strong case for saying that we don't waste much, and if we do, it's the folk in the middle who are wasting it.

As regards wonky veg, most supermarkets in the UK have been selling them for a number of years, too. It's actually a bit of a cheek on their part, having weaned consumers off normal-looking fruit and veg over the years on the pretext that we prefer our fresh food to look cosmetically perfect, to now try and pretend they're taking the ecological high ground by selling us misshapen produce as if they're doing us (and the environment) some sort of favour.

[Hoddy]

At last I've found my copy of "We'll Eat Again".

Here's a recipe for Mock Apricot Flan.

Line a 9 inch pie plate with oatmeal pastry or potato pastry and bake for 25 mins.

Grate 1lb of carrots, put in a sauce pan with a few drops of almond essence, 4 tablespoons of plum jam and about 4 tablespoons of water. Cook gently until a thick pulp and then spoon into the cooked pastry.

Note: The carrots really do taste a little like apricots.

I can't say I fancy it myself.

[YCCMB]

Funny thing is, I don't think I've ever made a real apricot flan in my life, so I'm unlikely to develop a burning desire to make one out of carrots anytime in the next few decades! Luckily.

Seriously, I really cannot envisage an outcome where we are reduced to staring at one another like cannibals as we huddle round braziers, having been forced out of our homes and onto the streets. If anyone else can, then it's probably also you that's panic buying baked beans. Stop it.

[Patf]

That sounds strange, Hoddy, but probably ok.

I remember going to a birthday party during the war and the mother had made banana sandwiches. No bananas in those days. She used stewed mashed parsnips with banana essence.

[woolybanana]

Oooohh, banana sandwiches, one of the foods served in Heaven, along with fried bananas, bananas and cream, bananas and yoghurt and just plain banana in its skin.

[Hoddy]

Patf - we could turn this into all our yesterdays.

I can actually remember my first banana. My mum, my dad and my uncle roared with laughing because I didn't know how to open it.

I expected it to taste like treasure (don't ask) and it didn't. I've never really liked them.

[Patf]

Wooly - there's a recent book by Hunter Davies called The Coop's Got Bananas - memoirs of his life growing up in the NW, and later.

He's still writing for the Times.

[PaulT]

From what the EU is saying, and have for a number of months that 'there will be no renegotiating' presumably Theresa May will be publishing her recipe for Humble Pie

[YCCMB]

I'm puzzled. For some time now, May has been saying that the deal on the table is the best one available, short of no deal at all. Most of the six hundred-odd people in parliament steadfastly refused to believe her, and many seem totally convinced that she has been lying through her teeth, and that the EU would just cave in once they'd made their displeasure apparent.

So far, and anything could still happen, May appears to have been absolutely correct. If anyone should be publishing humble pie recipes, I'm not clear why it should be her. If anything, she should be trying to find a polite way to say "I told you so"