Yesterday was a very difficult day, and today is due to offer up more of the same. Hopefully it will see an end to the drama, though, and I will blog about that in due course. On Monday I spent around three hours working on IncrEdibles and reached a bit of a milestone – 15,000 words, with all of the people profiles added in. Time to start on the plant profiles.

Sunflower

Pete has stopped eating meat, and I have drastically cut back and so this morning I have had an experience I haven’t had for a while – washing the accumulated greasy grunge off the grill, this time the result of a couple of lamb chops. Hence I have been thinking about fat.

These days we’re obsessed with fat – eating it, avoiding it, and working it off after Christmas (Pete is out pounding the pavement as I type, although he began last year and it’s not a resolution for the new year in his case). But for most of human history we would have been hard pressed to get too much fat in our diets. And in World War II it would have been unthinkable for me to have wasted the fat that came off my lamb – it would have been cleaned up, solidified in the pantry and used for cooking to supplement the meagre fat ration. Going back further into history every scrap would have been eaten or used for lamps, or possibly even rather fragrant skin care!

Now we’re exhorted not to pour waste fat down the drain (where it clogs the sewers and encourages rats). We can take waste oil to the recycling centre to be turned into biodiesel, or use it to make high calorie snacks for the garden birds. You can also compost small amounts (it’s made of hydrocarbons, after all) if you mix it with something dry like paper.

If you had to grow your own fat, you might find it a little tricky. There are plenty of plants that produce it, so you wouldn’t necessarily have to raise animals, but your diet would look very different.

There are no vegetables I can think of that have significant amounts of fat; the only fatty fruits I know of that are regularly eaten are avocados and olives – neither likely to be very productive in the British climate!

However, there are plenty of plants that develop oily seeds, and many of those can be grown here quite successfully – it’s processing them into cooking oil that causes issues on a small scale. Sunflowers are a big crop in France and grow well enough here; for an oil crop you’d want a black-seeded variety, but if you’re going to eat the seeds then apparently the striped ones are better.

Pumpkin seeds are also a reasonable source of fat and you can also get several varieties that have been bred with hulless seeds. Pumpkin seeds can be a valuable by-product of a crop grown primarily for squash, although you have to experiment to find a dual-purpose variety that works for you and you climate.

It’s also possible to grow flaxseed, linseed and sesame here, although how easy they are to harvest and thresh I don’t know. I’m sure some of you can come along, chew the fat, and offer some more suggestions ;)