I am indebted to Shrewd Food for the nobly simple and obvious concept of “fruit bowl jam”.

The idea is that you spare, from their fate on the compost heap, the dubious and imperfect specimens that tend to lurk at the bottom of the fruit bowl towards the end of the week, and use them to make small quantities of what may speculatively be termed “jam”.

I used five or six nectarines d’un certain âge and a fistful of sugar to make an admittedly runny preserve (I’m not sure how much pectin there is in nectarines, relatively speaking), which may not have been ideally suited to toast, but which nonetheless served to enliven my porridge for the rest of the week.

And enlivening one’s porridge is surely, in this day and age, an uncontroversial delight.

This was a rather straightforward chutney, but it benefited from tomatoes grown by B. and onions grown by E. and M. on their country allotment.

Ingredients

1 kg tomatoes

2 onions

180 g sugar

120 ml white wine vinegar

1 thumb-sized chunk of root ginger

1 tsp chilli flakes

1/2 tsp sweet smoked paprika (I use La Chinata)

Seasoning to taste

Method

1. Add a glug of olive oil to a heavy-bottomed saucepan.

2. Grate the ginger directly into the olive oil. This works better if the ginger is straight from the freezer, which is where ours tends to be stored.

3. Chop the onions roughly, so that they provide some bite and texture in the finished chutney. Sweat these on a low heat until clear.

4. Add the tomatoes and sugar and bring to the boil, stirring constantly.

5. Reduce the heat. Add the vinegar and chilli flakes.

6. Simmer until the mixture has been reduced to a viscous and glossy sauce. You want a chutney that will stay put when you spoon it onto a cracker. This will take an hour or longer. Wait until 10 or 15 minutes from the end to add the paprika as it’s a more delicate spice.

Serving Suggestions

With cheese on any suitable vehicle (bread, crackers, what-have-you). We put it on burgers on the day we made the batch picture above, which was met with general acclaim.

Having discovered suspiciously intact scraps of tea bag in strata of the compost heap dating from almost two years ago, I began to wonder about the biodegradability of our favoured brand of tea bag.

The e-mail below is from a helpful “careline adviser” at Buy ‘n’ Large–sorry, I mean, Unilever, which turns out to own Lyons Tea (as well as Persil, the patent for clothes pegs and Belgium).

It seems to confirm that Lyons tea bags don’t contain polypropylene, which is nice. It also seems to suggest that they are, in their entirety, naturally occurring, which is mildly surprising.

Dear Mr/s Paraic,

Thank you for your recent email.

I can confirm that all Lyons Tea Bags are fully compostable as they are made from natural fibres and are not man made.

I do hope that you will find this information useful. If you have any further queries please feel free to contact us again.

Kind regards,
[Name removed]

S. has pronounced this bread perfect, so I thought it might be worth sharing the recipe.

Ingredients

400 g plain flour

350 g coarse wholemeal flour (spelt flour works fine too, but gives a slightly nuttier flavour)

50 g milled seeds (whatever you have to hand; flax, pumpkin, that sort of thing)

2 x 7 g sachets of dried yeast

2 tsp caster sugar

2 tsp salt

1 generous slug of olive oil

425 ml water

Method

1. Dissolve the caster sugar in 100 ml of just boiled water, then top up to 425 ml with cold water. It should now feel luke warm. It needs to be warm enough to activate the yeast, but not so hot that it kills it.
2. Stir the yeast into the solution. I have read that a non-metal spoon should be used, but I haven’t been able to demonstrate any benefits experimentally.
3. Leave to stand for about ten minutes, or until the yeast is nice and frothy. (It will have been feeding on the sugar solution and emitting carbon dioxide.)
4. Add the flour, seeds and salt to the mixing bowl of a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment (we use a Kenwood Chef).
5. Mix the dry ingredients around a little with the dough hook. I used to sift the plain flour, but don’t bother any more and the bread is none the worse for it.
6. Pour in the yeast mixture and add the slug of olive oil.
7. Turn the mixer on to its minimum setting.
8. Watch the mixture as it comes together. After a minute or two, you should see a nice dough forming. It should be just wet enough to wipe any dry flour from the bowl as the dough hook pulls it around. If it leaves a residue of water on the sides or bottom of the bowl, it’s too wet; add flour a teaspoon at a time until it looks right.
9. Let the machine knead the dough for two or three minutes, or until it starts to look elastic.
10. Cover with some oiled cling film or a damp tea towel and leave to rise for about an hour and a half, or until the dough has doubled in volume.
11. Knock back the dough by giving it another minute with the dough hook on the lowest setting.
12. Place the ball of dough on a floured work surface and gently twist it into two more or less equal pieces.
13. Roll each of these pieces first into a ball, and then into a fat sausage shape about 20 cm long.
14. Lightly oil two loaf tins and gently rest the sausages of dough on the bottoms. (Stop snickering at the back.)
15. Cover with the oiled film or tea towel until doubled in volume again.
16. Pre-heat the oven to 220° C. (Don’t ask me what that is in degrees freiheit or whatever the ridiculous American units are called. Get a calculator.)
17. Bake at 220° C for 10 minutes then take the loaves out of the tins.
18. Bake for a further 25 minutes at 200° C.
19. Cool on a wire rack for an hour or so.

Serving suggestions

Very good with cheese, tuna and mayonnaise, chicken and pesto or tapenade. Also makes nice toast.