Dig For Victory!

Today I decided to take full advantage of the gorgeous autumnal weather we are experiencing in the UK (well, at least, in my part of it) and go to the Dig For Victory Harvest Fair in St James Park, London.

Dig For Victory was a second world wartime slogan, calling to all still at home to bolster their meagre rations with as many vegetables and salad items as their gardens could grow. The Harvest Fair was recreating what people would have been growing in the 1940s, along with a bit of a free food fest, to be honest. Hooray for free things!

Of course, this is all tied in with the book, as anything that can help me get some 1940s flavour is all good with me, and luckily I managed to coerce a couple of pals to wander along with me and peer at veg. Only the best days out when I am in charge...

But it was fab! I was particularly fascinated (if that is the right term) with broccoli. If I had ever thought of how it grew at all, it was as some sort of green cauliflower. But it is this huge plant thing, and the bit we eat is actually the flower. We marvelled at the lettuce, nodded at the beetroot, pointed out brussel sprouts... but as with all exhibition type things, you do the worthy bit first (read the posters, ponder the exhibits), and then you go in search of the fun bit.

Well, we could smell the fun bit – volunteers were cooking up a storm to the right of us, using fresh home grown ingredients. We had pumpkin pie (delicious) and hot corn on the cob, settling down on hay bales to eat, watching children make scary corn dollies and rather sweet paper flowers. It was one of those I Love London sort of days…