Val Harrison Making Marmalade

When a few people had emailed John suggesting he put recipes on the site, he was a bit doubtful. After all, this site is about growing food. But if  you grow your own vegetables then you are going to be interested in the quality of your food. Having grown the perfect cabbage you don't really want to boil it for 2 hours!

John, my husband, started it off with a couple of his favourite recipes – comfort foods! – and I started to contribute recipes I like and then took it over.

I've put many of my chutneys and jam recipes on the site.  John's contribution to these, apart from growing the produce, is to do the labels and eat them! They've become really popular and we were asked a lot about a recipe book.  It's now available and covers Jams, Chutneys, Preserves, Pickles, Relishes, Vinegars and more.  You can read all about it on the site: Easy Jams, Chutneys & Preserves

We've a lot of recipes sent in by our visitors – if you have a recipe you think we would like, why not send it in to us? Just go to send a recipe. Our forum members often share fantastic recipes and we've got a selection of those on here as well.

To try and help you find a recipe that you want we've set up multiple categories. You will find the same recipe can appear in upto five sections. For example, Val's Hot Aubergine Chutney is suitable for vegetarians, a vegetable recipe, based on aubergines and so it appears in those sections.  Hope it makes it easier for you.

If you're a vegetarian, you can quickly check if a recipe is suitable for vegetarians by looking at the 'Filed Under' bit under the recipe. I used to help run a vegetarian wholefood cafe when I was at university. Tasty,  filling and most importantly to students, cheap!

Our good friend Granny Dumplin has sent in a bunch of recipes that have been developed to take advantage of seasonal availability and even some things you can even find for free in the hedgerow. I know they are all tried and tested . Granny Dumplin is the 'net name' of an award winning retired chef who has cooked for royalty. Granny D has developed and tested these recipes, which are designed to be simple enough for mere mortals. Granny Dumplins Recipes

Tell me what you think

Underneath each recipe there is a comment box – if you've tried a recipe why not tell everyone how it worked out or if you've made a variation on the recipe let us know. If it didn't work out for you, that's valuable to know as well. Maybe I can help tell you where things went wrong. Your email is required to make a comment but will not be published or given to anybody but us. It is only so that we can reply directly to you if required to clarify a point etc. Comments will not appear immediately, we check things first before they appear to ensure they are appropriate.

Val Harrison