Just when I thought I’d forgotten how to loath Nigel

Nigel’s leader in this month’s OFM really engaged me and made me want to be like him. Just replace the word “evangelical” with “like a smug, self-satisfied, middleclass Guardian-media-twat living in a West London bubble with nothing but the intimacy of his bonds with root vegetables left to worry about” and then decide whether or not you want to eat his food:

“I like to know everything about what is on my plate. Not just whether my food is organic or not, but more than that. Much more.

If I shop at the farmers market or farm shop rather than the supermarket I can get to know who grew it and what variety they planted, if I buy from a vegetable box scheme I will sometimes get a note with it too, about the trials of getting stuff planted and picked.

But it is the fruit and vegetables I grow for myself that I really appreciate; I know their entire story, and can look at the carrot, the tomato, the cabbage on the plate and know I have some connection with its entire cycle from ordering the seed from the catalogue through to pricking out, planting, tending and harvesting.

Okay, so it has a few holes in it and is a prime contender for the rude vegetable competition, but somehow that makes it all the more special. It has an integrity and honesty to it that exceeds anything I can buy.

If this sounds a bit evangelical then so what? I guess that is what happens when you get your hand into the soil in order to make your own supper.

If cooking is a pleasure, then it becomes tenfold the moment you lift your own vegetables from the earth and rub the wet soil off them with your thumb.

Yes, I can say it tastes better, and some of that may be true, but there is so much more to it than that: I feel some kind of bond with what I am eating and, when I put that food out on to other people's plates I feel I am sharing something very very special.

Which of course I am.”

Get the fucking wood chipper fired up, would you.