Jamie Oliver and Cheese

Last June I spent a week in Boulogne installing our Bronze Age boat replica in the museum in the castle there. We came in to work one morning to find an English film crew setting up, Jamie Oliver was apparently coming to take on the French with some English cheeses. I am a big cheese fan particularly very special artisan cheeses and they had brought a couple which I had not come across before. Each country had to select a hard and soft cows milk cheese, a blue, a goats and a sheeps milk cheese, they were judged by impartial Belgian cheeses judges.

These were the 5 cheeses they chose
Westcome Cheddar

Tunworth

 

 Colston Basset Stilton

Cardo  

St James

I was surprised that the French Roquefort was not as good as some I have had tasted so the Colston Basset Stilton still won easily, personally I would have taken a Stichelton the new unpasteurised Stilton type cheese. I have just watched the program which aired a couple of weeks ago but is available for another week online here

The discovery of the day for me was Martin Gott's St James a mindbogglingly good cheese, the ones we were tasting had been matured by Neals Yard and were a bit softer and riper than the ones in the picture above. At the end of the day having tasted our way through all the leftovers we were given goody bags with a whole St Marks, it is sublime. Good to see they are now completely out of stock of St James at their cheese shop.

Bronze Age Wooden bowl replica for Heathrow airport

The excavations at Heathrow's Terminal 5 were the biggest ever dig in the UK. They also uncovered a particularly fine wooden bowl.

 I loved the bowl from when I saw the first images and was thrilled to be asked to make a replica of it to go in a display in the terminal building. The original is above and below are images of my replica, carved rather than turned from a piece of poplar and scraped to a smooth finish.

I have been flat out the last few weeks and lots of nice work has come and gone without being photographed I did just get a snap of this pair of kuksas, I liked these a lot and will be doing more.

 

10 rules for teaching craft

I have spent many years as a craftsman and then the last seven I have systematically developed a range of woodcarving courses. This has been a very interesting process and I thought it may be useful to others that teach to know how my mind works. So here are my 10 rules for teaching craft, they have been developed from teaching carving with axes and knives but I suspect many of the ideas are the same in pottery, basketmaking weaving or whatever.

Robin Wood's 10 rules for teaching craft

1 Don't run your first course in anything as a paying course, however good you are that's not fair. Do one for free for a few mates or neighbours, same length, same venue, exactly the content you plan and everything. Always the first one you learn a lot however good you are at your craft, you may find they get half as much done as you expected or twice as much.

2 If you see blood, more than an odd nick you as a teacher are doing something wrong. Do not accept blood as inevitable it's not.

3 If someone is struggling and after you have tried to help and given them time to struggle try and find a different way of showing/telling, I always see it as my problem as the teacher if someone is having a hard time not theirs.

4 Look closely at their hand and body positions and look how it differs from yours. Become aware of your own body.

5 Take regular breaks, I have found the structure of the days is equally as important as the content, make sure everyone is warm, dry, comfortable and not too tired only then can they focus on learning.

6 Only touch a persons work as a very last resort or if they ask, as soon as it is in your hands they are not learning. Pick up a similar piece or tool and show them alongside so they can mirror you.

7 Feedback forms, a well designed feedback form is helpful when developing courses. You know the sort that asks questions where you can answer one of 4 options, not 3 or 5 so you can't go in the middle.  How good was the food? how useful was the sharpening demonstration?
Then open questions like what did you find most helpful? What did you find least helpful? can you think of any way of making the course better? etc be open to suggestions and change.
After a couple of years hopefully you will have ironed out all the glitches and feedback forms just come back all glowing 10/10s at which point I stopped doing them.

8 Most important be sure what you are doing and why. Many people say they are teaching but actually what they are doing is providing holiday experiences. An alternative to pony trekking or adventure holidays, the punters are here to make a basket or chair, enjoy their surroundings, enjoy the feeling that they have made it and could if they wanted to make another but probably never will. If this is the aim then feel free to dive in and help them whenever they struggle and make sure they take something home they can be proud of. If you are aiming at empowering them with skills they will continue to use and grow then do a little and do it well with lots of repetition to embed things in muscle memory.

9 Judge yourself not by the work they do on the course but by the photos they send you of the work they do at home the week after.



10 Have fun. However serious you are about your craft people learn best when relaxed and having fun. You can take things very seriously and have fun at the same time.

There are other things like get first aid training and insurance and if you provide any food get food hygiene certificate but the above is the teaching the craft bit.

If you want to see more details about the courses I run they are here 

Food minister Owen Paterson backs GM crops

Sorry this is rather off my normal craft and woodworking topics but it is a subject equally dear to my heart. It is a story of powerful rich men taking risks with other people's livelihoods for their own personal gain, sound like the banking fiasco? no this one is industrial farming but there is still time to do something about it.

Yesterday the UK Environment Secretary Owen Paterson gave his backing to the GM food industry saying

 “Emphatically we should be looking at GM … I’m very clear it would be a good thing.
“The trouble is all this stuff about Frankenstein foods and putting poisons in foods.
“There are real benefits, and what you’ve got to do is sell the real environmental benefits.”
The Environment Secretary also said that consumers were already unwittingly eating GM food on a regular basis, so concerns about human health are misplaced.
“There’s about 160 million hectares of GM being grown around the world,” he said. “There isn’t a single piece of meat being served [in a typical London restaurant] where a bullock hasn’t eaten some GM feed. So it’s a complete nonsense. But, the humbug! You know, large amounts of GM products are used across Europe.”
Mr Paterson was confident that David Cameron would find an “appropriate moment” to back GM food.
“I’m very clear it would be a good thing,” he said. “So you’d discuss it within government, you’d discuss it at a European level and you’d need to persuade the public.” article here

Lets be clear about this, there are very real benefits of GM food the benefits are to the multinational corporations that are allowed to patent and market the GM modified products. The UK are leaders in GM technology. The government are desperate for anything that will show a profit at any cost and GM will show a great profit but at what cost? and who looses?

The story of Percy Schmeiser vs Monsanto show how hard it is for a Canadian farmer to stand up to Monsanto, his family had farmed the same land for 3 generations saving their own seed. Monsanto's GM seed blew into Percy's farm contaminating his seed. I would like to think Monsanto should be liable for this pollution yet their top lawyers successfully sued the Schmeisers for $100,000 for using "their" seed.



The UK public tend to oppose GM through fear of the unknown. I oppose GM because it has catastrophic effects on the worlds peasant farmers. Since 1995 when GM cotton was heavily marketed in India 300,000 cotton farmers have committed suicide to escape the huge burden of dept that this farming typically creates in third world communities. This short film shows how that process happens.



Listening to Monsanto we would expect the third world farmers to be welcoming them with open arms. Peru recently voted to ban all GM foods, not just seeds, any GM product at all for 10 years.

Kenya too bannng import of all GMO's

and some are pushing for a whole Africa ban on GMOs from 2013

When we drive past a cornfield most folk do not realise that from an insects point of view it is a poisoned desert. This experiment looking for life in a GM corn crop showed how barren it is.

The bottom line is that GMOs are designed to change the practice of small farmers planting genetically diverse saved seed. They are designed so that those farmers are tied in to buying new seed and fertilisers from Monsanto every year. They are designed for rich people to make money from poor people it does not surprise me that Owen Paterson is supporting this but it saddens me greatly.

new bowls 450 year old design

Mary Rose bowls

The Mary Rose was Henry the VIIs ship and sank in 1545. Every sailor had his personal bowl and I have had the opportunity to study and photograph the originals during my research. Whether you particularly want a Tudor replica or just a characterful bowl for your breakfast, soup or stew, these beech bowls should stand years of hard use.  Smaller ones make a large soup or breakfast bowl larger ones are great for meals of pasta or stew. Each one is branded deeply with a replica of the "H" brand that was on the originals marking them as Henry VIIIs property.

 

Mussels in cider and cream, large Mary Rose bowl Galician spoon

 

Recipe
In a frypan melt a knob of butter and soften a crushed clove of garlic throw in a bunch of mussels I used frozen shelled mussels cooking from frozen they only take 2 minutes to warm through. They are great cheap protein from a sustainable source and taste fantastic. Next tip in a good slosh of cider and crank the heat up to get it all bubbling for another minute or maybe 2. Add freshly ground black pepper I like lots. Last thing take off the heat and stir in a small glug of cream maybe about a tablespoon. From start to finish this takes about 5 minutes and it is fantastic, serve with fresh bread or I sliced and fried a left over baked potato and handful of peppery salad leaves, sprinkle with coarse sea salt, enjoy with the rest of the cider to wash it down.

Bowls available on my website here
7" diameter out of stock £33
large  7.5"-8" diameter £41
extra large 8.5"-9" diameter £49

These are some of the original 450 year old Mary Rose bowls that my design is based on lots more pictures of old bowls in my book

one man spreading a little happiness

I love stories of people who live simple lives yet make a positive difference to the world. Our lives today seem to end up so complicated and yet it seems so hard to make a difference. Well today I am taking a bit of inspiration from a homeless man called Simon who spends his time between Bath, Oxford, Cambridge and Birmingham traveling, sleeping out and playing the spoons. I am sure it's not an easy life and I don't know his full story but I do know there is a wonderful twinkle in his eye and he spreads a bit of happiness wherever he goes. Check these vids out, first off playing to Faithless Insomnia, Borough Market London.



quick demo of how to do it "it's a dying art, we are going to revive spooon playing" and I bet he is too. Birmingham train station.



duet with bluesman on Folsom city blues in Bath.



rocking it out and amusing the crowds in Oxford



and here is some more spoon fun



There are loads of "playing the spoons" vids on youtube, what makes these special for me is the spirit of sharing a bit a happiness and we can all do that whatever we are doing today.