Blog entries

Organiclea

Administrator — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 04:06:47 +0100

manna's supplier of organic fresh leaf & root vegetables. locally produced, urban community project. delivered by bicycle!

by Esme McAvoy

It’s empowering stuff, eating food that you’ve sown, grown and picked yourself. And I’m just talking from my own limited exRead More...

banana-rama

Administrator — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 03:38:02 +0100

by Esme McAvoy

Bananas are bananas, right? Always yellow and always, erm, banana-shaped. Well, not always.

Here in Colombia bananas come in all shapes and sizes. Some known as plantains are a radioactive shade of yellow-green, longer and fatter than your forearm with firm, Read More...

hot chocolate, colombian style

Administrator — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 01:39:11 +0100

by Esme McAvoy

It was in Colombia that I discovered just how good hot chocolate could be.

Colombians prefer to drink their home-grown cacao rather than eat it and a ‘choco-lah-tay’ means a cup of deliciously thick hot chocolate rather than a bar of CadbRead More...

summertime in minca – part one

Administrator — Sun, 22 May 2011 04:00:00 +0100

by Esme McAvoy

Life here in the mountains might be relaxed and calm but I feel like there’s so much to learn. Things that I’d never even thought to question before while living in the city, about how things grow, and when. We’re now in the height of summer and observing the Read More...

ecuador's markets

Administrator — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 04:00:00 +0100

by Esme McAvoy

Anyone fancy a freshly whizzed up tree tomato, guava and alfalfa juice? Or a bag of knobbly pink potatoes perhaps? Or a half kilo of purple maize flour the colour of Parma violets?

Finding the local market is always top of the to-do list when I arrive in a new town or Read More...

oil in the amazon

Administrator — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 06:04:15 +0100

by Esme McAvoy

After three weeks in Ecuador, I’ve returned to our little house in the Colombian mountains to find Minca basking in the full heat of summer. The days seem to melt, stretching long and lazy under the sun’s rays, and come early evening the high-pitched vibrating rhRead More...

bogotá markets ‘la ciudad’

Administrator — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 00:40:51 +0100

by Esme McAvoy

What’s bright orange, shaped like a Christmas tree bauble and filled with something resembling frogspawn? Clue: it’s a fruit and chances are you’ve never seen – or tasted – one before.

Going to the market in Colombia is like one biRead More...

coffee in colombia

Administrator — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 23:42:05 +0100

by Esme McAvoy

As summer time begins here in Colombia and the days on the green mountain get even warmer, the snowy scenes in London feel a long way away, as remote as flicking through a pack of traditional wintry Christmas cards. Christmas passed here withRead More...

minca, colombia

Administrator — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 04:13:39 +0100

by Esme McAvoy

It’s just after midday and I’m sat at a wooden table on the open terrace of a pretty white-washed cottage overlooking an exotic flower-filled garden. Beyond, a view of the greenest of mountain slopes dressed in the lightest of cloud-mist leads down to Colombia’s Caribbean coast. ItRead More...

the pumpkin man

Administrator — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 03:42:20 +0100

Guest Post for Manna by Esme McAvoy

I bought it on a whim. I meant to buy olives but emerged from Kentish town's impressive deli, Phoenicia, the proud owner of a rather striking white and British racing green coloured winter squash instead. With its perfectly scalloped form, patterned skin artistically marbled aRead More...

yoga retreat in morocco

Administrator — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 02:15:43 +0100

Special Customer Discount

guest post for manna by Lucy Wallace

Interested in a November yoga retreat in Morocco? This is a very exciting opportunity. Tim Cummins teaches at the wonderful Triyoga in Primrose Hill on Wednesday evenings-Shadow yoga and is their Saturday level one teacher, and he teaches privately - having many, clients... We need a couple more people to fill the retreat and thought that the manna crowd would be just the ticket. The Hotel Read More...

blackberrying on hampstead heath

Administrator — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 22:46:03 +0100

Guest Post for Manna by Esme McAvoy

There’s nothing like a spot of blackberry picking to trigger a little childhood nostalgia. Of the days when my big sis and I, aged nine and seven, would sneak off ‘round the block’ to the strictly off-limits row of terraced houses behind our own.

There, a measly pRead More...

the road to vegan

Administrator — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 20:21:51 +0100

Guest Post for Manna by Kip, the Messy Vegetarian Cook

Vegetarianism hit me fast and hard at the age of twelve. I was attending an open day at the Maryland Department of Agriculture when it happened: whilst chewing on a sample of fish, I turned around only to come face to face with its brethren in a tank. I spit the fish into a serviette and have never since conceived of animals as a source of food.

It was at age 29 I realised why people became vegan. I felt bombaRead More...

elderflower time

Administrator — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 19:55:15 +0100

Guest Post for Manna by Laura Porter

I love the idea of creating meals from foraging and harvesting nature but I’m far too much of an Urbanite to want to hang out in fields too often. But I heard a rumour that it was elderflower season, and I like St. Germain elderflower liqueur, so felt the need to try anRead More...

london calling

Administrator — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 21:16:52 +0100

Guest Post for Manna by Natasha Burge

It has been said that when a man tires of London, he tires of life, and I must wholeheartedly agree. Out of all the cities I have visited in my life, and there has been quite a few, London is by far and away my favorite. There is something magical about London, with its mixing of grand tradition and funky modernism, and its irresistible quirky sense of humor that is displayed in the architecture, the clothing style, and in the dry, side Read More...

give it a grow

Administrator — Tue, 25 May 2010 21:11:33 +0100

I'm an enthusiastic gardener each spring but when nothing grown, except weeds, I lose heart each summer. Nevertheless, I've sown veg seeds again this year: carrots, parsnips, spring onions, cabbage, etc - and I've diligently watered them daily and I have some incredible bindweed this year but not much else.

As a Londoner with limited garden space I felt inspired when I heard about the One Pot Pledge which is a campaign to get us to grow our own food in a garden pot. Read More...

mind your manna

Roger Swallow — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 13:14:06 +0100

What’s all the noise about?

How many times in the last forty + years have we screamed and yelled that something huge was happening? That we had woken up and figured out that there is killing going on under our satiated noses, that we are being fed a BIG lie by the corporate profit motive and the viral expansion of

our own greed that it represents…

Fresh from a world war we barely escaped but for our rationed childish impulses, lamenting such deprivation Read More...