How can you grow seaweed on an allotment 70 miles away from the sea?

Well Christmas is tomorrow and I went down to the plot to check on the brussel sprouts. They are looking healthy if a little small and I picked enough to cater for Christmas lunch tomorrow.  What a proud day to be able to serve them up to my family.

I will toss them in butter with bacon bits and walnuts. While the potatoes I still have left are too waxy to make really good roast potatoes (I always favour a Maris Piper potato for that) I will still use them to make salmon fishcakes to eat on boxing day.

In the mood for some cooking and loving Chinese food (at least before the diet starts in January) I also decided to try out a recipe I'd seen in BBC Good Food magazine.  Chinese seaweed. I was surprised to see that it isn't actually seaweed but cabbage shredded and fried.  I used a small savoy cabbage and some sprout tops, shallow fried them in some plain oil and then tossed them in a sweet sour mix with toasted sesame seeds. The sweet sour mix is two parts sugar and one part salt.

Delicious (and easy).