UK turns to watercress in the great salad crunch

Unlike spinach, courgettes and lettuce, which have been rationed by some UK supermarkets, watercress thrives in the cold, wet conditions that have affected growers in southern Spain, The Times writes.

 

The main importer of watercress has had sales all but double, from 350,000 bags a week last January, to 650,000 a week this winter. The Watercress Company, the UK’s leading supplier, sold an additional 200,000 bags in a week and sales in large cities have also shot up, with a 30 per cent rise in London compared with this time last year. Please, click here to read more at thetimes.co.uk. 

Former Conservative cabinet minister Lord Tebbit has poured scorn on suggestions that the current UK lettuce shortage constitutes a "crisis", the BBC writes. He said it showed "a lack of understanding" of the English. He made his remark after Labour's Baroness Jones of Whitchurch used the expression in the House of Lords to describe "empty vegetable shelves". Click here to read more at bbc.com. 

As the price of courgettes rocket, and supermarkets ration your favourite salad leaves, one man believes he has found the solution to our national lettuce crisis, the BBC reports. 

Foraging teacher Mark Williams reckons we should eat more weeds. He is urging shoppers to turn their backs on "tasteless imported Spanish lettuce" and instead head into the wild to fill our salad bowls. Even in February, he says there are dozens of alternatives to shop-bought greens growing in abundance along the coast, in woodlands and even in towns and cities. The teacher has drawn up a list of six plants:

Click here to read more at bbc.com.