Taxi fares in Britain are regulated by the councils in whose areas the drivers work. So, if they want to increase their rates they have to petition the council, which will then rule in favour of their proposal, or against.

(Mini cabs, which you book on the phone, can charge whatever they like.)

Well, right now the drivers working in a lot of the towns around the Blagger plot are campaigning to increase those prices, from a base of £2.70 to £2.80. Just 10p, or 3.7%. It doesn’t sound like much, does it. Except that while that 10p is the headline figure onto which everyone will latch, the more important figure is what that £2.80 represents.

Currently your £2.70 will take you 725 yards. Under the drivers’ proposals, £2.80 will take you just 586 which, as a letter writer to the local rag pointed out, means the cost of going the same distance has actually increased not by 3.7%, but by 28.28%.

That same letter writer has worked out the actual economics of the situation and it’s quite baffling. I’ll present his argument here, in its entirety, and point out that while it may leave your head spinning the upshot of his argument, whether he meant it or not, is that wherever you’re heading, you’re better off on your bike.

The actual basis for the increase is the cost of fuel, 725 yards is less than half a mile and would be travelled by most cars 50 or 60 times on a gallon of petrol or diesel at a cost of about 12 pence each trip (50 x 12 = 600) on the basis of a £6 gallon or 10 pence when it was £5 a gallon.

The increased cost for this trip would therefore be about two pence or 20 per cent of the cost of the fuel which forms approximately 3.5 per cent of the cost of a £2.70 fare, so put another way 20 per cent of 3.5 per cent is 0.7 per cent of the overall fare, which constitutes he increase 0.7 per cent of £2.70 which is less than two pence.

Now by my reckoning he’s shot himself in the foot, as he seems to be saying that the increase should be about 2p, and that for that we should still be travelling 725 yards, although he uses it as an argument for why we should ’share the fact that cheap energy is running out’.

That’s as maybe, but we have seen petrol prices decrease lately, and I haven’t seen the taxi drivers lowering their expectations. The trouble with arguments like this that take a short-term view of any situation is that they are almost impossible to roll back. Once the drivers get the right to charge us £2.80 for just 586 yards of travel, there will be no going back.

This is despite the fact that British Gas’ profits have risen 500% to £571 million in the last 12 months, and that its parent company, Centrica, banked £1.96bn in the same period. The companies’ public image was hardly enhanced when they announced bonuses for their directors the following day, and the papers pointed out that they coincided with a fall, not a hike, in the cost of oil. That went down from $147 a barrel to a more reasonable $123.

Needless to say the TV was full of commentators and ‘experts’ telling us all to turn down the thermostat by a degree or two - as if we hadn’t already thought of that - seemingly never spotting the fact that at this time of year, when the thermostat is usually down at zero anyway, you can’t take it any lower without coughing up for air-con.

You can blame it on inflation or corporate greed - your choice - but the truth of the matter is that prices are rising, and not just in terms of fuel. I don’t often remember what I pay for groceries from one shopping trip to the next, but on a late night trolley-push around the local store last night, two products stood out as having shot up.

Malt loafs, which for as long as I can remember, have been two for £1, were tagged up at £1.12. A 12% increase. The cat biscuits that I’d bought six weeks ago at 30p a carton (I remember because the cat goes through them so fast that I picked up a palette of 10 and it cost £3) were now 68p a pop. That’s £6.80 for the same palette, or an increase of 126%.

Now there’s not much you can grow at home to feed your pet, unless you’re keeping a vegetarian rodent, and you do have to heat your home, but with prices rising these are two good reasons for moving towards self-sufficiency, and that’s excluding the fact that the shorter food miles save on petrol.

By relying less on your local store you naturally save money in real terms. More importantly, though, every year you keep on growing your own food is more profitable than the last: not only do you get better at encouraging a higher yield, but the value of your produce is higher, too, thanks to increasing global crop prices.

We’ve been eating the lettuce for quite a while now and it’s been very nice. Great in sandwiches. We had really been growing it to make salad, but of course it’s raced ahead and beaten the tomatoes, peppers, beetroot, cucumbers and chillies by weeks.

Now, though, we’re starting to see the first of the tomatoes ripen. Only the gardener’s delights so far, which somehow seems logical. They’re a cherry variety, so it’s only right that they redden up first.

All told, we’ve got 23 tomato plants of four different varieties, all in various states of readiness, but I’d still be surprised if we had such a heavy crop as last year, as the flowers have been a little less generous this time around. Still, so long as we have enough to eat through the late summer, and then sufficient left over to make another batch of chutney (we’re just finishing off last year’s jars) I’ll be happy.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the garden, the cucumbers are putting on some impressive growth. We have about 10 actual fruits on the go, with the two largest not far off being ready, including this first one, which whenever I see it never fails to reminded me of a fat green slug.

We’ve had a few meals off the plants so far, but we have plans for next week that are going to involve a lot of cooking for a lot of people, so I’d been resisting the urge to harvest too many over the last week or so. As such, the vines were heavy with produce by this morning, and I managed to pick a kilo and a quarter of runner beans:

And another whole kilo and a quarter of French beans:

That takes up our totals of each for the year to date to 1.93kg of runner beans, and 1.54kg of French. That means that on both counts we’ve already exceeded what we got in the whole season last summer, where the runner beans mustered 1.4kg, and the French a paltry 875g.

For about 30p-worth of seeds, then, we’ve had a harvest worth £21.59 from these two crops alone, seemingly with more to come.

A little later that promised, perhaps, but this is what our finished apple jelly looks like.

The colour depends on both the variety of apple used and the length of time you boil the mixture. As we scrumped our apples from a tree down by the river we have no idea what they are, so can’t say at this stage whether the caramel colour we’ve ended up with is down to the variety or the way it was made, but we were careful not to keep the boil rolling after it had reached the required 105 degrees.

Our recipe made 15 pots like this.

Apple jelly differs from apple jam in the same way that any two jams and jellies differ: jellies are made using the juice of the fruit, while jams use pieces of the fruit themselves, usually pulped. As such, hard fruits like apples make particularly good jellies.

You extract their juices by boiling them up, then straining them through muslin, which is why making jellies requires a bit of forward planning, and a little bit of working time on two consecutive days.

The following recipe will make around 15 small pots.

Ingredients
2.7kg (6lb) apples
1.5 litre (3 pints) water
2kg (4.4lb) sugar (preferably preserving sugar)
Juice of half a lemon
25g of butter

Equipment needed
Very large, heavy-bottomed pan
Wooden spoon
Measuring jug
Scales
Muslin strainer
Muslin stand
Large bowl capable of holding 2 litres
Tray
Small plate
Thermometer (optional)

Method
Wash and quarter your apples. There is no need to peel them or remove the pips or stalks, as these and the skins will be caught when you strain the juice out of your fruit.

Put them into your large pan and add the water, then cook over a moderate heat until the apples are pulpy. You should be able to squash them very easily against the side of the pan using your wooden spoon.

Once they are mushy like this, set up your muslin so that it is supported over a large bowl, which itself should be stood on a tray to catch any overspill. Spoon your pulpy apples and water in to the muslin and leave them to dip overnight. Clean your pan and spoon thoroughly.

By morning, you should have around 2 litres (4.2 pints) of apple juice in your bowl. If it has stopped dripping, don’t be tempted to squeeze out any more, or you will make your jelly cloudy. Measure out the liquid, and add 1kg (2.2lb) of sugar for every litre (2.1 pints) of liquid. Return this to the pan and bring it slowly to the boil, stirring all the time until the sugar has dissolved.

When it has completely dissolved into the liquid, bring the mixture it to a rapid boil for 10 minutes, then add the lemon juice and butter to dissipate the scum that will form on top (you can skim off any that remains using a large flat spoon).

Boil for a further five minutes after adding the lemon and butter, then test for setting. Do this by spooning a little onto a cold plate. Allow it to cool for a few seconds, then push it across the plate with a finger or the end of a wooden spoon it. If it rucks up like jelly, you’re ready to pour it into jars. If you have a thermometer, you can double-check that it is ready by making sure that your mixture has reached st least 105 degrees Celsius.

They’re sealed and capped now, and just need their labels sticking on, which we’ll do tonight. We’ll post a photo of the results tomorrow.

Since switching energy providers to a green tariff, which came bundled with a free electricity usage monitor, I have become ever more aware of the amount of power I’m using, and am much better at switching off lights and banishing the standby button than I ever was before.

It soon became evident that by far the most power-hungry appliances at home are the kettle and the tumble drier. Switch on the kettle and you could increase 10-fold the amount of energy the house is using at any time to run the freezer, fridge, TV, alarm system, a few clocks and a couple of lights. Switch on the tumble drier and it’s not much different.

Unless you’re prepared to switch to a camping stove for making your tea, there’s little alternative to the kettle, but in the summer season one of the simplest, most effective self-sufficiency measures you can take is to string up a line across the garden and air your clothes the way nature intended. Banish the tumble drier and you’ll not only help save the environment; you’ll save money, too.

Plus, there’s something quite satisfying about watching your shirts blowing in the breeze.

We had our first proper harvest at the weekend. Three types of beans: French, runner and broad. Not a huge amount of any variety, but enough to cook ourselves a three-bean risotto for dinner.

Our totals for each crop, which have matured quickly in the last week, were:

When the broad beans had been shelled, the French beans sliced and the runner beans stripped, this was perfect for a two-person meal, which we’ll call:

Nik and Rich’s three-bean risotto

Ingredients
220g of beans of your choice
250g of risotto rice
1 glass white wine
1 litre vegetable stock
1 red onion
Quarter of a lemon
Grated parmesan or other hard Italian cheese
1 tablespoon of olive oil

Method
Prepare your beans as appropriate, slicing any that are eaten in their pods (such as French and runner) and shelling any that are eaten as seeds (such as broad beans). Blanch these by throwing them into a pan of boiling water for three minutes, then drain into a colander, and put to one side.

Mix up a litre of vegetable stock and put to one side, then heat a tablespoon of olive oil or other cooking oil in a heavy-bottomed pan. Use this to soften a finely-diced red onion. You’re not looking to brown it here - just to make it soft. Keep it moving so that you don’t burn it, and once it has softened pour in 250g of arborio or caranoli risotto rice and stir, watching carefully for the point at which its outer husk starts to go slightly translucent. Once it does, pour in a glass of white wine and keep stirring until the wine has evaporated.

Now add your stock, one ladleful at a time, stirring all the time. Only add your next ladle once the current one has been soaked up by the rice. Expect to spend around 20 minutes stirring to absorb all of the stock; the longer you stir, the more you disrupt the husks of the rice, and the more gloopy your finished risotto will be.

Once all of the stock has been used, test the rice to ensure it is cooked (there should be no crunch when you bite into it). If it is not ready, add some more stock and continue stirring until it is done. If it is ready, stir in your blanched beans and a good measure of grated parmesan. Squeeze in the juice of a quarter of a lemon to give it a little bite.

Serve, eat and enjoy with crusty bread or a green home-grown salad.

Nik and Rich’s three-bean risotto

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risotto, recipe, cooking

The only trouble is, the council came along yesterday morning and trimmed the hedgerow from which we’d been picking it. We were, frustratingly, mere hours too late to pick an even bigger crop than we had done the first time around.

So we set out on our bikes, looking for more. We cycled through the park and along the fields as far as the next town, and then came back along the banks of the river, reasoning that the best crops, if any remained, would likely be found where they were well watered. That was true: we found plenty of elders. The only trouble is, those that hadn’t been trimmed had fruited, and the blossoms had given way to berries, which are great for beer but useless for champagne.

The last place we tried was the little copse two streets from home, but while the elder here had also turned to berry we found that it had wrapped itself around a rather grand old apple tree that was starting to drop its first fruits on the grass. We picked them up, and plucked whatever on the branches was loose and on the point of falling, cycling home with a haul weighing in at an impressive 3.8kg.

We did find enough elder flowers for half a dozen litres of champagne, which we duly mixed in the fermenter when we got back home, but the apples are a far better prize that we’ll be turning into apple jelly in the next week or two.

I think we’re going to give up with this first batch of elderflower champagne and put it down to experience. It’s far too dangerous to use in its current state, and we’ve come to the conclusion - reluctantly - that even if we carried on with it for some time it would be impossible to keep in a cupboard.

We’ve had 18 explosions so far, with the volatile liquid still blasting the corks clean out of the bottles and spewing their contents all over the place, even with the steam-shrunk seals over the tops of the corks. As you can see from the picture above, they come out with such force that they actually shred the seals.

We’ve had them stored inside a big metal bin for a week now, trying to stabilise them, but now they just fire their corks into the underside of the lid (very noisy) which causes the liquid to run down the underside of the lid, down the side of the bin and onto the floor. It’s still better than it would have been if they hadn’t been in the bin at all, but it’s far from ideal.

So we’re going to pick some more elderflowers and buy some more sugar and lemons and make a second batch, learning these important lessons from our first attempt:

1. Use fewer flowers, or balance them out better with more liquid. They already have their own yeast inside them, so using a lot of flowers in a limited amount of liquid is bound to prove volatile.
2. Don’t add too much extra yeast when it looks like not much is happening. Try waiting a little longer and see what develops naturally before pushing things along yourself.
3. Stand well back at all times.