Mr Fothergills Mustard & Cress Seed (1)

Product Information

If growing in soil, put the cress in a sieve and rinse thoroughly under running water before eating

So, I hope I've convinced you. For the effort of sowing a few seeds that would otherwise provide about enough garnish for a cheese sandwich, you will, by letting cress grow, gain handfuls of leafy growth. Cress tends to lose its flavour when cooked, but it certainly adds texture and a mustardy warmth to any salad.From then on, winter and summer, mustard and cress were sprinkled on to our salads. The Victorians decided that it was the equivalent of ginseng and urged respectable matrons to serve it for breakfast with sliced radishes and salt. It reached its zenith with the invention of the egg and cress sandwich, then the ultimate in tea-time refinement. When consumed raw, cress is a high- nutrient food containing substantial content of vitamins A, C and K and several dietary minerals. Because aluminum accumulates in your body tissues, you may eventually experience adverse reactions, such as oxidative stress and poor liver function ( 14, 15).

If you have the space, there is nothing to be lost by experimenting. If all fails, then it will only take a few days to grow a fresh new crop. Where does cress grow best? Place the container in good light such as a brightly lit windowsill. Germination usually takes a day or two Start by adding a layer of growing medium around 1cm deep. This could be layers of kitchen towel, any absorbent paper waste, cotton wool or peat-free multi-purpose compost To begin with, you’ll need to buy some seeds – for garden cress seeds and/or mustard. Both plants have quite a lot of flavour, with mustard being hotter than cress. If you want something a bit milder, look for oilseed rape (canola) seeds – they can be grown the same way.Garden cress seeds contain 32% alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), an omega-3, and 12% linolenic acid (LA), an omega-6. Both are essential fatty acids that the body cannot make, so you must get them from food or supplements ( 17).

The true leaves of cress are feathery and divided and plants grow to around six inches high in about four weeks. Leave it longer and it will begin to go to seed, but if this happens don't just throw them out. The fire in the leaves will have died down, but they're still tasty and the tiny white flowers are also edible and provide a tiny mustardy explosion in the mouth. If you harvest by snipping stalks just above a leafy growing point, they may produce a second flush of leaves, but my experience is that cress isn't very keen to regenerate. Sowing a new batch is a better way to keep cress in production. But if the second world war was a battle to preserve the British way of life, that means it was also a battle to preserve British complacency, British snobbery, British amateurism, British silly insularity. And while swastikas flying over Whitehall were a real and frightening possibility, it's easy to understand why these two characters became so attractive to audiences sitting in the dark of the Essoldo, dreaming of peace - dreaming of living in a country fit for fools like Charters and Caldicott. Garden cress, known as chandrashoor, and the seeds, known as aaliv or aleev in Marathi, or halloon [11] in India, are commonly used in the system of Ayurveda. [12] It is also known as asario in India [13] and the Middle East where it is prized as a medicinal herb, called habbat al hamra (literally red seeds) in Arabic. [14] In the Arabian Peninsula, the seeds are traditionally mixed with custard to make a hot drink. [15] This annual plant can reach a height of 60cm (24in), with many branches on the upper part. The white to pinkish flowers are only 1⁄ 16in) across, clustered in small branched racemes. [4] [5]Garden cress is genetically related to watercress and mustard, sharing their peppery, tangy flavour and aroma. In some regions, garden cress is known as mustard and cress, garden pepper cress, pepperwort, pepper grass, or poor man's pepper. [2] [3] In a study in rats, those that ate garden cress had significantly reduced levels of fasting blood sugar and insulin resistance, compared with a control group. Both of these indicators suggest improved diabetes control ( 25).