Sunshine at last, and everything has come good. Tomatoes are ripening faster than I can eat them, and even last year's survivalist pepper plant has a hint of a blush on its weird and stunted fruits. Hurrah!

Sadly my homemade compost has been less of a success. My friend took a pile of it and plotted all of her exciting new herbs up, but she didn't bother to dilute it with any regular soil. It turns out it's a bit on the strong side, and the effect has been similar to what you might expect if you tried to grow a squirrel by shutting a baby one into a bag of dry-roasted peanuts. Disasterous.

Nevermind. There's been enough damp days mixed in that if my compost hadn't got to them first, the snails would have by now. That's the line I'm going to take.

Beetroot and Feta Salad Cauliflower Bake Cucumber Tzatziki

10.04.09 - Recipe submissions
A number of you have been asking if it is possible to send in recipes, and the answer is yes, just send them in to the contact address below. We'll cook them, eat them, and if they make the grade add them to the site. If you'd prefer to do this by filling out a form on the site, let us know and we'll rustle something up (although for anti-spam reasons we'll still have to vet and add them to the site ourselves).

21.02.09 - Expanded database - w00t!
I'm currently looking at expanding the food database to include seasonal meats, shellfish, apple varieties and anything else I can think of. But I don't want to dilute it too much, so I'm looking at ways to make it work well. If you've any strong thoughts about this, or there's something we've missed out that you think we ought to have included, drop me a line on ripeaboutnow@southfacing.co.uk

13.10.08 - R.A.N. are GO!
Ripe About Now is live and kicking and ready to serve. We'll be adding more features in the coming months so consider it a work in progress, but in the meantime please have a snoop around and let us know what you think. We're keen to hear your recipes, suggestions and interesting asides. Also let us know about any seasonal foods we may have overlooked, but do bear in mind we are UK-based, which I guess translates to temperate European, so we won't be adding mangos and the like until the climate really messes up.

Also, here's a quick word from our Technical Director explaining what it's all About.

Contact ripeaboutnow@southfacing.co.uk

Click HERE to download the free Ripe About Now desktop tool.