A selection of articles about local food producers, retailers, chefs and those supporting the local food and farming industry.
Reader, I’m marrying him. Since moving to Dorset we have home-grown a free range ring-bearer each plus one bridesmaid. In the first year of our thirteen together without a drama, crisis or major distraction, we are sailing away with them, our mums and two old friends to the land where the Bong-tree grows for a wedding-moon.
Whilst some may battle with a triffid-like harvest of weeds and vegetables, Simon Ford emerges unscathed from his vegetable garden and wonders how the economic downturn is affecting those that pioneered the sale of local veg. Anyone who grows veg Read more »
In the annals of my memory, the most resonant echo is that of afternoon tea. It is the meal to which the term ‘treat’ almost invariably applies. Tea is an occasion, to be taken occasionally, a set-piece with, like all Read more »
In the hills above Borgo San Lorenzo, in the Mugello area of Tuscany, chef Carlo sharpens the biggest carving knife I have ever seen. He is about to serve the penultimate course of a delicious dinner in his restaurant which Read more »
“I believe that what we eat, how we eat it and the circumstances in which food is produced has a profound impact on our sense of well being. Poor quality food results in ill health and the fact that people Read more »
The idea of a chat with Hugh about his current preoccupation with vegetables was hatched at an informal gathering celebrating the epic, thirty-six hour firing of Tim Hurn’s huge wood-fired kiln, at his pottery in the grounds of Bettiscombe Manor. Read more »
Who would have guessed it – a Portuguese café and food shop in Chard? But then again, who would have guessed that there was also a Portuguese community there? It’s true, though, and if you take a walk down Chard’s Read more »
Some town mice come with us in the packing boxes when we move to the South West. Literary types, they stow away in the crates of books where they make finely-nibbled nests out of a couple of novels. And after a good nap they set about systematically breaking into all the dry goods. Thin, grey and organised they seem quite a different species from the rounder, browner country cousins who restrict their store room damage to delicately whittling walnuts. Not taking out Foodie’s finest risotto rice collection.
June is the start of it. That endless blue sky, long-light, lazy-lunch feel that carries us through the summer and the holidays and puts us in mind of al fresco picnics, garden lunches, rugs and showers and easy food where the temperature of the food is less important and critical than the temperature outside. That peculiarly British thing of braving the breeze and the cloud on the horizon and taking food outside no matter what.
Nominated for another BAFTA for his documentary, Coppers, Simon Ford turns his attention to our daily bread. We are undergoing a quiet revolution in our bread eating habits. Some of us are beginning to cast off the tyranny of the Read more »