Except for tap water the things I've been drinking through the week aren't local. I could have bought very local Aspall Cyder or James White Apple or Beetroot Juice and if it had been summer I might have done but I need hot drinks this time of the year and no coffee, tea or chocolate is grown locally! (Told you this was just a sort-of challenge). So you are welcome to say I've cheated all week if you like!
I also had some home made cheese straws leftover from the Bonfire party to eat. They were not made using local produce but they could have been.
After the car boot sale (Yesterdays post) I called in at the Hog and Hen Farm Shop on my way home, (it's a relatively new farm shop about 4 miles from me), for some local basics...... Flour from Marriages in Chelmsford Essex for pastry and bread, butter and cheese from Suffolk Farmhouse Cheeses and the only really local veg they had..........kale from a nearby village.
I could have got milk there, also from Suffolk Farmhouse Cheeses but had some started in the fridge - not local but I didn't want to waste it...that would be silly. Other things I had already in use will keep for a week.
The breadmaker made me a loaf of bread and I realised the flour I'd picked up was seeded rather than multi grain.........how did I do that? so hope it doesn't disagree with me as some seeded things do.
So breakfasts have been simple......... home made toast and local honey.This jar and another already started have travelled all the way from the village next to the smallholding and I've had them since we moved - so it's a good thing that honey doesn't go bad! and it's about time it was used up.
Dinner - Made a very small flan using the non-local milk, local flour,butter and eggs plus my own red pepper from the freezer and chard from the garden. Half of it eaten with my own frozen roast vegetables and some of the kale.
I used 1 cooking apple to make 2 bun-tin sized small pies with the pastry trimmings from the quiche and had one for lunch and an eating apple with a piece of Suffolk Gold cheese.
Back Tomorrow
Sue
It all looks very tasty.
ReplyDeleteYour challenge shows though just how difficult it is to eat locally.
ReplyDeleteVery impressed with your efforts. Tea (and coffee) are so much part of life now - although I know there's a company in Cornwall growing "English" tea. But it's made me wonder (as your blog so often does) What did we do about hot drinks BEFORE tea, coffee and chocolate were imported? I can only think of mulled wine, and broth. I must do some historical research...
ReplyDeleteLove the look of your dinner, so colourful and I bet it all tasted wonderful.
ReplyDeleteFascinating, it looks an interesting challenge. Don't give up the coffee and tea though, I suppose 'English Breakfast Tea' doesn't count!
ReplyDeleteInteresting challenge. Traditionally 'small beer' and home made ale ,would have been safer than water to drink, also herbal teas ,lemon barley and other fruit cordials,could be drunk hot or cold.
ReplyDeleteThe farm opposite me sells eggs, apples, pears, plums, cider and pork, all from the gate. I consider anything in the line of vegetables to be local if they are grown in eastern England and I happily include Lincs and The Fens in that. The vegetables in the supermarkets are Fenland ones too so that makes it fairly easy. I do not buy unseasonal vegetables so anything from Peru or Chile or Kenya does not cross my radar. Tomatoes used to be grown at Wissington Beet factory using the steam from the beet process but they have now switched to cannabis for the medicinal market.
ReplyDeleteHmmm, I suppose herbal teas could be considered local. But sometimes one needs a bit of oomph to start their day. Go on and have your coffee or tea.
ReplyDeleteYour meal looks awfully tasty.
God bless.
This is what I call a challenge and wish you luck with it.
ReplyDeleteReminds me of a few programmes I watched many years ago, with Dom Joly doing a challenge to find different things each week that are still made in Britain. They ranged from furniture, clothes, toiletries, just about anything. He found a few things still made here, but not many. It was rather concerning when we used to manufacture just about anything.
It seems you are having fun, with the Challenge.
ReplyDeleteIn today's day and age, we really can't eat totally locally. But it is illuminating, to see what you have been able to do.
You know, in the old days, coffee and tea came from far away, also! So that's not *really* cheating. -smile-
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They grow tea somewhere in the south west so you cold at least claim it as local to the UK and get away with it.
ReplyDeleteI do admire you going to all this trouble Sue - it certainly makes interesting reading.
ReplyDeleteThere was a 'piece' I seen on our TV...I don't remember if it was in the news or on PBS or what...but they had found that a lot of the people that show up at the Farmer's market get the produce shipped in and it thus not grown locally at all. I wonder if that is true for smaller places like where I live...
ReplyDeleteThat piece of toast looks sooo tasty...Just add some blackberry jelly.
One of the (many) advantages of living in lovely Lincolnshire is the availability of fresh local produce - vegetables of course, plus there are locally reared cows, sheep and pigs for meat-eaters, eggs from the villages, local honey, the working mill sells locally grown oats as well as flour, fabulous Lincolnshire Poacher & Bomber County cheeses and butter, I don't particularly like trout but I could buy it from the local trout farm, the three surrounding small towns all have market days, as well as periodic farmer's markets, there is a soft fruit and apple farm just along the road - their windfalls are all made into cider - hic! We even have a milkman who delivers milk from the family farm.
ReplyDeleteTry getting a decent phone signal, or reliable and speedy broadband though! Very few banks or post offices, trying to find an NHS dentist is like trying to find hens' teeth. Swings and roundabouts!
If you still have any herbs growing in the garden you could go out and pick some for herbal teas of your own. I'm currently reading one of Mark Boyle's books ... 'The Way Home' ... and one of the things he talks about is how far tea travels and how easy it is to make your own.
ReplyDeleteNo honey doesn't go off does it, we have some in our cupboard from our days in Oxfordshire and it's perfectly fine … as was the jars they found in one of the Egyptian pyramids.