1 Week Eating Local Part 8 The Conclusion

The end of the week of eating local.....................it was an interesting sort-of-challenge to do.

 I ate more bread and eggs than normal and as the only local fruit was apples they got a bit boring........  eaten as snacks as well as part of a meal. There should have been local pears at the farm shop but their supplier had had a very poor crop....and had sold out in October.
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Some local food is easy to find thanks to the East of England Co-op and their Locally Produced shelves. My nearest Co-op is in Debenham 4 miles from me.

Meat - Easy from Co-op or Farm shop and many local butchers who sell meat from local farmers. I've always bought local sausages/bacon from the Co-op anyway. The Hog and Hen have their own whole chickens..........Very expensive. I eat very little meat by choice.

Honey - Easy as I had local in the cupboard and when that runs out there are several places I know to buy more.

Jams and Chutneys- There are many local companies that produce jams, chutney, mustard, mayonnaise  and sauces. Stokes of Rendlesham is one. Co-op stock them. I don't need to buy jams etc as I make my own and make sure to only buy Silver Spoon sugar and vinegar for the chutneys could be local as Aspall produce that too.

Eggs - Very Easy. On my way to swimming I pass two farm gate sales for eggs at £1 for half-dozen. Another place on my way to Stowmarket has just finished selling due to theft. There are two houses in the village that sometimes have eggs outside but not always so I can't rely on them.

Flour - Easy to buy Marriages who are based in Chelmsford Essex, it's sold at the Co-op. The mill in Pakenham, in West Suffolk, sells flour ground at the mill too. Another place I completely forgot about was Maple Farm at Kelsale, close to where we were at the smallholding.

Butter, Cheese, Milk and Cream - Easy where I live - all from one farm Suffolk Farmhouse Cheeses, the place we visited with WI, BUT if they were to stop it would be impossible to buy these locally. I made the most of the butter which was delicious, spreading it very thin and made sure to use every crumb of cheese sparingly.
A small milk producer...... Marybelle from   north Suffolk have just been closed down by their Belgian owners. As far as I know local dairy farmers - and there are very few now - sell to one of huge milk companies like Arla, dealing with farmers across north Europe.
(In research I came across Fen Farm Dairy near Bungay in Suffolk who do direct deliveries - at a price. 600g of butter and 750g of cheese would be £46 delivered!!)

Fruit - Only apples. Earlier in the year I might have got plums and pears and of course raspberries and strawberries in summer. Once there were more than 10 pick your own fruit farms across Suffolk. I'm not sure if any remain.
The Hog and Hen farm shop had some local Autumn raspberries  at £2.89 for a small punnet -much too expensive.
I didn't have enough of any fruit of my own to freeze this year but did make jam from BiL's strawberries.

Vegetables - Difficult. There's a company called  Suffolk Produce Ltd who are a cooperative of lots of farms in East Suffolk but they only sell to supermarkets. No wonder we were always able to sell everything we had on the stall at the smallholding. I rarely come across anyone selling from the gate around here - a few apples maybe and that's it. Of course earlier in the year I would have much more of my own stuff.
I've got my own red peppers in the freezer and leeks in the ground. My potatoes have nearly all been eaten. Now I know what I can manage on my own I may well put some Brussels-sprout plants in next year. 

Other things that I could have bought
Co-op stock Fairfields Farm Potatoes, potato crisps and other snacks. They are based on the Suffolk/Essex boundary near Colchester. I've not tried them.

A local bakery in Haughley (8 miles from me and celebrating 150 years of baking) has shops where they sell their own bread, biscuits and cakes so I could have bought from them easily.

The main non-local item used was yeast for my bread, plus things like curry powder. 

Of course I still have most of the flour left to use and the rapeseed oil and virtually all the tomato sauce. There are 2  portions of curry in the freezer and one pack of sausages (as they were BOGOF). 2 more cold sausages for sandwiches, and look how red the local Tiptree tomato sauce is.

 There are also couple of apples and eggs left.

I enjoyed finding out more about local produce and trying things I might not have done otherwise. I may well buy some of the local butter for Christmas and the Marriages seeded and wholegrain flour makes bread that's much more interesting than my normal white bread flour, but I was very glad to go out and buy pears to make a change from the apples!

Back Tomorrow
Sue

1 Week Eating Local Part 7

 Found my old recipe for biscuits to go with cheese and made a third.  But it should have been made with plain flour and I only had the local Self Raising. So didn't turn out how I remembered from years ago. I also added smoked paprika - not a wise choice as it didn't go very well with the blue cheese!

The original proper recipe is taken from The Penny Pincher Paper from around 1996........

Water Biscuits.(I made just a third of the recipe using 1oz butter)
3oz butter/margarine
5fl oz water
12oz plain flour
½ teaspoon salt.

Melt the butter in water and heat to luke warm. Stir in the flour and salt, then knead until satiny and roll out thinly. Cut into rounds or squares, put on baking tray and prick all over with fork. Bake for 20 minutes 325 F, 160C or Gas 4. Can add black pepper or, cumin or chilli or celery seeds or poppy seeds(or smoked paprika if you're eating them with a plain cheese!)

It was impossible to roll thinly with the SR flour and they didn't puff up so ended up like flavoured pastry!

Dinner........... more sausages, with a baked potato and  another section of the cauliflower and a big spoonful of my home-made red tomato relish.

The rest of the stewed apple.

Conclusion tomorrow.

Sue

1 Week Eating Local Part 6

Just a short post today, thanks for all comments about eating local food. It's interesting to hear what people in other parts of the country can find locally.

Toast and honey and local apples eaten again and home made bread. I've run out of the butter - sadly so have to use my normal, which is British but not local - a fail, but I really can't spend over £3 on butter as a regular purchase.

I used the last little bit of the Suffolk Gold cheese from the beginning of the week to do cheese on toast for lunch with two very small tomatoes - all that's left on the one remaining tomato plant in the greenhouse (apart from a few green ones which I must bring in before it's too late)

The Co-op Sausages served up with another tub of my own roast veg from the freezer.
Forgot a photo again! Duh!

Then I had the rest of the baked egg custard and a bit more stewed apple.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

1 Week Eating Local Part 5

More local eggs for £1

More apples from another boot sale, not as good as the first - all a bit sharp but this lot were £1

I certainly couldn't afford to always replace my store cupboard with local produced food but it's interesting for a one off experiment.
Every thing below is from the local Co-op

All East of England Co-op shops have 'Locally Produced' shelves. Quite a lot of choice of jams, chutneys, cakes etc etc, which I don't need as I always make my own
I bought Marriages multi grain flour - this is what I meant to buy first time. Hill Farm Rape-seed oil is local -Heveningham near Halesworth. The tomato sauce is Wilkin and Son Tiptree - Essex and the sausages are Taste of Suffolk from Bury St Edmunds.(I always buy these or another local company- Brundish Farm - sausages anyway) and as you can see on offer as a BOGOF.

My pepper grinder broke recently so I replaced it with a Maldon Salt Co. (Essex) although I'm sure they don't grow the pepper there!

Then there is milk from Suffolk Cheeses and Suffolk Blue cheese from them too both bought at The Hog and Hen farm Shop. The milk is £1.25 and that small bit of blue cheese was £3! - Blimey!

Lunch same as yesterday scrambled egg sandwich and beetroot.
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More of the cauli made cauliflower cheese. The sauce was made using the local flour and cheese,

and eaten with a piece of home made bread.

Too much home made bread!

I cooked the remaining cooking  apples and served up a little  with half of a baked egg custard. I did take a photo but it looked very unappealing ( although it tasted lovely) so won't include it.
The egg custard was 1 egg, a little sugar, local milk and NON local Nutmeg.

I'd forgotten how good a baked egg custard is and made with the milk which comes from Guernsey cows and isn't homogenized it was  good and creamy.........and full of calories too probably!

Back Tomorrow
Sue

1 Week Eating Local Part 4

 I looked at the BBC on line weather forecast yesterday and what it looked like reminded me of Craig Revel-Horwood on Strictly describing a poor dancer.....................DULL, DULL, DULL. Every day is a 'light cloud and gentle breeze' and the only bit of sun peeping out is Tuesday morning. I shall need to work hard at not getting depressed and gloomy myself!

Thank you to everyone for comments yesterday. Jayne mentioned the way supermarkets operate a just-in-time way of ordering and how little it would take for the system to implode.  I think that's the way all manufacturers work now.
It's one of the reasons we tried to be very self-sufficient for all the years at the smallholding and now
I like to keep plenty of food in my cupboards, especially living up the end of a lane, on back roads without a 4 wheel drive.

Apologies for not commenting on everyone's blogs. I start the day with good intentions but then time slips by.

Anyway, back to the Eating local.....................I cooked the last of my  beetroot from the garden.

And had a scrambled egg sandwich with beetroot for lunch and forgot to take a photo AGAIN........seems I'm not very good at this sort-of challenge!

This, in case you don't know is a cauliflower!

It's from the local farm shop but not grown there, it just about qualifies as local as it's grown in the Fens on the Norfolk/Lincs border.

Vegetables are grown commercially in parts of Suffolk. On the light sandy soil close to where we lived in Knodishall they frequently grew huge fields of carrots and onions, but they aren't sold locally. They go off to big packing warehouses and then to supermarkets, which could be almost anywhere.

It's difficult to find real local vegetables unless you grow them yourself............Oh how I miss the smallholding years!

I used part of the cauliflower for a curry
The curry started with the last of my onions, one of the local apples bought at boot sale and the smallest of my two remaining butternut squash. Thickened with the local flour and then of course curry powder NOT local! then add hot water. Added some home grown potatoes and some of the cauliflower plus a spoonful of my homemade chutney, pepper and small teaspoon of sugar. I meant to go outside to fetch in some chard but forgot.

The curry was divided into 3 portions and two went in the freezer. Normally I'd eat curry with rice but we don't grow rice in Suffolk..............yet, although with climate change who knows what will happen,  then I thought about making the new-fangled idea of cauliflower rice but quite honestly the thought of it doesn't appeal at all - even if it is wonderfully healthy and ecologically such a good idea, it sounds awfully "windy"!
 Instead I baked one of my potatoes and served up the curry on top. It was delish.

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Back Tomorrow
Sue

1 Week Eating Local Part 3

Next day

 I had the second half of the quiche with baked potato - getting towards the end of my own potatoes now- and kale again. Same breakfast and same lunch. I thought I'd taken photos of the little apple pies but found I hadn't.

The third day

Toast and honey again.

Used the first of my leeks from the garden plus another of my potatoes to make soup. I used an OXO veg cube for the stock. (IF I was very good I would have home made vegetable stock in the freezer but I don't) 

Still some kale left so a 2 Egg omelette filled with kale and a slice of home made bread. The Suffolk Churn local butter is very hard so when spreading it on bread I melted a little bit in the microwave. It spreads on toast without  needing to melt it, and it's exceedingly good, but double the price of the same amount of supermarket own brand unsalted butter.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

1 Week Eating Local Part 2.

Thank you for comments yesterday. I'm posting the Eat Local posts retrospectively so the car boot where I got the apples was nearly two weeks ago and I'll soon be at the end of my week  (Does that make any sort of sense?) I did it like this to give me plenty of time for taking photos and uploading.

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

1 Week Eating Local Part 1

Last Saturday I mentioned that it was knowing our sugar is a locally produced food that gave me the idea for the (sort-of) challenge and this was the other nudge ................... I found these cuttings as I sorted out a folder full of my old Penny Pincher letters that was falling apart.

The first is a comparison of prices between supermarket and farmers market, I didn't believe it then - about 15 years ago- and its even more unlikely now.
The pages come from the NFU (National Farmers Union) magazine I think and show two baskets of produce costing almost the same. There are no farmers markets close to me and those a bit further away are just once a month........and expensive, but probably the price we SHOULD be paying..........compared to supermarkets - who bulk buy and push down the prices they pay to farmers.

The second are pages from the East Anglian Daily Times - also from many many years ago when they ran a campaign called "Shop Local", and are comparing the miles food travels to reach our plates. Comparing supermarket to the authors local farm shop on the Suffolk/Norfolk Border. Over 13,000 miles for the basket on the left and 173 miles for the local produce.

I thought it would be interesting to see if I could manage for a week with local produce from Suffolk mainly but adding Norfolk and Essex if necessary (plus spices from distant lands). I won't compare costs as I already know that local will be about double the price of supermarket for some things, which is why this will just be for one week!
Of course Summer or early Autumn would have been a more sensible time to eat local - more food from the garden. Eating local was something that was commonplace at the smallholding when we were mostly self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables. But Hey-Ho....I'll give it a go!

So I started at the Car Boot sale  with local apples from a private seller's own orchard - Eating Apples 8 for £1 and Cooking apples 5 for £1. Eggs are available from several farms withing a few miles and are £1 for half a dozen.

That's the beginning

More Tomorrow
Sue

Second Saturday in November

Thanks to everyone who liked my two just-for-fun posts this week and  for leaving lots of comments
Here are some replies to comments from early in the week...........

Shouting BANG! when the snaps in crackers fail, reminds me of The Good Life on TV
I'm glad so many people are going to enjoy the new Ann Cleeves book and to Jenny - yes I've read The Salt Path - and loved it.
To Chris - I think a library waiting list of 658 must be a record!
Re The Gates - There's nothing at the road end of the lane to say it's a dead end but as it's not got a proper road surface it ought to be obvious. From the road end of the lane you can't see my house but now you can see the gates. I only need to have one gate open to get my Fiesta through so just open it in the morning if I go out and shut it in the evening before dark.
The footpath up the lane and down the meadow is hardly used and mainly by local people who can do a 2 mile circular walk, a few dog walkers and sometimes by rambler groups as part of a much longer walk.

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My Round-up of the week............
It certainly turned much colder last week, Wednesday was really chilly and some proper autumnal fog too. Plus rain off and on and it was too wet for boot-sales last weekend, the small local boot-sale was completely water logged and will probably have to stop before the end of November. The big boot-sale  should carry on until mid December - hopefully.

I've had an unsettled week which often happens after a weekend where I've spent time with family. The family last weekend were Col's sister's family because it was her birthday. There were 8 of us for Sunday lunch cooked expertly by my niece who is a Brilliant cook.
Then I go home alone  and days after seem a bit flat and I have to work hard to keep from feeling low. This wasn't helped on Monday by burning the sausage rolls I was making for taking to WI......stupid woman ......expensive mistake.........trying to do too many things at once. I quickly made some fruit slices instead and had already made cheese straws, so with the things the other two people on catering duty had brought there was plenty for everyone.

It was because I was feeling a bit low, flat and pointless that I decided to put my mind to a (sort of) BLOG CHALLENGE! The idea came from two places one of them being this large machine below. It's the sugar beet harvester, working on the field on the other side of the track from my house on Wednesday last week.

You mustn't be in a hurry driving on the lanes at this time of year because around any corner could be a tractor and tipping trailer emptying it's sugar beet load onto a hard standing, or a HUGE lorry taking up the whole road as the sugar beet is loaded from a heap by another machine called "a mouse".

The photo below comes from the web and is actually in Germany but is exactly the situation you could find here. You don't get held up for very long because it takes just 6 minutes to fill the lorry!

One other reason for driving carefully is MUD on the roads. If trailers have carried their load from fields along roads you can be sure there is plenty of mud..........and it can be very slippery. A good farmer will have a tractor and scraper nearby ready to try and clean the roads but they can't get it all up and it will be slippery until there's a good rain to wash the mud away.

The nudge to my challenge is because this beet is taken to either the  Bury St Edmunds factory in Suffolk or Cantley in Norfolk  to be refined into sugar. Silver Spoon sugar is British and local as all sugar beet is grown and processed in East Anglia or the East Midlands (as opposed to Tate and Lyle sugar refined from sugar cane grown on the other side of the world).
So ..............Local Food................that's my sort-of  challenge for sometime next week. More about this when I get organised.


This week I'm grateful for

• Getting through a rough patch unscathed
• People smiling because of my blog posts
• Good books to read
• Bright ideas!

Back Monday as long as I survive our family bonfire and fireworks and food  party! Never done it before so it will be interesting.

Have a good weekend
Sue

P.S. Has Marlene in Cheltenham(?) got a different blog as she re-started The Simple Life one on 2nd Nov but now that's gone too?