Come and enjoy a feast of breakfasts at the Ledbury Big Breakfast

You can enjoy breakfasts from the lightest to the fullest at the Ledbury Big Breakfast 2015 taking place on Friday and Saturday 30th and 31st January.   This event is run by Ledbury Food Group in conjunction with Breakfast Week 2015 to celebrate breakfast and local food.

Paul Gurney of Gurney Butchers with ingredients for a good breakfast
Paul Gurney of Gurney Butchers with ingredients for a good breakfast

Specials new this year for you to enjoy include a takeaway Breakfast Bagel Bar, together with Poached Herefordshire Pear with Bara Brith, Cheese and crispy bacon muffins, Eggs baked in Portobello Mushrooms, Sausages made with Cider, Apple Brioche with bacon and a cider syrup, a Breakfast Stack and a novel Rock and Roll Bingo Brunch. If you fancy Eggs Benedict, pancakes with bacon, omelettes of all kinds, or traditional home cured bacon and eggs then Ledbury is the place for you.  See full details on our events listing page.

A full range of local produced breakfast produce will be on sale at our butchers and food shops to build and enjoy a good breakfast at home.

Several cafes are opening specially from 8am on Friday to provide for those who would like a breakfast before work – or just an early breakfast.   The Country Market will offer a stop and go café/takeaway service for those in rush on Friday.

For a second year Trumpet Corner Café and Llandinabo Farm Shop are running a competition for a new sausage which they will sell during the Big Breakfast.  Get you entry in by 26th January!

Alongside the Big Breakfast, John Masefield High School are celebrating Breakfast Week with a special programme of lessons focusing on breakfast, and promotion of breakfasts in the school dining room for pupils and staff.

We are pleased to have such a range of local food on offer again, and to join in Breakfast Week 2015 with its key message of the importance of a good breakfast to start the day.

Bromsberrow Big Brunch

There is a chance to enjoy more delicious breakfast dishes featuring locally sourced ingredients later in February. On Saturday 21st February, The Shop at Bromsberrow will be holding the Bromsberrow Big Brunch from 11am – 1pm with traditional, cooked and continental breakfast items on offer. Come and visit our friendly community shop for this special event which will see the launch of the new café at The Shop and the announcement of the winner of the competition to name the café.
The Shop is in Bromsberrow Heath, just off the A417 before the motorway junction. (Postcode for Sat Nav: HR8 1PG)

Don’t forget Small Business Saturday…this Saturday

Small-Business-Saturday-UK-2014-Logo-BlueIf you are Christmas Shopping this weekend, see what your local independent shops and traders have to offer.

Saturday 6th December is Small Business Saturday – a day to support, inspire and promote small businesses.   Recent research by American Express on the economic impact of small independent businesses indicates that High Streets with a majority of independent businesses create a friendlier neighbourhood and plough 60p of every £1 spent back into the local economy.

Just by Christmas shopping you can bring real benefit to our local economy.

Our independent shops and traders in Ledbury and District have all kinds of local food and drink gifts – why not make up a gift of several local products?

…and we have a whole range of local independent shops in Ledbury for wider gift shopping.

So celebrate Small Business Saturday.

P.S. Get ideas for presents by browsing through the Producers Directory on this Website – this includes an Activities Offered section with all kinds of ideas for presents.

The Big Breakfast is coming …

Market House Cafe - Breakfast BruschettaP1000687

What could be better than a super breakfast on a cold winter’s day?  Come and join us in the 3rd Ledbury Big Breakfast taking place in and around Ledbury, Herefordshire on Friday 30th and Saturday 31st January.

All kinds of breakfasts will be on offer from the lightest fruit and cereals to the heartiest Herefordshire breakfast.  You can eat in the warmth of one of our cafés or hotels, or visit our butchers or food shops to take something tasty home.  Expect special breakfast offerings – in previous years we have enjoyed Eggs Benedict, Eggy Bread, Devilled Kidneys, the “Full Monty” Sausage, and even Breakfast Ice Cream.  This year we also hope to have “early-bird” breakfasts for workers in the town to enjoy.

Venues and menus are now listed here.

The event is being organised by Ledbury Food Group in association with Farmhouse Breakfast week to remind us of the importance of enjoying a good breakfast, and to celebrate our wonderful local food.

Last year 20 food outlets of all kinds took part.

Muse - Breakfast Buffet P1000636

Chickens, Chickens and More Chickens

More information about this planning application can be found on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Broiler-Sheds-Colwall/1498630197087820. The deadline for comments about the application is 14 November.

A planning application has been made to Herefordshire Council to develop a new poultry rearing site at Chance’s Pitch, Colwall. The proposal is for four rearing sheds each housing 50,000 birds, with a turnover of stock about every 7 weeks.

The site is close to the Ledbury to Malvern road (A449) neighbouring an existing potato store.
There is much local concern about this application which some see as industrialisation of our landscape.

What do you think?

  • Should we accept the principle of intensive farming as a means of providing affordable food?
  • Should we be pleased that local land and facilities are being employed to produce chicken products for the UK market?
  • Should we make a stand against intensive farming of this kind wherever it takes place?
  • Should we focus on where these facilities go to minimise impact on the environment and local landscape?

 

New food shop openings in Ledbury High Street

HandleyCakeThe choice for food shoppers in Ledbury has become even wider with the opening in the past week of two new shops in the High Street extending even further the range of locally produced foods available in Ledbury.

Handley Organics moved from the Homend to its new premises in the High Street – right by the market area – on Saturday 26th July.  The much larger shop will enable Caroline Handley to expand the already considerable offering of local and organic foods. A good place to look for new food ideas.

By Ledbury’s ancient -Market House, the Market House café has opened the Market House Deli next door – doors opened last Wednesday (23rd July). This new venture for Heather and her team stocks a range of local products including fresh baked local bread, as well as their own coffee blend and pastries.

It’s great that two established local businesses have expanded to increase still further the range of good food available on Ledbury’s high street!

Market House Deli new shop - July 2014 P1010463
Market House Deli new shop – July 2014
Handley Organics new shop July 2014  2 P1010455
Handley Organics new shop July 2014
Handley Organics new shop July 2014 P1010448
Handley Organics new shop July 2014

LIFE IS…

cherries

We asked you at the Ledbury Celebration to complete this phrase – here are your responses

Life is…best, good juicy

Life is…fantastical

Life is…full of surprises

Life is…not being dead!

Life is…quite a ride!

Life is…the joy of juice

Life is…unknown

Life is…a delicious plum

Life is…a box of Lego

Life is…a wonderful journey

Life is…to take the moment when it comes

Life is…horses – I had a horse all black and white. I rode here in the day and wished I could ride her in the night

Life is…made in Bosbury

Life is…70 years plus injury time

Life is…sometimes red with anger and sometimes red with love

Life is…a pain in the g..e

Life is…like the Malvern Hills

Life is…what you make of it

Life is…cherries – a bowlful – just see how many they will eat

Life is…another bit of the cherry

Life is…like a lilac

Life is…a walk in the park with Frodo

Life is…an amazing thing

Life is…a gift

Life is…precious – squander it at your peril

Life is…full of plums and cherries and the juice thereof

Life is…fun around the corner and can make you laugh

Life is…scented

Life is…simple

Life is…racing round the Nurburgring

Life is…full of discoveries

Life is…unpredictable

Life is…what happens when you are busy making plans

Life is…a scrumptious bacon butty

Life is…making loom bands

Life is…learning to dance in the rain

Life is…moving back to Ledbury after 20 years away

Life is…a box of chocolates

Life is…travelling

Life is…wonderful in lovely Ledbury

Life is…for living

Life is…sitting at a computer drinking coke

Life is…smelling a grandchild                  which end?

Life is…an open door; through it are infinite possibilities, waiting just for you

Life is…being nearly 80

Life is…sharing horse breath

Life is…all about family and friends

Life is…cart-wheels

Life is…Ledbury

Life is…Love

Life is…appreciating every moment

Life is…too complicated for one line

Life is…what you make of it and lots begins at 60!

Life is…hard being a teenager

Life is…too short – enjoy it!

Life is…a dream

Life is…a bar of chocolate

Life is…knowing who you are and why you are here

Life is…66 and finding love again

Life is…a completed staircase?

 

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this magnificent statement!

Thanks to Chrissie Bentley and her team for organising this – to them we give the last word

Life is…a bowl of Bentley’s best cherries

A Ledbury Celebration, food, drink, music, poetry – 13th July 2014

Many thanks to all who visited or took part in this special event run in partnership with the Ledbury Poetry Festival.   The weather cleared, the displays on the food stalls were fabulous, and once the music and poetry started so the beer, cider, perry and Derek’s special elderflower and lemon liqueur Proseccos started to be appreciated.

Derek of 3 Counties Liquers P1010424

Many thanks especially to our stallholders who worked a long day to make this all possible for us to enjoy.  It was a true celebration of our local food and drink blended with good music and poetry.

Irina and her bread P1010402

Please let us know what you thought of the day and ways in which we could make a future event even better by email to ask@ledburyfoodgroup.org or via our Twitter feed. More photos appear at the end of this article.

Some thoughts on cherries and plums.

Chrissie Bentley asked for poetic contributions on cherries and plums.  Here are some of them together with some more authentic ones:

Stalks

Two cherries on the cherry-tree hung there quite enchantingly

And anyone who looked could see that cherries would blush so easily

When tickled pink to think of pies and twinkles in each other’s eyes.

Two cherries on a cherry tree tasted very good to me.

John Edward Smallshaw

Cherry Ripe

Cherry-ripe, ripe, I cry

Full and fair ones; come and buy

If so be you ask me where they do grow, I answer, There

Where my Julia’s lips do smile;

There’s the land or cherry-isle, whose plantations fully show

All the years where cherries grow

Robert Herrick

Cherries

Handed to me in soft paper sack,

I transferred them

straight to a bowl.

Life can be a paper sack

of cherries,

but why live in Solihull

when you can live in Barbados?

They were EXQUISITE.

I ate them as quickly as I could

without taking in too much air,

squeezing the stones finger and thumb

over the vicarage wall.

I felt life

coursing through me

several hours later.

Poetforhire.net

 

Some thoughts on plums…

my head looks like a mouldy plum

I think that’s why I look so glum

 

I am going to sit on my bum

And eat a plum

 

My love is like a plum

  • Plump
  • Lustrous
  • Unusual
  • Moist

Eat them slowly and enjoy their goodness

While the summer warmth lives in my heart

 

Cherries are red,

Plums are blue

That makes purple

Just like you!!!

 

Life is what you make it…

Plum pie is how you bake it.

 

Ode to Herman the Plum

Intense, round, plum coloured, ball of plumpness…with a stone

This is just to say…

I have eaten the plums that were in the ice-box

and which you were probably saving for breakfast

Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold

William Carlos Williams

This is just to say

I have eaten the plums that were in the ice-box

then wrote a poem that was anthologised and read by millions

You were so understanding in the divorce court so sweet and cold

Barry Lane