The Big Breakfast is coming …

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

November 15, 2014December 17, 2024

Cafe Supper Success!

If you were ever in any doubt about the quality and range of home-grown produce in and around Ledbury then last night’s Café Supper at the Market House Café would have changed all that! With glasses of Sixteen Ridges wine (locally made from Worcestershire grapes) in our hands, Norman Stanier from Dragon Orchard and Once Upon a Tree told us all about the wine and their exciting new venture. We then ate our way through a delicious menu of local food (see below). The only problem being whether to choose the Artisan Bread & Butter Pudding or the Herefordshire Apple Dumpling, but my neighbour and I sorted that by swapping halfway through – a tactic followed by a few others, I believe!

A big thank you to Heather and Alan Tookey and all their staff at the Market House Café for hosting our inaugural supper. Not only did the café look superb but everything ran like clockwork and there was a real buzz about the place. Like all good parties, it’s success was shown by the fact that it was quite hard to persuade people to leave at the end of the evening – we were all having too good a time!

And, of course, an equally big thanks to chef John Devine for not only cooking such a scrumptious meal but being prepared to talk to us about it too. I know several of us diners wanted to know just how you made potatoes quite so tasty, which he readily explained, although I am not sure I have the skill to make them quite so melt in the mouth… He explained why he had chosen that particular cut of beef, those particular vegetables and how he had cooked it all – plus how he made the thin, crisp and utterly delicious pastry around the apple dumplings.

We hope this will be just the start, and that other cafes will want to host similar evenings. Your feedback on the evening would be much appreciated. Contact any of the Food Group with your thoughts and ideas, or scroll down to “Leave a reply” and add your comments – and any photographs – to this post. We look forward to hearing from you.

MENU

Market House Café & Deli

1 The Homend, Ledbury HR8 1BN

Friday November 14^th 2014

Slow Cooked Herefordshire Beef

served with a rich Wye Valley Ale Sauce

Roasted Root Vegetables

Buttered Cavolo Nero

Sliced Potatoes, baked with cream & cheese

~ : ~

Artisan Bread & Butter Pudding

with our homemade whisky orange marmalade

served with Herefordshire clotted cream

Herefordshire Apple Dumpling

with a cider syrup & double cream

~ : ~

Tea or Coffee

£20.00 per person

List of our Suppliers

Herefordshire beef – D T Wallers, Ledbury

Apples & Cider – Once Upon A Tree & Dragon Orchard

Dairy – Cream & Milk – Bartonsham Farm, Hereford

Vegetables & Potatoes – Carey Organics, How Caple

Eggs – Chacely Vicarage Farm, Glos

Butter – Netherend Farm

Mineral Water – Holywell Malvern Spring Water

Coffee – Hunters Coffee, Worcester

Ale – Wye Valley Brewery

Cheese – Taynton Farm, Glos

Bread – Peter Cook, Hop Pocket

October 30, 2014December 17, 2024

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?

October 28, 2014December 17, 2024

Winter Squash Recipes

I have had a wonderful crop of winter squash this year. They were slow to start with loads of flowers ( Turkoman Squash flowers are perfumed!) but no fruit til July, then each plant set one fruit. Crown and Turkoman squash grew well, but I don’t succeed with Butternut. The trick is good moist and warm soil – a compost heap is ideal ( a friend had huge plants and several fruits per plant on hers), but I did well in well manured soil and plenty of watering.

So what to do with them?

Continue reading “Winter Squash Recipes”

October 16, 2014December 17, 2024

Rachel Hicks on Managing the Bromsberrow Community Shop

In May this year I sold ‘Just Rachel’ the ice cream and dessert business that I started 27 years ago. In July I started work as part-time manager of the community shop at Bromsberrow Heath. I hadn’t been intending to find a job so soon – I had meant to take some time for me – but The Shop was looking for a manager and it seemed too good an opportunity to miss.

There has been a shop at Bromsberrow Heath since the middle of the nineteenth century. The most recent owners of the village shop, who ran the post office from the same premises, wanted to retire so put the business on the market in 2008. After five years they had failed to find a buyer so decided that they had no option but to shut the shop down. Faced with losing their local shop, a group of villagers got together to establish a community shop which opened for business last November. Over the past ten months a team of volunteers has achieved a tremendous amount, starting up and running a shop that is open seven days a week, which offers daily papers, freshly baked bread, a range of grocery staples, fresh fruit and vegetables and a coffee shop.

The community shop is a large premises – a fact that is a blessing and a curse at the same time. It is wonderful having so much space because we have room for a large café area at the back of the shop and will shortly be doing sandwiches and baguettes in addition to the tea, coffee and cake that we offer at the moment. It is a curse because in the winter it will be difficult, and expensive, to heat.

At the moment we offer some local food such as cider made on the Bromsberrow Estate, free-range eggs from Dymock, French bread baked by Fabrice in the unit next door, milk from Bartonsham Dairies in Hereford and, oh yes, ice cream from Just Rachel at Eggs Tump! Our most locally sourced produce is some of the fruit and vegetables that we sell – grown by villagers and donated to the shop.

However it can be argued that everything we sell is local food, because it is local to the customers who buy it. A local shop means that villagers do not have to travel the six miles into Ledbury to do their shopping, saving them money and time, and the shop is vital to those who are unable to get into Ledbury. Rather than the customers going to the products, the products are brought to the customers, into the centre of their community. And The Shop at Bromsberrow is very much a community hub – the volunteers know the customers and greet them by name; news (or should that be gossip!) is exchanged; the elderly and less able are looked out for – this is all part of the service that the shop offers.

And my role in all this? I’ve been brought in to get the shop running more efficiently and profitably. The Shop is staffed by a team of volunteers, so any messages have to be communicated to a good number of people, rather than just to one or two staff members, so part of my job is to ensure everyone knows what to do and how to do it. Local produce is one area in which small shops have the edge over the supermarkets so I will be increasing the range of locally produced items that we are selling. A computer club, giving lessons in computer use, is starting in October and I have plans for other groups, such as a young mum’s coffee morning, to bring more people into The Shop.

The team who runs The Shop is full of enthusiasm and ideas – over the next couple of months we have a Macmillan Coffee Morning (4^th October), a celebration of Chocolate Week (18^th Oct), a Christmas Table-Top Sale (6^th December) and a Christmas Choir evening (late December) planned.

Why not pay us a visit, see what we have to offer and pause a while in the coffee shop? We always need more volunteers, so if your visit inspires you to join our team, we will welcome you with open arms. But even if you don’t join us, we will be delighted to see you.

Webmaster’s note: The Bromsberrow Community Shop is well signed and very accessible: turn left off the A417 when travelling north towards Ledbury, just past the M50 junction.

October 13, 2014December 17, 2024

Ledbury Baker wins World Bread Award 2014

Congratulations to Ledbury ‘Real Bread’ baker Peter Cooks Bread for landing the top prize of overall winner of the Tiptree World Bread Awards 2014 for their category winning Ciabatta. Their signature loaf, ‘Cider Crumb’, won a Bronze at the awards and is made from combining light malthouse and white flour with apples and Tom Oliver’s Dry Cider and they also won Gold for their Blackberry Focaccia.

Chris Newenham of Tiptree presents Peter Cook with his trophy and prize as the Tiptree World Bread Awards 2014 champion

Peter Cooks Bread bake at the Hop Pocket at Bishops Frome and their bread is available at Ceci Paolo and the Market House delis in Ledbury, and at The Nest – Hand Made Scotch Egg Co – on the Hereford Road. For anyone who would like to find out more about Real Bread or try their hand at making it, they are starting bread-making workshops in November.

October 2, 2014December 17, 2024

Harvestime – an apple journey – 11th & 12th October 2014

The Herefordshire parishes of the Marcle Ridge are once again celebrating harvestime in the orchards, with a collection of events, walks and talks with many opportunities to taste and purchase apples, juice and cider. Local farms, cider-mills and cottage venues will be opening their doors to visitors over the weekend. Many events are within walking distance of each other, but Westons Cider have also kindly offered their tractor-&-trailer to carry visitors between some of the venues.

An amazing range of dessert, cooking and cider apples will be available to taste and admire at the Feast of Apples in the beautiful surroundings of the Great Barn at Hellens. Over 20 varieties of local apples will be on sale. On Saturday, those seeking advice on the planting and care of fruit trees will be able to join one of three talk/tours of Hellens fruit tree collection, led by visiting expert Tom Adams.

Visitors to Hellens will also be able to select their favourite apple name and then create a simple textile hanging with Jeanette McCulloch. These hangings will be used the following day to create a backdrop for Herefordshire Poet in Residence, Paul Henry, who will be sharing his online Poetry Orchard. In this ‘virtual’ orchard, developed with Ledbury Poetry Festival, each poem takes its title from a named Herefordshire apple variety. Paul will be joined by some of the contributors who will read their poems at 2.30pm on Sunday at Hellens.

Cider and perry making at differing scales will be on show at Gregg’s Pit, Woodredding Farm, Avenue Cottage, Hellens and Westons. On Sunday morning at Woodredding, Brian Robbins will be offering a ‘Taste of History’, sharing the story of cidermaking over 200 years on the family farm.

With organised walks and cycle rides, apple-inspired lunches and teas, this is an excellent opportunity to enjoy Herefordshire countryside. The full programme is available at www.bigapple.org.uk.