Real bread and an illicit stash of gravadlax

Yesterday was my favourite local farmers market at Abbey Leys so it was a great chance to stock up some lovely food.  On top of this, I braved the icy cold with the other stall holders to promote a website I’ve set up to promote local, seasonal food in my community.  It was so blinking cold in the barn, and although I was so pleased with my display of seasonal vegetables and old-fashioned seed packets on stick, a number of people did mistake me for a grower.  Oh well.

But enough of that and back to the real bread.  For a while now, a fantastic bread lady (officially known at Jane’s Handmade Bread) has been coming to the market.  She makes heavenly real bread.  My favourite is her Miracle Bread which is stuffed full of all kinds of seeds and has a lovely golden brown colour to it.  She never arrives before 10.30am, having been up since 3am baking, but everyone waits and queues for ages just to get their hands on some of her beautiful breads.

Edible adventures with the little sister

So following on from my weekend (last week) with my family and then the little sister, this is what we got up to when she came to stay…

We made French toast or eggy bread.  The little sister had hers with cinnamon sugar and I added some crushed (and homegrown!) raspberries to mine…

We made ‘cheats’ wraps – seed flecked tortilla wraps filled with Moroccan style hummous, sweet potato falafel and homegrown lettuce.  Sadly only the salad was homegrown…

We also had a delicious girlie lunch at Tampopo (the little sister’s favourite) – we shared Vietnamese goi cuon, she ate yaki udon noodles and I ate pad Thai.  Sadly we ate it all too quickly and there are no photos to show for these delicious dishes.

However, we also grabbed some lunch from Selfridges which I did snap a few quick photos of before we devoured it.  A selection of Indian delights and a pesto, mushroom and cheese pretzel and a mango smoothie to share…

A vegetarian breakfast for a hungry sister – a fried egg, sunny-side up with diced vegetarian sausage…

As part of her final parting dinner we did a baked Camembert eaten with crusty white bread that we picked up at the Abbey Leys farmer’s market.  Recipe for how to bake Camembert (it’s really easy) here.

We also made to-die-for cookies.  These are Hugh’s 10 minute cookies from his River Cottage Everyday recipe book, and they are everything you want from a cookie.  They are moist in places but crispy in others, chewy, sweet, and bittersweet with dark chocolate…

And finally, just before we left to pop her on a train home, we whipped up a quick quesadilla.  Two tortillas pan fried in a little oil with grated cheddar cheese and chopped cherry tomatoes sandwiched in the middle…

I miss you little sister!

A delicious pie from The Great North Pie Company

I thought it was about time I shared with you a fabulous new local food business who produce fantastic pies. 

I first met Neil from The Great North Pie Company at a farmer’s market at Abbey Ley’s last summer when I had a stall to advertise the local food awards I was running as a volunteer for CPRE Cheshire.  A relatively new business on the local Cheshire food scene, Neil and his family set up in 2008 baking delicious pies using quality local produce.

The Great North Pie Company were a runner-up in our CPRE Cheshire ‘Buy Local’ Food Awardsand were a winner of the far more prestigious NW Fine Foods awards.  On Sunday I bought a delicious beef and potato pie (with truffle oil!! a little non-local luxury we’re all allowed to indulge in!) for N and I to share for lunch.

We devoured the pie, with its melt-in-the-mouth beef that flakes apart into tender strands, along with hunks of Miracle Bread, also bought from the farmer’s market from Jane’s Handmade Bread, smeared with milky white goat’s butter.  A truly scrumptious local meal.