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Local food/produce

Claypole said:
Last autumn we were visiting family in Thaxted, Essex and near where they live is a church with gardens with an apple orchard. Apparently you could help yourself, (either that or we were scrumping!)

We took a few home, and I’m not exaggerating when I say they were possibly the best apples I’ve ever eaten.

Proper, natural grown British apples are fantastic, yet what they sell in the supermarkets, and even farm shops? Imported apples, grown in far away places like South Africa, stored for months, and shipped thousands of miles.

They largely have no, or very little flavour, yet most people don’t even realise it. We’re so used to eating tasteless food, we’ve forgotten what it's really meant to be like.

I’ve noticed the same sort of thing with honey. Most of the stuff you can buy in supermarkets will claim something like ‘Product of EU and non EU countries’. It will be very sweet but doesn’t actually taste of much, yet customers buy it thinking that’s what honey is supposed to taste like.

They could probably buy locally made honey within a few miles of the supermarket…
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Mainly because people want seasonal produce on demand 52 weeks a year ... :(

I love asparagus and gorge on it every year , for the few short weeks that it is fresh from the local fen growers , after that I refuse to eat the spindly , bright green , bitter stuff that the big boys fly in from Peru all year round .

Strawberries picked with your own hand when they are ripe and beautiful are absolutely worth the wait as well , as are fresh ripe apples , plums raspberries etc from your own back garden , should you be so lucky that is .

And as for trying to second guess when you might fancy a banana or melon , you have to buy both about a fortnight in advance from any supermarket to have the slightest chance of it being close to ripe when you decide to eat it .
 
Neptune said:
@Claypole
You want apples?
Look at the calendar for what’s available when but this place has a squillion (appx) varieties and you can try before you buy. Oh and they make single variety apple juice

Pick Your Own Family Apple & Fruit Farm Chelmsford Lathcoats Farm PYO Chelmsford

Lathcoats Farm, in Galleywood, Essex, is a third generation family fruit farm growing over 40 varieties of delicious English apple, and a wide variety of summer fruits for Pick Your Own.
www.eapples.co.uk
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I like the look of that Neptune, especially the cider (y)
 
Woodbutcher said:
Mainly because people want seasonal produce on demand 52 weeks a year ... :(

I love asparagus and gorge on it every year , for the few short weeks that it is fresh from the local fen growers , after that I refuse to eat the spindly , bright green , bitter stuff that the big boys fly in from Peru all year round .

Strawberries picked with your own hand when they are ripe and beautiful are absolutely worth the wait as well , as are fresh ripe apples , plums raspberries etc from your own back garden , should you be so lucky that is .

And as for trying to second guess when you might fancy a banana or melon , you have to buy both about a fortnight in advance from any supermarket to have the slightest chance of it being close to ripe when you decide to eat it .
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This is so true, the best asparagus i ever had was the stuff i grew on my allotment. I planted from seeds and left the first 2 years harvest as advised by someone that knew a lot more than i did, it was fantastic. You dont know how hard it was to leave it alone when fully grown, but sometimes you just need to let nature do its thing without rushing. Another favourite was the soft, warm strawberries & raspberries that we had for just a few weeks every summer. Glorious!!
 
In my younger years I used to love Haslet sandwiches! Here on hols in Devon we have found a fantastic local butcher and enjoyed two great meals, both from local produce. First was Barnsley chops and next day a T bone steak, both cooked over charcoal on the barbeque. Yes we have had fantastic weather!
 
Oathkeeper said:
In my younger years I used to love Haslet sandwiches! Here on hols in Devon we have found a fantastic local butcher and enjoyed two great meals, both from local produce. First was Barnsley chops and next day a T bone steak, both cooked over charcoal on the barbeque. Yes we have had fantastic weather!
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When our girls were little we had a short break at Camber Sands and i found a butcher that was selling Salt Marsh lamb. We'd never had it before so bought some chops to put on the bbq like you. Wow, this was fantastic, so full of flavour. On our last day i went back & loaded up with as much as i could afford and took it home with us.
 
We haven't planted any of the fresh veg yet (too cold still)

But we have got the meat for the autumn growing nicely - three days old now - the photos were freshly born last Sunday 😋
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I think freshness also comes into the equation with local food, with fish being perhaps the joint best example. I live two hours from the nearest coast these days, but had a boat in Aberystwyth harbour in the late 1970s, and very fresh fish, caught maybe an hour before cooking, is superb. Ditto new potatoes from the garden (planted a month late this year, thanks to the wettest March on record), a few minutes from earth to saucepan.

We get eggs from our three hens, which are kept on grass, and the difference between them and anything from a shop is staggering (the grass diet helps) and, when we moved here from a town thirty nine years ago, I started buying chicken from a local farm that ran their hens on grass, and hadn't tasted chicken so good since the 1950s, when it was a 'luxury' food, because there were no factory farms in those days.

Locally produced food that's fresh and good quality cannot be beaten.
 
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Neptune said:
@Claypole
You want apples?
Look at the calendar for what’s available when but this place has a squillion (appx) varieties and you can try before you buy. Oh and they make single variety apple juice

Pick Your Own Family Apple & Fruit Farm Chelmsford Lathcoats Farm PYO Chelmsford

Lathcoats Farm, in Galleywood, Essex, is a third generation family fruit farm growing over 40 varieties of delicious English apple, and a wide variety of summer fruits for Pick Your Own.
www.eapples.co.uk
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Five minute walk for me and they have some other good fare, not cheap but always worth a punt.
 
Shake2Much said:
We haven't planted any of the fresh veg yet (too cold still)

But we have got the meat for the autumn growing nicely - three days old now - the photos were freshly born last Sunday 😋View attachment 469102
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This one and others will in be our freezer .... 450 so far and counting :

IMG-20240420-WA0003.jpg


Absolutely love haslet and eat it by the bucket load, but unfortunately none of our local butchers make it due to lack of demand, so Tesco is a necessary evil unfortunately because lips, hoofs and arseholes taste so damn good ...

20240424_221046.jpg


😋
 
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That hurts said:
This one and others will in be our freezer .... 450 so far and counting :

View attachment 469123

Looking good - we only have a hobby flock of eight ewes, and only lambed two this year as changing to smaller ones (Cheviot x Zwartble) I had to sell the other 90+ kg flighty ewes as too risky for my knees without proper handling gear. Five lambs is more than our freezer needs 😁😁
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Telbert said:
There's only 1 traditional English butcher within about 3/4 miles of me and that's an old friend that i've known since i was a kid. He's not allowed to put any pork products out on show but keeps a healthy range hidden away in the chillers.
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I can probably guess why ...

I have a couple of good craft butchers locally. One - who recently took over after the previous owner retired - made a point of putting a pigs head in the window!
 
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Grey Man said:
I can probably guess why ...

I have a couple of good craft butchers locally. One - who recently took over after the previous owner retired - made a point of putting a pigs head in the window!
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The new owners of the shop are Christian Kurds so have no personal reasons to do it. Apart from not wanting to offend some members of the community, while offending others. :(
 
Haslet sarnies reminds me of another delicacy we used to get served up - savoury ducks (or faggots in other parts), cooked in the oven with tinned tomatoes. We still have them now from time to time. 😊
 
Telbert said:
The new owners of the shop are Christian Kurds so have no personal reasons to do it. Apart from not wanting to offend some members of the community, while offending others. :(
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Without wanting to derail the thread, the numbers of folks I have met in the last 10 years, and increasing expodentially in my area (Herefordshire / Worcestershire) who have sold up and moved if able away from the South East to more rural areas is truly comment worthy.

ATB, Ed
 
The food offerings around here are abysmal nowadays unless you’re happy to seek out artisanal providers & pay handsomely for their fare. Our local Tesco has now done away with the butcher’s, fish & cheese counters! Whilst I think the Uk is much improved in the artisan & restaurant offerings the supermarkets leave a lot to be desired compared to France or Spain for example.
Spanish supermarket cheese counter:

IMG_1577.webp


Hams Aisle:

IMG_1576.webp


Most French Carrefour have properly aged meats in special fridges:

IMG_3582.webp


I guess Tesco et al would be selling similar if there was a demand for it over here…
 
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