Now I *get it* about local foods!

This week I spent a couple of evening reading through a new-to-me blog called Chiot's Run. The blog is a real sunshine to read, as she is so full of life, and passionate about eating food produced locally. I've always understood about the ecological and economical reasons of buying locally produced food, but Chiot's Run made me understand that it was also FUN.

So inspired, Dave and I spend the weekend discovering what local foods were available. A quick search on the good old google threw up a shower of farm shops, so many so that there was no way we could visit them all in one go!

Having got up early on a Sunday morning (I sort of got up thinking it was Monday, made breakfast and asked what time Dave was going into work, before I realised it was Sunday...) we headed to the north of the city, and went to five different farm shops this afternoon. A whole afternoon of sunny country side driving, and discovering new areas of the county we've never been to. We bought lots of cream, sausages, liver, burgers and vegetables. Some of the shops were were very commercialised, with most food coming from outside the county or even outside the UK (!!!), but we have found a two in particular that we are definitely going to return to. The Little Town Dairy was beautiful, with a very good butchery section and super friendly staff. Bradshaws Farm Shop will probably become our main shop from now as they have a wide range of fruits and vegetables and they label each as locally or not locally grown very clearly.

we also discovered a fabulous ice cream place (Wallings farm) down a country lane, which had really tasty ice creams! Yes, sugar makes me have a headache so I only had a little bit of Dave's, but if you're going to be ill over an ice cream, this was the one to be ill over!

Back home, I got inspired by another one of Chiot's Run post about making butter, so I made butter! We are so excited (well, I am very very excited, and Dave is 'excited', which averages us out to 'so excited'). I think it's magical that you take some cream, shake shake shake and there's your butter. The taste is amazing too. It's just nothing like what you get in the supermarkets. Even if you never make butter again, it is worth doing once just so that you know what REAL butter tastes like.

 

I made one batch by hand (a lot of shake shake shake action while watching Monty Don), and one using the food processor. You would think that doing it with the food processor is by far the easier method, but to be honest with you, I think I prefer doing this by hand.  

First of all, doing it by hand creates less washing up afterwards. In the manual method, I just had a tupperware that I used to shake the cream in, a shive to drain the liquid off and a bowl to pound the butter. With the food processor, I had the food processor bowl, the mixer attachment, whipping attachment, all the fiddly bits that I don't even know what they are called, on top of the shive and bowl. 

Secondly, it didn't save me THAT much time. It took me 25 to 30 minutes of manual shaking, where as the food processor took about 20 minutes. I thought the food processor would zap the cream into butter in no time! It's not really a better method when you think of all that electricity being used up too.

Thirdly, I really enjoyed that magic of cream turning into butter, right in my hand, just by the strength of my arms shaking the life out of the poor thing. For the most of part during the process, I had this tupperware full of whipped cream that wasn't turning into anything at all. I was really to give up so many times, but then suddenly, the thing turns into butter! Lovely, golden yellow butter that turns mash into the most amazing plate of food ever!

Today's lunch was (local) liver and onions with (local potato) mash (made with my hand made butter). The mash, as I mentioned already, was just out of this world. The potato tasted like a potato and the buttery taste came through beautifully. The liver was nice and tender, and very tasty too!

It was a really fun day out, and so glad we did it. Thank you Chiot's Run for inspiring us to love what surrounds us.