Local Bacon Wrapped Chicken

  The advantages of buying local meat and veg, even when you can't grow your own, are many. From keeping local businesses flourishing to really knowing what goes into the food on your plate, from guaranteeing freshness to greater animal welfare.
 So, shop around and see what your local area has to offer.

  This is a simple and tasty way of cooking chicken breast, best served with a fresh spring salad straight from the garden.

Ingredients:
One chicken breast per person
One slice of bacon per person
Cheese (of your choice, i like Cheddar)
Cooking Oil (variety of your choice)

Ready to Cook

Cut the cheese into thickish slices. Place one slice of cheese on each chicken breast, wrap the bacon around the chicken breast, covering the piece of cheese.
  Heat the oil in a frying pan and seal the chicken, on all sides (you don't need to be too fussy, it's just to bring out the flavour of the bacon and chicken)
 Place the chicken pieces into a backing dish and cover with a lid.
Bake in the oven for about 20mins, until chicken is cooked through.

Serve on a fresh salad and drizzle with the cooking juices.

 

 

Bacon Wrapped Chicken with Garden Salad and New Potatoes

Foraged Elderflower Pancakes

There are always a few food items to forage for at any time of year.

  Make sure you are very sure of what you are picking when it comes to forage, there are plenty of books out there with clear pictures, but when in doubt ask someone who knows.
   Also for anything you are picking which is low to the ground, make sure that it isn't where dogs can wee on it.

   Currently in mid May the nettles haven't quite come in to flower so nettle soup can still be on the menu, make it with some bacon croutons sprinkled in it and it makes a great bug busting soup.

Elderflowers

The Elder Trees are just coming in to flower and Elderflower Pancakes have always been a great favourite since I was a child. It's just a simple pancake, with elderflowers in it.

Elderflower Pancakes

Batter:

4 oz Flour
2 Eggs
1/2 pint Milk
a pinch of salt (optional)

Mix all the ingredients up in a big bowl. Whisk until smooth

Leave in a cool place for about 1/2 an hour.

Pick one stalk of elderflowers per pancake you want to make.

wash the flowers and cut from the stems(you don't need to get rid of all the green, just the thick bits)

mix the flowers into the batter.

Heat some cooking oil in frying pan (ideally non stick) and ladle enough batter to coat the frying pan evenly but thinly.

Flip the pancake once.

Serve hot with cream, icecream, lemon juice or just on it's own.

Elderflowers make lovely cordial too, or jelly.

A selection of eggs from our chickens

 

Home Grown Rhubarb Crumble

Mixed Salad Leaves

May is the time for fresh green salads, spring onions and radishes coming from the veg patch.
Asparagus is doing well this year with all the sunshine.

For me, there is nothing that brings in the joys of spring more than rhubarb crumble.
It isn't difficult or fussy, so i think it's ideal for my first recipe.

Rhubarb Crumble.
Ingredient:
Three fat stalks of rhubarb, leaf part cut off
3 or 4 tbs Honey, more if you like it sweet. or you can use sugar
6oz of Flour
3oz of Butter
3oz of Sugar

Wash rhubarb and chop into inch long bits, place in a deep oven proof dish.
Drizzle the honey over rhubarb.
In a separate bowl rub the butter into the flour until it looks like bread crumbs
mix in the sugar and spread the crumble mix over the rhubarb.

Cook in the centre of an oven heated to 180 C for about 40 mins.


You can use up any old, but not brown, apples or pears by peeling and chopping in with the rhubarb. Also crystalised ginger can add a bit of a zing.

Rhubarb can also be bottled so you can enjoy this pudding in mid winter if you so wish.

Forced Rhubarb Leaves

  Hi, I'm Eleanor, based in Taunton, Somerset, UK.
  The idea for this blog came from a Taunton Transition Town meeting. Talking about how to promote local and home grown produce.
   A diet based on local food was sugested, a small group met up and the idea for this was born!
   Essentially what we are trying to achieve is to promote local food in all it's forms. So we are hoping to have a list of things that are in season to forage, plant, harvest and buy. Plus what to preserve for winter and how to do it.
  Also we will have recipes using all these lovely locally produced things. Please feel free to send me any of your favourite recipes, esspecially any that are child friendly.
   Every month we'll have a little friendly competition, publishing some recipes to see how many of the ingredients you can source locally to you. Anyone can join in! Just see how low you can go(for food miles that is!)