local yoghurt with various fruity compotes and purees – plum, apple, blackberry and pear. I even have a crack at making my own yoghurt but that doesn’t really work out – it’s quite nice and is certainly edible, but you’d be hard pushed to describe it as anything but yoghurty fl avoured milk. They still miss the cereals though and so we start having porridge which turns out to be delicious with blackberry jam stirred through it. The oats aren’t local but they are from the UK. Weekend breakfasts are easy as toast dipped into soft boiled eggs, or bacon and scrambled eggs are always a winner. For lunches we tend to have sandwiches and homemade soups like courgette or butternut squash. These might be accompanied by scotch eggs and sausage rolls, or even a homemade quiche from the farm shop. Sometimes though it’s just leftovers from the night before; the end of a chicken pie or some recycled sausages. And the salad leaves I buy
from a local supplier, complete with lovely edible fl owers, might need a bit of a wash, but they last four times as long as the
sprayed salads from the supermarkets which always seem to start
going off before I’ve even got them home.
My girls aren’t great
with potatoes which is a bit of a nuisance given it’s one of the only carbohydrates I can fi nd that is local. In the farm shop I see some pasta fl our milled in Oxfordshire. It’s outside the 30 mile
limit, but then pasta is generally imported from Italy. So I decide to use the fl our and some free range eggs to make my own. I borrow a pasta machine from a neighbour and spend a therapeutic hour rolling out the dough and cutting it into long ribbons of tagliatelle, before freezing it in batches that will last the month. The whole process is surprisingly satisfying and when the time comes to eat it, I realise the effort was worth it. Our evening meal is the easiest. Bangers and mash, chicken pie with butternut squash, omlettes, faggots, shepherds pie, homemade pasta with bolognaise sauce made from fresh tomatoes and local beef – the options are many. Something I have found it diffi cult to fi nd a substitute for is baked beans though. A couple of tins in a month isn’t too bad I tell myself, and at least I haven’t caved in to my toddler’s avocado fi x.
I quickly realise that, inadvertently, I’m eating
seasonally. It’s clear why Transition Chepstow chose September as the month for this challenge – many fruit and vegetables are in abundance at this time of year. Another thing I notice is that cooking is
taking much less time than normal. I’m cooking much simpler meals, perhaps because I can’t use half the store cupboard ingredients that I normally would. And as an avid recipe follower in the past, I fi nd I’m cooking much more
instinctively now with whatever food I’ve got. Admittedly some of the food and ingredients
I am buying are more expensive. As a result I’m careful not to waste anything. For some of the signifi cantly more expensive products, I am conscious of serving smaller portions than I otherwise might. I don’t think there is any less enjoyment though – the far superior fl avour of the honey, the ice cream, the cheese and so on more than compensate for the fact that we are eating a bit less of them. Another big difference to our normal diet is how much less processed the food is that we are eating. It’s not like we exactly lived on ‘ready meals’ before, but now that I am buying our food in their most basic and unprocessed forms I really notice the difference. The food we buy now
has massively less packaging too and it takes well over a week to fi ll my kitchen bin. When I shop at the farmers market I take along a bag, and the fruit and vegetables I buy
are emptied into it from bowls that they have been measured into. There might be the occasional paper bag, but compared to a supermarket, it’s astounding how little packaging there is.
But three weeks in
and the cravings start to kick in. I can’t bring myself to go out and actually buy any chocolate so I search the house and fi nd some out-of-date cherry liqueur chocolates on top of the piano. I scoff them down immediately, hoping that none of my fellow food challengers will suddenly turn up on my doorstep. I notice that coffee
is starting to make a
reappearance in my daily routine too. Just one or two a day. I admit I’d never even thought about giving up tea. The idea of starting the day without a cup was unthinkable, and so this was always going to be my exception to the challenge rules. And around this time I start to take
advantage of the fact that it’s open to interpretation whether eating things made locally, but that are clearly made using ingredients from further afi eld, is still within the spirit of the challenge. I ponder this over a cup of tea and a large slice of homemade chocolate cake from a local farm shop and conclude that the odd bending of the rules is probably okay. As the challenge draws to a close I refl ect
on which of my new habits I’ll keep up. I will make a trip to the supermarket and invest in a couple of boxes of breakfast cereal and a few tins of baked beans, and I may in the future top up store cupboard supplies from there too if I can’t fi nd what I need elsewhere. But in terms of meat, bread and cakes, eggs, dairy, and above all fruit and vegetables, I truly feel I can get better value for money by shopping locally. Thank heavens I live where I do!
Star Inn,
Llansoy Monmouthshire is well known as a foodies haven and we are so lucky to have so much choice when popping out for something to eat.
Y
ou can go for Michelin star treatment or for some fantastic
pub food. And with the Star Inn at Llansoy
you can get the fantastic pub food safe in the knowledge that the head chef, Matthew Dawkins, cut his culinary teeth under the stewardship of Michelin starred James Sommerin at the Crown at Whitebrook. The Star Inn is tucked away in the
heart of the Wye Valley and gives a warm welcome on arrival. The portions are hearty and the
prices are reasonable. We decided to visit on a Tuesday
evening for a family meal just before one of the clan returned to London to student life – so the hearty portions and varied menu were very welcome. The family tucked in to all sorts
– starters included black pudding, smoked bacon and butterbean stack topped with a free range poached egg (£5.95) and halloumi cheese, deep fried in rosemary tempura, mixed leaves and chilli jam (£6.25) give a brief fl avour of the sorts of dishes you can expect. Mains included stuffed
Monmouthshire chicken roulade wrapped in smoked bacon and served with dauphinoise potato, green bean parcel and creamy peppercorn sauce (£14.50) and slow roasted belly pork on a bed of black pudding mash, braised red cabbage, apple chutney with a cider and sage sauces (£13.95). There’s also a specials menu – and
the desserts were delightful and all priced at £5.50. The Star Inn is the Gwent CAMRA
Country Pub of the Year and the beer drinkers in our party were pleased to fi nd the real ales on offer were well kept and they thoroughly enjoyed them during the meal. All the meals are as locally sourced
as possible and from just one visit you can see why the restaurant and the chef are gaining such a good name. This is defi nitely one for a return JB
visit.
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