Just listened to the Food and Farming Awards on Radio 4’s Food Programme. It’s pretty interesting, lots of inspirational stuff going on all round the country, for example there’s a school in County Durham who aim to source all their food from within 50 miles of the school. Some of it is even grown on site  they have 3 allotments at the school – wow!. It’s a great idea, and apart from ensuring the pupils had amazing, healthy food it also means that money spent by the school is going straight back into the local community, some of the farmers are even parents of the pupils, brilliant.

Good to see my old local veg shop Unicorn getting an award. They were joint winners of Best Local Retail Outlet. As mentioned in the programme they have just bought a 21 acres site to enable them to grow their own veg, adding to the already brilliant range of local organic veg they have on offer. I’ve said it before, but I really miss having them around. You guys in Manchester don’t realise how lucky you are, if you’re not already a commited Unicorn fan I advise you to get down there ASAP. It really is a great shop. You can read more about their ethics and current projects on their website.

Bury Market won the award for Best Food Market. I’d not heard of this market until listening to this programme, but now I’m desperate to go! Have any of you been? It sounds great, over 300 stalls, lots of speciality food, delicatessens, grocers, cheese, meat, fish (if you’re into that kind of thing), home made cakes and confectionery. Can’t wait to go! Any tips about which are the good stalls would be great.

Anyway that’s enough from me, listen to the programme here, you might find something you didn’t know about happening near you!