Tag Archives: Food

Edible Park Update

Excitingly we have been awarded a grant for the ongoing work in our Edible Park at the Quakers Burial Ground opposite St Mary Redcliffe Church.

Plans are afoot to not only turn the space into an exciting space, filled with edibles that are both beautiful and productive, but to make the space one that can be used by educators to show best practise in a range of things, from composting to planting for pollinators and more.

There will also be a selection of online resources for learners of all ages and skill sets so that ideas taken from the park are replicable at home, or in a local community space, or even as guerrilla planting;)

We look forward to working with you to make this happen!!IMG_4297

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A Trip to Stokes Croft

Today we went on a little walk around the gardens in Stokes Croft, including the gardens at Marlborough Hill Street and Spring Hill.

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Both gardens looked amazing. The trees are thriving on Marlborough Hill Street as are the artichokes and all the wonderful herbs that have been planted there and we really look forward to maintaining and adding to that garden this year. It’s a fun garden on a completely lost piece of ground and it’s exciting to see it start to have a life of it’s own, expand and start to provide Fruit and herbs for the community in which is sits.

 

Then we doodled up the hill to Spring Hill, another garden that has changed a lot since we first started to work on it, and which is now looked after by the community who have done a grand job of changing the space into one that is both productive and beautiful. This is another space that when we started to do some work there, took a lot of cleaning and tidying. There were cans, needles and nappies galore as well as some very sick looking plants! Strawberries and raspberries are now thriving where one there were just weeds and the beds which were also full of weeds and sick shrubs are being used for soft fruit and vegetables such as onions, garlic and broad beans. It’s an absolute joy to be in and can only get better.If you would like to get involved in either of these gardens, or any of the other 27 gardens across the city, please do get in touch with us at info@ediblebristolorguk.wpcomstaging.com and we will let you know when work parties are planned for!! After all, if you eat, you’re in!!IMG_0306

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A Surplus Supper Club Lunch

Today Sara, our project lead and founder, went to lunch at the cafe at St Paul’s Learning Centre, that is run by FareShare SW’s Surplus Supper Club. Here’s what she thought!!

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I was invited to this lunch a couple of weeks ago and was excited to be going as it is run by our Food Route Local collaborators FareShare South West through their catering arm, the Surplus Supper Club. The concept is that food that FareShare are donated is used to provide lunches for people to buy at a ridiculously reasonable price, whilst creating both jobs for local people and putting some money back into FareShare SW making it a far more self sustaining charity. So off I trundled in the freezing cold to the cafe which is situated within St Paul’s Learning Centre.

I really like the cafe space in the Learning Centre as it’s bright and airy and there are full length windows so you can watch what is going on outside in the rich and diverse community of St Paul’s. The tables and chairs are a great miss mash of up cycled furniture and all the tables have fresh, British grown flowers on them and info about the Surplus Supper Club. We went up to the canteen style counter first and I was both amazed and delighted at the range of hot lunches available, amongst which were prawn paella, onion tart with artichokes and olives and toad in the hole. I plumped for the tart and my guest went for the toad. Neither of us were disappointed!!IMG_0273

The onion tart was on a rich buttery base and the onions had been sweated down with balsamic so they were deliciously sweet, with the artichokes and olives adding a touch of bitterness that was just perfect to balance it all out. The toad in the hole, I am reliably informed, was equally as delicious, with light and tasty Yorkshire pudding encasing perfectly cooked chipolatas on a bed of creamy mash with a rich gravy.

What shocked me more than anything was the prices!! These dishes were delicious and the cost in total for us both to eat would have been £6.50. The prices are set at veggie main courses are all £3.00 and anything with meat in is £3.50. Both of us considered that was a complete bargain as the food was not just delicious but the quality seemed to be really high too.

IMG_0274What it is important to remember is that if initiatives like these didn’t exist this food would be headed for bins and in many cases landfill which seems extraordinary when you are invited to eat such wonderful food which there is absolutely nothing wrong with whatsoever. Having chatted with both FareShare and the Surplus Supper club crew it seems that often this food is going to waste purely because it might have been labelled incorrectly or has simply been over ordered by warehouses.

So if you are in St Pauls, or within walking/cycling distance of it for lunch, I strongly recommend this cafe. Not only will you get a delicious lunch, but the busier they are, the more food is saved from landfill!!

 

Thanks Sara. We are also aware that the Surplus Supper Club can cater for events, large and small, so if you would like to get in touch with them they are on Facebook, on Twitter @surplussupper and their website is surplussupperclub.org

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Welcome to Food Route Local

This year we have been squirreling away in collaboration with FareShare South West, to create Food Route Local, an online resource that will take surplus food from those who have it and ensure it gets to people who can use it. We must admit it has been a challenge, and it has seen various guises along the way, but we now have it up and running and so we are excited to tell you about it. It is a project that has been made possible with a  Bristol Green Capital Strategic Grant, which we were extremely happy to receive.

The idea came from many meetings during 2014, where a group of people who are passionate about starting to solve the massive food waste crisis we have in the UK, discussed how to solve it on a local level.  Having discovered that many people are trying to help stop such enormous waste at distribution level, and with a feeling in the room that the local needed eto be addressed, a decision was made that concentrating on surplus coming from local shops, restaurants and cafes would make both make a difference and create a community of people who were helping each other, whilst ensuring that food was going to feed people and not to landfill.

The mecanism for using Food Route Local is a simple text message. A message goes out from the giver of the food stating what they have and when and probably where it needs to be collected from, to the organisations that have signed up to receive food. Those organisations then call the number on the text to contact the supplier and arrange collection if they can use that food. It really is that simple.

Want to know how you can get involved? Well spreading the news is important and we would ask you all to do that. But also making organisations that you know of, or work with, aware of Food Route Local and its aims. There are tons of food wasted every day whilst we see 16 food banks active in the city and to us this makes no sense. So no matter how small the organisation, we want to help them to feed people with food that is just surplus to requirements. It is still in date and perfectly edible!

There is lots more information at foodroutelocal.org about how to get involved.

Food Route Local also has a Facebook page and is @foodroutelocal on Twitter. So please get involved and help us start to get food away from landfill and to those who can use it!0

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No Comments General News, Partnerships and Collaborations

That Apple Flapjack Recipe!

For Apple Day apple flapjacks were made and several folk have asked for the recipe so here it is. It is a slightly altered version of one from the Apple Source Cookbook which, if you have lots of apples each year, is worth buying. It’s very simple but delicious.

140grams self-raising flour

3tsp cinnamon

200g demerara sugar

170grams rolled oats

230grams butter

2-3 apples

Buttered brownie tray or square cake tin

Put all the dry ingredients into a bowl and mix together.

The put the butter and sugar into a pan and gently heat until both are melted. Add this melted mix to the dry ingredients and mix together well.

Put half the mixture into the bottom of your cooking tray. The peel and slice your apples and add those to the top of the mix, finally adding the last half of the mix on top of the apples. Cook at 160 (fan), 180 for 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool before cutting into pieces.

And then enjoy!!

 

No Comments Community Gardens, Community Wellbeing, General News, Home Economics

Millennium Square Work Party

Join us to harvest and plant out some winter crops!!

The Urban Allotments are a collaborative project with Almondsbury Garden Centre and At Bristol so you can find out more about these two grat organisations as well as creating some beautiful space in the centre of our city!

All are welcome but under 16s must be accompanied by an adult

Please wear sturdy shoes….

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Community Food Growing and Eating.

2014-09-04 19.18.21-1So, we’re doing a survey…

We would like to know some of your shopping and cooking habits! If you could take 5 minutes to complete this survey on community food growing and eating, we’ll get back to you soon with a fascinating report that will help us understand how Incredible Edible Bristol can best serve your your community, and help us work with our collaborators to bring you an exciting programme of events to enhance your community growing experience.

10 questions for you…

UPDATE: Survey is now closed. THANKYOU to everyone who helped by sharing and completing it.

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Pollinators Poll: Wildflowers v Wasteland?

pollinator-choiceSo we’ve been talking through various ideas, aims and project plans for 2015. Many of these are simply about continuing and expanding what we started this year, but some (to do with Pollinators and the Pollination story) involve new ideas and initiatives that we’d love to see happen. We have a chance now to apply for a small amount of Green Capital funding which along with volunteer hours, donations in kind and a fired up community of IEBers could easily make these ideas a reality. So – the question is…

Are you in!? Do we have your support?

This question is important not only for idealogical reasons (we are all in this together) but also because the funding application demands ‘evidence that the community wants’ what we’re proposing.

But we don’t have much time, so we figured if we could ask you to respond to this ridunculously simple poll, and ideally, ask your friends to do the same, we will get the evidence we need to add to the application and hopefully secure the funding, and then we can share what we’re thinking and get your more detailed input via comments on this post, and in person, at the Incredible Afternoon celebration at Trinity on October 19th.  So the proposed theme for next year’s project is Bees, Flowers, Honey, Food – Bristol’s Pollination Story. And here’s the poll:

Q.: Which would you rather have around Bristol? 

 

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