Roberts & Speight - Our Saturday Saviour

Do you ever have those days when, despite your best intentions, you just can't face cooking at the end of the day?  For us, it's usually on a Saturday when we've been happily busy in the shop but all the rushing around has left us feeling hungry, exhausted and ready to flop down in front of the TV.  On those days, we can be easily tempted to the land of takeaway but we also have a foodie secret weapon - Roberts & Speight.

This brilliant food shop on Norwood is (oh joy!) open until 7pm on Friday and Saturday evenings.  Even though we don't close until 5.30pm ourselves, we still have time to make it as it involves only a slight detour on the way home.

The only thing I can complain about is that the level of temptation is overwhelming.  Quite often our Saturday evening dinner ends up being a few of their wonderful cheeses with whatever condiments and nibbles we buy or can rustle up at home.

Their selection of cheeses include many award-winning British cheeses such as the fabulous Cornish Yarg (a favourite) and cheeses such as Harrogate Blue from the North Yorkshire based Shepherds Purse.

Sometimes we branch out into their cooked meats and almost always can't resist leaving without at least one of their homemade Chicken & Pancetta pies (when they have some left).  They are sublime.  If you buy one thing from them, make it one of these.  You won't regret it!!

So, what else have they got?  Olives, sundried tomatoes etc...

... bread, a whole selection of delicious crackers...

... pates, chutneys, pasta, condiments, cooking sauces...

... a chilled cabinet full of assorted goodies (goose fat for perfect roast potatoes anyone?) and we even noticed some Naan bread, which we've been managing without because we didn't think we could find it from anywhere little and local.  Their big freezer cabinet is similarly packed with house made ready meals ready to put in the oven plus things like Vegetarian Pates from Welsh company Patchwork.

There's a big selection of tea and coffee from companies like The Blending Room (see our Saturday Market post from a couple of days ago) and TeaPigs.

And two sections dedicated to sweets and biscuits.  Now we're talking.  Check out the Yorkshire made products, like Yorkshire Parkin from Lottie Shaw's.

They also have deep south inspired sweets from Walkington's own Dixie Kitchen where owner Sally McIntosh (originally from Alabama) whips up American classics such as Butter Almond Crunch, Pecan Rocky Road, Peanut Butter Balls and these Creamy Louisiani Pralines (which just happened to fall into our basket on Saturday).  What's a few calories between friends?

But we've really left the best to last.  Just look at their wine collection.  Makes me go all dreamy :-)

But last Saturday it was for beer that we rushed to Roberts & Speight after work.  Just look at those beautiful labels calling out to be bought.

Their British beers include good selections from the local Wold Top and Great Newsome Breweries.  But they also have (very exciting) American craft beers including two of our favourites - Goose Island and Brooklyn Brewery.

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A basket full of lovely beer and Sunday to look forward to.  Happy smile.

4 good reasons to shop on Saturday Market

Noise, bustle and brightly coloured awnings.  Don't you just love it when you stumble across a really great market?  We blogged a couple of weeks ago about how much we love Columbia Road flower market in London and I remember that before we moved to Beverley, we'd drive over to spend the weekend with friends and rave about the market.  Now I think we probably take it for granted.  We scurry past on the way to work on a Saturday morning, occasionally stopping to pick something up but never really strolling and soaking it all in.

So this morning, we made an effort to see it with fresh eyes.

The plant stall was looking particularly smart, perhaps due to the fact that Spring has finally arrived.

The really helpful guy in charge gave us some advice about looking after the beautiful bright orange Fritillaria Imperial 'Aurora' we bought for £3...

... there was a tempting yellow thing that will apparently grow in water (maybe one to spruce up our pond?)...

... plus a whole row of  veggies...

... and cheerful looking spring flowers.

Thierry from T C Patisserie started his business on Beverley, Cottingham and Pocklington markets before opening his cafe on Lairgate which he runs with his wife Nicky.

Thierry, a formally trained patissier, makes all kinds of cakes and other goodies.  The market stall is usually packed with croissants, pain au chocolate and other temptations.

The Blending Room is another local foodie success that started life on Beverley market and you'll still find them there every Saturday.  Based in Hull, they are small batch coffee roasters and sell a range of high quality coffees and speciality teas.

The photo's courtesy of Maru Market who will also deliver The Blending Room's products direct to your door.

My fourth and final market recommendation is Ford Framing.  I tend to forget that they come to the market because if I need a frame or a mount cutting, I normally call into their shop at North Bar Within where they also sell original paintings by British artists.

But the market stall is packed with ready-made frames in different shapes and sizes and if they don't have what you want, you can order it to pick up the following week.

There must be 50 stalls on the market (that's a complete guess) so making just 4 recommendations doesn't really seem fair but it could turn into the longest blog post ever otherwise.  But I will give just a quick reminder of everything you can get on there - meat, bread, olives, fish, flowers, cheese, hardware, pet stuff, sweets and a whole lot more.  Plus the joy of browsing and just enjoying the market.  That's got to be worth an hour on a Saturday morning.

When little and local becomes a challenge

Have you been watching Revolution, the new US TV drama?  If not, I shouldn't bother, I don't think it's going to be winning any awards.  I only ask because it's about what happens when the power goes out and never comes back on again and it got me thinking about the things we take for granted.  Not in any deep, spiritual way but those low level, everyday things we don't even give a second thought.

With that in mind and in the interests of balance, we thought it was about time to do a blog post on the things we've had to do without or have struggled to find during our little and local  month.

Music
Seriously, is there ANYWHERE left to buy music that isn't online or in a supermarket?  We've had a month with no downloads and we're even stuck for buying lovely Niece No 1's specially requested birthday present - a Pop Party 11 CD.

It'll have to be a locally purchased gift plus a cheque so that she can buy the CD herself.  By the way, if anyone has any ideas for a brilliant present for a singing, dancing 11 year old that we can buy little and local, all suggestions gratefully received!

Technology
I nearly slipped up the other day and bought an app online but caught myself just in time.  I wanted  a barcode scanner for my phone to test some technology we want to use in the shop.  It's hard to believe that Apple's App Store was only launched in 2008.  Five years on, downloading apps is such an integral part of life for most of us that we barely give it a second thought.

Petrol
Back in 2006 or 7 (not sure which), the comedian Dave Gorman travelled across America from coast to coast, trying not to give any money to the man.  

As he puts it:

In other words, no Holiday Inns, no Best Westerns and no Comfort Suites.  No Shells, no Arcos and no BP gas stations.  No MacDonalds, no Starbucks and no chains of any kind.  Just Mom & Pop businesses all the way.

The resulting film and book, America Unchained, are well worth checking out.  But my main point is that it's absolutely incredible that he managed to fill up at independently owned petrol stations across the country.  I'm not sure if he'd get past Grimsby if he tried it here.  And we have failed miserably in this area too.  Apart from the accidental Wickes incident, it's the only area that has completely stumped us.  And hopefully you'll forgive us for cheating a little here - it's impossible to run a business without being mobile.

Clothes
Now there are a lot of independent clothes shops in Beverley.  And good ones too.  Like Teatree Bay on Toll Gavel.

In fact, there are so many that they deserve their own blog post really, which I'll try and get sorted.

The fault is not with them, it's with me.  I hate clothes shopping and I'm lazy.  Not a great combination.  Add to that my less than svelte figure and slightly odd shape and you end up with a clothes shopping nightmare.  I generally put it off so I just haven't done any this month.  This despite the fact that I have a hole in my favourite jeans which is threatening to become indecent.

I am ashamed to admit that I assume that I won't be able to find what I want in my size in a little & local so I don't bother looking.  As an independent retailer I can tell you that it's like a knife in the heart every time someone says to you "Oh, I didn't know you stock that, I bought mine online/at John Lewis/in York" (delete as appropriate).  And yet, I'm basically doing the same thing.  Shame on me.  I promise to try harder.


And despite sitting here racking my brains for the last 5 minutes, I really can't thing of anything else that has been really challenging.  We're so lucky.  Beverley's got all most of our everyday needs covered with little & local restaurants, take-aways, food shops (which we've written about quite a lot!), gift shops (there's a great one called Amanti in Wednesday Market, I hear), shoe and clothes shops, hardware and even a Chemist (Spinks on Albert Terrace).  And as for our occasional needs and wants - you can even buy furniture, curtains, white goods and jewellery (special occasion or otherwise) from a fine little and local establishment.  Cool, huh?

Weekly Shop No 3

We've only got 1 week of our little & local project left to go so this will be our last weekly shop report.  It's gone so quickly and I feel as though we're just hitting our stride with it.

This was today's shop, minus a couple of tins of tomatoes which I completely forgot to put out for the photo.

Our window cleaners arrived just as I was doing the photos and judging by the looks they were giving me, now think I'm completely barmy ;-)

The biggest thing I've noticed is that the whole shopping process has become much quicker now that we know what we can get where.  Our basic shop takes about 45 minutes taking in the butcher, the greengrocer, the fishmonger, Jacks and the bread and fruit and veg stalls on Wednesday Market.  The extra bits, we try and do when we're passing (see our earlier post about O'Brians and Maple News).

Instead of giving you the full shopping list this week, I thought I'd tell you what we plan to eat so that you can judge whether we're getting good value for money out of what we've bought locally.

Dinners
Lamb curry
Keralan prawns with basmati rice
Lebanese chicken with green lentils
Jacket Potatoes (with ragu sauce left over and frozen from last week)
Vegetarian shepherd's pie
Spiced haddock with bombay potatoes
Pork with cashews, chilli and mint

Lunches
Rolls with roast pork
Thai spiced carrot soup
Lentil and feta salad

Looking at the picture, I'm struck by how similar our food shop looks every week.  Maybe it's just putting it out on the table that makes it look that way.  We do a fair bit of cooking but it could be that we're always attracted to the same type of recipe.  The last couple of weeks they've had wonderful fresh looking fennel and globe artichoke in the greengrocer but both are a bit out of my comfort zone.  I've never cooked a globe artichoke and the only thing I've ever done with fennel is put it in a fish pie.  So I feel as though I'm still missing out on buying some of the nicest, freshest stuff.  By the way, if anyone has any great recipes for those ingredients, please share!

So, the reckoning.  We spent £72.89 in a total of 9 local shops.  The Tesco comparison shop was £75.99, £3.10 more expensive.  I had to substitute a few items because I couldn't find single plums and rhubarb on Tesco's website so I put kiwis and pears in my basket instead.  That's the second week in a row that little and local has come in cheaper which is a bit of a surprise but a very happy one.

What ever happened to the General Store?

When I was a kid, my mum (a woman of many and varied careers) owned a village shop and Post Office for a while.  You know, the kind you used to find everywhere.  Our tiny village in the picturesque Cotswolds somehow managed to sustain not one but two little shops and its own Post Office.  Three jelly teddies for half a penny, cream soda in returnable bottles and fresh cream cakes picked up from the bakery on the way to school in the morning.  Those were the days!

Image by Peter Adams/Getty Images published in The Times

I guess it was what you'd call a General Store.  That tiny space was crammed full of what would now be considered to be a 'random' assortment of goods from sweeties to sewing needles and eggs to envelopes.  But what all those things had in common was that they were the stuff that people need and use.  Basically, a supermarket in miniature form.

But you hardly ever see them these days.  Whatever happened to them?  I guess that supermarkets came along and convinced us all that it was much more convenient to shop with them instead.  But I'm feeling optimistic today and wondering if it isn't time for a general store renaissance.  Maybe not with the full-on, crazy combination of goods we used to sell but a more contemporary, pared down version.

I may be onto something as there are 2 shops in Beverley that have undergone recent make-overs and both have come to our aid more than once in the last 3 weeks.

The first is O'Brians in the Molescroft parade of shops on Woodhall Way, recently taken over by Kieran O'Brian.  We've known the entrepreneurial Kieran for a while as he also owns KPO recycling who collect our cardboard waste from the shop.

When I popped in today I had a long chat with the lovely Kieran.  His theory is that people of 'my generation' (and I swear that at this point, I hadn't even mentioned the half penny jelly teddies) are culturally conditioned into supermarket shopping but that there's a younger generation who already think differently.  Maybe he's right.  I really hope so.  And if there's any justice, this little shop deserves to do well.  It's got fruit and veg...

... a little meat and dairy section, with meat from a local butcher John Marson and yogurt, cream, butter and creme fraiche from Longley Farm in West Yorkshire.

There's a bakery section, cleaning and household stuff....

... and a really handy section full of store cupboard stuff.  If you've been reading the blog regularly, you'll know that we've been missing cereal so Antony will be overjoyed that I grabbed him some Cornflakes today.

There's also a rack of dried herbs....

... and, oh joy, a small selection of fresh herbs.  But the great thing is, they're ones that you actually want.  And I was incredibly impressed to see Vanilla Pods, which I'd assumed I wouldn't be able to get anywhere except the supermarket.

You even get service with a smile.

The last couple of times I've been there, there's been a really steady flow of customers nipping in which is great to see.  And you can even order online for home delivery through We Deliver Local.

The second shop that I wanted to mention is Maple News on Maple Drive.

It's a shop I haven't used until recently when we started dropping our parcels off there for courier collection.  To be honest, I didn't really know it was there and it doesn't look very glamorous from the outside but I now think that it's a bit of a hidden gem.  It's got all your normal newsagenty stuff but has also been the only little & local place I've found so far to get shampoo and deodorant - just as well, as I was getting a bit low!

They've also got tinned goods which means I can pick up my tinned tomatoes when I drop off my parcels...

... and it turns out that I can get cereal here too.  If only I'd realised sooner :-)

In many rural communities, local people are re-embracing the concept of the General Store and creating community-owned village shops.  According to the Plunkett Foundation, they are one of the leading success stories of the UK co-operative and social enterprise movement.  In 1992 there were just 33 community-owned shops.  Now there are 303 with a further 20 anticipated to open by the end of 2013.  Maybe it really is a sign that the tide is turning and people are looking for a different shopping experience.

If you want to feel inspired, check out the Brockweir and Hewelsfield Village Shop which boasts a cafe featuring local art exhibitions, local food, postage services, photocopying, a book exchange and a whole lot more.  Local living for the 21st century.

Only 7,000 Butchers Left in the UK

Have your meat shopping and / or eating habits changed in the wake of the horse meat scandal?  It seems that many people have been returning to buying meat at the butcher after years of getting it as part of their supermarket shop.  Which is great news for the butchers of the UK whose numbers, according to this piece in The Telegraph have decreased from 22,000 in the mid nineties to fewer than 7,000 now.  That's an astonishing decline so as shocking as the horse meat scandal was, it's good to know that there's a silver lining.

And we're really lucky.  Even after the recent closure of one of our butchers on Toll Gavel, we still have 2 remaining - the one on Norwood and Ye Olde Pork Shoppe in Wednesday Market.  So far during our little and local month, we've been using the latter because it's no more than a minute's walk from our shop but next week, I do plan to pop in to the one on Norwood as well.

I have to say that Ye Olde Pork Shoppe is very jaunty looking and appealing from the outside.

But have to confess to be very slightly intimidated by butchers in general (rather than this one in particular).  It's my issue not theirs - a lack of confidence in my own knowledge, I think.  But that said, I've enjoyed my visits so far and have bought a whole chicken, chicken fillets, huge pork chops and some sausages.  All have been delicious.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the butcher happily joined the chicken for me.

And when I asked about the origins of the sausages, I discovered that they're made on the premises.  Can't get more local than that, I guess.  (Apologies for the slightly odd photo, I only remembered to get the camera out just as I was about to whizz them up into my pasta sauce mix).

Having done a bit more research on Maru Market's website, I now know that they smoke bacon and gammon in the shop themselves and that the majority of their stock comes from within a 30 mile radius.  All of the pork is free range and comes from prize winning Anna's Happy Trotters farm near Howden.  The lamb is sourced from Roos, near Withernsea and many of the chickens on sale are from a farm in the village of Seaton, near Hornsea.  The beef is sourced from a range of farms within Yorkshire.

Thanks John at Maru Market for all that helpful info - I haven't quite reached that level of chattiness with the butcher myself yet!  And if anyone reading this doesn't yet know about Maru Market, it's a brilliant service that lets you order groceries online from our local Beverley shops and have them delivered direct to your door.  At the moment, you can order meat, fish, fruit and veg, and tea and coffee.  We're hoping that John will do a guest post on the blog sometime soon.

Sorry, I digress.  Back to the butcher.  They also do cooked meats, sausage rolls, pies etc and they look pretty fine, although I can't say I've sampled them as yet.

If you're like me and a little apprehensive about going to the butcher, why not go anyway?  I reckon they'll be getting their fair share of people like me who don't know a ribeye from a porterhouse and hopefully, they'll be welcoming us all with open arms!

Image from Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc.

Top 10 Reasons to Think Local

So why bother shopping local?  Since the whole purpose of this blog is to see (a) if it's still possible to do all our shopping locally; and (b) to raise the profile of all our little & local shops, we thought we should maybe say a bit more about why we think it's important.

For us it's all about being present.  Physically engaging with the people and places that make up our town and our community.  This brilliant manifesto produced by Totally Locally makes us feel happy just reading it.

That's the emotional tug but there's also loads of well-documented and concrete benefits to local shopping.  We found this Top 10 on an American website called Sustainable Connections and to be honest, it says it much better than we could ever hope to do...

1. Buy Local - Support yourself: Several studies have shown that when you buy from an independent, locally owned business, rather than a nationally owned businesses, significantly more of your money is used to make purchases from other local businesses, service providers and farms - continuing to strengthen the economic base of the community.
2. Support community groups: Non-profit organisations receive an average 250% more support from smaller business owners than they do from large businesses.
3. Keep our community unique: Where we shop, where we eat and have fun - all of it makes our community home. Our one-of-a-kind businesses are an integral part of the distinctive character of this place. Our tourism businesses also benefit.  “When people go on vacation they generally seek out destinations that offer them the sense of being someplace, not just anyplace.” ~ Richard Moe, President, National Historic Preservation Trust
4. Reduce environmental impact: Locally owned businesses can make more local purchases requiring less transportation and generally set up shop in town or city centers as opposed to developing on the fringe. This generally means contributing less to sprawl, congestion, habitat loss and pollution.
5. Create more good jobs: Small local businesses are the largest employer nationally and in our community, provide the most jobs to residents.
6. Get better service: Local businesses often hire people with a better understanding of the products they are selling and take more time to get to know customers. 
7. Invest in community: Local businesses are owned by people who live in this community, are less likely to leave, and are more invested in the community’s future.
8. Put your taxes to good use: Local businesses in town centers require comparatively little infrastructure investment and make more efficient use of public services as compared to nationally owned stores entering the community.
9. Buy what you want, not what someone wants you to buy: A marketplace of tens of thousands of small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over the long-term.  A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based not on a national sales plan but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers, guarantees a much broader range of product choices.
10. Encourage local prosperity: A growing body of economic research shows that in an increasingly homogenized world, entrepreneurs and skilled workers are more likely to invest and settle in communities that preserve their one-of-a-kind businesses and distinctive character.

It may not always be possible to buy local but we can think local FIRST.  As they put it:

Think local first + Buy local when you can = Being a local!

We couldn't agree more.

We've fixed it

If you've tried to comment on the blog and couldn't, it's because we got one of the settings wrong.  Sorry!  And thanks to the lovely Anne for pointing it out when she came in the shop earlier today.

Hopefully it's fixed and anyone should be able to comment now.

Waste Not, Want Not

Is there any more depressing sight than fruit and vegetables on the turn?  They just make me feel sad.  I'm not the sort of person that buys up a bag of slightly squishy fruit for £1 at the end of market day.  I can't bear the sight or smell of overly ripe bananas, let alone contemplate eating them.

I explain all of this just so that you know my starting point.  I'm not one of those people who never wastes anything and who can whip up a delicious meal from a a few out of date eggs, a parsnip and some wilting lettuce.  Although to be honest, you'd have to be a a culinary genius to pull that one off.  I throw things away.  Probably things that could be used.  And in a weird way, the advent of the brown bin has made me feel less bad than I should about it.  As if the fact that its being composted somewhere is OK because at least its not going to landfill.

But writing this blog has made me pay attention to what I'm buying and I've started to wonder if we could use more and waste less.  I came across this brilliant website 'Love Food Hate Waste' which has a page of facts and statistics that make interesting and scary reading.  Did you know that we throw away 7.2 million tonnes of food and drink from our homes every year in the UK, and more than half of it we could have eaten?  Or that wasting this food costs the average household £480 a year, rising to £680 for a family with children?

So when I opened the fridge to find some puckered and softening tomatoes staring back at me, I decided to make soup.  I forgot to take photos until I'd already started chopping so you'll have to take my word for it that they were unhappy looking tomatoes.  There still weren't enough of them to make soup though, so I bought some more at Fresh & Fruity, the greengrocer on Dyer Lane.  They had loads of choice so I bought these lovely little ones

and a whole bag of older, bigger ones for 50p.  They were still firm and nice looking though so it was a real bargain.

I found an easy recipe in Jamie Oliver's 30 Minute Meals which was basically to put all the tomatoes (big ones quartered) in a roasting dish with a halved chilli, some crushed garlic and some olive oil....

... roast them in the oven until they go soft and start to colour.  While they're cooking, fry some chopped red onions until they're soft then add balsamic vinegar (he says 4 tablespoons) and allow to cook off before pouring in your cooked tomatoes.

Then add your basil and blitz in a food processor (or I did it in the pan with stick blender).

I think I probably added seasoning somewhere along the line and I also added some water because it was a bit thicker than I wanted.

The end result was this.

Probably all the better for being made with a few really ripe tomatoes.  So I'd count my first real foray into wasting less as a success and I feel like I did a good thing.

I've probably heard the phrase 'Waste Not, Want Not' a thousand times without giving any thought to its meaning but today I looked it up.  It probably originated in Yorkshire and means that if you waste nothing, you will want for nothing.  Well, I'm not sure I completely buy that philosophy but if I could save 480 quid this year, I'd be a very happy girl.