Over the last two days I have felt a little bit like the old woman in the ‘local shop’ from The League of Gentlemen, asking shopkeepers “Is this local?”. I’ve realised that it’s rarely enough to take the first answer at face value.
At least with fruit, veg and dairy the provenance is either known exactly (because you are talking to the grower), or is often marked on the produce even in supermarkets.
But with store cupboard foods it’s a little trickier. Anything that contains more than one ingredient starts to become a little mysterious. Provenance isn’t marked on the packaging, or if it is it simply has the country of origin. (With the notable exception of Silver Spoon, who market their clearly-labelled East Anglian sugar on the front of the packet as ‘homegrown’. Well done.)
You can walk into a shop and ask what is local and be told “Everything!”, but once you start to probe on individual products it turns out that nothing fits the brief of being from East Anglia, perhaps having one local ingredient mixed in with lots of less local or continental ones. I even came across some fish which was ‘from’ Lowestoft, but on further investigation turned out to have been farmed in Scotland, and then just smoked in Lowestoft.
Local beer is another funny one. I went into a shop this evening that had lots of ‘local’ beers, all from local breweries in East Anglia. I felt a bit bad questioning the chap behind the till as he was trying to watch the England game which was clearly at a critical point, but he was helpful when I asked him whether the ingredients would have been locally grown. “Probably not, no-one really grows hops that locally.” Still not really a definite answer, but food for thought (I still bought the beer by the way).
That got us thinking though, is it best to buy beer from a local brewery? Or would it be better to buy from one based in a traditional brewing region like Kent? If brewed in Kent the ingredients may only travel a short distance to the brewery before being transported to the shop in Cambridge. But if I buy beer from a Norfolk brewery, presumably there is more transport involved getting the ingredients to the brewery first?
Hmm. It’s not easy this local eating malarkey. But we did manage to survive our first 24 hours, on breaded plaice goujons, potato wedges and broccoli; rhubarb compote with oat topping; porridge with strawberries; home-made own-grown bread, salad and goats cheese; and leek risotto (rice is one of our exceptions).
Posted by Vicky