Harvest Festival is here, which gets Richard Negus and Callum McInerney-Riley wondering whether any of us actually know what is in season anymore.
After an opening involving harvest hymns, Sunday school, Sandhurst church services and the possibility of a religious denomination based around lager, they eventually get onto food.
Why can you buy asparagus and strawberries all year round? Have supermarkets disconnected us from the seasons? And why aren’t we better at celebrating the particular foods grown in particular places, rather than simply importing the same things whenever we fancy them?
There is a December blackberry cheesecake, the defence of the Sunday roast, memories of proper British food and some fairly unpleasant processed food from childhood. Richard remembers bedrooms full of stored apples, they discuss pickling and preserving gluts, and eventually conclude that the easiest gateway into eating British may simply be a full English breakfast.
Richard also has details of the Big Breckland Breakfast in aid of rural mental health charity YANA.
CountrySlide is a podcast that looks at farming, conservation and life in the British countryside.
You can contact us by email on: contact@countryslide.co.uk
Edited and Produced by Amy Green.
This transcript was generated using AI and may contain minor errors.
Richard Negus: We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land and it is fed and watered by God's almighty hand.
Callum McInerney-Riley: That was incredible.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I was going to do cauliflowers fluffy and cabbages green.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I love a harvest song, me.
Richard Negus: Yeah, you went to one of those Baptist churches, didn't you?
Richard Negus: I can tell that sounds like the sort of thing that they would sing.
Callum McInerney-Riley: No, special school.
Richard Negus: Yeah, I mean, look, it is something I have to say.
Richard Negus: I am not.
Richard Negus: a regular church goer.
Richard Negus: When I say regular, I mean I don't get invited to weddings that often anymore because of my age.
Richard Negus: And funerals though, they're coming up soon.
Richard Negus: Yeah, let's be honest, at my age, that's all I've got to look forward to.
Richard Negus: And obviously the second weddings.
Richard Negus: And do I go at Christmas?
Richard Negus: I usually go at Christmas and to that.
Richard Negus: But I haven't been to a Harvest Festival service for a long while.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I don't think I've ever been to a harvest service.
Richard Negus: No.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Never.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I did go to, I did go to like, I don't know, what's the kids, the kids junior version of church.
Richard Negus: Oh yeah, Sunday school.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, Sunday school, that's the one.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And we have all these children and they're telling the sort of God squad stories and the fables and stuff.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And I'm just rattling them off left, right and centre and all the other kids, they're meant to be in this class all the time and they haven't got a clue about Noadi's Ark.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And I thought, where have you been?
Callum McInerney-Riley: What have you been doing here?
Callum McInerney-Riley: You've been here for two years and I just turned up on me day off.
Richard Negus: Eating the crayons largely.
Richard Negus: I mean, I seem to remember Sunday school was largely wax crayons.
Richard Negus: You were allowed to have some play time and then they read.
Richard Negus: from a children's Bible, some of the stories, which most of the time always made everyone sound very vindictive.
Richard Negus: And I just thought, I don't want to be judged by anybody.
Richard Negus: So I just gave it up.
Richard Negus: Although, I have to say, in the army, I used to go, certainly when I was at Sandhurst, I used to go to
Richard Negus: church services there, largely because you got given cups of tea and biscuits.
Richard Negus: And then my friends who are Roman Catholics told me that they actually got given wine and beer at the Roman Catholic after sort of after the service type thing.
Richard Negus: And it was remarkable.
Richard Negus: Yeah, how suddenly the blood of Christ.
Richard Negus: Exactly.
Richard Negus: It's amazing how many people suddenly turned religious when they found out that you had better food and drink at the Catholic.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I saw there's one in there's one in Africa where their church, they celebrate beer.
Callum McInerney-Riley: So you go, it's a small village, you go in and I think instead of instead of our men, they say Amstel.
Richard Negus: Shut up, that's a lie.
Callum McInerney-Riley: That's the church for me, baby.
Richard Negus: The church of lager and latter day IPA.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I don't even like beer that much, but I'd sign up.
Richard Negus: I do.
Richard Negus: And so sign me up.
Richard Negus: I'm off to Africa.
Richard Negus: Anyway, listen, Harvest Festival.
Richard Negus: What are we going to talk about related to that?
Callum McInerney-Riley: I've got one more fun law.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Remember we had the stories of my African family.
Richard Negus: Yes.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Well, Africans are very religious.
Richard Negus: Yes.
Callum McInerney-Riley: So we used to go to African church in London, sort of somewhere around the Tottenham area.
Callum McInerney-Riley: My dad and I were the only white folk in there and it was a very jump up and down sort of happy, clappy church.
Callum McInerney-Riley: What an amazing place.
Callum McInerney-Riley: What a happy place to be.
Callum McInerney-Riley: They're very welcoming, surprisingly, but you definitely would feel like an alien going in.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And I do remember being like, what am I doing in here?
Callum McInerney-Riley: But great, great experience.
Richard Negus: Did they have sort of.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, they're jumping up and down, everyone's praising the Lord, reaching to the skies for Jesus.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I mean, I imagine it's not like that if you go to a rural village hall.
Richard Negus: No, we did have, actually, it's quite amusing, we hadn't got a vicar for quite a long while.
Richard Negus: And we've got a lovely chap called Andrew, who was the
Richard Negus: sort of, I don't know what they call him.
Richard Negus: But anyway, he was like the rector come lay preacher type thing.
Richard Negus: And he's a very high church, Church of England person.
Richard Negus: And he decided to do a sung matins service, which is basically singing psalms from out of the thing.
Richard Negus: And he did it, went through quite a lot.
Richard Negus: And we're all sort of shifting around rather uncomfortably thinking, what on earth is all this stuff.
Richard Negus: And there was a lovely guy called David who lived in the village who had been as a Geordie and he'd been a master mariner, merchant navy.
Richard Negus: And he said at the top of his voice, he goes, bloody hell man.
Richard Negus: He goes, I thought we're in a synagogue like here.
Richard Negus: And sort of everyone stopped and poor old Andrew went, oh anyway, oh man.
Richard Negus: And that was it.
Richard Negus: Yeah.
Richard Negus: So harvest festivals, why are we talking about harvest festivals, Callum?
Callum McInerney-Riley: Because it's that time.
Richard Negus: It's that time of year again.
Richard Negus: And so we thought, dear listeners, that it might be a sensible thing to come to the idea of food.
Richard Negus: I mean, I have to say, it's a funny old time, really.
Richard Negus: We have Harvest Festival now in modern farming.
Richard Negus: Harvest is more or less well and truly over a long while ago.
Richard Negus: But
Richard Negus: Obviously, we've got huge numbers of vegetables, which are still sort of in the ground and coming up.
Richard Negus: I think I've had the last of my parents' runner beans now.
Richard Negus: They used to appear daily with a little bag of runner beans of their spares and tomatoes and whatnot.
Richard Negus: But one of the things I am particularly, and you as well-being much more of a foodie than I am, is it something that I'm worried about the fact that because
Richard Negus: we shop in supermarkets.
Richard Negus: The seasonality is largely A forgotten concept now with most shoppers.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, We had this discussion the other day and I think we discussed food at length in the one about the
Callum McInerney-Riley: when I went to France and made the observations of how they eat far more local than we do.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And I assume, no, I didn't notice particularly, but I assume they eat seasonally.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Certainly like the fruit was very much in season then and you'd be getting fresh melons from the supermarket and that sort of thing.
Callum McInerney-Riley: But I just don't think that we, not only do we not eat seasonally,
Callum McInerney-Riley: but the stuff isn't available to us like it should be.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Like you can buy asparagus any time of the year, but obviously British asparagus grows at a certain time.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Interestingly, I had a food tasting at the wedding and there was all these different bits.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And bear in mind, we're looking at December.
Richard Negus: Yeah.
Callum McInerney-Riley: So I've picked all the ingredients
Callum McInerney-Riley: And one of the things was a blackberry cheesecake.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And I said, I don't really, it's December.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I don't want a blackberry cheesecake because none of them are in season.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And the guy turned around and looked at me and said, don't worry, they're in season somewhere.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And I thought, you are correct, but I just want, I want stuff that's local, that's fresh, that's nice.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I don't want a
Callum McInerney-Riley: blackberry crumb, black, I mean a crumble would have been, sounds quite good actually.
Callum McInerney-Riley: But I just don't think you should be eating, not that you shouldn't be eating stuff because that's, eat what you want, right?
Callum McInerney-Riley: But if you can eat stuff that's fresh and you can eat stuff that's local and you can support local farmers, that's brilliant.
Callum McInerney-Riley: It tastes better.
Callum McInerney-Riley: It is better for you.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And I just don't know that we're set up
Callum McInerney-Riley: to allow the everyday consumer to do that.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I think it's basically impossible unless you're going to maybe go to a farm shop.
Richard Negus: Well, I think that's half the problem, but it's interesting.
Richard Negus: See, I reckon the old French, I mean, you're talking about your wedding breakfast, as they call it, even though it will be a lunchtime.
Richard Negus: Never know quite why they call it that.
Richard Negus: Yes, silly old fashioned language.
Richard Negus: Anyway, so they're asking you as a celebratory meal,
Richard Negus: And one of the things I think the continentals get right more than us is that they celebrate food.
Richard Negus: They don't just have a harvest festival.
Richard Negus: They have festivals all the time because there's a various season.
Richard Negus: The only place I've seen, notably in England, where they have
Richard Negus: proper celebrations of a particular crop because I was talking the other week at the Alborough Food and Drink Festival, which was a nice event.
Richard Negus: But there wasn't like a, Mike Warner did a let's champion seafood that comes from here, but it still wasn't front and centre.
Richard Negus: But I did notice that in at the three county show when I went there in the summer, the Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire
Richard Negus: they actually do have very specific festivals around various things.
Richard Negus: So they like have a plum festival because of Evesham plums.
Richard Negus: Yeah.
Richard Negus: And they have an Evesham asparagus festival.
Richard Negus: And they have another festival that celebrates the, there's a certain Worcester pair or something like that.
Richard Negus: And they celebrate that.
Richard Negus: So for some reason, those 3 counties along the Welsh borders there
Richard Negus: have retained this celebratory thing about that particular thing.
Richard Negus: And obviously the Scots have the Burns night where they go and have a whole hoo-ha about a sheep's stomach stuffed with porridge and offal and then use it as an excuse to get drunk.
Richard Negus: But we don't seem
Richard Negus: although we might have a harvest festival, so we are celebrating that the harvest is in, we're not actually celebrating what that harvest is very much.
Richard Negus: And do you think that's because the supermarkets basically don't want there to be a hooray, it's the asparagus festival?
Richard Negus: Because like you say, it's probably when the asparagus has finished here, it's off to Peru or Morocco.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I think the answer is twofold.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I think potentially the supermarkets, if they could make a good profit out of highlighting local food, farmers and this sort of thing, and they could make, if it was good for the bottom line, they'd do it.
Callum McInerney-Riley: There's not really any incentive to say this is in season now, local British farmers.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And there's also a negative to that.
Callum McInerney-Riley: So when they highlight this is in season, it's really good.
Callum McInerney-Riley: It comes from local farmers and after whatever month it's then, imported from wherever it is.
Callum McInerney-Riley: So they also highlight the imported food so that they're probably getting no upside and a lot of negative.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, probably then not worth doing.
Richard Negus: That's true, actually, because I suppose all they want to do is really just get people in the rest in the shop.
Richard Negus: So I want to know another thing, Ryan.
Richard Negus: I was thinking back on this because I had to write a piece for The Telegraph.
Richard Negus: It hasn't been published yet.
Richard Negus: I think it's out this Sunday because it's British food fortnight this week.
Richard Negus: And what's that?
Richard Negus: It's basically it's a not very well run.
Richard Negus: but farmer-led, and I say not very well run, not to be disparaging, it just hasn't been picked up by enough people, if I'll be perfectly honest.
Richard Negus: It's one of those things.
Callum McInerney-Riley: It's hard to get buy-in for something like that.
Richard Negus: I know it is, it's very hard and it's trying to actually promote what we're talking about today.
Richard Negus: And it's a farmer-led project where they're trying to highlight seasonality, eat British and
Richard Negus: Ben Aveling at Radmore Farm, he did a campaign last year to try and get more people eating a proper Sunday roast.
Richard Negus: And some journalists writing for The Telegraph basically wrote a piece a couple of weeks ago saying that the Sunday roast is crap.
Richard Negus: It's highly salted, overly expensive, apparently, which I really can't quite understand that one.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I tend to agree on the meat side of things.
Richard Negus: Okay.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Like a chicken, a chicken is pretty cheap.
Callum McInerney-Riley: But a chicken of all the roast dinners, chicken roast is the worst one.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Can we collectively agree that that's the worst one?
Richard Negus: Yes, agreed.
Callum McInerney-Riley: It doesn't have to be.
Richard Negus: No.
Callum McInerney-Riley: But you know when someone puts a decent bit of topside in front of you and you've got loads of beef gravy over the top and someone's taken the time to make it like that, it's so much better than a sort of very mid.
Richard Negus: Yeah, I agree with you.
Richard Negus: So what Ben Aveling was trying to sort of say with his support the roast isn't just the fact that it's what's in it, but he's saying that in our busy lives, it's one of the few times when families get around a table and they celebrate the food.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Kids hate most of the things on a roast dinner.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I want to say that.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Like roast potato and gravy, and then you'll be all right.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And then maybe Yorkshire puddings.
Callum McInerney-Riley: But trying to get kids to eat 4 veg and some chicken is quite hard sometimes.
Richard Negus: Yes, I suppose I'm now sort of looking at Charlie through the rose tinted spectacles that he's a 16 year old who would literally eat his own leg if he poured some gravy on it.
Richard Negus: So yeah.
Richard Negus: So the whole ethos is to try and not just celebrate the food.
Richard Negus: This Telegraph article was sort of saying it was crap.
Richard Negus: didn't taste very good and we should be in, she started sort of listing all these various foreign dishes.
Richard Negus: I mean, to give her a due, she didn't say go and use foreign food in it, but she was saying foreign dishes.
Richard Negus: Now when I was a kid, I don't know about you, because I am considerably older than you, but foreign food didn't really come on our radar.
Richard Negus: I think my mum would cook lasagna and she would cook
Richard Negus: spaghetti bolognese, but most of the time we are talking proper British staples.
Richard Negus: We were a Le Ro's beef family.
Callum McInerney-Riley: All I think is like my nan used to cook solely really classic British food.
Callum McInerney-Riley: There'd be shepherd's pies and cottage pies.
Callum McInerney-Riley: There'd be sort of ham, egg and chips.
Callum McInerney-Riley: All the classic
Callum McInerney-Riley: British staples, mission chips, all the, everything you can think of.
Richard Negus: Everything had chips and an egg on it.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Pub grub.
Richard Negus: Yeah.
Richard Negus: And the funny thing is though, right, is that if you, a few years back there was constantly, I think all TV used to be was they'd get a load of washed up comedians and sort of singers from the 90s and they would get them on there and they'd go, oh yeah, the 80s.
Richard Negus: The 80s, And they would always go and talk about Finders Crispy Pancakes and Viennettas and things that you put in the toaster and then burnt your mouth with what they call cheese toasties.
Richard Negus: I experienced none of this.
Richard Negus: I'm the same age as these people.
Richard Negus: And I go, I've heard of Finders Crispy Pancakes.
Richard Negus: But I've never even eaten one in my life.
Richard Negus: We weren't allowed them because we had roast everything.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Do you think we've gone the other way?
Callum McInerney-Riley: Do you think we've, because I used to eat this sort of stuff when I was a kid.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And now I think most parents would look at it as like, unless they're in a desperate situation, most parents look at things like
Callum McInerney-Riley: So eat these pasta things he's just put some water in or things that were boil in the bag or just.
Richard Negus: Yeah, Cod in cod in parsley sauce in a bag.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I think that was a thing.
Richard Negus: No, I mean, you just wouldn't, would you?
Callum McInerney-Riley: It just sort of it just looked like a load of beer mats stuck together.
Callum McInerney-Riley: It was square.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I've never seen a square fish in my life.
Richard Negus: Yeah, exactly.
Richard Negus: It's a bit beer.
Richard Negus: I think that's perhaps what it was.
Richard Negus: It was
Richard Negus: paper mache, that was it in a bag and you boiled it and then you sort of sprinkled some parsley on it and thought it was being continental.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I think we're more food aware than ever before.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I think we know more about processed foods.
Callum McInerney-Riley: We know what's good for us.
Callum McInerney-Riley: We know what's bad for us.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And I think we're more aware and we should enable the consumer to make better choices.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I think they make better choices for their health.
Callum McInerney-Riley: but I think there's a way to go about making better choices for locality, supporting British farmers and eating seasonally.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I think there's a way to go.
Richard Negus: Yeah, I suppose that's it.
Richard Negus: So if we were trying to really push buy local, buy seasonal, what's the things that you think would be the most difficult to wean
Richard Negus: the great British public off that they have become so used to having 12 months of the year.
Richard Negus: What's the thing you think that people go, I've got to have it.
Richard Negus: I've got, I can't, I'm not have my strawberries even though it's February.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I think strawberries is a good exception because when they are available, probably promoted by Wimbledon,
Callum McInerney-Riley: But there's always strawberries available in the supermarket that are British.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And it's also a really good fun activity to take kids strawberry picking, even though you end up spending about 15 quid per punnet and they end up picking loads of white, random white ones that will never ripen in a million years.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Besides my PTSD from past experiences like that, I think strawberries are quite good.
Callum McInerney-Riley: They have those in, but generally berries is the one thing I think people wouldn't be like, oh, we only eat strawberries in June.
Richard Negus: Yeah.
Callum McInerney-Riley: They're just not going to do that.
Callum McInerney-Riley: They will, people will want December strawberries, whether you like it or not.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Blueberries, the same.
Callum McInerney-Riley: They'll want blueberries all year round.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Salad stuff, all your fresh things.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I don't think people would hack it if they couldn't get it all year round.
Richard Negus: Well, see that might be the thing because one of the other things about Harvest Festival was the idea that there was all of a sudden a glut and we all got excited because you had this glut and you had to now process it into a storable
Richard Negus: overwinter entity.
Richard Negus: So for example, you would be pickling everything.
Richard Negus: You would be parboiling things and sealing them up in jars and whatnot.
Richard Negus: And so I think the interesting thing is that like, if you think about it, we still have, you're talking about blackberries in your dessert.
Richard Negus: We've got in the freezer right now, blackberries that are in freezer bags.
Richard Negus: waiting to come out and they will be fine for making a crumble with or they will be all right if you want to go and cook them with some venison or some pigeon breasts or something like that.
Richard Negus: You wouldn't be wanting to go and necessarily eat them, pop in your mouth and eat them raw.
Richard Negus: But I think one of the things that we've actually forgotten about is that the harvest festival not only celebrated that you got the harvest in, but you had this glut and now you would have a period
Richard Negus: of lots of food preservation and we don't need to preserve stuff anymore because we can import it rather than wanting that taste of, I mean some apple varieties, right?
Richard Negus: They're storers, same with some potatoes.
Callum McInerney-Riley: They even store incredibly well.
Richard Negus: Exactly.
Richard Negus: Used to put them on.
Richard Negus: I mean, I can remember going to my grandmother's house and she had the huge number of bedrooms and there would be in every flipping bedroom, there would be newspapers laid out.
Richard Negus: Exactly.
Richard Negus: Oh God, there's bloody apples from two years ago.
Richard Negus: And you know, every one would, one other one would go off and they would then get chopped in half the
Richard Negus: bad bit thrown out for the thrushes and the blackbirds and the good bit would then be turned into, I don't know, apple sauce or something.
Richard Negus: And I think we've lost that.
Richard Negus: I'm sure that's a time thing because it does take quite a bit of time and fact.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I do know people that pickle and preserve things, but personally, I mean, I like pickling things, but I'll pickle things for 24 hours notice, not to
Callum McInerney-Riley: last myself a nuclear winter.
Callum McInerney-Riley: It seems like a big prepper thing to do.
Callum McInerney-Riley: It's not really an everyday man's hobby to be pickling a load of potatoes or whatever that might be.
Richard Negus: No, that's probably true actually.
Richard Negus: Do you know what I had this morning?
Richard Negus: I had for breakfast, we had some leftover new potatoes, which we had with a salad last night.
Richard Negus: And this morning I chopped them in half and I fried them up with two fried eggs for my breakfast.
Richard Negus: And I thought that is what I should be doing.
Richard Negus: A is not food waste, but secondly, it was a proper excuse to have.
Callum McInerney-Riley: You were close to a corned beef hash there.
Callum McInerney-Riley: would have been a few bits extra and you could have.
Richard Negus: I would have chucked a sausage in the pan, but I was told often not.
Richard Negus: I wasn't allowed to touch them because they've actually been made into a sausage casserole for tonight.
Richard Negus: Now, listen, speaking of breakfasts, I have a public service information announcement.
Richard Negus: because I've been asked by one of our wonderful patrons to let everyone know that the big Breckland breakfast, Breckland for those of you who don't know it, is in the south of Norfolk, north of Suffolk, the dry arid bit.
Richard Negus: there is a big Breckland breakfast in aid of Yana, which is a fantastic charity that tries to break down sort of rural isolation and you've got a friend to talk to in the farming and rural communities.
Richard Negus: And that is on Friday, the 23rd of October.
Richard Negus: at the Grain Kitchen at the English Distillery.
Richard Negus: So good old English whisky made there.
Richard Negus: Harling Road at Rowdham at 8.30am Friday the 23rd of October.
Richard Negus: The big Breckland breakfast.
Richard Negus: You just have to book a little ticket.
Richard Negus: I'm sure that producer Amy will put a link on the show notes thing.
Richard Negus: But I think
Richard Negus: That would be a good thing to attend.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Nice.
Richard Negus: Any road.
Richard Negus: Breakfast, I think that's the one thing, Callum.
Richard Negus: That's as English as it gets.
Richard Negus: The more people would probably eat an English breakfast, wouldn't they?
Callum McInerney-Riley: I think, well, you're not, you're certainly not buying bacon from anywhere other than British farmers, really.
Callum McInerney-Riley: You can get the random stuff, but generally you're buying bacon from British farmers.
Callum McInerney-Riley: You're buying sausages from British farmers.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Your eggs.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah.
Callum McInerney-Riley: That'll always, they don't really like, oh, although they did relax the.
Richard Negus: Yeah, and then look what came in.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Salmonella came in.
Richard Negus: There's a lesson for us all.
Callum McInerney-Riley: So yeah, British, British line standard eggs are like the best in the world.
Richard Negus: Yes, there you go.
Richard Negus: You see, so I mean, I think.
Callum McInerney-Riley: So we're all saved by the full English breakfast.
Callum McInerney-Riley: The full English breakfast.
Richard Negus: Although yes, I think so.
Richard Negus: I think basically what we should be celebrating is not only the Sunday roast because of its connotations of family togetherness, but if you generally want to have your gateway drug to eating British,
Richard Negus: is that you should shun the muesli, push it to one side, unless of course it's made with British ingredients like some of the Jordan stuff.
Richard Negus: And you should eat a full English every day.
Richard Negus: So I think a country slide public service announcement #2 is that we'd like to see more Harvard arteries.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Fill your arteries with pride.
Richard Negus: Yes, go on, be British.
Richard Negus: Die young.
Richard Negus: There's A T-shirt.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Fill your arteries with British pride.
Callum McInerney-Riley: full English breakfast on the front.
Richard Negus: Oh, what?
Richard Negus: I tell you what, that's a political t-shirt ever.
Richard Negus: Yes, we're support, we're tough on arteries, tough on the causes of hardened arteries.
Richard Negus: It's, yeah, it's, I think that's the way forward.
Richard Negus: That's definitely the next t-shirt.
Richard Negus: I mean, one of the problems I have got though, hash browns, when did they become a thing?
Callum McInerney-Riley: I don't know.
Callum McInerney-Riley: They've been slowly taken over by the potato tot, which is just a smaller version of the hash brown.
Richard Negus: Oh, is it?
Richard Negus: Is that what potato tot is?
Richard Negus: I have heard of it on American sort of sitcom things and stuff is that they, because I think the first time I ever came across potato tots was
Richard Negus: on an American comedy film, Napoleon Dynamite, and I had no idea what they were.
Richard Negus: And so is that what they are?
Richard Negus: So they're like a little hash brown.
Callum McInerney-Riley: They're just like a hash brown, but like it's the hash brown's little brother.
Richard Negus: Yeah.
Richard Negus: Oh dear, that's not, I think that's just put me off my breakfast.
Richard Negus: I wouldn't have that.
Richard Negus: So actually, what this is the secret is that when you make your dinner, intentionally cook too many potatoes and
Richard Negus: cook too much cabbage, and if you can get away with it, cook too many peas, then you can slap it all in a frying pan the next morning.
Callum McInerney-Riley: You lost me at peas.
Richard Negus: What?
Richard Negus: It's a proper ingredient for bubble and squeak.
Richard Negus: Obviously, in season, you would add a little bit of Brussels sprout to it, chop that up in, and you make a rosti, which in this country we call bubble and squeak, and then you put a fried egg on top, 3 rashers of bacon.
Callum McInerney-Riley: That's an absolute beaut.
Callum McInerney-Riley: How would you, if you were to put an action plan together, how would you eat seasonally?
Callum McInerney-Riley: I'm willing to bet that most people don't know what's in season and when.
Richard Negus: That is the absolute nth of the problem you have highlighted there is that people just don't know because we have become
Richard Negus: So removed from our food, which we've talked about on the show quite a few times.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I think it matters geographically as well, because if you go to Lincolnshire or somewhere like that, it's just...
Callum McInerney-Riley: The farming's everywhere.
Callum McInerney-Riley: You see fields of broccoli and stuff like that.
Callum McInerney-Riley: You don't have any of it.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Essex is not known for broccoli fields.
Callum McInerney-Riley: You might get kale.
Richard Negus: What would be your sort of, what would Essex be famed for?
Richard Negus: Is it, oh, I'm going to go to Essex because it's X food.
Richard Negus: Oysters, yes, exactly.
Richard Negus: So there you go, that's a good thing.
Richard Negus: And they do have an oyster festival there, don't they?
Richard Negus: So perhaps that would be it.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Hilarious that you go and get a seafood platter from Mersey and it'll be full of things like
Callum McInerney-Riley: like smoked salmon.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I think you didn't catch that down the edge, did you?
Richard Negus: No, I think you've hit the nail on the head is the way we could, and this is a note to the wonderful people who organise the British Food Fortnight, is that what local people should do
Richard Negus: is that they should celebrate a particular ingredient, a bit like Mike does with his fish or a bit like Hugo does with game is how we say, look, okay, so pheasant's in season right now.
Richard Negus: I'm going to show you 73 different ways of cooking that one particular ingredient.
Richard Negus: So perhaps that would be the way is that we should have more localised, a bit like they do in Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire, is we should have localised celebration festivals
Richard Negus: whereby we celebrate that one ingredient and build a meal around that one thing, which, the Scots do it with haggis.
Richard Negus: And that's funny old tasting stuff.
Richard Negus: So why can't we do it with, you know, I don't know.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And you can always, you can always check the label to see where it's grown.
Richard Negus: Yes.
Richard Negus: And if it's not grown in Britain, throw it in on the floor.
Richard Negus: Just open up the bag, tip it on the floor, say, oh no, oh no, it's broken.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Push it under the refrigerated counters, so no one will really find it.
Richard Negus: No, exactly.
Richard Negus: Do like you do when you go into Waterstones and you see a book written by an author you don't like.
Richard Negus: Put it in a different department or turn it back to from.
Richard Negus: That's it.
Richard Negus: So if you see
Richard Negus: Moroccan asparagus, or you see Egyptian strawberries, just literally move them to the back of the shelf.
Richard Negus: I mean, I know some poor old boy or girl has had to go and stack that shelf, so it's a bit unkind on them, but eventually Tesco's will get the message.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Just for comedy purposes, don't actually do that.
Callum McInerney-Riley: No, Other countries fruit is available.
Richard Negus: Yes, it's just \*\*\*\* though.
Richard Negus: Any rd, listen, I suppose we have probably
Richard Negus: leathered on enough.
Richard Negus: So we have decided that the best way to support Britain's farmers is to have a cooked breakfast every day, get heart failure.
Richard Negus: The wedding breakfasts are at lunchtime and if you're going to have blackberries in them, they're probably best preserved.
Richard Negus: And it's certainly if you're going to get married in December.
Richard Negus: And we've also decided that whenever you go shopping, you have to commit small acts of near vandalism to support Prince Farmers.
Richard Negus: Well, there we go.
Richard Negus: This is why we are the most popular rural podcast in Britain.
Richard Negus: And there we go.
Richard Negus: So goodbye, everyone.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Let's go to the after show where we can discuss non-food related topics.
Richard Negus: Excellent.
Richard Negus: Bye.
Richard Negus: We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land and it is fed and watered by God's almighty hand.
Callum McInerney-Riley: That was incredible.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I was going to do cauliflowers fluffy and cabbages green.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I love a harvest song, me.
Richard Negus: Yeah, you went to one of those Baptist churches, didn't you?
Richard Negus: I can tell that sounds like the sort of thing that they would sing.
Callum McInerney-Riley: No, special school.
Richard Negus: Yeah, I mean, look, it is something I have to say.
Richard Negus: I am not.
Richard Negus: a regular church goer.
Richard Negus: When I say regular, I mean I don't get invited to weddings that often anymore because of my age.
Richard Negus: And funerals though, they're coming up soon.
Richard Negus: Yeah, let's be honest, at my age, that's all I've got to look forward to.
Richard Negus: And obviously the second weddings.
Richard Negus: And do I go at Christmas?
Richard Negus: I usually go at Christmas and to that.
Richard Negus: But I haven't been to a Harvest Festival service for a long while.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I don't think I've ever been to a harvest service.
Richard Negus: No.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Never.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I did go to, I did go to like, I don't know, what's the kids, the kids junior version of church.
Richard Negus: Oh yeah, Sunday school.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, Sunday school, that's the one.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And we have all these children and they're telling the sort of God squad stories and the fables and stuff.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And I'm just rattling them off left, right and centre and all the other kids, they're meant to be in this class all the time and they haven't got a clue about Noadi's Ark.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And I thought, where have you been?
Callum McInerney-Riley: What have you been doing here?
Callum McInerney-Riley: You've been here for two years and I just turned up on me day off.
Richard Negus: Eating the crayons largely.
Richard Negus: I mean, I seem to remember Sunday school was largely wax crayons.
Richard Negus: You were allowed to have some play time and then they read.
Richard Negus: from a children's Bible, some of the stories, which most of the time always made everyone sound very vindictive.
Richard Negus: And I just thought, I don't want to be judged by anybody.
Richard Negus: So I just gave it up.
Richard Negus: Although, I have to say, in the army, I used to go, certainly when I was at Sandhurst, I used to go to
Richard Negus: church services there, largely because you got given cups of tea and biscuits.
Richard Negus: And then my friends who are Roman Catholics told me that they actually got given wine and beer at the Roman Catholic after sort of after the service type thing.
Richard Negus: And it was remarkable.
Richard Negus: Yeah, how suddenly the blood of Christ.
Richard Negus: Exactly.
Richard Negus: It's amazing how many people suddenly turned religious when they found out that you had better food and drink at the Catholic.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I saw there's one in there's one in Africa where their church, they celebrate beer.
Callum McInerney-Riley: So you go, it's a small village, you go in and I think instead of instead of our men, they say Amstel.
Richard Negus: Shut up, that's a lie.
Callum McInerney-Riley: That's the church for me, baby.
Richard Negus: The church of lager and latter day IPA.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I don't even like beer that much, but I'd sign up.
Richard Negus: I do.
Richard Negus: And so sign me up.
Richard Negus: I'm off to Africa.
Richard Negus: Anyway, listen, Harvest Festival.
Richard Negus: What are we going to talk about related to that?
Callum McInerney-Riley: I've got one more fun law.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Remember we had the stories of my African family.
Richard Negus: Yes.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Well, Africans are very religious.
Richard Negus: Yes.
Callum McInerney-Riley: So we used to go to African church in London, sort of somewhere around the Tottenham area.
Callum McInerney-Riley: My dad and I were the only white folk in there and it was a very jump up and down sort of happy, clappy church.
Callum McInerney-Riley: What an amazing place.
Callum McInerney-Riley: What a happy place to be.
Callum McInerney-Riley: They're very welcoming, surprisingly, but you definitely would feel like an alien going in.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And I do remember being like, what am I doing in here?
Callum McInerney-Riley: But great, great experience.
Richard Negus: Did they have sort of.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, they're jumping up and down, everyone's praising the Lord, reaching to the skies for Jesus.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I mean, I imagine it's not like that if you go to a rural village hall.
Richard Negus: No, we did have, actually, it's quite amusing, we hadn't got a vicar for quite a long while.
Richard Negus: And we've got a lovely chap called Andrew, who was the
Richard Negus: sort of, I don't know what they call him.
Richard Negus: But anyway, he was like the rector come lay preacher type thing.
Richard Negus: And he's a very high church, Church of England person.
Richard Negus: And he decided to do a sung matins service, which is basically singing psalms from out of the thing.
Richard Negus: And he did it, went through quite a lot.
Richard Negus: And we're all sort of shifting around rather uncomfortably thinking, what on earth is all this stuff.
Richard Negus: And there was a lovely guy called David who lived in the village who had been as a Geordie and he'd been a master mariner, merchant navy.
Richard Negus: And he said at the top of his voice, he goes, bloody hell man.
Richard Negus: He goes, I thought we're in a synagogue like here.
Richard Negus: And sort of everyone stopped and poor old Andrew went, oh anyway, oh man.
Richard Negus: And that was it.
Richard Negus: Yeah.
Richard Negus: So harvest festivals, why are we talking about harvest festivals, Callum?
Callum McInerney-Riley: Because it's that time.
Richard Negus: It's that time of year again.
Richard Negus: And so we thought, dear listeners, that it might be a sensible thing to come to the idea of food.
Richard Negus: I mean, I have to say, it's a funny old time, really.
Richard Negus: We have Harvest Festival now in modern farming.
Richard Negus: Harvest is more or less well and truly over a long while ago.
Richard Negus: But
Richard Negus: Obviously, we've got huge numbers of vegetables, which are still sort of in the ground and coming up.
Richard Negus: I think I've had the last of my parents' runner beans now.
Richard Negus: They used to appear daily with a little bag of runner beans of their spares and tomatoes and whatnot.
Richard Negus: But one of the things I am particularly, and you as well-being much more of a foodie than I am, is it something that I'm worried about the fact that because
Richard Negus: we shop in supermarkets.
Richard Negus: The seasonality is largely A forgotten concept now with most shoppers.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, We had this discussion the other day and I think we discussed food at length in the one about the
Callum McInerney-Riley: when I went to France and made the observations of how they eat far more local than we do.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And I assume, no, I didn't notice particularly, but I assume they eat seasonally.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Certainly like the fruit was very much in season then and you'd be getting fresh melons from the supermarket and that sort of thing.
Callum McInerney-Riley: But I just don't think that we, not only do we not eat seasonally,
Callum McInerney-Riley: but the stuff isn't available to us like it should be.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Like you can buy asparagus any time of the year, but obviously British asparagus grows at a certain time.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Interestingly, I had a food tasting at the wedding and there was all these different bits.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And bear in mind, we're looking at December.
Richard Negus: Yeah.
Callum McInerney-Riley: So I've picked all the ingredients
Callum McInerney-Riley: And one of the things was a blackberry cheesecake.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And I said, I don't really, it's December.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I don't want a blackberry cheesecake because none of them are in season.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And the guy turned around and looked at me and said, don't worry, they're in season somewhere.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And I thought, you are correct, but I just want, I want stuff that's local, that's fresh, that's nice.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I don't want a
Callum McInerney-Riley: blackberry crumb, black, I mean a crumble would have been, sounds quite good actually.
Callum McInerney-Riley: But I just don't think you should be eating, not that you shouldn't be eating stuff because that's, eat what you want, right?
Callum McInerney-Riley: But if you can eat stuff that's fresh and you can eat stuff that's local and you can support local farmers, that's brilliant.
Callum McInerney-Riley: It tastes better.
Callum McInerney-Riley: It is better for you.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And I just don't know that we're set up
Callum McInerney-Riley: to allow the everyday consumer to do that.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I think it's basically impossible unless you're going to maybe go to a farm shop.
Richard Negus: Well, I think that's half the problem, but it's interesting.
Richard Negus: See, I reckon the old French, I mean, you're talking about your wedding breakfast, as they call it, even though it will be a lunchtime.
Richard Negus: Never know quite why they call it that.
Richard Negus: Yes, silly old fashioned language.
Richard Negus: Anyway, so they're asking you as a celebratory meal,
Richard Negus: And one of the things I think the continentals get right more than us is that they celebrate food.
Richard Negus: They don't just have a harvest festival.
Richard Negus: They have festivals all the time because there's a various season.
Richard Negus: The only place I've seen, notably in England, where they have
Richard Negus: proper celebrations of a particular crop because I was talking the other week at the Alborough Food and Drink Festival, which was a nice event.
Richard Negus: But there wasn't like a, Mike Warner did a let's champion seafood that comes from here, but it still wasn't front and centre.
Richard Negus: But I did notice that in at the three county show when I went there in the summer, the Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire
Richard Negus: they actually do have very specific festivals around various things.
Richard Negus: So they like have a plum festival because of Evesham plums.
Richard Negus: Yeah.
Richard Negus: And they have an Evesham asparagus festival.
Richard Negus: And they have another festival that celebrates the, there's a certain Worcester pair or something like that.
Richard Negus: And they celebrate that.
Richard Negus: So for some reason, those 3 counties along the Welsh borders there
Richard Negus: have retained this celebratory thing about that particular thing.
Richard Negus: And obviously the Scots have the Burns night where they go and have a whole hoo-ha about a sheep's stomach stuffed with porridge and offal and then use it as an excuse to get drunk.
Richard Negus: But we don't seem
Richard Negus: although we might have a harvest festival, so we are celebrating that the harvest is in, we're not actually celebrating what that harvest is very much.
Richard Negus: And do you think that's because the supermarkets basically don't want there to be a hooray, it's the asparagus festival?
Richard Negus: Because like you say, it's probably when the asparagus has finished here, it's off to Peru or Morocco.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I think the answer is twofold.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I think potentially the supermarkets, if they could make a good profit out of highlighting local food, farmers and this sort of thing, and they could make, if it was good for the bottom line, they'd do it.
Callum McInerney-Riley: There's not really any incentive to say this is in season now, local British farmers.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And there's also a negative to that.
Callum McInerney-Riley: So when they highlight this is in season, it's really good.
Callum McInerney-Riley: It comes from local farmers and after whatever month it's then, imported from wherever it is.
Callum McInerney-Riley: So they also highlight the imported food so that they're probably getting no upside and a lot of negative.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, probably then not worth doing.
Richard Negus: That's true, actually, because I suppose all they want to do is really just get people in the rest in the shop.
Richard Negus: So I want to know another thing, Ryan.
Richard Negus: I was thinking back on this because I had to write a piece for The Telegraph.
Richard Negus: It hasn't been published yet.
Richard Negus: I think it's out this Sunday because it's British food fortnight this week.
Richard Negus: And what's that?
Richard Negus: It's basically it's a not very well run.
Richard Negus: but farmer-led, and I say not very well run, not to be disparaging, it just hasn't been picked up by enough people, if I'll be perfectly honest.
Richard Negus: It's one of those things.
Callum McInerney-Riley: It's hard to get buy-in for something like that.
Richard Negus: I know it is, it's very hard and it's trying to actually promote what we're talking about today.
Richard Negus: And it's a farmer-led project where they're trying to highlight seasonality, eat British and
Richard Negus: Ben Aveling at Radmore Farm, he did a campaign last year to try and get more people eating a proper Sunday roast.
Richard Negus: And some journalists writing for The Telegraph basically wrote a piece a couple of weeks ago saying that the Sunday roast is crap.
Richard Negus: It's highly salted, overly expensive, apparently, which I really can't quite understand that one.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I tend to agree on the meat side of things.
Richard Negus: Okay.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Like a chicken, a chicken is pretty cheap.
Callum McInerney-Riley: But a chicken of all the roast dinners, chicken roast is the worst one.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Can we collectively agree that that's the worst one?
Richard Negus: Yes, agreed.
Callum McInerney-Riley: It doesn't have to be.
Richard Negus: No.
Callum McInerney-Riley: But you know when someone puts a decent bit of topside in front of you and you've got loads of beef gravy over the top and someone's taken the time to make it like that, it's so much better than a sort of very mid.
Richard Negus: Yeah, I agree with you.
Richard Negus: So what Ben Aveling was trying to sort of say with his support the roast isn't just the fact that it's what's in it, but he's saying that in our busy lives, it's one of the few times when families get around a table and they celebrate the food.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Kids hate most of the things on a roast dinner.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I want to say that.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Like roast potato and gravy, and then you'll be all right.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And then maybe Yorkshire puddings.
Callum McInerney-Riley: But trying to get kids to eat 4 veg and some chicken is quite hard sometimes.
Richard Negus: Yes, I suppose I'm now sort of looking at Charlie through the rose tinted spectacles that he's a 16 year old who would literally eat his own leg if he poured some gravy on it.
Richard Negus: So yeah.
Richard Negus: So the whole ethos is to try and not just celebrate the food.
Richard Negus: This Telegraph article was sort of saying it was crap.
Richard Negus: didn't taste very good and we should be in, she started sort of listing all these various foreign dishes.
Richard Negus: I mean, to give her a due, she didn't say go and use foreign food in it, but she was saying foreign dishes.
Richard Negus: Now when I was a kid, I don't know about you, because I am considerably older than you, but foreign food didn't really come on our radar.
Richard Negus: I think my mum would cook lasagna and she would cook
Richard Negus: spaghetti bolognese, but most of the time we are talking proper British staples.
Richard Negus: We were a Le Ro's beef family.
Callum McInerney-Riley: All I think is like my nan used to cook solely really classic British food.
Callum McInerney-Riley: There'd be shepherd's pies and cottage pies.
Callum McInerney-Riley: There'd be sort of ham, egg and chips.
Callum McInerney-Riley: All the classic
Callum McInerney-Riley: British staples, mission chips, all the, everything you can think of.
Richard Negus: Everything had chips and an egg on it.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Pub grub.
Richard Negus: Yeah.
Richard Negus: And the funny thing is though, right, is that if you, a few years back there was constantly, I think all TV used to be was they'd get a load of washed up comedians and sort of singers from the 90s and they would get them on there and they'd go, oh yeah, the 80s.
Richard Negus: The 80s, And they would always go and talk about Finders Crispy Pancakes and Viennettas and things that you put in the toaster and then burnt your mouth with what they call cheese toasties.
Richard Negus: I experienced none of this.
Richard Negus: I'm the same age as these people.
Richard Negus: And I go, I've heard of Finders Crispy Pancakes.
Richard Negus: But I've never even eaten one in my life.
Richard Negus: We weren't allowed them because we had roast everything.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Do you think we've gone the other way?
Callum McInerney-Riley: Do you think we've, because I used to eat this sort of stuff when I was a kid.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And now I think most parents would look at it as like, unless they're in a desperate situation, most parents look at things like
Callum McInerney-Riley: So eat these pasta things he's just put some water in or things that were boil in the bag or just.
Richard Negus: Yeah, Cod in cod in parsley sauce in a bag.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I think that was a thing.
Richard Negus: No, I mean, you just wouldn't, would you?
Callum McInerney-Riley: It just sort of it just looked like a load of beer mats stuck together.
Callum McInerney-Riley: It was square.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I've never seen a square fish in my life.
Richard Negus: Yeah, exactly.
Richard Negus: It's a bit beer.
Richard Negus: I think that's perhaps what it was.
Richard Negus: It was
Richard Negus: paper mache, that was it in a bag and you boiled it and then you sort of sprinkled some parsley on it and thought it was being continental.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I think we're more food aware than ever before.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I think we know more about processed foods.
Callum McInerney-Riley: We know what's good for us.
Callum McInerney-Riley: We know what's bad for us.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And I think we're more aware and we should enable the consumer to make better choices.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I think they make better choices for their health.
Callum McInerney-Riley: but I think there's a way to go about making better choices for locality, supporting British farmers and eating seasonally.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I think there's a way to go.
Richard Negus: Yeah, I suppose that's it.
Richard Negus: So if we were trying to really push buy local, buy seasonal, what's the things that you think would be the most difficult to wean
Richard Negus: the great British public off that they have become so used to having 12 months of the year.
Richard Negus: What's the thing you think that people go, I've got to have it.
Richard Negus: I've got, I can't, I'm not have my strawberries even though it's February.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I think strawberries is a good exception because when they are available, probably promoted by Wimbledon,
Callum McInerney-Riley: But there's always strawberries available in the supermarket that are British.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And it's also a really good fun activity to take kids strawberry picking, even though you end up spending about 15 quid per punnet and they end up picking loads of white, random white ones that will never ripen in a million years.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Besides my PTSD from past experiences like that, I think strawberries are quite good.
Callum McInerney-Riley: They have those in, but generally berries is the one thing I think people wouldn't be like, oh, we only eat strawberries in June.
Richard Negus: Yeah.
Callum McInerney-Riley: They're just not going to do that.
Callum McInerney-Riley: They will, people will want December strawberries, whether you like it or not.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Blueberries, the same.
Callum McInerney-Riley: They'll want blueberries all year round.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Salad stuff, all your fresh things.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I don't think people would hack it if they couldn't get it all year round.
Richard Negus: Well, see that might be the thing because one of the other things about Harvest Festival was the idea that there was all of a sudden a glut and we all got excited because you had this glut and you had to now process it into a storable
Richard Negus: overwinter entity.
Richard Negus: So for example, you would be pickling everything.
Richard Negus: You would be parboiling things and sealing them up in jars and whatnot.
Richard Negus: And so I think the interesting thing is that like, if you think about it, we still have, you're talking about blackberries in your dessert.
Richard Negus: We've got in the freezer right now, blackberries that are in freezer bags.
Richard Negus: waiting to come out and they will be fine for making a crumble with or they will be all right if you want to go and cook them with some venison or some pigeon breasts or something like that.
Richard Negus: You wouldn't be wanting to go and necessarily eat them, pop in your mouth and eat them raw.
Richard Negus: But I think one of the things that we've actually forgotten about is that the harvest festival not only celebrated that you got the harvest in, but you had this glut and now you would have a period
Richard Negus: of lots of food preservation and we don't need to preserve stuff anymore because we can import it rather than wanting that taste of, I mean some apple varieties, right?
Richard Negus: They're storers, same with some potatoes.
Callum McInerney-Riley: They even store incredibly well.
Richard Negus: Exactly.
Richard Negus: Used to put them on.
Richard Negus: I mean, I can remember going to my grandmother's house and she had the huge number of bedrooms and there would be in every flipping bedroom, there would be newspapers laid out.
Richard Negus: Exactly.
Richard Negus: Oh God, there's bloody apples from two years ago.
Richard Negus: And you know, every one would, one other one would go off and they would then get chopped in half the
Richard Negus: bad bit thrown out for the thrushes and the blackbirds and the good bit would then be turned into, I don't know, apple sauce or something.
Richard Negus: And I think we've lost that.
Richard Negus: I'm sure that's a time thing because it does take quite a bit of time and fact.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I do know people that pickle and preserve things, but personally, I mean, I like pickling things, but I'll pickle things for 24 hours notice, not to
Callum McInerney-Riley: last myself a nuclear winter.
Callum McInerney-Riley: It seems like a big prepper thing to do.
Callum McInerney-Riley: It's not really an everyday man's hobby to be pickling a load of potatoes or whatever that might be.
Richard Negus: No, that's probably true actually.
Richard Negus: Do you know what I had this morning?
Richard Negus: I had for breakfast, we had some leftover new potatoes, which we had with a salad last night.
Richard Negus: And this morning I chopped them in half and I fried them up with two fried eggs for my breakfast.
Richard Negus: And I thought that is what I should be doing.
Richard Negus: A is not food waste, but secondly, it was a proper excuse to have.
Callum McInerney-Riley: You were close to a corned beef hash there.
Callum McInerney-Riley: would have been a few bits extra and you could have.
Richard Negus: I would have chucked a sausage in the pan, but I was told often not.
Richard Negus: I wasn't allowed to touch them because they've actually been made into a sausage casserole for tonight.
Richard Negus: Now, listen, speaking of breakfasts, I have a public service information announcement.
Richard Negus: because I've been asked by one of our wonderful patrons to let everyone know that the big Breckland breakfast, Breckland for those of you who don't know it, is in the south of Norfolk, north of Suffolk, the dry arid bit.
Richard Negus: there is a big Breckland breakfast in aid of Yana, which is a fantastic charity that tries to break down sort of rural isolation and you've got a friend to talk to in the farming and rural communities.
Richard Negus: And that is on Friday, the 23rd of October.
Richard Negus: at the Grain Kitchen at the English Distillery.
Richard Negus: So good old English whisky made there.
Richard Negus: Harling Road at Rowdham at 8.30am Friday the 23rd of October.
Richard Negus: The big Breckland breakfast.
Richard Negus: You just have to book a little ticket.
Richard Negus: I'm sure that producer Amy will put a link on the show notes thing.
Richard Negus: But I think
Richard Negus: That would be a good thing to attend.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Nice.
Richard Negus: Any road.
Richard Negus: Breakfast, I think that's the one thing, Callum.
Richard Negus: That's as English as it gets.
Richard Negus: The more people would probably eat an English breakfast, wouldn't they?
Callum McInerney-Riley: I think, well, you're not, you're certainly not buying bacon from anywhere other than British farmers, really.
Callum McInerney-Riley: You can get the random stuff, but generally you're buying bacon from British farmers.
Callum McInerney-Riley: You're buying sausages from British farmers.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Your eggs.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah.
Callum McInerney-Riley: That'll always, they don't really like, oh, although they did relax the.
Richard Negus: Yeah, and then look what came in.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Salmonella came in.
Richard Negus: There's a lesson for us all.
Callum McInerney-Riley: So yeah, British, British line standard eggs are like the best in the world.
Richard Negus: Yes, there you go.
Richard Negus: You see, so I mean, I think.
Callum McInerney-Riley: So we're all saved by the full English breakfast.
Callum McInerney-Riley: The full English breakfast.
Richard Negus: Although yes, I think so.
Richard Negus: I think basically what we should be celebrating is not only the Sunday roast because of its connotations of family togetherness, but if you generally want to have your gateway drug to eating British,
Richard Negus: is that you should shun the muesli, push it to one side, unless of course it's made with British ingredients like some of the Jordan stuff.
Richard Negus: And you should eat a full English every day.
Richard Negus: So I think a country slide public service announcement #2 is that we'd like to see more Harvard arteries.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Fill your arteries with pride.
Richard Negus: Yes, go on, be British.
Richard Negus: Die young.
Richard Negus: There's A T-shirt.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Fill your arteries with British pride.
Callum McInerney-Riley: full English breakfast on the front.
Richard Negus: Oh, what?
Richard Negus: I tell you what, that's a political t-shirt ever.
Richard Negus: Yes, we're support, we're tough on arteries, tough on the causes of hardened arteries.
Richard Negus: It's, yeah, it's, I think that's the way forward.
Richard Negus: That's definitely the next t-shirt.
Richard Negus: I mean, one of the problems I have got though, hash browns, when did they become a thing?
Callum McInerney-Riley: I don't know.
Callum McInerney-Riley: They've been slowly taken over by the potato tot, which is just a smaller version of the hash brown.
Richard Negus: Oh, is it?
Richard Negus: Is that what potato tot is?
Richard Negus: I have heard of it on American sort of sitcom things and stuff is that they, because I think the first time I ever came across potato tots was
Richard Negus: on an American comedy film, Napoleon Dynamite, and I had no idea what they were.
Richard Negus: And so is that what they are?
Richard Negus: So they're like a little hash brown.
Callum McInerney-Riley: They're just like a hash brown, but like it's the hash brown's little brother.
Richard Negus: Yeah.
Richard Negus: Oh dear, that's not, I think that's just put me off my breakfast.
Richard Negus: I wouldn't have that.
Richard Negus: So actually, what this is the secret is that when you make your dinner, intentionally cook too many potatoes and
Richard Negus: cook too much cabbage, and if you can get away with it, cook too many peas, then you can slap it all in a frying pan the next morning.
Callum McInerney-Riley: You lost me at peas.
Richard Negus: What?
Richard Negus: It's a proper ingredient for bubble and squeak.
Richard Negus: Obviously, in season, you would add a little bit of Brussels sprout to it, chop that up in, and you make a rosti, which in this country we call bubble and squeak, and then you put a fried egg on top, 3 rashers of bacon.
Callum McInerney-Riley: That's an absolute beaut.
Callum McInerney-Riley: How would you, if you were to put an action plan together, how would you eat seasonally?
Callum McInerney-Riley: I'm willing to bet that most people don't know what's in season and when.
Richard Negus: That is the absolute nth of the problem you have highlighted there is that people just don't know because we have become
Richard Negus: So removed from our food, which we've talked about on the show quite a few times.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I think it matters geographically as well, because if you go to Lincolnshire or somewhere like that, it's just...
Callum McInerney-Riley: The farming's everywhere.
Callum McInerney-Riley: You see fields of broccoli and stuff like that.
Callum McInerney-Riley: You don't have any of it.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Essex is not known for broccoli fields.
Callum McInerney-Riley: You might get kale.
Richard Negus: What would be your sort of, what would Essex be famed for?
Richard Negus: Is it, oh, I'm going to go to Essex because it's X food.
Richard Negus: Oysters, yes, exactly.
Richard Negus: So there you go, that's a good thing.
Richard Negus: And they do have an oyster festival there, don't they?
Richard Negus: So perhaps that would be it.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Hilarious that you go and get a seafood platter from Mersey and it'll be full of things like
Callum McInerney-Riley: like smoked salmon.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I think you didn't catch that down the edge, did you?
Richard Negus: No, I think you've hit the nail on the head is the way we could, and this is a note to the wonderful people who organise the British Food Fortnight, is that what local people should do
Richard Negus: is that they should celebrate a particular ingredient, a bit like Mike does with his fish or a bit like Hugo does with game is how we say, look, okay, so pheasant's in season right now.
Richard Negus: I'm going to show you 73 different ways of cooking that one particular ingredient.
Richard Negus: So perhaps that would be the way is that we should have more localised, a bit like they do in Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire, is we should have localised celebration festivals
Richard Negus: whereby we celebrate that one ingredient and build a meal around that one thing, which, the Scots do it with haggis.
Richard Negus: And that's funny old tasting stuff.
Richard Negus: So why can't we do it with, you know, I don't know.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And you can always, you can always check the label to see where it's grown.
Richard Negus: Yes.
Richard Negus: And if it's not grown in Britain, throw it in on the floor.
Richard Negus: Just open up the bag, tip it on the floor, say, oh no, oh no, it's broken.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Push it under the refrigerated counters, so no one will really find it.
Richard Negus: No, exactly.
Richard Negus: Do like you do when you go into Waterstones and you see a book written by an author you don't like.
Richard Negus: Put it in a different department or turn it back to from.
Richard Negus: That's it.
Richard Negus: So if you see
Richard Negus: Moroccan asparagus, or you see Egyptian strawberries, just literally move them to the back of the shelf.
Richard Negus: I mean, I know some poor old boy or girl has had to go and stack that shelf, so it's a bit unkind on them, but eventually Tesco's will get the message.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Just for comedy purposes, don't actually do that.
Callum McInerney-Riley: No, Other countries fruit is available.
Richard Negus: Yes, it's just \*\*\*\* though.
Richard Negus: Any rd, listen, I suppose we have probably
Richard Negus: leathered on enough.
Richard Negus: So we have decided that the best way to support Britain's farmers is to have a cooked breakfast every day, get heart failure.
Richard Negus: The wedding breakfasts are at lunchtime and if you're going to have blackberries in them, they're probably best preserved.
Richard Negus: And it's certainly if you're going to get married in December.
Richard Negus: And we've also decided that whenever you go shopping, you have to commit small acts of near vandalism to support Prince Farmers.
Richard Negus: Well, there we go.
Richard Negus: This is why we are the most popular rural podcast in Britain.
Richard Negus: And there we go.
Richard Negus: So goodbye, everyone.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Let's go to the after show where we can discuss non-food related topics.
Richard Negus: Excellent.
Richard Negus: Bye.