Every year the CookbookShelves head out on holiday. This year is no exception, the outputs of which we’ll publish when we’ve done it. In the meantime, here is what we got up to last year. So the holiday was a fantastic couple of weeks away from the cookbook shelves in Gloucester and the Lake District. Though we’ve been away from the shelves, we’ve still been experiencing some fantastic food and produce whilst exploring the countryside and some great farm shops. Our first week was near Gloucester, and on the way, we stopped off at the excellent Daylesford Organic farm shop en route to Featherdown farm. A few epicurean delights, including some lovely ham, sourdough and a beautiful chocolate and cherry cake. The week-long stay at Featherdown lends itself to some simple cooking, BBQs and picnics. We were cooking over open fires, charcoal, wood and also a couple of gas stoves we took with us (waiting for a fire to get going first thing in the morning before you can have coffee is We did take a cookbook recipe with us for some apple pancakes which we didn’t quite get around to – when we get to that part of the shelves we can try them out! We also found a fantastic service station on the m6 – Gloucester services. It’s part of a three services group with farm shops and cafes rather than the Greggs, WHSmiths, etc. We had lunch one day, and the produce and cakes from the farm shop were beautiful, particularly a memorable lemon polenta cake – very moist and with a lovely buttercream topping.
Our second week was in the Lake District, staying on the Holker Estate, close to Cartmel. It was another fab week exploring the Lakes, some lovely cafe lunches, including a cracking burger at Folk in Bowness-on-Windermere, an excellent rarebit at Baldry’s in Grasmere, and a couple of good sourdough base pizzas at the Low Sizergh Barn Farm Shop and Cafe. The cookbook club post wouldn’t be a cookbook club post without some reference to a cookbook. Our cookbook story is that we bought a cookbook, which was a bargain in the Holker Hall gift shop – Dessert by David Everitt-Matthias. We have his book Essence: Recipes from Le Champignon Sauvage (we ate there many years ago, and it was an amazing dining experience), so at some point, the cookbook club will get to it on our shelves! The next post will be one dedicated to a fantastic meal at one of the iconic restaurants of the Lake District – a special treat for my birthday – L’enclume in Cartmel.
Find out about the wonderful Daylesford Organic here:
The Cookbook Shelves 