LOCAL PRODUCE FEATURES IN FENWICK’S BREAKFAST PROMOTION (February 2006)

Sausages, bacon, cereal, milk, honey, and speciality breads, all produced by Northumbria Larder members, featured strongly in a recent breakfast promotion at Fenwick’s Food Hall in Northumberland Street, Newcastle.

The promotion was part of the national Farmhouse Breakfast week 2006 campaign run by the Home Grown Cereals Authority (HGCA) with the support of Food from Britain, the National Farmers’ Union and the Woman’s Food and Farming Union. This year’s theme was “Make Time for It”. It offered food producers, retailers, individuals and schools an excellent opportunity to organise events which pressed home the message that breakfast is probably the most important meal of the day.

Three Northumbria Larder members who held tastings at Fenwick’s were Tracy Betney, of Broom Mill Farm, West Auckland, County Durham, Caroline Tweddle, of Acorn Dairy, Archdeacon Newton, Darlington, and Heather Robson, of Chain Bridge Honey Farm, Horncliffe, Berwick.

Tracy gave shoppers the opportunity to taste her range of sausages, home-cured bacon and black pudding. Always a creative sort, Tracy has recently launched a range of hot, spicy sausages, which are already proving winners. Her Rocket sausage recipe includes Tabasco, cumin and paprika and the West Auckland Toulouse sausage contains garlic, black pepper and Toulouse herbs. There are other ingredients but Tracy is reluctant to give too much away. “People have been known to pinch recipes,” she says. Last year, she and her husband Matthew struck gold in the national Great Taste Awards for their Toulouse sausage.

Acorn Dairy, which has supplied organic milk and cream to Fenwick in Newcastle for over five years, was also sampling at the store. “Fenwick was our first customer in Newcastle and they place regular orders with us which make it worthwhile for us to deliver our organic dairy produce from Darlington.” Heather Robson family’s honey has been a regular best seller in the Newcastle store for several years.

Other NL members who supply Fenwick with breakfast produce include Heatherslaw Mill at Ford and Etal, north Northumberland (cereals), and Thomsons Bakery, Westerhope, Newcastle (speciality breads).