Why use seasonal ingredients?

One of the reasons we do this is so we can offer the freshest of ingredients for our bakes. Seasonal produce has the fullest flavour so we’ll adapt what recipes we can. But there will be a hold on some of the menu from season to season.

If you buy produce out of season, the farmers will need to replicate conditions. Heating, poly-tunnels, etc. cost the growers so they tend to be more expensive to buy too. Or they’re getting flown in, maybe starting to spoil too so we’d looking at a lot of food waste

We select local produce as much as possible from our suppliers Organic North. Even when buying citrus and the like, we know they are never air-freighted.

Depending on where you shop you might be shocked that, yes apples have a growing season – this was always the biggest shock to my customers.

Why can you buy them from the supermarket?

Well, many crops like apples, carrots, squash, citrus even. Are picked unripe, then stored so they will gradually ripen over the months and so still be available through autumn and most of the winter. After that other shops may import from around the world.

The gaps in availability are minimal for some crops. We won’t sub in from the other side of the world, we’ll just (gulp) wait for the new crop.

Here’s an idea of what I’m on about….

We bought this poster from Marceline Smith for the grocers I worked at and aside from our weather changes both fruit and veg posters are pretty spot on.