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A day at the organic Gloucester Farmer's Market

© Carolan Nathan

What is a girl like me domiciled in and writing for a Beverly Hills paper doing in this Gloucester farmer's market? You may ask and rightly so. Myths have grown up around British food and British chefs which need to be dispelled especially on the other side of the pond and my mission is to do just that. Working with the British Tourist Authority and their offices in Wales, Gloucestershire, Chester and York, a rather intense program was set up for me to journey round to meet many local food and wine producers, organic dairy farmers and cheese makers, and the Chefs creating a revival in fine British cuisine.

I have suffered endless banalities from readers, friends and associates Stateside regarding our food. And often wondered why so many Americans are critical of another country's cuisine especially when they, themselves, have been seduced by the US media into eating tasteless, mass produced, fat free, grown on supermarket shelves products, and really do not know what good food is.

So here I am, this bright and sunny September day in the Gloucester farmer's market with Gloucestershire chef, Robert Rees, a champion of excellence in home grown local foods. He adroitly maneuvers me from one stall to another introducing me to such celebrities as Melissa Ravenhill of Birdwood Farm, a small organic dairy farm using only home produced milk in their prize winning range of traditional cheeses utilizing old, established methods much like it was done over 100 years ago. The owners of Windrush Valley Organic Farm realized the need for Goats Cheese and now produce quality products like Chevre Blanc, Dainty Herb, Garlic Herb using milk from their own herd.

Purely Organics is one of Rick Stein's favourite suppliers and no wonder as this producer smokes his fish in the traditional manner -trout swim through watercress beds in spring water enhancing the taste of these fine fish.

Plums and apples abound as this is a very fruitful area and cordials and apple wines and cider are delicious and nutritious. The Three Choirs Vineyard is one of England's leading wine producers making white, red and sparkling wine. Whilst at Days Cottage, apple juice from traditional apple orchards is unfiltered.

It is commendable that all the farmers have to live within a 30 mile radius to the market and the people who produce it are the only ones who can sell it. So you know you are getting fresh, organic quality, locally sourced and packaged goods. There are national safety standards applied rigidly and all the farmer's markets in the UK are heavily inspected.

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