Food

Great Taste, organised by the Guild of Fine Food, is the acknowledged benchmark for fine food and drink. It has been described as the 'Oscars' of the food world and the 'epicurean equivalent of the Booker prize'. Quite simply the Great Taste logo is the sign you can trust when buying food and drink in your local, quality retailer. Ma Baker, Fulham's only micro bakery, is run by Liz Wilson.  She scooped two Great Taste Awards in 2016.

The first ever Waitrose Drinks Festival will take place in London on the 16th and 17th September. Celebrating the best food and drink available at Waitrose, the festival will be open to the public and will include masterclasses, workshops and a rooftop BBQ. With over 200 Waitrose drinks producers taking part at the Institute of Engineering and Technology in London, the various themed rooms will offer plenty of opportunity for guests to sample a huge range of spirits, beers, ciders and wines, as well as an extensive selection of speciality foods.

A feast of fabulous food and drink is on the menu when the Eden Project's Festival of Food returns with a packed three-day programme from Friday September 9 to Sunday September 11. Celebrating the best on offer in food and drink, the event will feature a stellar line-up of celebrity chefs, delicious foodie treats and daily wine tastings hosted by TV expert and author Susy Atkins.

With the Great Taste 2016 results just announced, The Traditional Free Range Egg Company, formerly known as Blackacre Farm Eggs, is now celebrating, as all five products in its Free Collection have been awarded stars from the world's most coveted blind-tasted food awards. Better still, with just 141 products achieving a 3-star Great Taste award out of 10,0

During the scorching hot day at the Taste of the West Food Fair on the Green, Sharpham Wine and Cheese were amongst 60 Gold Award winners lucky enough to meet HRH The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall.Celebrating 25 years of success, Taste of the West invited Prince Charles, in his capacity as Patron, to meet a selection of Gold Award winners from the Taste of the West Awards.

This summer take the Veg Pledge - simply go meat and fish free for 7 days and donate the money saved to the charity Beating Bowel Cancer. To make it even easier, the charity has developed an online calculator which you can use to work out how much money you will save, based on your average weekly meat consumption and where you shop. It’s a great way to look at your diet and spending habits and raise funds to help those affected by bowel cancer at the same time.

A restaurant in the Highlands has beaten eateries across the country to be named the Regional Winner for Scotland in the Good Food Guide Local Restaurant of the Year Awards. The Whitehouse Restaurant, in Lochaline has been nominated by its customers to be the top local choice in Scotland, despite its remote location. The Whitehouse Restaurant is described by the Good Food Guide (GFG), which is published by Waitrose, as being “about as remote as you can get without leaving the mainland”.

In response to both the recent media attention and consumer concern over the recycling of paper cups, the Foodservice Packaging Association (FPA) and Paper Cup Recovery and Recycling Group (PCRRG) have launched an industry-wide Manifesto with the objective of significantly increasing paper cup recovery and recycling rates by 2020. The Manifesto has more than 30 signatories, representing each stage of the paper cup supply chain from raw material suppliers, cup manufacturers and retail high street brands to waste and recovery operators and paper reprocessors.

As anticipation builds for the 29th annual World Cheese Awards, which is being held in San Sebastián this year as part of the International Cheese Festival, awards organiser, the Guild of Fine Food, is delighted to officially announce its first judge for 2016, Andrea Power of Hatchman's Premium Cheeses, the only cheesemaker in the whole of Barbados. The Barbadian producer's trip to the Basque Country will be sponsored by Cobblers Cove, a luxury retreat on Barbados' west coast, as part the celebrations being held to mark 50 Years of Independence for this small and proud nation.

Lovers of extreme hot food – you have been warned! If you thought the notorious Komodo Dragon – a chilli pepper launched last year by Tesco - was hot stuff then just wait till you try the Carolina Reaper which goes on sale at the supermarket tomorrow. It's officially the hottest chilli pepper in the world according to the Guinness Book Of Records, measuring an average 1.5 million Scoville units.

Devon is renowned for its exceptional culinary gems. People travel from all over the country, and further afield, to taste some of the county's outstanding offerings. There's a new force to be reckoned with on the national food map, Devon's Deer Park Country House Hotel has just announced that Hadleigh Barrett has come on board as the new head chef. 

Too many children under the age of five consume foods and drinks with high levels of sugar at least once a day, according to a survey published by charity Action for Children. Over half (59 per cent) of parents in the West Midlands give their children sugary drinks like squash and cordial at least once or twice a day, exceeding the maximum daily allowance of five sugar cubes for children of that age.

Waitrose has become the first supermarket to sell own label products through British Corner Shop, the online store that delivers British food to customers worldwide.  It will enable Waitrose to enter entirely new territories from the 138 countries British Corner Shop regularly ships to, including two of its largest markets, the USA and Germany, neither of which is among the 60 countries the UK retailer already exports to. 

Misconceptions about how to freeze food safely are contributing to food waste in the West Midlands and across the UK, according to new research by the Food Standards Agency (FSA). The research – released as part of Food Safety Week – identified a number of freezing ‘myths’ that are preventing people in the West Midlands from using their freezers to make food go further.

Speciality food company Cottage Delight has been producing award-winning handmade fudge in Staffordshire for over 40 years and now the company's best-selling range is even more scrumptious following the addition of a locally produced butter.  Developed with the help of the Staffordshire Cheese Company, Sea Salted Butter is made with rich double cream sourced from a local family farm.

It was a clean sweep for Blackacre Farm Eggs at the Taste of the West Awards this year, with owners Dan and Briony Wood picking up Gold Awards for their entire Free Collection, including their brand new Dabbling Free goose eggs. Judges described the goose eggs as “simply delicious – very mellow with a great depth”, while also commenting on the unique packaging, saying that the “eggs would make a really lovely gift.”