To celebrate fifty glorious years of cheese making, the team at Brue Valley Farms has created a new improved recipe, extra-mature Farmhouse Cheddar, exclusively for Marks & Spencer. The new recipe Cheddar is rich and full flavoured in the true farmhouse tradition, making it ideal for Britain’s cheese lovers who crave a really flavoursome, strong-tasting cheese with a lingering finish that will bring their taste buds to life.

As you sip cider with a slice of delicious and unique Farmhouse Cheddar, let your senses transport you to the idyllic, tranquil and rural landscape of Somerset. Look down from Glastonbury Tor to the flourishing green meadows below where the Clapp family has been farming at Brue Valley Farms since the 11th Century.

Farmhouse Cheddar is traditionally made by the Clapp family and their team, from the milk from Brue Valley’s own dairy herd. Making the cheese requires a combination of art, skill and science with the cheese makers relying on skills and practises handed down from generation to generation. Employing these traditional methods results in a cheese that delivers powerful, complex flavours – a must have on any cheese connoisseur’s cheeseboard.

To celebrate supplying one of Britain’s best loved supermarket, Marks and Spencer’s, for the past twenty five years, a delicious new recipe Farmhouse Cheddar has been specially created exclusively for the store. This new recipe shows off the quality and flavour of this specialist cheese and has a slightly softer flavour than previous blends, aiming to appeal both to purists as well as those trying a stronger cheese for the first time. Perfect for those seeking a stimulating gourmet treat to satisfy their savoury taste buds, this cheese is best enjoyed on a chunk of warm crusty bread or with a glass of fruity red wine as an after dinner treat.

Give your cheeseboard and your cooking some good old fashioned farmhouse flavour with this delicious and delightfully full flavoured cheese. The new Farmhouse cheddar is a bespoke recipe that has been developed with M&S and Dairy Crest to broaden the appeal of farmhouse cheddar by introducing a slightly softer flavour while still delivering a mature, savoury taste with a lingering finish. Partner with Somerset cider, chutney and crusty bread

Somerset-based delicatessen meat specialist, Bringing Home the Bacon, has won another four awards this week for its top quality bacon and sausages. These latest additions to the trophy cabinet see free range pig farmer Anna Mogford add two more Gold and two Silver Taste of the West awards to her ever increasing list of honours.

Anna is thrilled about her most recent awards and says it is an important endorsement for her products. “It’s fantastic news! Winning in the Taste of the West Awards is a great measure of quality and it’s a wonderful feeling to know that my pigs and my products are appreciated so much. I have enormous pride in what I do and I always strive for perfection, so it’s very rewarding to get such positive feedback from this prestigious organisation.”

The Bringing Home the Bacon Dry Cured Unsmoked Back Bacon and Dry Cured Traditional Oak Smoked Back Bacon both won Gold awards, whilst the Traditional Old English Breakfast Sausages and Sage & Caramelized Red Onion Sausages both won Silver medals.

This latest news comes hot on the trotters of Bringing Home the Bacon’s recent One Gold Star award for its Unsmoked Back Bacon at this year’s Great Taste Awards, organised by The Guild of Fine Food. Bringing Home the Bacon has also won a number of other awards in recent years, including 2009 Taste of the West Silver Award for its Natural Oak Smoked Back Bacon and Streaky Bacon, and 2009 Taste of the West Bronze Award for its Unsmoked Dry Cured Back Bacon and Streaky Bacon.

Based in Donyatt, near Ilminster, Bringing Home the Bacon produces high quality bacon and sausages from free range, ‘home reared’ pigs, resulting in cured and smoked meats with the finest flavours and tastes. The focus is on quality and provenance, and the range has SALSA (Safe and Local Supplier Approval) accreditation.

The prestigious Taste of the West Awards is one of the most highly respected in the food and drink industry, established seventeen years ago. The awards highlight successful and high quality businesses across food and drink production, hospitality and food retail.

Bringing Home the Bacon’s range of bacon and sausages, as well as special combination packs, are available online at www.bringing-home-the-bacon.co.uk and from specialist delis nationwide.

Seen this amazingly good advert for Cadbury Spots V Stripes? All part of the marketing push for a new bar of chocolate. You may scoff but it’s a fun idea!

The advert is great; so is the chocolate incidentally!

We think games are great. They get people playing, they bring people together and sometimes they even reveal an undiscovered talent. That’s why, with the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games around the corner, we’re launching Spots v Stripes.

We’re asking the nation to choose sides and split into Spots or Stripes in order to play, what’s quite possibly, the biggest, longest game ever.

Footy, cricket, bike races, online games, games you’ve made up like full-contact tiddlywinks or even a simple game of ‘tag’. You can play pretty much any game you can imagine.

So how do you take part? First, pick the side you want to play for – Spots or Stripes. Then whenever you play a game against someone from the opposing side, the winner scores a point for his/her side. All the points will be logged right here and updated live on our Score’o’tron. Score enough points and you could even become one of your side’s all-star heroes.

Plus we’ll be laying down weird and wonderful challenges to the nation with big prizes up for grabs. We’ll be stopping the traffic with big city takeovers and we’re bringing Spots v Stripes to local events everywhere.

The Spots v Stripes website allows you to record the scores, there is a running update on the two teams, and plenty of ideas to boot.

This handsome chunk of meat hails from award winning Pipers Farm. Specifically it is a 4 week hung Red Ruby Entrecote Steak, cut, sealed and frozen in the perfect size for one.

“Our Entrecote Steak is just the eye muscle of the sirloin, so has no layer of visible fat. Tender, juicy and full of flavour. Serve with a simple red wine sauce (with caramelised onions) for a real treat! Our red ruby beef has a wonderful depth of flavour. Why? Because it has been bread on its native Exmoor and then grown slowly to natural maturity on the Somerset Levels. This gives a well-marbled, fine-grained texture which reaches perfection when we hang it on the bone for a month. Boneless Rib is just one of our well-loved roasts, and our perfectly trimmed Mince or our superb Grilling Steaks are just two mouth-watering ideas for everyday eating.”

Five individually packed single portions. (Free flow pack of 5. Take only what you want and freeze the rest for later.) retails for £36.99. Just one item from an impressive range that takes in lamb, chicken, bacon, sausages and even ready made meals.

“We started Pipers Farm 20 years ago, when our sons, Ed and Will, were very young. Our goal was to produce healthy meat that we as a family could enjoy eating with complete confidence. Today Pipers Farm helps to sustain 30 farming families who have natured the countryside for generations. We passionatly believe in offering our customers the best and healthiest meat they can buy, always a pleasure to cook, sensational to eat and excellent value. Peter and Henrieta Greig”

Pipers Farm offer their range via their internet site in addition to operating a shop in Magdalen Road, Exeter.

Prestat, chocolatier to Her Majesty The Queen, has just launched its new Finest Selection Chocolate Bean Bars. Each of the four bars is a masterpiece created from cocoa beans sourced from Sao Tome, Ghana and Tanzania – ranging from fabulously creamy white chocolate with Madagascan vanilla to an outrageously intense 80% dark bar.

The bars launch Prestat’s ‘Committed to Trading Fairly initiative’. Every cocoa bean in every bar is grown by farmers who benefit from ESOKO – an alternative initiative to the Fair Trade scheme – which Prestat has helped to pioneer. It directly benefits each farmer by helping them get the best possible price for their crops via a subsidised SMS information system.

Nothing less than the ultimate expression of Prestat’s expertise and passion for chocolate would do – so tracking down the finest cocoa beans from Africa was followed by weeks of perfecting each couverture in Prestat’s artisan kitchen. The extravagant packaging, designed by the renowned artist and illustrator Kitty Arden, has already passed muster at the ‘Palace’ and provides a glorious prelude to what lies inside…

Tasting notes:

• Fabulously Creamy White Chocolate – The smoothest creamy, white chocolate with real Madagascan vanilla
• Velvety Smooth Milk Chocolate – A bold milk chocolate bursting with the fragrance of hazelnuts and a note of caramel
• Dark & Rich Chocolate 71% – Dark but not bitter with hints of coffee and hazelnuts
• Intensely Dark Chocolate 80% – Hints of forest fruits, ginseng and angelica

All bars are 75g/2.65oz

Prices: White, Milk and Dark – RRP £1.80: Intensely Dark – RRP £2.00

Unlike the Fair Trade scheme, the ESOKO initiative guarantees provenance and is very streamlined and unbureaucratic. Having trialled the ESOKO system with 200 farmers in Ghana, the initial feedback suggests that it typically raises a family’s income by around 25% – significantly more than the benefit they get from the Fair Trade scheme.
Prestat subsidises regular SMS texts which are sent to farmers through ESOKO, providing them with local and international commodity prices for the crops they grow. The farmers are then able to negotiate with local traders much more effectively and sell their crops when prices are relatively high. Given the volatility of prices, that can make a very significant difference. ESOKO also gathers information from farmers on likely crop yields, the quality of produce and problems with disease and pests for example, all of which can benefit the whole industry – from farmers to manufacturers.

Although Esoko does not directly address the problems of child labour, many people who are familiar with West Africa feel that the exploitation of children and other social issues are caused and fuelled by widespread poverty. There is a powerful argument that significantly boosting the local farmers’ real income over a sustained period is therefore the best way to curb social problems.