Ant on the Food Programme & BigBarn is nominated for BBC Radio 4 Food & Farming Awards

Ant is on Radio 4's Food Programme this Sunday, for the third time. And BigBarn has been nominated for this years BBC Radio 4 Food & Farming Awards in the 'Best Retail Initiative' for the BigBarn MarketPlace.

Now that over £3b is spent on food online we think we should help local producers take some of this spend. Especially when supermarket online customers are only one click away.

MarketPlace is designed to help any local producer on BigBarn quickly set up an online shop and meet the needs of those of us wanting speciality food or too busy to visit our local supplier. So far 390 of our members have added 7,500 products, from artisan foods like regional cheeses, Isle of Bute Seaweed and Langoustine, to great local beef and bacon. Local because our MarketPlace shows local first, giving the distance from each producer to the user's postcode.

In time we want to help farmers and retailers team up throughout the country to offer a complete range of fresh local foods in one delivery. And judging by our Cheaper than initiative, hopefully cheaper than the supermarket. Please help us get there by trying out the MarketPlace and voting for it here http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/ffa/2009/nominate/. As well as voting in the other categories.

We are very lucky to have so many great food producers in this country. To encourage them, and more farmers to diversify, we simply need to buy and enjoy their produce, so please tell your friends.

To listen again to Ant's last Radio 4 appearance, click here.

Buying food online yet?

Online food shopping can provide access to amazing artisan food, bargains from those trying to promote their products and the one stop delivered convenience, for your granny. Interested?

If like me you have been reluctantly dragged in to the digital age you probably started shopping online for the holiday flight, then the book or DVD, Christmas gifts, insurance and now clothes and food?

In the past online shopping best suited price comparison on branded products or commodities, now 'taster' bargains and convenience are big factors. Why not enjoy a bargain. And get your granny's heavy shopping bags delivered?

We have set up our MarketPlace to help artisan and local food producers sell online. In time, we want everybody in the country to be able to buy a complete range of local food and drink in one delivery, for everybody's granny. So far 391 producers and retailers have added 7,300 products to the BigBarn MarketPlace. In some areas you can get a complete range, in others we are hoping to help village shops team up with local farmers to offer a bigger range online than can be stocked in the shop. You can then collect or get a local delivery for you and your granny.

And bargains? Many producers have some delicious foods and will be setting up special offers to encourage people to taste and, hopefully reorder.

To get a bargain and encourage more producers to join and team up simply register as a customer by buying delicious food and drink. Simply click on any of the following, and if our system does not already know it, type in your postcode, to see who sells online nearest to you; beef, free range pork, chicken, sausages, home cure bacon, game, fish, langoustine, sea salt, chilli sauce, wild yeast, ham, asparagus, beer, wine, cider, honey, preserves, salami, pate, fudge, chocolate, cakes, pies, oysters, shrimp, coffee, tea, veg box, pesto, olives, cheese, mustard, herbs, biscuits, cakes.

And for the boring stuff, tins, washing powder, loo rolls, dog food, the really heavy bags, we recommend www.mysupermarket.com where you can type in you shopping list and let the supermarkets scrap amongst themselves for your business.

Grow Your Own?

Grow your own veg? Ever thought about farming at home? All you really need is light and water, in the age of plant pots and grow bags you can grow anything. You can even make life even easier by buying ready grown plants from your local nursery.

And to support your climbing beans use local coppiced bean poles rather than imported bamboo and help sustain your local woodland.

Nearly all fruit and vegetables have a much better flavour when fresh and 'just picked' and what better way to persuade kids to eat 'yukky greens' than getting them involved in the growing. Especially if they experience the magic of growing from seeds. For the best and easiest, try a climbing bean and wonder if it will grow up to the clouds with a giant at the top guarding a golden egg.

Once you are a professional you may want to get an allotment and start selling your surplus to local people and even your local shop! To find your local bean pole supplier or nursery for seeds, herb and veg plants, fruit trees, and great advice type your postcode here.

The Great Local Food Survey

Is Local food cheaper than the supermarket? We say YES, and would love your help to prove it and in the process blow away a common misconception that local food is more expensive, which is currently holding back the growth of the local food industry.

I was amazed recently when I found sugar in a farm shop that was cheaper than the local supermarket. Traditionally supermarkets have sold sugar at a loss to entice customers. It seems once they have the customer everything changes!

Unfortunately most consumers now believe that the supermarket's buying power will result in huge savings for all. This is not the case. It seems nearly every local food outlet I speak to - and we have 7,500 on BigBarn - is cheaper on many of their products, like for like, than their local supermarket.

We want to highlight these outlets with a special 'price tag' shaped icon on the BigBarn map and would really appreciate your help in finding them. So please email and send us your list. You may even help keep prices low by increasing your local outlets volume of sales and, in time, encourage local producers to grow a wider range of produce.

Stewp

If you've ever seen a hen in the rain, you'll know what "really miserable" looks like. After an absolutely glorious weekend, today is looking like a stinker. In addition to the steady drizzle there's a nasty gusting wind that's doing it's best to whisk my polytunnel away to someone else's garden, and the hens - in best British tradition - are determined to grimly stick it out in the rain. For crying out loud, girls! Go inside!

It's the perfect day for a bit of comfort food and in our household we've developed something we call "Stewp" - a cross between a stew and a soup - that fits the bill perfectly. It was largely inspired by a Jamie Oliver recipe which we saw him make on his Jamie at Home show. It's an Italian Bread and Cabbage soup, which tastes an awful lot nicer than it might sound. Jamie makes his in a beautiful brick oven in his garden. I don't have a brick oven, and my wife won't let me build one, but it works in a regular oven as well.

As you'll see if you look at his recipe, Jamie's version is a mixture of some classic Italian ingredients - pancetta, cavalo nero, fontina and parmesan cheeses, garlic, and so on - but the basic method of the dish can be applied to a variety of ingredients. That basic method is:

1. Roast or grill your ingredients.
2. Slowly cook in chicken stock in the oven.

Here is our current favourite version, and it uses good quality free range chicken.

1. Roughly chop a couple of onions. Add to a baking tray with a sprig of rosemary, a couple or three whole garlic cloves and a few glugs of olive oil. Cook in a medium hot oven until the onions are starting to caramelize.
2. Cut your chicken into portions and add to the onions and garlic. Return to the oven to brown well.
3. While the chicken and onions are cooking, roughly dice some potatoes, chop some cabbage (savoy, or kale also works well) and grate some cheese (cheddar or an edam-type cheese work great).
4. When the chicken is well browned, remove from the tray and add some thick doorsteps of stale ciabbatta. Mix well to coat the bread in the oniony-garlic juices and return to the oven to brown (this will only take a minute or two.
5. Remove the tray and turn the oven down slightly. Now, in a casserole dish you want to layer your ingredients - onions, potatoes, cabbage, chicken, bread, sprinkle of cheese, onions, potatoes.... Make sure you finish with a layer of bread on top, and sprinkle the bread with the remaining cheese. Now fill the casserole with chicken stock so that it doesn't quite cover the top layer of bread. Cook in the oven until the potatoes are tender and the top is golden brown.

This is a great, warming, comforting dish, and at least it got one of the chickens inside and out of the rain!

Have you tried a similar recipe? If so, leave a comment and let us know.