The BigBarn/BBC Good Food Coupon Offer is now in full swing. For those of you who don’t know, if you buy a copy of BBC Good Food Magazine, you can cut out a coupon which can be redeemed for a variety of tasty treats at hundreds of local food producers and retailers around the country. To find out which producers are participating you can look for the red icons on BigBarn.co.uk or bbcgoodfood.com.

In addition to the Coupon Offer, our relationship with BBC Good Food has given us access to their recipe database. In the first of four seasonal installments we present a selection of autumnal and wintery dishes (including a couple for Christmas) including a Cold Weather Hot Pot, Autumn Vegetable Soup and Christmas Ham with a Sticky Ginger Glaze.

To view the recipes, click here.

By Ant Davison. Further to harping on about British apples, plums, blackberries and mushrooms and how well they grow in this green and pleasant land, we thought it was time we helped you forage for some.

I spent a few happy hours this weekend scrumping some delicious apples, (6 unknown varieties, one tasted like a pear) and collecting some fresh fallen chestnuts (delicious roasted over the fire).

The apples were on the edge of a wood beside a public road and the chestnuts were in a National Trust park, all open to anyone. I have noticed many other places to pick apples and often seen people beside the road helping themselves to some local delicacy. There must be hundreds of such foraging opportunities around the UK and with so much unpicked and rotting food it seems silly not to add these ‘local assets’ to the BigBarn map.

Over the coming months, therefore, we are inviting our BigBarn users, as well as the thousands registered to receive our newsletter, to send us information about any apple/plum/nut trees, mushroom spots, horse-radish patches etc so that in a couple of months we have enough information to add a ‘Forage’ icon.

If you know of a good foraging spot email us here with the location, (including postcode or one nearby), the food and when in season. If you haven’t registered to receive our newsletter yet simply click here. Our newsletter is designed to become your local food community newsletter and keep you up to date on local foraging opportunities as well as what your local food producers have in season or on special offer. The best food is closer than you think!