A very happy festive season from as all at BigBarn. We now have 400 producers in the BigBarn MarketPlace with over 9,200 products, many with some great Christmas presents. To see producers for each product simply click on the links or photos and buy, to collect, or get a delivery. Or browse producers offering a discount using code BB1.

Free Range Turkey for the whole family.
Regional Hampers

Chocolates from artisan chocolatiers using real carefully selected ingredients for incredible flavour. Or for the real chocoholic try a chocolate making course.

Specialist coffees whole whole beans to grind fresh or special grinds for different uses. Or for tea lovers, find some real tea not factory floor sweepings.

Chilli sauce some like it hot, a great present for real men.

Rape Seed Oil; buy it in 5l cans for cooking, salad dressing or bottle it with herbs or chilli to make chilli oil for pizza.

Cheese; Direct from the producer or expert, with a the story of why the product is so good.

Christmas cakes and puds made using special recipes and carefully selected ingredients.

Gluten Free bread and cakes

Real home cured bacon and ham (not the stuff injected with salty water)
Quality sausages Matured beef

Health and natural beauty; including soaps, creams, lotions, honey balms and remedies

Beers, ciders and English wine

Mutton; not from a 8 year old barren ewe but from a lamb that has been allowed to mature to give better texture and flavour

Haggis and black pudding direct from artisan butchers.

Marmalade, jams and chutneys; from people who carefully select their ingredients for real flavour.

Courses; from cookery, to chocolate, sausage, bread or cheese making, to foraging.

Or browse all those producers offering a discount with the BB1 discount code. Simply click the discount code page and click on any producer of interest, fill to your shopping basket to the require value then type in BB1 to get the discount.

The celebrations have begun for sausage week Nov 1-7. We British love our sausages and should be proud of the great quality and variety throughout the UK.

The last 30 years has seen a real renaissance in sausage making. I am sure when I was young sausages were suffering the same fate as beer, with tasteless Watneys Red Barrel and fatty ‘Walls hot Sausages’, dominating the market. We now have a huge variety with regional brands like Cumberland, Lincolnshire, made by many butchers as well as hundreds of special recipe mixes passionately guarded by their makers.

The best may be those made locally by your butcher or farmer. Your local sausages will be fresh, and by meeting the producer, you to find out how they are made and what is in them. You may even be able to ask for something special, like a batch of gluten free. You can also avoid the misleading supermarket packaging, like the bacon my girlfriend bought recently that had a union jack on the packet but no mention anywhere that the pork was British. Probably imported then cured and sliced in the UK.

We have hundreds of great sausage producers on BigBarn, including 170 in MarketPlace where you can search and buy online.

To try online shopping in our MarketPlace click here or use your special discount code BB1 and browse the producers on our special discount code page. If you fancy something a bit unusual, like beef, wild boar or venison sausages, type it in the search box.

And if your favourite sausage producer is not in our MarketPlace tell them to give us a call, you could then order online and save a shopping trip, or collect to avoid the weekend queue and delivery charge.

As online food sales grow so does the popularity and range of products in our MarketPlace. Now including 405 producers/retailers with a total of over 9,150 products. For more, ideas, and a special discount code read on.

Online food sales are expected to reach £6b this year and continue to grow. Not surprising when we are all so busy and spend more time in front of our computers.

Those, like me, who think food is something we should really, see, touch, sniff and feel before buying, especially fruit and veg, may be dismayed, although with further thought, why?

If I find a great local supplier why not buy a weekly delivery, online, of fresh seasonal fruit and veg? If I want great meat why not buy a local free range turkey, half lamb, at a discount, for the freezer, a big pack of my favourite sausages or some properly matured beef. And have it all delivered?

There is also a huge range of produce not available in shops; great regional hampers, raw milk, seaweed, and all kinds of specialist; courses, cakes, breads and gluten free, coffees, rare breed meat, cheese, preserves, beers, ciders, natural beauty products, etc. Owned by enthusiasts rather than corporations governed by cost cutting accountants and marketeers.

We have added links to some of the items listed above, so simply click to see some of the producers, or to get a discount from participating producers try our special discount page showing all those who offer money off if you use discount code BB1. Or as always our Deal of the Day page for special offers on selected products.

You may have met Don at a Food festival or outside event, and been lucky enough to taste his delicious home made Onion Bhaji or Pakora. A huge enthusiast for great food and cooking at home, Don has created special mixes and kits to make cooking a fantastic Indian meal easy.

Sri Lankan-born Don arrived in England as a young man, he had just £7 in his pocket. The cricket-mad youngster started at the bottom in the motor trade and worked his way up to owning several successful and award-winning East Anglian car dealerships.

Always a great food lover, when he stepped down from his dealership businesses he found he was spending more time developing his love of Indian cooking and often invited all the neighbours round to try out his dishes. Tasty onion bhajis were a favourite with his guests and Don soon became known as ‘The Bhaji Man’.

As he perfected his recipes, he hit on the idea of Bhaji Man mixes – carefully pre-prepared products made from the finest quality, freshest ingredients which take only minutes to prepare.

Good Eastern cuisine can seem a mystery because it requires knowledge of a variety of spices and skills and it can be time-consuming and complex to create with many ingredients and a long process of cutting, chopping, grinding, mixing and frying.

Bhaji Man’s Easy Mixes enable even the busiest of people to cook fresh, authentic, delicious Indian snacks at any time. Specially selected spices have been hand blended with gram flour, which when added to onions or vegetables, creates a superb Eastern treat.

Easy to prepare, both the Bhaji Mix and the Vegetable Pakora tempura batter mix can be made in minutes – simply add water and chopped onions or sliced vegetables – and served hot and fresh as a light lunch or with dips for a perfect appetizer. Alternatively, serve these moreish little snacks at a party, a romantic meal for two or a BBQ – the magic taste of the Easy Mix will add spice to any occasion!

Bhaji Man Easy Mixes are Gluten Free and suitable for Coeliacs. They have no artificial colours or added flavours and no artificial preservatives or added salt. The Veg Pakora mix is also suitable for vegetarians.

To try some of Don’s great mixes, click here. And please let us know what you think.

We set up BigBarn to help consumers get safer, fresher food and farmers a better deal. We are passionate about promoting local food and encouraging trade and why I am happy to dress up as Carrot Man occasionally. If you think this is mad please read on and perhaps you will change your mind.

I get fresh fruit and veg from my local farm shop that is better and cheaper than the supermarket, I tell my friends, the farm shop does well and the farmer grows more produce. If you have a similar story or shop near you please feedback below for the chance to win a box of 32 packets of Pipers Crisps.

When I say better and cheaper I bought corn on the cob picked that morning for 35p. In the supermarket they were half the size, old, dry, and 45p. My local corn was so sweet and moist I didn’t even add butter.

Before BigBarn, when I was a farmer, we found our carefully grown onions on the supermarket shelf priced at the equivalent of £850/tonne, when the local packer had only promised to pay us £110/tonne, in 30 days time, we were slightly annoyed!

I realised If we sold to local farm shops at £220/tonne and they sold them at £425, we would all make a fair profit and the consumer would get them at half the price of the supermarket.

This is all rather over simplified, but why farm shops should be cheaper on fresh produce. Of course not all farm shops grow their own, or have local producers of all products, but is something more people should be aware of when trying to save money. Supermarkets are NOT cheaper for everything despite their huge buying power.

You will find over 700 icons on the BigBarn map with red ‘£’ signs attached meaning they are cheaper than the supermarket like for like on some products. Apparently many more think they are but are worried that if they ‘flag’ their icon and are wrong they will get sued.

‘Arghh’, but I hear you say, ‘I can’t get everything on my shopping list from that farm shop’. The answer is to change your shopping habit to once a week with your local shop and once a month to the big shop for the tins and household goods. You will save money, get better food and avoid the bogofs and impulse buys.

So there you have it, I dress up occasionally to try and change peoples attitudes to local food. It is better and cheaper and if you change your shopping habit, to local every week and the supermarket once a month, you can get better food, save money and encourage more local production.

If you agree and want to spread the work send this to a friend, by clicking ’share’ below, or if you have any examples of bargains at your local farm shop please feedback below. Likewise if you are a farm shop with a comment please add it.

Love or hate honey, it isn’t just for spreading on toast. As the Derbyshire Dynamo Gloria, Bee keeper and honey expert, will tell you in her best selling book.

‘I’ve known about the marvels of honey my whole life,’ Gloria explains. ‘I grew up in a mining community and my grandmother was not only a herbalist, but kept a hive in next door’s garden. She was always dispensing honey to the miners as remedies: for wounds and cuts, and as an expectorant for coughs and tuberculosis. And no protective clothing for her: she wore a net curtain!’

Gloria’s careful research indicates there is nothing that her antibacterial bee products can’t help with: from burns to prostate problems, coughs to eczema and psoriasis, mouth ulcers to hay fever. Anecdotally, bee stings can be helpful for multiple sclerosis, and also arthritis, ‘Which is probably why I don’t have it,’ she says cheerfully. ‘In some countries, “apitherapy” is registered as a medicine, and the US is trying to create regulations for its use.’ Honey has been used to treat infected surgical wounds in hospitals, overpowering even MRSA. ‘It’s not a surprise to me,’ Gloria notes. (Florence Nightingale used it, apparently, during the Crimean War.)

You can buy this brilliant book in the BigBarn online shop here. Or here for Gloria’s honey and remedies. Or to find your local honey producer try your local farm shop, or see if there is jar icon on your local map meaning ‘preserves’.

Ever tried proper seaweed? Not the chopped fried cabbage you get in a Chinese restaurant, the real plant from the sea.

Full of essential vitamins we seem to ignore this great source of food. Luckily you can now buy it in the BigBarn MarketPlace from Iain on the Isle of Bute.

Born in Bute Iain retuned after years on the mainland and researched the product he could see through his sitting room window, seaweed, and tons of it.

The more research he did, the more he discovered about seaweed’s many uses, both for bathing and for eating. As well as the two edible varieties, Iain gathers two types of bathing seaweed: knotted or egg wrack and bladderwrack. Seaweed is naturally rich in vitamins, minerals and trace elements. In hot water, it turns a lovely spring green and releases a silky sort of gel into the water.

‘It’s very relaxing,’ Iain says. ‘People use it for soothing the symptoms of rheumatism, arthritis, psoriasis and eczema. They also like the softening effect it has on their skin and hair. When they try it, they come back and order again.’

Although seaweed gathering has been popular for centuries and is still practised in Ireland and Wales, Iain found very little evidence of it being done in Scotland nowadays, except for its use as fertiliser.

‘It seems to have all but died out and I don’t understand why,’ he says. ‘Seaweed’s benefits are becoming increasingly well known and this is a prime area for it. There are fast-flowing currents of seawater rushing in from the deep waters of the Sound of Arran twice a day and countless gallons of fresh rainwater run down from the mountains into the Kyles of Bute, so this is an ideal location. Fortunately for me, this is a designated seafood fishing area, too, so I know the water is pure because it is tested every three months by the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency.’

To try some seaweed on the plate, or in the bath, click here. And please let us know what you think.

If like me you are a lover of chilli but hate having your head ‘blown off’ by a rogue pod or seed read on.

Our featured producers are Jason and Steve, founders of the South Devon Chilli Farm. They been growing chillies since 2003 and now grow over 10,000 chilli plants every year, harvesting tonnes of fresh chillies. They are sold fresh or used in their range of chilli sauces, preserves and chilli chocolate. The business now has up to 8 ‘hot’ staff kept busy all year.

You can visit the farm and shop all year and wander among the fruiting chilli plants, sample all of the sauces, preserves and chocolate made on the farm and take away fresh chillies, chilli seedlings, plants and seeds (during the growing season).

Or you can buy fresh chillis and sauces from Jason and Steve in our MarketPlace or, next year, buy some seeds, also in MarketPlace, and grow your own, as I have.

Some of my lucky friends have been given chilli plants and I will be using my crop, together with a pack of a hotter variety, to make up chilli oil, filling some arty bottles with dried chillis, herbs and rape seed oil from the 5 litre can I always have in stock. Great Christmas presents!

Bread, at its best, is a superb food and immensely diverse, reflecting the local culture and being integral to a healthy diet. So what’s gone wrong – why is 95% of the bread on offer such insipid stodge?

The answer lies in the cost cutting, industrialisation of the production system.
Good bread has one ingredient which nothing can replace – time, lots of it! Industrialisation is all about doing it quickly – perhaps an hour and a half from mixing to packing.

Bread is a fermented food; it needs time for the enzymes and good bacteria to work on the dough, transforming it from the inside. Industrial bakers try to fool the dough by high speed mixing, using large amounts of powerful yeasts, and adding a cocktail of chemical agents which do not appear in the list of ingredients. The result is appalling, and really not a good food.

To make good bread, all you need is: flour, water and salt… and time. Artisan bakers don’t even add new yeast – they use saved dough or wild yeast cultures and bacteria in the flour (and on our hands) to gently leaven the dough, over a minimum of 36 hours.

These naturally leavened breads have superb taste, with no need for sun dried tomatoes and the like to make then tasty. They also have greatly superior nutritional qualities, making them more digestible and higher in nutrients, and lower in their glycaemic index (good for kids and diabetics).

Increasingly, top restaurants and discerning consumers are seeking out these artisans at farmers’ markets or specialist bakeries. And bread making courses are more popular than ever.

It really is not that difficult to make great bread with the right knowledge, flour and yeast. If you want real bread avoid the supermarket and go and talk to your local baker or Farm Shop on the BigBarn map. Or depending on your preference use the BigBarn MarketPlace, and buy online; Bread, Wild Yeast, bread making courses, or flour.

Fresh, sweet, corn on the cob, a winner for the whole family.

Those people who grow grow their own sweet corn say the water should be boiling on the stove before they pick the ripe corn from the veg patch. They then peel off the outer leaves as they walk back to plunge the cob in the boiling water.

This they all say is the ultimate way to have corn on the cob.

I have not been fortunate enough to experience this taste sensation, but did have some corn from my local farm shop only 3 hours old, for only 30p each. I was amazed that it was so sweet and moist I did not need the usual butter coating.

So don’t delay, forget the aged supermarket corn and get down to your local farm shop. Maybe phone first to find out when they pick it and get the kids involved in the race to eat the sweetest corn.

All you have to do is use our map to find your local corn, or for a delivery check our MarketPlace for corn. And for inspiration try our recipes.