Valentines Day Special

How about a delicious treat for your Valentine? Food and drink is a primal need so what better way to reach your valentine's heart? At BigBarn we have some great ideas and have asked a few of our producer members to send in their ideas as comments below. Please also comment if you have a heart winning recipe or story.

To start with something basic. Ladies, your man will pander to your every whim for weeks if you cook him a delicious, locally-produced, well hung, juicy, steak. We recommend you look at the BigBarn map to find your local farmer or butcher and ask questions so you can tell your man the story of his meal. Please note that a local sirloin steak will probably be cheaper and better than a supermarket fillet steak.

And you men, forget the sweetie shelf at the local garage, or crappy flowers from the supermarket and give your lovely lady some hand made, high cocoa, aphrodisiac rich, hand made chocolates.

Simply visit the BigBarn map or MarketPlace to find and buy the best local steak or for a huge range of chocolate.

Comments

Posted by Kendra at Rawr Chocolate on 4th 2010f February, 2010 @ 10:35am:

Whether it's Christmas, Valentines, or Easter, chocolate always seems to be one of those gifts you never go wrong with. But do you know what's in your chocolate? Where it comes from? How it's made?

Lots of people ask us, what's so good about raw chocolate? And to answer that we always start with a little history lesson. Cacao, the seed of the melon-like Cacao fruit from which all chocolate is made, has a long and intriguing history. From being used medicinally by the Aztecs and Mayans, as currency by the Spanish, as an aphrodisiac by the French, to the chocolate that we know today. Our attraction to chocolate may have as much to do with cacao's cultural background as with its delicious taste.

Raw chocolate is an idea of bringing chocolate back to it's roots. With less processed cacao, no nasty additives, high cacao content, and purely natural ingredients we can get back to basics. Most commercial chocolate is intensely processed at very high temperatures: enzymes, antioxidants, vitamins, and other nutrients don't have a chance! Next, highly refined sugar, emulsifiers, and other processes are added/applied to produce something very alien to the original cacao bean.

At Rawr, we process as little as possible. By keeping temperatures to a minimum, mixing, pouring, and wrapping by hand, we aim to maximise that true cacao nutritional value and flavour. Instead of refined white sugar, we use the sweet nectar of the agave plant. No dairy is used: instead we use delicious coconut flour in our lighter chocolates. All ingredients are sourced ethically and are pesticide free, packaged with recycled and/or recyclable materials.

Check out our dairy free, gluten free, raw chocolate (including our Valentine Chocolate Collection) at the BigBarn Marketplace: http://www.bigbarn.co.uk/marketplace/vendors/rawr

Posted by Marion Fordy on 4th 2010f February, 2010 @ 10:53am:

Candle lit dinner for 2 is the most romantic way to spend valentine's night. I will cook the main course, maybe steak, and he can impress me with a lovely dessert. Forget the rip off flowers and restaurants.

Posted by Philida on 4th 2010f February, 2010 @ 12:27pm:

How about a lovely natural present for you loved one?

Bees venture out around now, on days when the temperature gets to 10 degrees, looking for spring food - snowdrops, catkins and pussy willow are some of their favourites. The pollen on early flowers gives the bees protein to build up the colony strength and numbers in the early months.

After this cold winter they will have to work hard to get colony numbers up and we will have to replace colonies lost in the bad weather. It's essential to get an early start, so the bees visit the big drifts of wild snowdrops and the willow trees on the river at Muckleford, and fill their little pollen sacs to take back to the hive from February. Local garden flowers have a part to play - bees love crocuses, hellebores and winter flowering shrubs like mahonia, honeysuckle and wintersweet. The queen will start laying eggs - fertilised ones produce female worker bees, unfertilised ones become male drones - and the bees get busy rearing new brood, raising young bees and cleaning up the hive, ready for making honey in April. Buy a gift from our online shop at http://www.bigbarn.co.uk/marketplace/vendors/filberts - see our special offers on lip balms.

Posted by sara chambers on 6th 2010f February, 2010 @ 2:31am:

AMORE... ...FALL IN LOVE WITH SQUISITO THIS VALENTINE’S DAY. On the most romantic day of the year we bring to your door delicious Italian food handmade with the best local ingredients. Spend less time in the kitchen and more time together! http://www.bigbarn.co.uk/marketplace/vendors/squisito

Posted by Richard Emans on 8th 2010f February, 2010 @ 1:15pm:

The Ultimate Aphrodisiac; Fresh English Oysters

For the very best, freshest oysters buy direct from us, the grower. Our Gigas and Natice oysters are grown in the shallows off the Essex coast and are second to none.

To buy online; http://www.bigbarn.co.uk/marketplace/vendors/Maldonoysters

Leave a comment