Hodmedod was founded with the aim of getting more British-grown pulses into British kitchens to support diverse sustainable rotations in arable farming and provide good, healthy wholefoods. Up to now we've grown the farms and crops we work with by selling our expanding range of plant-based wholefoods through our website and into independent retailers and caterers.
We've now launched ten pulses and grains from British farms as part of Holland & Barrett's transformation of their food range, available in their stores across the UK. It's a fantastic opportunity to make British-grown fava beans, carlin peas and quinoa, along with other pulses and cereals, available more widely and to support more diverse farming.
Ten years ago British's traditional pulse crops like fava beans and carlin peas were all but impossible to find in shops. Older varieties of cereals, including emmer and naked barley, were barely grown. Quinoa, lentils and pink Flamingo peas, all new to British farming, weren't in production on any scale. It's fantastic to see all these crops now available on high streets across the UK.
The first ten products will be followed by more wholefoods produced from British arable crops in the coming months.
Holland & Barrett's food relaunch is a return to the health store chain's origins as a grocery store founded in Bishop's Stortford, Essex, in 1870. The new range of 500 lines is focused on healthy foods and each pack carries a "Plant Points" count of the number of plant species in the product.
Find the range of pulses and grains in stores and on the Holland & Barrett website.
We love to see and hear where our pulses and grains get to and how they're used. Please share your photos of them - on shop shelves, in kitchens and cooked up - on social media and tag @hodmedods. Each week we'll pick a favourite post and send the author a new product to try. |
Comments will be approved before showing up.
A few years ago we were looking for a sweetner for some granola recipes, something UK produced and minimally processed. When our apple syrup order from Liberty Fields arrived we knew we were onto something special - we quickly added them to our short list of brilliant Guest Producers
Down a warren of country lanes, not far from the Tamar Valley in Cornwall, is Julie Bailey's orchard Lower Trelabe, where she grows historic local varieties of apple and makes her delicious Apple Natural apple shreds, traditional fruit leathers that contain only the natural plant sugars.
Nick Saltmarsh
Author