Hodmeblog

When you buy the Kayapó's PI'Y Brazil nuts, you’re doing more than experiencing a (delicious!) taste of the Amazon rainforest. Each purchase has significant agency attached to it. It acts as a vote for a more just, sustainable system, contributing to the financial independence necessary for the Kayapó to continue their commitment to protecting the rainforest. We call it Solidarity Trade.

James Bucher grows carlin peas for us at Hall Farm in Knettishall on the Suffolk-Norfolk border as a mixed bi-crop and with no pesticides or synthetic fertiliser, one element in his transformation of the farm from intensive input-reliant production to working with the soil and nature.

Read the chapter on the history of beans from Pen Vogler's Stuffed: A History of Good Food and Hard Times in Britain. Now out in paperback, Stuffed tells the stories of the food and drink at the centre of social upheavals from prehistory to the present.

Barleybird is a community interest company founded by Hodmedod to build understanding of agroecology and work to change food systems.

Neil Buttery's new book Knead to Know is an insightful and engrossing history of baking. In this extract he surveys medieval bread from bannuc to the upper crust.

Cooking pulses (beans, peas, lentils, chickpeas...) is fundamentally about getting water and heat into them so they're tender, digestible and delicious.

Pulses are the edible mature dried seeds of leguminous plants, members of the Fabaceae botanical family. The best known pulses in Europe are beans, peas, chickpeas and lentils. Of these, peas and (fava) beans have historically been grown in the UK. Legumes are any plant of the Fabaceae family; pulses are only the edible seeds.

Wholegrain cereals - the unrefined seeds of cereal crops with the bran, endosperm and germ intact and just the husk removed - are most commonly milled for flour but they're excellent cooked whole too. Different species and varieties vary in colour, texture, size and taste, but all have a strong nutty element to their flavour.

Chef James Taylor has been working since mid 2023 to transform school meals initiatives at two London primary schools - Sir Thomas Abney School in Stoke Newington and Harrington Hill Primary School in Clapton. The London Mayor's initiative to provide universal free school meals in primary schools from September 2023 is both a crucial lifeline for families nit by the cost-of-living crisis and an inspiration for change. James and the school have used this opportunity to provide meals that champion more nutritious, planet-friendly food.

A few years ago we were looking for a sweetener 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

We've 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.

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.