The Marmalade Festival - February 10th Cumbria

This Post was written by Martin from Artisan-food

Artisan-food is organising the food part of the magnificent Marmalade festival, to be held at Dalemain House, Cumbria, on February the 10th this year. There will be around 24 local producers attending and we are planning to make it a real taste sensation. The Artisan food marquee and Dalemain's historic barn will be connected together and this is where all the producers will be. We have a fantastic line up with over 50 citrus themed products on offer. So if you are anywhere near the lake District, come and visit. The festival is on from 10-4. E-mail me or just come to our stand to say hello.

We are also getting some superb publicity for the event. 4 full pages in the Sunday Telegraph magazine, 4 Pages in Tastes of Britain, an article in the Field, plugs in Food and Travel, BBC Countryfile amongst others, as well as lots of great local coverage too. It seems that Orange is the new Black, well at least in a food sense. Our latest will be UKTV Food - Market Kitchen - transmitted on 31st January at 7pm.

We have some fantastic local artisan producers who will all be bringing their own citrus twist to the festival, they range from Susan Aglionby who breeds Longhorn cattle and as well as selling her beef, will be cooking some of her excellent slow grown, grass fed, traditional breed organic beef for people to taste (click here or more info).

Susan is part of the Hadrian Organics network and will also be accompanied by Eva’s organics, a fantastic local organic vegetable grower who runs an excellent local box scheme in the North of the county.

We have two local artisan cheese producers, Leonie Fairburn from Thornby Moor and Lynne Ballentyne Dykes from Wardhall Dairy who produce excellent cheeses from single-herd raw milk, they will be matching their popular hard and soft as well as goats cheeses with citrus chutneys amongst other things. To complement this we will also have a great selection of other citrus cheeses from around the UK bought to us by John Natlacen of Churchmouse Cheeses, recently voted as “the best independent cheese shop in 2007” (Click here for article)

People will be able to try cooked venison with cranberry and orange jelly as well as sample a canape of Venison Pate with Cumberland jelly, the venison is from Deer ‘n’ Dexter, (click here for article)

We have one of the countries finest stoneground organic millers attending, notably the Watermill (click here for article) and whilst on the bread theme, The Moody Bakers a local cooperative with an excellent reputation and products will have a selection of breads, marmalade cakes and lemon drizzle squares. The counties butter maker will be selling handmade butter, called Cream of Cumbria, “you may be able to whip their cream, but you can’t beat their butter”.

Jane Maggs from Wild and Fruitful will be creating the official “Festival marmalade” out of Seville oranges and locally grown quince, a fitting challenge for a producer who is known for her excellent jams, jellies and chutneys. Also present will be Lizzie Smith who has won many awards for her fabulous Cumbrian Frutta Cotta, and recently created a Mostarda version that was awarded the “best new product” at the recent NW fine food awards. (click here for article)

The Gift of Oil, described by Gordon Ramsey as having “dazzling oils and amazing vinegars” will present a variety of citrus infused oils for sampling. Our very special Lyth Valley Damsons can be sampled steeped in Gin from Cowmire Hall and there is lots more too..

Chef, Nick Martin, who we call “Cumbria’s culinary ambassador” will be cooking various dishes too, based on local produce, just in case you are not tempted by any of the food on the stalls!

I hope to see you there, come and visit the Artisan-food stall and watch me preserve some lemons, you can also buy the winning festival bread and there's lots more we plan to do.! - Martin

Hello from Cumbria's real food magazine!

This Post was written by Martin from Artisan-food.com

A quick introduction as I have just joined this group. My name is Martin and along with my wife Cecilia we run Cumbria's on-line food magazine. It's sort of like a big blog in that it's our personal take on the food scene in Cumbria, but we run it as a magazine, on-line. I'm a photographer and Cecilia is a journalist, so that's the words and piccies taken care of, Cecilia makes the pages and I make the site. Job done.


We fight for the rights of the real Cumbrian sausage....

About three years ago we took a decision to try to spend our "food money" in local shops rather than the supermarket. Being foodies and often cooking all sorts of food for our friends and family, this was not going to be easy. Where do you start? As usual for me, it was in at the deep end. "Let's try only eating food produced in Cumbria for a week" was the bright idea that Cecilia willingly went along with. After driving for what seemed like hundreds of miles and spending hours searching for any, never mind decent, sources of genuinely local food, the week ended up being a real eye opener. This was the seed that started the magazine and now two years on from the launch we spend the vast majority of our "food money" locally, sometimes without even leaving the house. Over that time our understanding and love of our local food economy has blossomed.


After the blossom comes the Damsons from Lyth Valley, a simply perfect local product that ends up in jam, gin, puddings, chocolates....

The sections are called, startin', readin' eatin' cookin' gettin' and makin'. It's all about who produces what in Cumbria. How it's produced, where to get it, how to cook it and where you can find it to eat. We love our producers and our chefs in particular. Not least because the good ones are really hard working and extremely dedicated. We hate being disappointed with badly cooked and poorly served, expensive food. So we have our own restaurant reviews. These represent the places we love to go back to. I like to experiment as well and the site gives me the perfect opportunity and excuse to try cheesemaking, bake sourdough bread, smoke food, stuff my own sausages...you name it I'm up for it.


Such as researching the best recipes for cooking the local grey squirrels...

We have a blog section on the site. I post regularly, so does one of our local chefs, an organic vegetable farmer, a food historian (well at least he did until he broke his leg...) and more recently a local dairy farmer is giving us his insights too.

We are re-designing the site at the moment (the articles have had a makeover, top pages are next) as well as introducing video, which we call, somewhat tongue in cheek, our own TV channel. But seriously whilst we stick more or less strictly to Cumbrian products on most of the site, we would be happy to include contributed videos on relevant food subjects, just e-mail me if you have some ideas or relevant content.

It's a bit of fun really.

Hope you like what we do, feedback is always welcome.
Martin