Lunch-club (this is where we take it in turns to cook or prep-up lunch for everyone in the office- can be really nice but when it’s your turn it gets a bit hectic when, for example, if the oven fails you whilst baking 30 potatoes) ended on a slightly posher note than is usual yesterday, with the huge cuts of a wedding’s leftovers of cheese including, Rachel (Shrewsbury born and bred) was proud to point out, some Shropshire Blue. She was keen that I should try some (even though it’s quite an alarming orange and blue combo) and it was very tasty. We got to talking about what other special foodstuffs had sprung up from her home town and surrounding area but have so far only established the Shrewsbury biscuit, which Jess tells us is a common species among the rip-off on-board snack range on the trains. You know, along with salty instant hot chocolate that can bend spoons (plastic ones).

Where I was born is also the birth place of the Bramley Apple! This cross-pollinated slightly larger than average but very beautiful apple is the most popular variety of cooking apple in the whole UK.  Mary Ann Brailsford grew the first Bramley in Southwell (Nottinghamshire) around about 1809 and later the garden fell into the hands of a Mathew Bramley. A local green-fingered chap- Henry Merryweather (of whom the local garden centre must owe it’s name – gosh I am learning a lot about my heritage with just a little fumble through Google) asked if he might make take a grafting from the tree and start to sell the apple, old Mathew agreed, but only if he was to call it after him.

Hmm really should have thought more about this email- on consultation it appears that none of my friends come from Cheddar, or Kendal (mint-cake)l or Melton Mowbray (pork pies) so far we’ve got the Britvic Factory in Chelmsford and Kraft foods in Cheltenham- not quite the rustic angle I was going for…

What about you guys? Anybody share their birth place with the sausage? Cox’s Orange Pipin? Candyfloss? Share it with us.

Trackback URL