Elderflower Cordial

As Peter and I went for a walk the other evening we realised that there was an abundance of elderflower bushes that had not been raided for their blooms but the season was fast coming to an end with many of the heads starting to turn.
We had not been offered any cordial this year by the lady in the village who makes it so the light bulb moment occurred and I decided to have ago at making my own.
So armed with a bag full of lovely creamy flower heads and a bag of oranges and lemons I spent last Sunday mixing up the infusion and on Wednesday we spent the evening sterilising bottles and straining the liquid.
I have to admit to being rather pleased with the result and having tried a glass over ice last night found the end product to be refreshing and full of the taste of the Staffordshire lanes!!!!
I have just finished labelling them up so some nice shiny bottles of Gastronomy Elderflower Cordial will be on the shelves tomorrow!


Enjoy

The Great Staffordshire Breakfast

So while I sat last week eating my brunch - a delicious plate full of bacon, eggs, sausage tomatoes and mushrooms with a good cup of tea, (I was being spoiled in return for washing up duty) I overheard a couple next door who had also partaken of a great Staffordshire all day breakfast commenting to Peter that is was the best breakfast they had enjoyed. I glowed with pride and then began to think. So what made it better than any other breakfast?

Was it the fact that the bacon, cooked gently in the pan, tasting ever so slightly of crisp porky sizzle and salt complimented the creamy texture of the free range egg and the tart acidic soft texture of the tomato or was it the fact that it was presented beautifully on a large fine china Wedgwood plate and my cup of finest English tea brown enough to taste of tea but pale enough to be delicate was also in a lovely china tea cup... maybe it was as simple as the sunshine streaming through the window, bouncing off the floor making me feel warm whilst the dulcet sounds emanated from the CD player temporarily taking me far away from my pots and pans!


Now everybody likes a big, hearty English breakfast once in a while, don't they? Families sit at their tables on a Sunday morning and tuck in but I wonder do they know where the tradition really came from? why is the Full English Breakfast, so well... English?

I bet they don't know that the English breakfast first came in to our households as a marketing ploy, in the 1920’s, much the same as the red Santa Claus arrived via Coca Cola. ‘Bacon and eggs’ was the phrase used by Edward Bernays to persuade people that a good hearty breakfast after a relaxing lie in on a Sunday morning was just what they needed to start their ‘relaxing’ day off.
With the passage of time and significant advertising it became very popular to buy Edward Bernays bacon and eat it with lots of different things on a Sunday morning. The most popular were sausages, eggs, black pudding, mushrooms and tomatoes.

Further google research has also revealed that Henry V and his men ate a hearty breakfast before going out to battle. This included all manner of ingredients, some not so appetising such as uncooked cows kidneys with black pudding and bacon! Eggs were also eaten but as they were harder to come by they must have been a bit of a treat and I guess in those days an impending axe crashing through your armour kind of obliterated the worry of cholesterol!

More recently in 2002 the BBC reported the death of the Great British Breakfast claiming foreign muesli's and french croissants to be at fault, however reports from a small rural village in Staffordshire can confidently claim that the Staffordshire all day breakfast is definitely not deceased but growing in popularity. So why not pop down to the Gastronomy Shop and enjoy a moment of pure deliciousness with Staffordshire bacon and eggs but definitely no raw cows kidneys and let us know what you think - Are the days of bacon and eggs a thing of the past...