50 Things To Do Before You're 11&¾ At Yeo Valley

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Earlier this week, The Boy and I were invited to the wonderful Yeo Valley in the Mendips to work with the National Trust on their 50 Things To Do Before You're 11&¾ campaign. This was perfect for us as I've spent much of this year promoting the campaign through this blog and my outdoor play posts, and I also thoroughly enjoy visiting Holt Farm as it is a beautiful site.

Yeo Valley have partnered with the National Trust to help promote the outdoor play campaign, and during the course of the day we were given the opportunity to complete several of the 50 Things which The Boy thoroughly enjoyed. Many of these The Boy had already completed, however the one we haven't managed to tick off yet is 'hold a scary beast'; we did complete it when I placed a worm on his hand. It may not seem very scary to you or I, but to a four year old who doesn't like slime, it was a terrifying creature!

50 Things at Yeo Valley

We had a great day in a wonderful setting with good friends. And what better proof is there of the fresh air being good for you than The Boy falling asleep on the way home?

From October to January this year, Yeo Valley fans can win one of ten fantastic holidays each worth £1,000 on special packs of its natural and fruity yogurts. Simply pick up a big pot or one of its 4-pack varieties from any major supermarket, visit the Yeo Valley website and enter the code on the pack for the chance to win one of ten unique breaks to a magical National Trust cottage, for a tranquil ‘staycation’ in spectacular locations across the country. In addition to this fabulous offer, Yeo Valley is giving away 250 family passes every day, giving families the chance to experience the National Trust’s enchanting places absolutely free of charge.

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The Woodland Trust & Yeo Valley

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Yeo Valley

Ever since the first time I visited the Yeo Valley farm overlooking Blagdon Lake last Summer, I have had a fondness for the dairy company which has seen my shopping tendencies change. Gone are the Onken yoghurts, gone is the cheap milk for £1 and blocks of butter produced by a company which doesn't pay British dairy farmers a fair price. In has come Yeo Valley. It's not only a company which I'm proud to associate my blog with, but a range of products which I'd rather have in my fridge and our tummies. And ultimately, on my conscience.

As an ethical company, Yeo Valley have teamed up with The Woodland Trust to plant 10,000 trees and help preserve Britain’s wonderful woodland. On the underside lid of the special packs of Yeo Valley (marked with the Woodland Trust campaign) is a code which when entered onto the Yeo Valley & Woodland Trust page could result in one of 10,000 trees being won, either to plant in your own garden or donated to The Woodland Trust.

However, their partnership goes much further than that, and that's why a bunch of parent bloggers (including us) were invited to a Woodland Trust day at the Yeo Valley headquarters to meet with the people behind the campaign, and introduce our children to learning about their world via forest exploration and play.

We were welcomed to the Mendips by the larger than life Les, the head ranger at Yeo Valley, who explained to the children all about the different rocks that make up the strata of the hills. Introduced to the forested area by the Woodland Trust, we were invited to complete a leaf trail and a bug hunt which the children were completely engaged in. I was very surprised just how interested The Boy was in the different leaves around, and we quickly identified about ten different trees and bushes in a very small section of wood. Enlisting the help of the kind lady behind the Nature Detectives (the children's Woodland Trust club), he was able to find several different minibeasts as well.

Woodland Trust

After a luscious lunch prepared by the chefs at the Yeo Valley kitchen, we were revived enough to create dens for woodland creatures (or tiny aliens as Les told the children), and then produce a truly wonderful wizard's wand using detritus from the forest floor.

The wonderful sheets we used are available to download for free from the Nature Detectives website here. They are great generic sheets, and I would really recommend downloading them and using them during the forthcoming Autumn months.

The Woodland Trust have a club for young explorers called the Nature Detectives Club, which has a wealth of resources and challenges available for children. Membership is as little as £12 for one child for a year, as little as 25p a week.

Woodland Trust & Yeo Valley

We received a goody bag of Yeo Valley yoghurts to try out, marked with The Woodland trust campaign (and we've entered in our codes and donated trees) and a selection of the wonderful wildlife identification swatch books available to buy from The Woodland Trust directly. The Boy finds these fascinating, in particular the leaf book; it was his bedtime reading for a week after our trip to the farm!

We were invited as guests to the Yeo Valley farm to help promote their campaign with The Woodland Trust, and received the above items free of charge.

Roasted Squash, Red Onion, Spinach & Cheese Tart

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On these balmy Summer evenings, one of my favourite evening meals is quiche, salad and baby new potatoes. Fortunately I was recently sent the new cookbook by Yeo Valley; The Great British Farmhouse Cookbook. With over 100 recipes inspired by the traditions of the British farmhouse kitchen, this beautiful book brings together fresh ingredients and seasonal flavours.

I've decided to have a go at the recipe on page 92, from 'The Veg Garden' section:

Roasted Squash, Red Onion, Spinach & Cheese Tart

Ingredients:

  • For the filling:
    • 2 small red onions
    • 375g butternut squash, cut into 2.5cm chunks
    • 2tbsp olive oil
    • 300g chard or spinach leaves, large stalks removed and coarsely shredded
    • 225g well-flavoured cheese, crumbled or coarsely grated (I used 100g of dolcelatte)
    • 3 large free-range eggs
    • 300ml double cream
    • salt and black pepper
  • For the pastry:
    • 150g plain flour
    • 75g stoneground wholemeal flour
    • 65g chilled butter, cut into small pieces
    • 65g chilled lard, cut into small pieces (I am vegetarian so used 130g of butter instead of the lard)

ROasted Squash, Red Onion, Spinach & Cheese Tart

  1. Make the pastry first by mixing the flours in a food processor with the fats and ½ teaspoon of salt, until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add 2 tablespoons of cold water and mix briefly until the mixtures binds together. Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead. Roll out thinly and use to line a lightly greased 23cm loose-bottomed tart tin 4cm deep. Prick the base with a fork and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
  2. Preheat the oven to 200°C.
  3. Peel the onions (the original recipe calls for the root end to remain intact, I rebelled and sliced it off), then slice each one from top to bottom to make thin wedges. Put the squash chunks and onions in a roasting tin and drizzle the olive oil over the top (I mixed some olive oil with balsamic vinegar). Season with salt and pepper and toss together. Roast for 20-30 minutes.
  4. Line the base of the pastry case with a circle of greaseproof paper and cover with baking beads. Bake for 15-20 minutes until the edges are biscuit coloured. Remove the paper and beans (once cooled!) and return to the oven for 5-7 minutes until the base is crisp and golden.
  5. Meanwhile, heat a large saucepan over a medium-high heat, add the chard or spinach and cook for 2-3 minutes until wilted (I cheated and put mine in the microwave with a knob of butter for 90 seconds). Tip into a colander and gently press out the excess liquid. Season lightly.
  6. Remove the pastry case from the oven and lower the temperature to 190°C. Arrange the squash, onion, cheese and spinach over the bottom of the pasty case. Beat the eggs and cream together with seasoning. (This is where I changed the recipe slightly; I added the spinach – as I used frozen – to the egg mix which had been blitzed with the dolcelatte.) 
  7. Pour over the filling and bake for 30-35 minutes until set and richly golden on top. Serve warm and with buttered new potatoes and mixed leaf salad.

ROasted Squash, Red Onion, Spinach & Cheese Tart

What I particularly like about this book is the huge amount of vegetarian recipes in it, either as a main course or as a light meal. I'll be experimenting with a lot of these easy recipes over the Summer, so expect more posts, particularly the lemon curd & raisin bread & butter pudding, Somerset scrumpy & apple cake, and the spiced pear bakewell! There may be some other savoury dishes as well.

Yeo Valley’s Great British Farmhouse Cookbook is available from all good book shops with a RRP of £19.99. You can buy it here on Amazon for £10.00

Sarah Mayor is the daughter of Roger and Mary Mead, who started Yeo Valley at Holt Farm in 1961 with thirty cows and the odd sheep. Mary opened a tea room and the clotted cream they made for it meant there was lots of skimmed milk left over. So they tried making yogurt… and people seemed to like it. They still do. The Mead family is still living and working at Holt Farm today.

I was sent a copy of this book for the purpose of this review and post. I was also given permission to reproduce the recipe on my blog. My opinion is honest and unbiased.

Lemon & Lime Chocolate Cheesecake

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When I went to Yeo Valley for a day learning about their organic gardens, I was lucky enough to be treated to a cookery session with their head chef Jaime. One of the dishes that he showed us how to make was a cheesecake using Yeo Valley yoghurt with a very clever technique. I decided to use one of the pots of yoghurts that they sent me home with and to try and make my own version. The ingredients are simple: a pot of Yeo Valley lemon and lime yoghurt, half a tub of chocolate Philadelphia, eight amaretti biscuits, a knob of unsalted butter. You will need to do step three in advance!

Lemon & Lime Chocolate Cheesecake (serves 2)

lemon and lime chocolate cheesecake

Melt a large knob of unsalted butter (I used Yeo Valley as it is so creamy) on a low heat and stir in eight amaretti biscuits. You can use normal digestives, but I like the nutty taste of the amaretti biscuits. Spoon half into each serving dish and press down.

lemon and lime chocolate cheesecake

Melt half a tub of Philadelphia chocolate cheese on a low heat. Pour it over the top of the biscuit base. Place it in the fridge to set for ten minutes or so.

This is the bit that you need to do in advance of everything else, the night before it's needed is best. Line a sieve with a plain, clean cotton teatowel, place over a bowl and pour in the yoghurt. Over the course of the night and day, the whey from the yoghurt will slowly drip out leaving a lump of thick, solidish yoghurt inside the teatowel. You'll actually be able to pick it up it will be so solid!

Whisk this with 150-200ml of double cream to form a smoother, looser mixture. Spoon it over the chocolate and place it in the fridge to set for ten minutes.

Et voila!

Yeo Valley have a huge range of yoghurts from the traditional Vanilla and Strawberry styles, to the more exotic Lemon Curd, and Lemon and Lime. Producing approximately 10 million pots of yoghurt every week, you can see why they are so popular!

Digging For An (Organic) Victory

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Last week I was fortunate enough to be invited to somewhere that I'd wanted to go for quite some time: the organic gardens at Yeo Valley headquarters in Somerset. The purpose of the visit was to see how they have really taken on board the technology behind organic farming, as with their dairy products, and to see the techniques they employ.

Yeo Valley is not like so many of those large companies, churning out products (pardon the pun) with little regard for anything other than commericial criteria. They started in the 1970s as a family run business between a husband and wife, the company continues to be run by Mary and now her son Tim, while the gardens are the brainchild of Tim's wife Sarah. When they moved back to the farm twenty years ago, Sarah set about changing the traditional farmhouse garden into something more personal and contemporary, expanding the area to six and a half acres, and opening up the view to Blagdon Lake just beyond the farm.

In 2009 the farm became completely organic, and the gardens followed suit the next year as one of only a handful of organically certified ornamental gardens in the country. Everything in the garden, which is then used in the tearooms, is grown organically and is home-made. The team working on the gardens and in the kitchens, are incredibly dedicated to creating a home-grown environment and delicious foodstuffs, from the organic compost made on site (making them virtually waste-free) to the cheesecakes made by the head chef Jaime.

When I arrived, I was treated to a tour of the gardens by one of the gardeners. The garden is split into 'rooms' and allows for different design aspects to be explored.

The Bronze Garden was one of my two favourite sections, with all flowers and plants fitting the colour scheme of 'bronze'. The pool you see here is treated to an organic black dye every year, this makes it reflective and allows for the statue and surrounding area to be reflected beautifully, but it also means that the sun's rays do not penetrate the surface and therefore no algae grows. Clever hey?

The vegetable garden was my other favourite section; the mixed beds are bursting forth with carrots, leeks, brocolli, sweetcorn, with  Love in the Mist and marigolds scattered in between them. It was a riot of colour, life and promise. There are beautiful metalwork sculptures throughout carrying the vegetable theme on.

The flowers throughout the garden are simply stunning: a riot of typical British countryside flowers in either the natural meadow setting (complete with Yeo Valley's own beehives making sixty jars of honey a year) or the woodland walk with foxgloves and ferns galore.

Following the tour of the organic gardens, we were fortunate enough to have the head chef at Yeo Valley show us how to cook three dishes using the delicious range of Yeo Valley yoghurts. Jaime demonstrated how easy it was to make sourdough bread (the non-messy way), to smoke trout (as a vegetarian I didn't pay much attention to this one, although it could probably do vegetable kebabs and halloumi nicely) and how to use a pot of yoghurt to make a cheesecake.

Don't they look delicious? Fortunately we got to taste test them, as they made up part of our lunch. The chefs at Yeo Valley had created a stunning array of simple side dishes to accompany the smoked trout, or roasted vegetable tart.

Clockwise from top left: home-grown tomato salad, pasta with feta cheese, mustard and olives, beetroot salad, and roasted vegetable tart.

The afternoon concluded with a talk about making organic compost and feeds for plants. I'm quite a keen composter but didn't realise the difference between aerobic and anaerobic composting; most of us compost anaerobically (not turning the mixture) and this can take up to eighteen months. Yeo Valley are keen to use all their garden waste; compost, leaf mulch, nettle and comfrey teas etc. Very impressive, and food for thought in my own garden.

It was an amazing day and I've been trying out a few of the recipes that Jaime showed us, more of these to follow in the next week.

If you'd like to find out more about the organic gardens at Yeo Valley then click here for more information. If you'd like to visit them, then they run open days on Thursday until September, click on the visitor information tab.

I received a day out at Yeo Valley and a bag of gorgeous dairy goodies to experiment with my cooking.

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