Category Archives: Food for Thought

Celebrations at Siren 107.3FM

Siren FM recently celebrated winning the title of East Midlands Station of the Year. The Radio Academy Award was part of their Nations and Regions awards which celebrates local programming.

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It’s fantastic for Siren to win this award and have the hard work of all the volunteers appreciated. We found out about the win at the station back in December but it was great to have an evening dedicated to receiving the award.

The accolade was awarded to Lincoln’s first community radio station because:

“Siren FM is a really ambitious and creatively interesting station. They’re doing something different but in their own way and are firmly rooted in their community. A mix of local experiences and stories with global themes – relating the world to Lincolnshire and vice versa.

“This entry displayed a great range of voices and topics on air as well as a great mix of youth, heritage, diversity and local history. A student station that demonstrates good engagement with both students and the wider listener. The schedule was eclectic and the station sounded good and fresh.”

Our winning entry included lots of clips from a variety of Siren shows, and I am happy to say that my radio documentary following the Burton Road Chippy was included.

Here’s some photos from the night.

Cooking to save lives recipe book

Excitingly one of my cake recipes has been published in a local recipe book.

Me and Sam Pidoux posing with our recipes | Photo: Sam Pidoux

The Cooking to Save Lives book has been published by the Lincolnshire based first aid charity Lives. Over a couple of months they collected recipes from local restaurants, cafes and people to create this guide to the county’s food.

Back in the summer Steve Hyde from Lives visited Siren FM to talk about what the charity does and to explain their project. Essentially Lives need to fundraise almost a million pounds a year to keep running and Steve thought a recipe book would be a good way to raise some money. He approached Chris Strawson, who works for local printing company DPS Printing, and he had the idea to fill the recipe book with dishes from restaurants and cafes from around the county.

You can listen to that interview on Food for Thought from last summer here.

It was after that meeting that Sam Pidoux, who regularly helps out on Food for Thought, came up with the idea to submit some of our own creations to the book. Sam came up with gluten free chocolate brownies made using beetroot as one of the ingredients so the pressure was on to come up with something good.

Usually when I am baking I will follow recipes but I couldn’t submit someone else’s recipe and pretend it was my own. There was one cake that I had come up with myself for my Dad’s birthday. He loves those chocolate and lime sweets and I wanted to use those flavours in a cake. After some experimenting with how to use lime in cakes, I created a delicious chocolate and lime marble cake. The recipe was different and something special to me so I thought it was a good choice for the book.

In early December Lives and DPS Printing held a party at the Electric Bar in the centre of Lincoln to celebrate the launch of the book. It was my first chance to see the book and I was very impressed. It was great to see people interested in my cake and to see all the other dishes that were in the book.

You can pick up a copy of Cooking to Save Lives from a few local cafes and restaurants including Angel Coffee House, Burton Road Chippy and The Old Stables. Alternatively you can buy the book online as well on the Lives website.

Rachel Allen’s cooking tips and Snap It Taste It Blog It

In this week’s Food for Thought podcast Snap It Taste It Blog It talk about Lincolnshire products and Samantha Pidoux and I chat to celebrity chef Rachel Allen.

People’s food shopping budgets may have got smaller but it’s still important to cook healthy and filling meals. This is what Rachel Allen is tackling in her latest television show Everyday Kitchen by showcasing simple and inexpensive meals to make. Earlier this week Samantha Pidoux and I chatted to the celebrity chef about her new Good Food programme and asked Rachel Allen how she felt about her title — “the Queen of Irish cooking”.

Tuesday 1st October was Lincolnshire Day and I invited Alex and Ben from Snap It Taste It Blog It to review the county’s finest foods. The long-distance couple, who review food in both New York and Boston, Lincolnshire, have been on the show before but this time they are both in the UK.

The past couple of weeks both Alex and Ben have been travelling around Lincolnshire and the rest of the UK trying out new foods so they’re back on Food for Thought to share their food experiences.

Alex and Ben from Snap It Taste It Blog It in the Siren FM studios | Photo: Snap It Taste It Blog It & Gemma Benefer

If you liked listening to this podcast then make sure you listen to Food for Thought on Siren FM every Wednesday at 2pm.

Spire Chocolates and cooking to save lives

The Lincolnshire charity Lives are releasing a local cookbook to help fundraise for themselves. Lives are a voluntary emergency service based in the county and they’re looking for pubs, cafes and restaurants to contribute recipes to the cookbook. It’s hoped that the recipe book will be available before Christmas and all the profit will go towards helping to run the charity.

To find out more about the charity, the cookbook and how people can contribute their recipes, Samantha Pidoux and I chatted to Steve Hyde from Lives and Chris Strawson from the printing company DPS.

Also on this week’s podcast I chatted to Lindsay Gardner from Spire Chocolates, which is based in Louth. It was fascinating to chat to Lindsay about how she got interested in making chocolates and how she creates her award winning flavours.

If you liked listening to this podcast then why not listen to Food for Thought on Siren FM every Wednesday at 2pm.

Valentine Warner on Food for Thought

Celebrity chef Valentine Warner has recently been to Scandinavia to find out about the food and the culture. He’s now sharing his experiences over on his Good Food show Valentine Warner eats Scandinavia and in an interview for Food for Thought.

Photo: UKTV

Valentine Warner is passionate about using local and seasonal foods — which is also a popular approach to food in Scandinavia too. During his travels Valentine went ice fishing with only a drill and bait, he also cooked with some unusual ingredients including blood and moss. In fact he enjoyed his trip so much he sounds like he wants to move there.

We also talked about why is so passionate about using seasonal goods, his inspiration when it comes to cooking and why he likes listening to music when in the kitchen.

Food for Thought regular Samantha Pidoux joined me for the interview and has written about it on her blog to get another take on our chat with Valentine Warner.

If you’ve liked this podcast then try listening to Food for Thought as it goes out live on Siren FM every Wednesday at 2pm .

Valentine Warner opens with a joke

Recently on Food for Thought I interviewed the television chef Valentine Warner. It was about his new show Valentine Warner eats Scandinavia which will be shown on the Good Food channel.

I’ll post the full show later but here’s a teaser of our chat. It’s always strange to start talking to someone off the television as if you’ve known them for ages, and this is how Valentine Warner started things off.