The fruity benefits of opening a wholesome seasonal restaurant

What a summer we’ve had down at The Hog Roast! The weather gods smiled upon us for the entirety of August, and the vegetable gods blessed us with bumper harvests, demanding extreme creativity in order to fully utilise the resultant gluts. ‘The week of the beetroot’ was particularly notable, during which the beetroot themed additions to the menu included chocolate and beetroot cake, beetroot muffins, and enormous vats of beetroot soup, not to mention me adopting a distinctly purple hue, hands that were stained purple, and (somehow) a purple highlighted strand of hair. The ‘week of the blackcurrant’ followed, which saw blackcurrant vinaigrette, blackcurrant pancakes and a number of indistinct, but very purple, salads. More recently, the last few weeks have seen incredible quantities of apples, necessitating ‘team apple chopping’ events, and inordinate crumbles, cakes and pies.

The amount of fruit we’ve been receiving recently has highlighted how much delicious fresh fruit and veg goes to waste. There are lots of groups out there attempting to tackle this issue, from Abundance Oxford, a community urban fruit harvesting project, which organises regular harvests from back gardens with gluts (with permission) and then redistributes the fruit to community projects, to Feeding the 5000, who organise regular ‘gleanings’ across the UK. Gleaning is an ancient practice, which essentially involves collecting unwanted crops from farmers (with their permission!). On Monday, I had a wonderful day out in sunny Canterbury harvesting thousands of plums which otherwise would have been wasted. I would encourage everyone to get involved with some of these groups.

The highlight of the summer was probably ‘Three acres and a cow: A history of land rights and protest in folk song and story’, organised by Oxgrow, Cultivate and Abundance Oxford. Brilliant musicians and wonderful storytellers came together to tell an alternative history of the British Isles in a jam-packed Hogacre pavilion. We served locally-grown food, locally-brewed beer from Compass Brewery, and Abundance provided some particularly delicious crumble during the interval. The performance was simply magical, and it was the perfect end to the perfect summer at Hogacre.

There have been some pretty stressful times too. One Sunday in particular stands out; the café was tremendously busy, and, suddenly, for some inexplicable reason, water started pouring out of the pipes in the kitchen. I ended up lying in a minor flood while pointlessly tinkering with a spanner in the hope of preventing the complete submersion of the kitchen. Fortunately, a helpful and very able customer stepped in, saving both the kitchen and my sanity. The Hog Roast will be closing for winter on October 20, but before then we have a number of very exciting activities planned. Sunday sees Hogacre host its annual harvest festival, which promises lots of local delicious food and general harvest celebrations. Then on October 20 we intend to enter hibernation with a bang and will be hosting Apple Day in conjunction with Abundance Oxford.

TRY IT: The Hog Roast is open Sundays, 11am-4pm. For more details like us on facebook, follow us on twitter (@thehogroastcafe) or check out our website (thehogroast.org)