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A PILOT scheme set up to promote Northumberland’s distinctive cultural and culinary products has been so successful it has been given funding for a second year. Read

Endangered foods are worth saving

It’s not just our wildlife that is endangered, so are many artisan foods. Jane Hall reports on a unique 10 Things to Eat! Before They Die dinner which aims to show why traditional foods are worth saving. Read

Message in a bottle on Fairtrade offerings

JUST like handbags and sunglasses, wine has its designer labels. Malcolm Gluck tells the story of a wine importer from Singapore, who having splashed out £5,000 for a bottle of Chateau Petrus, made sure that it was prominently displayed on his table, but then proceeded to ‘enhance’ his glass with Pepsi. He admitted, Malcolm relates, to not liking the taste of red wine. Read

The Utong Thai resturant on Westgate Road, Newcastle.

Utong Thai Restaurant, Newcastle

DID you know that lots of people from the Far East are alcohol intolerant? For someone running a licensed restaurant this is like being a landscape gardener with hay fever or a pilot with vertigo. Read

Tyne for a pint

ALE plus arithmetic equals chaos. If our summing-up is as it should be we estimate that over the past two centuries some 400 breweries have hugged the River Tyne. Read

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TEN THINGS TO EAT! BEFORE THEY DIE MENU

Canapes: Potted Windermere smoked char with traditional Swiss rye bread, mini bakers with Gouda fondue, Herat raisins with seared monk fish, mini beef Wellingtons, cappacio of venison with Saxon Village cherry preserve Read

Online and off message

IT’S a good thing they’ve finally painted the Forth Bridge with a special paint which means that now, for the first time since it was built, they don’t have to start all over again immediately they finish. Read

Dorset Blue Vinny

Since the Second World War, this cheese was only made in very small quantities on one or two farms until it was revived by Michael Davies of Sturminster Newton, Dorset, who is now the sole producer. Read

Artisan Somerset Cheddar, UK

Cheddar is one of the most famous cheeses in the world but also one of the cheeses most often produced industrially. Barely 5% of the 400 producers who made Cheddar in the cheese’s home territory of Somerset half a century ago remain in business. Read

* Jersey Royal, UK

While this potato is grown across Jersey, none are thought to be produced in the traditional manner on the south facing coastal slopes of the island using seaweed fertiliser. The majority are grown under polythene and use chemical fertilisers, which Jersey Royal fans say has irrevocably altered this potato’s taste. Read

Traditional Gouda, Netherlands

The town of Gouda became a central cheese market in the 17th Century. Some 300 farmers in The Netherlands, most of them in the Gouda region, still produce raw milk farmstead cheese, but their numbers are shrinking, due in part to the abundance of cheap pasteurised imitations. Read

Formby, near Liverpool, was once widely renowned for the quality of its asparagus grown on the fine, sandy soil of the local dunes. It is estimated that some 200 acres were devoted to asparagus growing around Formby Point in the early 1940's. Today, there are only a handful of growers left and they are continually faced with competition from abroad with cheaper, higher yield varieties.

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Irish Raw Milk Cow’s Cheese

In the 1970s a loose association of artisan producers reintroduced cheese-making on a small scale in rural Ireland. But while Irish specialist cheeses have won international acclaim, only a handful of the new traditionalists still use raw milk in their production. Read

* Ballobar Caper, Spain

Gathering capers is an ancient tradition in Ballobar.Due to competition from elsewhere, since the 1980s commercial harvesting of these capers has stopped and only remains for self-consumption. Read

Traditional Valais rye bread, Switzerland

It is now difficult to find the original version based on pure rye bran and sourdough. This bread keeps for several months which was at one time significant: in mountain villages the communal oven would be lit two or three times a year. Read

Three Counties Perry, UK

Almost all commercially-made perry today is produced in the three counties area of Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. It is not suited to large-scale production and the few remaining makers appear to be doing it because of their love of the product. The result is that as time goes by, fewer people are aware of its existence, and less is produced each year. Read

Raisin of Herat, Afghanistan

Herat is a fertile area well-known for its raisin. The historical record with more than 120 varieties goes back to the 4th Century. Read

Saxon Village Preserves, Romania

From Transylvania, a province that relies heavily on agriculture for its livelihood, the women of the villages provide an additional source of income by preserving production of this ancient, traditionally domestic confection. Read

* Mananara Vanilla, Madagascar

Over two-thirds of the world's vanilla is grown on the African island of Madagascar. But larger plantations are slowly replacing the traditional style of cultivation, in which vines are planted at the base of large trees in the rainforest. Read