That’s right people; this week is British Sandwich Week 2008! One of the country’s favourite foods is being celebrated for a whole week. With the weather being so freakishly warm of late we need no persuasion here to swap our daily soup intake for a refreshingly cool sandwich.

The British Sandwich Association is running Sandwich Week from May 11th-17th and are encouraging small/independent and larger sandwich bars to use this week to reward their most loyal sandwich eating customers and just generally get very excited about sandwiches.

The British Sandwich Association has recently had a website re-vamp and it is looking pretty swish and some of the new features are rather cool. They have a whole host of sandwich recipes to inspire you if you are feeling bored of your existing ones. They have broken them down into helpful ingredient based categories, making it easier for you to get to a good recipe, fast.

They also have sandwich of the month - this month’s is an alternative take on the ‘classic’ smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel. April’s sandwich is salmon, sour cream and chive dip bagel – yum! If you fancy getting the scoop on what the celebrities munch on at the moment then check out the ‘Celebrity Sandwiches’ section. With offerings from Anthea Turner and Tamzin Outhwaite you can’t go far wrong.

Anyway, I hope this inspiration enough for you all to swap your salads for a sarnie this week to show your respect the nation’s favourite lunch food.

Photo taken by Jimbrickett over on Flickr

It seems Gordon Ramsay is getting all hot and bothered again, this time it is not over the cleanliness of commercial kitchens but about seasonal produce. Ramsey is speaking out about the benefits of restaurants serving in-season and locally sourced produce over out of season fruit and veg that is flown in from other countries.

Here at welovelocal.com are all for supporting local seasonal produce, buying locally always has fantastic benefits to the local economy, and buying seasonal produce really does help globally as air miles are reduced, thus lowering our countries carbon footprint.

However after reading the BBC article and watching the clip of a very fired up Gordon I can’t help but wonder if what he is suggesting is possibly taking it a little to the extreme? Fining chefs who do not have seasonal produce on their menus, outlawing out- of -season produce from restaurants and creating government legislation to make it all happen!

Whilst it’s true that seasonal produce is far tastier, sustainable and imaginative we need to be educating both consumers and chefs alike about the importance of this produce as opposed to outwardly banning the use of anything else. The National Farmers Union pushes this point further - that education is key as so much of farming is already tied up in legislation.The suggestion is that we need to focus on educating consumers about menu transparency and its benefits in order to move forward.

There certainly seems to be a huge move towards menu transparency today with restaurants priding themselves on their local offerings. It seems now, more than ever eating establishments are using their local and seasonal credentials as a unique selling point.

So it seems as a nation we are taking the steps in the right direction, but I suppose Ramsay wants us to take the final leap. It certain is understandable, but is such government action necessary, can we not make the right decision alone?

What do you think?

Tip: in season at the moment are; tomatoes, salad leaves, courgettes, berries and yummy apricots!

Photo by Becca G over on Flickr

Received this awesome picture yesterday. We’ve had welovelocal.com cakes (made with my own fair hands) , stickers and signs but the pizza tops them all!

John W, uploaded this marvelous creation to welovelocal.com when reviewing his local Kebab shop - Turkish Delight. Now, seeing that kebabs are usually consumed when under the influence of alcohol I’m not entirely sure if John modified this Turkish Delight pizza himself, or the kind ‘kebab man‘ whipped it up for him?

Anyway we think it’s awesome - cheers John!