Jamie and Judy Mackay are  currently cycling from Felsted, Essex to Chernigiv, Ukraine, which is a major city near to Chernobyl in support of the Revival Children’s Rehabilitation Centre – that’s 1800 miles in just over 4 weeks!

Garry & Liz Paxton are driving the support car  to accompany Jamie and Judy for the first 1200 miles across Holland, Germany and Poland, up to the Ukraine border which is where Alan Hilliar and Pauline Craven (who run the charity UK-Aid) will meet them and support Jamie & Judy for the remainder of the journey in Ukraine to the Revival Centre.

We thought this was rather wonderful  - so provided them with some Munchy goodies to keep their legs pumping across all those miles! Check out their blog here, where you can track their progress & see pics along the route and you might see them nibbling the Munchy Snacks that we sent them off with!

If you’d like to donate, then the JustGiving page is jamiejudymackay@justgiving.com

Crikey, it’s been a busy week or two at Munchy Towers.  Does the title of this post rhyme? We’re not sure.

Anyway  - ! We’re crazily working on producing & roasting more Crunchy Bites,  as we’re focusing on them & their launch from now until the Aldeburgh Food Festival in Sept… latest news is that they are now available online, not just at the shows.  Click here to buy online  You might have seen them in places like Friday Street Farm Shop nestled on the shelves – we haven’t got all the packaging sorted yet,  so many of them are in little black & white labels, but we’re getting there.  Positively though they seem to be going down really well, and we are selling lots of them at the shows especially –  and as they’re a bit of a new territory for us because they make fantastic  bar nibbles, it’s all very exciting.

We took them to the Bar 2010 show last week – where we got some really positive feedback from the bar/pub/drinks  guys – not just because they’re really tasty & go dead well with drinks, but also because they are tasty & good for you.. which is decidedly NOT  like most other bar snacks…!  It’s the apricot kernels that make them really special – we’re the first company in the UK to roast these little beauties and they add a superb crunch & satisfying fullness to the mix. The fact that they have ace anti -carcinogenic properties is an added bonus!

You can find us and the new seeds at the following shows over the next week or so – do come along and taste the new mixes – and the older ones for free – let us know what you think – we reckon you will be pleased!  Plus, as an added bonus, those of you who saw our Twit Pic last week will know ( @munchyseeds in case you’re not there)  - you’ll get to meet the lovely & fabulous Neil – our new boy on the stand!

Colchester Food & Drink Festival

26th & 27th June – Castle Park, Colchester

The Royal Norfolk Show

30th June – 1st July. Truly a special one this one. A great day out!

So a while ago we mentioned that we were going to be holding a cook off for some new ideas for breakfast cereals  - there were 5 girl attendee’s, Mrs Munchy, Nicks, Clare-Bear, Vic’s, Zeddie (absent but sent her sample in anyway)! and Mrs Derek All arrived in high spirits – lots of chatting – more chatting – and even more chatting! good grief girls…. but here are the headlines of who made what!

Zeddie – (absent, but not one to miss out on a challenge) brought a  fabulous looking colourful crunchy high protein packed breakfast in a pot – even came with it’s own name ‘G.I Breaky’ – because you’re worth it!! wink wink. This had everything one could dream about in it and could even probably claim to grow you brains if you ate enough of it! go-ge-berries, lemon zest, cranberries, rape seed oil, coconut – even ginger!

Mrs Derek – thee most organised, pitched up with the most beautiful looking golden cooked Granola with more fruit and goodies than you could poke a stick at! plus photo copies (for each of us) for 5 delicious looking granola/ muesli recipes she’d down loaded form the internet a little earlier! wow – home economics’ teacher by trade!

Nicks – arrived with a bought packet of Co-op’s own granola! BUT had added cinnamon, flaked almonds and god for bid chocolate raisins! ‘IT girl’ clearly used to picking out all the tasty bits while sitting still at a computer all day long.

Clare-Bear – well not enough time in her busy packed weeks to build a muesli from scratch – so arrived with a home made tin of granola biscuits really destined for the school raffle! but hat’s off to her, it looked rather Moorish and the school did miss out!

Vic’s – arrived first, bursting into the kitchen with arms full of home made granola by the bucket and tins of energy granola styled muesli bars; because well, she had the recipe books out and all the ingredients so why not go just go for it!

Mrs Munchy – (Alias Me), had gone raiding the Munchy shed of all tasty ingredients and goodies and then went through the pantry at home and ended up in the fridge, throwing in the not so good and tasty bits in – including 1/3 of a jar of lemon curd! great, emptied yet another jar that’s been hanging around a wee bit too long! (the girls won’t notice)!

Recipes to follow!

We travel all over the country doing shows & we love it –  but when we do a run of shows in the local area it’s extra nice  (we get to have a bit of a lie-in! ) & get to catch up with all our lovely local munchy pals new & old! -May is an especially busy month: Here’s where we’ll be over the next few days – Hope to see you there!

15th May: The Hadleigh Show

The Hadleigh Show is a popular country show which aims to promote agriculture and country life.  Tradestands vary from farm machinery and fertilizers to commercial enterprises selling country clothing, garden plants and furniture, cars and country crafts, etc There will be  Livestock and equestrian competition classes, clay pigeon shooting, gun dog scurry, funfair, food hall, flower arranging demonstrations, art show, rural craft marquee, sheep shearing demonstration, and many more attractions can be found on the showground together with various refreshment stalls and a licensed bar!

15th & 16th May: The First Greene King ‘Real Food & Beer’ Festival: Bury St Edmunds

This is the first ever Greene King ‘Real Food & Beer Festival and will be held in  Westgate Brewery Gardens on Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th May. The Festival

will take place in a large marquee on the lawn behind Westgate House, Bury St Edmunds (a few doors down from the Theatre Royal), across the gardens and

into the Brewery Tap. This food and drink extravaganza is part of the 25th Bury St Edmunds Festival, and is a celebration of local products from this excellent part of the country.

The marquee and brewery grounds will be adorned by the region’s best producers and their fine fayre, and we will of course be showcasing our own fine

ales. There will be a hog roast, a venison spit roast, butchery demonstrations, hand-made preserves, local cakes and ice-creams, as well as beer master

classes with Greene King brewers.

Tickets are £1 and are available from the Theatre Royal Box Office (01284 769505), as well as on the door at the event. Do bring along friends, family and

customers to introduce them to the real Taste of Suffolk – and East Anglia.

16th May – Essex Young Farmers Country Show: Chelmsford

The Show is the biggest and best agricultural and country show in Essex & is held at Boyton Hall Roxwell, CM1 4LN. It offers a wide variety of activities for the whole family. The gates burst open for a fun filled family day out at 10am and there is ample free parking for everyone. Admission prices on the day are: Adults £10, Children over 3 £6 and a family ticket £25.

We love sunflower seeds.

Stuffed full of protein, vitamins, minerals and fibre, they taste yummy & they’re really good for you, hence why we use them loads in our mixes – but we’ve just discovered another way of using them – to gently & beautifully protest by popping them in the ground & watching them brighten up sad, neglected or under utilized earthy space as well as the lives of all the people who work, live & commute near them. The guys behind it all: Guerrilla Gardeners around the world! www.guerrillagardening.org & they are organizing International Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening day on  May 1st this year – a day where you’re encouraged to go out & sow sunflower seeds. The site has loads of tips, there’s a facebook page and a video telling you how to grow them – such a great idea!

Now, we don’t want you to try popping  a Munchy Seeds Sunflower Seed in the ground because they’ve been roasted, (ours are  much better in your mouth!) but normal, non-roasted sunflower seeds will grow just about anywhere & we love the idea of planting flowers to brighten up bits of the world that aren’t loved.  It’s not all about Sunflower seeds either – if you check out the site then you can see that enterprising peeps have been planting and maintaining vegetables, rock gardens, sweet peas  and more in the strangest, but oddly beautiful spaces.

So – who’s up for it then? We think that there must be loads of you out there who’d be up for becoming a Guerrilla Gardener – and  who like us have been inspired by their ideas! We’re going to be using the Munchy Blog to post pictures when we spot any Guerilla Gardening on our travels, so do share your pictures with us  if you see any –  we’ll be judging the best pictures of any Guerrilla activity spotted in Suffolk later in the year ( when the sunflowers have had blossomed beautifully)  & the winner will get some Munchy Goodies – so do get spotting!

Email us at Crispin@munchyseeds.co.uk or use Twitter: @Munchyseeds

We can’t wait to upload our first spotter pictures… watch this space!

Spring is here, the leaves are ready to burst and I’ve got bored with ‘off the shelf’ sugary cereals that taste like candy-floss (And that’ll do about as much good as licking a lolly pop would)! – so some friends of mine and I are about to have a ‘Cereal cook off’ – to see “who can make the tasty-est, healthy-est and lovely-est homemade breakfast cereal of all”

In a fortnights time, instead of scoffing coffee and cakes at our usual fortnightly morning chin-wag, I’ve got 7 friends coming over for a ‘gourmet breaky feast’ – I’ll be supplying orange juice, milk, cream, stewed plums, tinned peaches, fresh thick natural yoghurt and runny honey, along with the usual suspects bowls, spoons, coffee and tea –  basically all that’s required for a completely delicious healthy homemade breakfast with the aim that together we will come up with some new tasty ideas!

The winner of the 7 man team – will hopefully have the recipe made into a new Munchy Muesli or Granola that’ll go on sale in the summer – But, we thought, why stop at that – so, we’d like to open the challenge up to you all – if there’s any other group of friends out there that think they can ‘brew-up’ a better muesli munch than us lot? Well then, let the challenge begin…!

You have roughly two weeks to get organised and seriously if you do think you come up with a winner then get in touch and we’ll take if from there…  lucinda@munchyseeds.co.uk We’re going to give it a month or so for the entries to come in and then will give  feedback and hopefully lots of pics of the trials & results on the blog & twitter!

Happy cooking all!

Ps technically a Granola is cooked or roasted and a muesli is usually uncooked! Either will do for the purposes of this challenge –  we hope you enjoy experimenting & joining us in a breakfast revolution to show how easy & (cheap!) it is to make our own delicious homemade cereal  mixes without being forced into buying a brightly coloured cardboard box that’s as light as a candy floss – and about as much use!

Sent another van load (stuffed to the gunnels) of stock down to the IDH late last night, should keep the Munchy Sales crew busy for a few more days but Mr Munchy is prepared to run a dawn delivery raid over the weekend if necessary. As long as he is back for a late breakfast of hot cross buns and Easter eggs!

Mrs Munchy  has been busy  arranging a joint sampling of our Munchy Granola with Total (Greek yoghurt) which is taking place at the end of the month .. more details of when/where to follow!

We have to say IDH has been fantastic this year, great improvement on previous years!  The new organisers (Media 10) have clearly thrown a lot of money at the show in terms of layout, design and marking, & we will certainly be going back next year.  Most popular Munchy mixes this year have been the Omega mix and our new Crunchy Bites.

Our  lovely production crew, who have been clocking up some serious over-time over the last 14 days are looking forwards to the Easter break and will be leaving work today with an Easter egg an a bottle of champagne as a thank you for all their efforts over the last two weeks.

Well, we’re all feeling a bit bushed, so going to sign off  by wishing  all our lovely Munchy pals a very happy & relaxing Easter!

Here at Munchy Towers  Spring has well & truly sprung & we are all bouncing around like lambs because we’re  getting out and about meeting you guys at shows and events around the country.  We love meeting you and hearing your feedback on the seeds  - it’s always a great time to make new Munchy pals & to get ideas for new flavours you might have that we haven’t thought of yet!

Where we are over the next few weeks:

As usual our Events page  http://www.munchyseeds.co.uk/shows.php has all the juicy details but here are some highlights:

The lovely Vitality Show starts on Thursday afternoon – late night until 9pm! a very very busy good show esp. for the ladies! massages, life coaches and lots of girly things available..

The  FANTASTIC Ideal Home Show http://www.idealhomeshow.co.uk/ starts this Saturday, we didn’t do it last year even though we’d done it for 9 years and it was it’s centenary! but this year it’s had a major re-vamp from the NEW buyers of the show and looks really really exciting – a floating restaurant, Alice in Wonderland garden etc and best of all the show now runs for 17 days!

We’re at the Country Living Spring Fair from the 24th – 28th March, and believe it or not this will be our 12th year exhibiting (!) We have some super tickets to give away for the weekdays (Wed, Thur & Friday)  as well as tickets for the GALA evening of the 24th – Email, DM or ring us on 44 (0)1728 833004 to secure yours ( we have only limited numbers, so it’s first come first served!)

Phew… more to come soon!

The new issue of Cook Vegetarian Magazine landed at Munchy Towers on Friday. With it there’s a free booklet called ‘82 Miracle Meals’ and they’ve featured our delicious home made Munchy Seeds Cereal Bars recipe on page 9!

The booklet is incredibly informative – eg did you know that ‘Buckwheat’ is not a kind of wheat?  It is actually the fruit of a herb – and for nutritional purposes, it can be considered a ‘pseudo’ cereal!

Likewise, wild rice is not actually a rice but a type of aquatic grass!

Here’s the Munchy Seeds Cereal Bar recipe featured in the booklet:

Munchy Seeds Homemade Cereal Bars:

Over a low heat melt 60g butter and 40g margarine

Add 80g brown sugar & 2 Tsp of golden syrup

Mix in 150g Munchy Granola & 100g oats

Stir in the zest & juice of 1 lemon plus a pinch of salt

Spread mixture evenly over a non stick baking tray

Bake at 220C for 15 minutes (until golden brown)

Stand for a couple of minutes before scoring with a knife into cereal bar portions.

HAPPY MUNCHING ONE & ALL!!

We are putting the logos for these guys on our site pages,  but just wanted to let you know that Munchy Seeds products are approved by the Vegetarian, Vegan & Coeliac Society, and that, with the exception of Munchy Granola (because it contains honey & oats), our mixes are suitable for Vegetarians, Vegans & those following a gluten & wheat free diet.