Food & Drink notes

Let the good times roll; walk this way; the dating game

Compiled,Caroline Stacey
Saturday 06 August 2005 00:00 BST
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Let the good times roll

Dinner's ready if you're in Dorset, and in the mail if you're elsewhere. Parkers Menu ( www.parkers-menu.co.uk) offers a range of frozen ready meals, hand cooked in small batches with no dodgy additives. The dishes can be put together into a dinner party menu from £11 a head, for, say, pâté, coq au vin with dauphinoise potatoes and this award-winning chocolate roulade. Order by phone on 01963 250570 for nationwide delivery, or buy from the family catering firm's shops in Sherbourne and Dorchester.

Walk this way

OK, Wainwright was no sybarite, but the Lake District is a gourmet hotspot as well as a hiker's paradise. Lucy's in Ambleside, Cumbria (015394 32288) is so dedicated to good food that it has just been voted Best Independent Small Food Shop. Delicacies like Sel de Vin, a wine-flavoured salt and Cumberland rum-soaked fruit, 60 mostly British cheeses, hams and charcuterie, their own tartlets and cakes baked to traditional recipes all helped put the jam-packed Ambleside deli firmly on the foodie's map.

The dating game

Evocative of oases in thirsty times, Bateel is a sparkling date juice that looks like champagne and costs like it too - it's £15.95 for 750ml. For the extravagant teetotaller, or you can add it to vodka for a syrupy mixer. Made in Belgium with dates from the United Arab Emirates it's available exclusively in Harrods.

Age of innocence

Feel fruity and all loved up this weekend at Fruitstock, the free festival put on by the Innocent drinks company, where raving comes with a healthy vitamin boost and additive-free nourishment. From midday today and tomorrow until 9pm in London's Regents Park there's music (not Bananarama reformed, sadly - though there will be lots of mashed bananas in smoothie form), stalls selling natural and delicious foods, home-made cakes, a champagne tent, wine, beer and Plymouth fruit cup, a farmers' market, and all the Innocent drinks under the sun. Arts and crafts and circus skills for kids, and even smoothies and yoga for them too. It all adds up to more good, clean Innocent fun. Check out www.fruitstock.com for full details.

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