Grow your own omelette

This isn’t some bizarre science experiment, rather a chance for schools to win a wonderful, chicken-friendly prize by entering a home-made omelette into a competition. The rules are that the omelette will have to start with eggs from the school’s hens and can include anything - as long as it has been grown by the school and is in season and ready to harvest in May. However, salt and pepper is allowed! The final omelettes will be judged at the Real Food Festival on 5 May. www.schoolfoodmatters.com

Knead to Know: the Real Bread starter

Knead to Know from the Real Bread Campaign is the only book dedicated to helping you succeed in bringing Real Bread back to the heart of your local community. Whether baking at home once a month for a local producers’ market, joining together with neighbours to set up a Community Supported Bakery, or in a traditional high street bakery, this practical guide will inform and inspire both start-up and existing bakers. This 140 page handbook contains not only cornerstone recipes, but also information on business models, legislation, money matters, equipment, ingredients, techniques, marketing, media relations, courses, suppliers, and much more.

Knead to Know is available as a limited edition book or PDF download from www.realbreadcampaign.org

Aerial gardening

A new book charting one Londoner's attempts to transform herself into an aerial, edible gardener is out in June.  ‘My Garden, the City and Me: Rooftop Adventures in the Wilds of London’, by Helen Babbs is a personal portrait of a rooftop garden and of a city.  Find out more at www.aerialediblegardening.co.uk and read Helen’s article about her experiences at www.thejelliedeel.org.

Real Food Book

We have two copies of the Real Food Festival’s wonderful new book to be won.  The Real Food Book was launched at the start of April and features loads of great recipes from producers and people linked with the events the festival organisers run. To enter this prize draw, please send in a picture of yourself reading the Jellied Eel in one of our stockists – see this link. If they’ve run out let us (and the shop) know. Send your entries by the end of May to thejelliedeel@sustainweb.org

Rating the coffee chains

According to the latest investigation by Ethical Consumer magazine, the next best place to buy your coffee, if there's no independent coffee shop nearby, is AMT, which uses 100 per cent Fairtrade coffee and 100 per cent organic milk, making it streets ahead of the other chains.  For more information visit www.ethicalconsumer.org.

Tap water springs in London

We’re very lucky to live in a country where we have drinking water available on tap. But with drinking fountains in short supply it’s not always easy to get hold of free h2o when out and about. Now Tapwater – an organisation that encourages people to choose tap water over its bottled counterpart – is signing up cafés, shops and pubs to be refilling stations, where anyone can pop in with a re-useable container and fill up with free tap water.  Over 500 stations can be identified by a tapwater refilling sticker in the window, and Tapwater has also developed a map which shows all the participating businesses on it, and an app for your smartphone. www.tapwater.org

Farm Academy

Farmers’ markets may be coming to a school near you, as part of the Farm Academy project. London schools have the opportunity to get involved in food and farming, as well as hosting their own markets. The schools will first go on residential visits to organic farms where they will take part in a variety of farming activities. On returning to school they will be able to set up school farmers markets, at which they can sell their own school-grown produce. The markets will also support small, local producers, as well as enabling members of the school and wider community to buy local, fresh and seasonal produce and meet the farmers.  HCarey@soilassociation.org