Rachel Marshall introduces a handy new guide to all things food locally…
When you’re out and about in North Lancashire keep an eye out for the newly published ‘Little Book of Local Food’.
Over Summer 2026 this pocket size guide will be appearing in many of the places you might find THRIVE magazine – cafes, libraries and at FoodFutures events.
The ‘Little Book’ covers a huge range of topics from where to buy local seasonal food and how to grow your own, to some of the bigger issues about how our food is produced, the choices we can make about what we buy and how to reduce food waste.
It’s got recipes, ideas for eating more sustainably and lots of useful links to food related activity across North Lancashire.
The idea for updating the original ‘Little Book’ (published in 2012) came from Silvia Rossi – who at the time was the Closing Loops Food and Chef Network coordinator.
She’d been on a long train journey and took the book along to read.
Her reaction was that the original book was brilliant and covered just about everything you might want to know about food locally – but much of it is now out of date.
So we set about to re-design the book so it could be easily kept up to date with the latest information and news.
With the help of Adele Armistead and Sarah Maginness at Moonloft we developed the concept of a printed fold out leaflet (officially called a Z-Card) which would act as a map to different sections in a virtual version of the ‘Little Book’.
Each topic on the printed Z-Card provides a simple intro with QR codes to scan and explore more information online.
The online content was pulled together by Deborah Simmonds at LESS with input and expertise from many across the FoodFutures network.
Each section of the online book can be read on its own, so you can dip in and out of things that interest you or read several sections together.
This project has been a year in the making so we’re really excited to launch the book and very grateful for the lovely design work from the team at Moonloft.
Look out for the Z-Card across the district or visit the virtual book at: foodfutures.org.uk/little-book-of-local-food/.
