Food
Grocery Expands Product Range
We’ve been asked if we can stock cheese and milk along in our grocery, so we’ve listened to you and have selected a whole new range of delicious chilled food items for you to choose from, including:
Milk
Snowdonia Cheese
Yorkshire Wensleydale (being a Yorkshire girl I couldn’t resist!)
Cartmel Sticky Toffee Pudding
Salmon & Mushroom Pate
Smoked Chicken & Duck
and a range of Italian cured meats including Proscuitto, Salami, Mortadella, Pancetta and Speck.
With our range of non-chilled foods including Laprig Valley Apple Juice, Greenknowe Honey and scrummy Keswick Ketchup, and our frozen ready meals, you’re all set – you can shop for tea whilst you’re buying your plants!
Don’t forget that we also stock fresh bread on Saturdays and Wednesdays, local free range organic eggs, and a great range of fruit and vegetables. Do come in and have a look. I can highly recommend the British grown cherries!.
Valentines Lunch at Woodside
Woodside Valentines Lunch
Friday 14th Feb 2025. 1pm start.
We are holding a special lunchtime dining event in the Birdhouse Tearoom on Friday 14th February at 1pm to celebrate Valentine’s Day. It’s a perfect opportunity to treat yourself and your loved one to a delicious home-cooked meal in the comfort of our cosy tearoom.
The menu is below and we are now taking bookings. Please call on 01835 830315 to book your table and let us know your menu choices. Please note that bookings can only be accepted by phone – we are open every day 10am – 4pm to take your booking, or you can leave a message on our answerphone outside our working hours – just remember to leave your telephone number so that we can confirm your booking!
Starters:
Scottish smoked salmon and avocado salad with a chilli & lime dressing
Beetroot and feta tartlet with balsamic tossed rocket
Main Courses:
Bacon wrapped pork fillet stuffed with olives, herbs and sundried tomatoes with new potatoes and seasonal vegetables
Tomato, fennel and tarragon lasagne served with a crisp salad and garlic sourdough bread
Puddings:
Chocolate and orange melting pot
Raspberry meringue roulade
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Coffee and homemade tablet
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2 courses £25 per person
3 courses £30 per person
Please book on 01835 830315 with your menu choices and let us know of any food allergies and intolerances when booking.
Breakfast Menu
An extended breakfast menu is now being served in the Birdhouse Tearoom.
As of 1st March we are open from 9:00am, so we are now offering a wider range of breakfasts in the Birdhouse Tearoom, which will be available every day between 9am – 11am. We’ve all had a taste of our new menu items, and they’ve had a resounding “thumbs up”! (My favourite is the hash brown with scrambled egg and smoked salmon).
Birdhouse Tearoom Breakfast Menu
Breakfast Rolls: choose from the following fillings
- Lorne Sausage
- Bacon
- Scrambled Egg
1 filling £4; 2 fillings £5; 3 fillings £6.
Woodside Breakfast Muffins – two homemade mini “muffins” made with cottage cheese, chives, courgette, mushrooms, and spinach, served with warm cherry tomatoes. £6.95.
Add a rasher of crisp bacon for an extra £1
Smoked Salmon & Scrambled Egg – A hash brown, topped with organic free-range scrambled egg, and finest Scottish smoked salmon. £6.95
Banana Pancake Stack – layers of fresh banana and warm pancakes, with a maple syrup drizzle £5.95
I hope you enjoy our breakfast menu as much as I’ve enjoyed sampling it.
It’s Not All Plants!
We love our plants here at Woodside, but we do other things too!
Vintage Garden items
Last year we started sourcing and stocking vintage garden and shed items, and we are well stocked with interesting bits and pieces from 50p to £2500, so plenty to suit all budgets!
This week I’ve collected some gorgeous late-Victorian salt glazed troughs, I’m reasonably good at remembering to put photos onto Facebook, so please follow us if you want to receive regular photos of items that catch my eye. We have also got a section here on the website for our antique and vintage items – now we’ve passed the May and June madness I’ll be able to spend a bit more time getting it up to date.
Our search for vintage and antique items takes us throughout the UK, but we are always very happy to source items closer to home, so if you want us to do a shed or garden clearance for you, just get in touch. Also if there is a particular item, for example a sundial, that you’d like us to look out for, just let us know and we’ll see what we can find….
New Range of Curry Pastes
We also retail selected food items in our plant shop, including our own home-made frozen meals, fresh bread, fruit and vegetables. We have recently started stocking a new range of curry pastes, which are made in India with traditional Indian ingredients. These differ from other sauces and pastes in that each one has it’s own distinct fresh flavours, and don’t all just taste of gloopy spicy curry – I’m sure know what I mean! Choose from 8 different flavours, all £4.50 each:
Butter Chicken (Highly recommended)
Goan Curry
Chicken Curry
Karahi Curry (Also highly recommended – quite spicy, but tasty too)
Rogan Josh
Chick Pea Curry
Tikka Masala
Tandoori
Serve them with our giant oven baked naan breads, and that’s a meal sorted!
Chocolate Cake Day
This Friday, 27th January is National Chocolate Cake Day (who knew there was such a thing – but it sounds like an excellent idea to me).
To celebrate, we will be offering 5 different chocolate cake options: Chocolate Fudge Cake, Chocolate Brownies, Guinness and Chocolate Cake, Chocolate and Beetroot Cake and Chocolate Log.
These are all available individually for you to enjoy, or we are offering a Chocolate Cake Taster Sharing Platter for just £10. Only available on Friday 27th, so if you’d like to come you may want to book by calling 01835 830315.
Burns Night.
If you are not a sweet tooth, you may be looking forward more to this week’s Burns Night. With the original date for our Burns Lunch now fully booked, we have added an extra date of Thursday 26th January for you to enjoy the Woodside Burns Lunch from 1pm.
Enjoy:
Starters:
Cullen Skink Or
Vegetarian pate with homemade oatcakes
Main Courses:
Haggis, tattie neeps, whisky sauce, and buttered leeks or
Vegetarian Wellington, tattie neeps, whisky sauce, and buttered leeks (V)
Pudding:
Mango and black pepper cranachan or
Clootie dumpling and custard
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2 courses £21.50 per person
3 courses £27.50 per person
Please pre-book menu choices – 01835 830315
Apple Festival
Don’t forget to put a date in your diary for our Apple Festival weekend on 15th and 16th October in partnership with Borders Organic Gardeners (BOG). There will be a range of attractions, including a display of apples and information about apple growing.
There will also be some gardening related stalls, including
- Tinnisburn Plants (Saturday only),
- Half A Hedgerow,
- Northumbria Basketry Group,
- Crailing Community Orchard (Sunday only)
- The Wildlife Information Centre,
- Lyne Organics.
Family Activites
On the Sunday we will have some family activities such as sign painting and a “William Tell” shooting stall!
We are also delighted to welcome Kerry Jones and her mobile cinema to Woodside on the Sunday – more information on Moving Images can be found here
Oven Ready Freezer Meals Range Expanded
We are now preparing a larger range of our own oven ready freezer meals. We are still offering our vegetarian range of meals (Mushroom Stroganoff, Puy Lentil Bolognese and Butternut Squash & Chick Pea Tagine) and our best selling Posh Fish Pie, and have now added the following new meals:
Beef Lasagne
Cottage Pie
Fruity Chicken Curry (GF)
Lemon & Ginger Chicken (GF)
Shepherd’s Pie
These can all be cooked in the oven from frozen, or can be defrosted before cooking. Our meals are made from fresh ingredients rather than using pre-prepared sauces, so are packed full of real flavours. Some of you found our previously bought-in meals a bit salty, so making our own meals means that we can reduce these salt levels and enjoy the great taste of the food.
Desserts
To complete your meal we also have Berry Meringue Roulade (defrost and serve) as well as Toffee Apple Crumble and Salted Caramel Brioche Bread and Butter Pudding – both of which require oven cooking.
All our freezer meals, sweet and savoury, are useful to have in the freezer for those days when you can’t be bothered to cook, or are faced with an empty fridge!
Game
We have replenished our supply of whole frozen pheasant and whole frozen wild mallard which are a useful back-up to have in the freezer. As the shooting season is now drawing to a close these will probably be the last we get until November. However, as soon as we have a bit of freezer space available we will be offering local venison again as this proved to be very popular.
Grocery
We’ve also freshened up our grocery shelves with some delicious new products which includes: Borderfields rapeseed oil, gluten-free hollandaise, horseradish or dill & mustard sauces, vegan mayonnaise, flavoured vinegars, roasted red peppers, preserved lemons, stuffed vine leaves, beetroot ketchup, avocado and lemon mayo and more…. We also still stock our best selling giant naan breads as well as curry sauces, and of course we can’t forget our wonderful free-range organic eggs from nearby Sandystones Farm.
A regular highlight is the arrival of fresh bread on Wednesdays and Saturdays. We are now getting in Toasted Sunflower and Pumpkin Seed Sourdough as well as Plain Sourdough, and we also have slices of Focaccia delivered fresh each Saturday. Customers are beginning to place regular orders so that they don’t miss out – if you want to order bread on a regular or just on a one-off basis just call on 01835 830315. If you have any special orders for get-togethers or larger family meals just give us a couple of days notice so we can order in for you. The large focaccias topped with chilli peppers and bacon are highly recommended!!
Winter Warmer Lunches
From this weekend we are starting a series of two-course winter warmer lunches featuring lovely traditional comfort food. These are available by pre-booking only and are served at 1pm on Saturdays and Sundays throughout January and into the beginning of February. Why not go for a good walk first, then come to Woodside for 1pm for your lunch? You could also meet up with friends (a maximum of 3 households indoors under current Covid rules) and on a nice day you could even choose to sit outdoors.
The price is £15 which includes a cup of tea or coffee and the menu options for various dates are below:
January 8th & 9th – Three-cheese Macaroni Cheese (V) & Syrup Sponge Pudding & Custard
January 15th & 16th – Pheasant & Shallot Casserole with Dumplings, & Bread & Butter Pudding
January 22nd & 23rd – Chilli con Carne with Rice, & Sticky Toffee Pudding
January 29th & 30th – Chick Pea and Sweet Potato Curry (V) with Naan Bread, & Toffee Apple Crumble
February 5th & 6th – Sausage-meat Stovies, & Chocolate Sponge Pudding
Please book by phoning 01835 830315
Sticky Toffee Pudding
There is a bit of a story around our Sticky Toffee Pudding (served on 22nd & 23rd January). For as long as I’ve known Stephen – about 30 years – he’s been going on and on about the best sticky toffee pudding in the world that he used to get when he worked as an apprentice gardener at the Sharrow Bay Hotel on Ullswater in the Lake District. None has ever matched this in all the years we’ve been eating out together and it’s become a bit of a long standing joke between us. However this year I surprised him at New Year by finding the original Sharrow Bay Hotel recipe and baking it for all the family. Now I’m no baker, but I have to say it was a triumph, and it has Stephen’s seal of approval as being the “real thing”, so I’m delighted to have scribbled the recipe down and brought it to Woodside for our kitchen staff here to make. Look out for it being featured fairly regularly on our forthcoming menus as it it absolutely gorgeous. I hate to say it, but Stephen – you were right!
New Cakes for Summer
To celebrate our new kitchen, Pat has been busy baking from new recipes that we’ve discovered over the winter which we think you will love.
Look out for:
Rhubarb and Lemon Curd Cake, made with our own rhubarb
Sumptuous Chocolate Cake
Limoncello Biscuits – inspired by my love of Italy and also by one of the few liqueurs I actually like. Not to be wasted on the children!
Bounty Bar Cake – this is definitely one you can give the children. A delicious loaf cake combining chocolate and coconut.
Chocolate Guinness Cake – another delightfully boozy cake to boost your calorie intake after a good walk around the plant centre.
Old Favourites
Don’t worry – we still have our old favourites such as Sticky Lemon & Ginger cake, Chocolate Roulade, Really Carrotty Carrot Cake and Lemon Meringue Roulade, and we continue to have a selection of gluten free cakes too.
We look forward to seeing you soon
The Age of the West Equine Show
Our annual equestrian theatre performance is nearly here!
“The Age of the West” is a unique production, performed by Equestrian Theatre Scotland, in the garden at Woodside. It is a one-off performance taking place next weekend on Saturday 10th August, and features stunning horses and talented riders, fresh from filming “Outlander” and who can also be spotted in “Game of Thrones” and in the recent film “Mary, Queen of Scots”. You may also see performing dogs and we are sometimes lucky enough to enjoy the performance of a talented goat! Combined with live music, a freshly prepared buffet supper, and an attractive setting in the garden – what more could you wish for?!
Tickets are on sale now, and can be purchased by calling during our opening times of 10-5, or you can call into the Plant Centre and pay in person. We accept all major cards except American Express. Tickets are £18 for adults, £12 for children and £50 for a family ticket (2 adults and up to 3 children). The ticket price includes a two-course buffet.
We are anticipating that this show will once again be a sell-out (we have been hosting the equestrian theatre for a number of years now) so please note that you will not be able to purchase tickets at the door.
Gates open at 6.15pm, with the buffet served from 6.30pm. The show starts at 7pm.
You are advised to bring something to sit on, such as a picnic blanket or deck-chair as we have limited seating, and also to bring with you everything you might need for an evenings outdoor entertainment (umbrella, midge repellent, sun glasses etc).
This year we have purchased two large gazebos, so there will be a certain amount of undercover seating in case of rain.
Don’t forget to book your tickets by calling us on 01835 830315 and have your card details handy. It should be a wonderful evening’s entertainment.