BIG Eat's success at St Peter's community centre

Months of growing fruit and vegetables followed by a community feast up at St Peter's Community Centre, this is a harvest festival with a difference.

It started way back in Spring with the BIG Sow, when seeds were sprinkled in gardens and allotments all over Bexhill, and young and old alike encouraged to nurture and grow.

The fruits and vegetables of their labour was then brought to the community centre on Saturday morning and turned into a delicious and impressive array of dishes to be shared by everyone - such as orange, ginger and squash soup, tomato and courgette flan, carrot salad, frittata, apple crumble and the astonishingly good sweet marrow cake. For youngsters in particular to enjoy there was a pizza table where you could organise your own freshly harvested toppings onto a fresh base, alongside an array of homebaked bread such as potato and carraway, and cheese and onion.

The event was organised by a team including Jason and Judy Newton, Jim and Felicity Truscott, Ros Clayton, Pauline Goubert, and Rev Daniel Smith and his wife Zoe. Special mention should also go to the Rev Roger Crosthwaite whose magic tricks are fast becoming a must-have for any local event.

Jim Truscott commented: "It has been fantastic. It started this afternoon with a church service, a short thanksgiving, with probably about 150 people there, and then more people have been coming along to this - we probably have about 200 people by now, and they are coming and going. The most amazing thing about the BIG Eat is that in the morning we don't know what we are going to cook, we are waiting for the fruit and vegetables to come in, and then it arrives and we have this team of cooks waiting in the kitchen, and they just get on with it.

"This year we have had loads of squashes - almost every dish has got a squash in it. My favourite I think is the frittata which looks absolutely amazing and was cooked in an enormous pan, using lots of different ingredients such as courgettes and potatotes.

"It is a great idea...people taking part in the whole thing with growing vegetables and then bring them along to see them turned into these lovely creations, and then the food is free. "That's the most important thing - showing people where their food has come from."