SAVE THE DATE!

It's fast approaching that time of year and the

MAINSTREET CHRISTMAS SHOPPING EVENING

 is the best way to kick off the festive period! 

Join us on THURS 12th NOVEMBER 7-9pm 

for a night of jollyness and merriment!

Click below to see what we have in store this year:

Margaret Atwood is coming to Mainstreet!

This posts needs little explanation - other than, 

DON'T MISS THIS!

Mainstreet & Mons in France - Part 1

Abondance Cow

It has been an exciting few months for the Mainstreet DELI, with The London Coffee Festival under our belts we geared ourselves up for the next foodie adventure - FRANCE! 

The UK leg of our French cheese suppliers MONs are based in Bermondsey, London (you may have spotted their stall at the famous Borough Market) and work with us to select the very best seasonal cheese to stock in the Mainstreet Deli. When they offered to take us to France to meet cheese makers and visit MONs HQ we jumped at the chance.

And so with the guidance, knowledge and expert linguistic skills of Jon Thrupp, Director of MONS Cheese UK, Bill Shaun and Phillippa left Mainstreet for the mountains... Here is part 1 of our French diary.

Olia Hercules - Mamushka

Olia Hercules

We are feeling full of inspiration after a wonderful event with the beautiful Olia Hercules. Her debut cookbook Mamushka, published this month by Octopus, is brimming with delectable recipes and mouth watering photography. We were lucky enough to have Olia with us for her first cookery demo, she cooked Kurka Tabaka (Garlicky Georgian Poussin) for our hungry audience and we assure you - it was delicious!

More below!

Penguin Little Black Classics

HAPPY 80th BIRTHDAY 

PENGUIN!

To celebrate 80 years of publishing, Penguin have released the

LITTLE BLACK CLASSICS

Pocket size snippets from 80 classics, for 80p each!

Check out the website - www.littleblackclassics.com

After scouring through the stacks, picking the ones we wanted for ourselves - we decided to continue the penguin party throughout the shop. Including a window display filled with books and coffee from another OCC (Ouseburn Coffee Company) whose coffee we sell in our DELI. We like to think coffee plays a big part in fueling classic literature! Click the link for more.

The London Coffee Festival 2015

A couple of weeks ago Bill, Shaun and Phillippa headed off to The London Coffee Festival  in search of information, inspiration, - and caffination! (As if we need extra encouragement to drink more coffee!) Here is a sneak peek at what we got up to...

Mouse Mansion

Welcome to Mouse Mansion!

Over the past few weeks, Shaun and Phillippa have been secretly building a mansion in our HOME department. It has finally made its way into our windows, and the new inhabitants of Main Street St Boswells have a home!

Inspired by our current favourite picture book, 'Mouse Mansion with Sam and Julia' by Karina Schaapman, our version is designed around the little Maileg Mice that we sell in our bookshop. 

Dutch author and artist Karina Schaapman spent years building and furnishing the Mouse Mansion in which her collection of stories takes place. Each room depicted in this incredibly detailed book is inspired by stories from the artists childhood. The elaborate house is 6 feet wide, almost 10 feet tall and made from cardboard boxes and papier-mâché. Karina's mansion contains more than one hundred rooms to explore - our version may be a little smaller, but we like to think of it as more of a Scottish Tenemnet...
See more below..

Mainstreet HOME Spring 2015

Our HOME department is an ever evolving space that each season refreshes and replenishes itself with all manner of objects old and new. Beautiful reclaimed pieces of the old Mainstreet buildings are re-worked and installed to house carefully selected books, quirky antiques and unique homeware. This Spring welcomes a host of heavenly textiles, iconic utility essentials and serious coffee kit.

The 'It' shelves behind the counter
Clockwise L-R: Stoneware mugs from Plum & Ashby, Handmade leather notebooks from Art Box Design,
The iconic Bialetti Moka Pot, enamelware from Emalia Olkusz
books, from selection

See more :

Everyone's talking about...

Hemsley + Hemsley, The Art Of Eating Well

by Melissa and Jasmine Hemsley

The Hemsley sisters Jasmine and Melissa, are seriously 'In Vogue' - but really though. As contributing editors for Vogue and The Guardian, these girls have their fingers on the pulse of the super cool, superfood industry. This beautifully bright inspiring book is full of delicious recipes that happen to be gluten, grain and refined sugar free. Best of all they work hard to dispel the myth that fat makes you fat, quite the contrary, 'low fat' food full of emulsifiers and sweeteners are the real enemy. The Hemsley sisters encourage the use of animal fats and butter - natural ingredients that our bodies were built to digest and gain nutrition from. “For the past 60 years, we've been discriminating against all kinds of saturated fats, natural or not,” says Melissa. “The whole time we should have been discriminating against processed and hydrogenated fats.” The book is brimming with inspiring recipes which offer a modern take on 'back-to-nature' eating. Try the insanely good recipe for BBB (that's Black Bean Brownies) and the girls secret weapon vitamin, mineral, collagen and keratin boosting 'Bone Broth'. You will be adding coconut oil and chia seeds to shopping basket before you know it.

"Melissa and I realised that despite loving to cook and eating 'healthily', we were still suffering from everyday ailments such as acid reflux, painful bloating, IBS, eczema and being constantly exhausted from the stress of our jobs," explained Jasmine, also a model. "We started to research and read everything we could get our hands on, but we couldn't find just one ethos that we could live by. After many months of using ourselves as guinea pigs we finally found a way to eat that made us feel vibrant, strong and healthy." - Jasmine Hemsley

#BOILYOURBONES    @HemsleyHemsley   

Check out the girls making 'courgetti' at the brilliant Riverford Farm in Devon:

Hemsley + Hemsley is available to buy here at Mainstreet, that is if we haven't bought all the copies for ourselves! It would make a great alternative Easter gift for those not of the chocolate persuasion.. (or to have as well as chocolate, -  more likely surely?)

Supplier Focus: TEMPEST BREWING Co.

We are pretty big on beer in the Mainstreet DELI, our range of ever expanding craft beers is really interesting at the moment, worth a look! So with that in mind, this month's SUPPLIER FOCUS are award winning local artisan brewers TEMPEST Brewing Co. 

Testing the wares at the Traquair House BEYOND BEER festival

CLICK BELOW FOR MORE...

A Very Mainstreet Christmas To You!

Pretty snow scattered our beautiful old buildings

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
from all of us at
The Mainstreet Trading Company!

What a season it has been, filled with all kinds of festive cheer and goodies. The shop was full to the brim with treasures, fairy lights and freshly cut holly, all to set the scene for a magical Mainstreet Christmas.

Here's to a another fun filled year behind the blue doors!

As always - click the link below!