I knew Erika Pratt by smell before I knew what she looked like, in the nicest sense. She’s responsible for the delicious waft of frying sausages that hits you when you arrive at Lewes Farmers’ Market. It comes from her van, Moveable Feasts. My five-year-old son declared her hot sausage in a roll ‘the best I’ve ever had’.

Tell me a bit about your cooking. I grew up near Piltdown very close to nature. Cooking was what I shone at. Mrs Cripps, my Home Economics teacher at Chailey, was very good. She used to let me do what I wanted. I used to make banana bread for Bill’s, but when they got flooded, I ended up with 80lb of spare bananas. Luckily for me, Beckworth’s took me on. The odd thing is the banana bread did less well at the top of the town than it did at the bottom. I make flapjacks and lemon drizzle cake for Beckworth’s now, and flapjacks and brownies for the Pells Pool. I’ve been doing Moveable Feasts at the Farmers’ Market for years, since Topsy Jewell asked me to come along and do a cookery demonstration. I started cooking Colin Staplehurst’s pork and apple sausages. We chose them because it was autumn and they were seasonal, but they became so popular, that’s what we sell, along with bacon and burgers and a spicy chili-bean soup. I started cooking on a camping stove, then we got a barbeque, and finally a van. I now have two vans.
How would you describe your cookery ethos? Good, wholesome tasty food. Not too many ingredients. I’m quite creative. I don’t stick to recipes. I like to source food locally, but I don’t think it has to be organic, because people have to jump through hoops to get organic certification. I do like to barter with food, so for example I get a bag of whatever vegetables are in season from Ashurst organics, like this week it’s courgettes and spinach, and in return I trade staff lunches for her workers.