There was a buzz of excitement in Garsington Village Hall when I arrived. Some residents of the village were arriving with large dishes covered in tin foil and jugs of hot soup; others were laying up a central table with napkins and cutlery.

They were all responding to a challenge set them by local food enthusiasts Annie Wright and Tina Everett, who believed it was time to highlight both local produce and Fairtrade products. The two had invited residents to bring a dish made from local produce and/or Fairtrade ingredients. By ‘local’ they meant anything grown or produced in Oxfordshire. Each participant was also required to provide a list of ingredients and their sources.

Annie explained that the aim of the challenge was to raise awareness of just how much local and Fairtrade produce is available. She said: “We also want everyone to have fun, enjoy a jolly good meal and raise some money for St Mary’s Church Health Project in Tanzania and for the Garsington Village Hall at the same time.”

I had been invited to be one of the judges, along with Lorna Hicks, who runs the Fairtrade shop at St Michael at the North Gate, Oxford, co-organiser Tina Everett and writer Sylvia Vetta, who simply adores good home-cooked food.

Within minutes of arriving we all agreed that this was a simply wonderful way of celebrating Sunday lunch. Our task was to help ourselves to a little from each dish, before the visitors took over and filled their plates. Together we had to decide which dishes deserved a prize.

One of the impressive things about this challenge was the number of young people under 18 who had taken part. Their enthusiasm was infectious. The outright winner of this category was Phoebe Heath-Brown, who cooked some amazing bread rolls and served a breathtakingly beautiful bowl of home-made ice cream in a home-made ice bowl garnished with sprigs of rosemary. Her pudding looked and tasted simply fantastic and would most certainly have won her a place in the television Masterchef series.

The winner of the adult section was Carole Vincent. Her crispy roast potatoes, to which she had added crunchy onions and garlic, may not have been the most complex of dishes, but what she had done was take a basic vegetable and cook it to perfection. It was amusing to watch the enthusiasm with which the guests tucked into them.

When I asked Nick King, whose roast Muscovy duck and fresh chicken eggs also won a prize, where he got the duck from, he smiled. Apparently Nick had reared it himself. His hens laid the eggs, and the winter lettuce and mustard leaves came from his garden. Now you can’t get much more local than that! The duck was delicious.

Other winners included Jennifer Heath-Brown, Phoebe’s sister, who cooked some superb meringues with sloe coulis. Young Emma Stevenson cooked very tasty meringues, too, and served them with a blackberry coulis, using blackberries the family had picked during the autumn and frozen. Her brother Richard created a tasty loaf of bread. In the adult section, Judy Eden earned a prize for her chocolate pudding which celebrated Fairtrade chocolate. Jenny Rothery’s orange pudding was highly praised too.

As I said, when presenting the prizes, this was an event that made everyone a winner. Those lucky enough to partake of the dishes were winners, and those in developing countries labouring to provide us with Fairtrade chocolate, fruit and coffee were winners too. And the sight of others enjoying the dishes they had created rewarded those who brought dishes that didn’t gain an official award. The local suppliers were winners too. Wessex Mill Flour, milled from local wheat in Wantage, had been the flour of choice for many contestants. The Upper Norton Jersey Cream Company, Church Hanborough was also a firm favourite. Both their gloriously thick creamy cream and their succulent butter was listed on several recipe sheets.

Many contestants choose eggs from Bradmoor Farm, Haddenham, and vegetables from Tolhurst Organics, Whitchurch-on-Thames. Several had created tasty meat dishes from locally produced organic beef and lamb from Harlesford Farm, Tetsworth, near Thame. This farm has been supplying meat direct to the consumer for eight years, and is particularly popular for its home delivery service at a very reasonable price. This farm is registered with the Organic Farmers and Growers, and the Farm Assured British Beef and Lamb scheme. Their beef comes from a suckler herd of pedigree Limousin Cattle and the lamb is also home-bred from a closed flock of Charollaise cross Texel ewes.

All in all, the event was a great success, particularly as it offered me a chance to share a meal with friends that permitted me to relax and stop worrying about my 2009 pledge to eat only local or British food. Yes, I accept that Fairtrade products such as oranges, chocolate and dried fruit were included in many of the dishes. But it was generally decided that if I could drink Fairtrade coffee, then for this occasion I could enjoy other Fairtrade products too.

Fans of the Radio 4’s The Archers will know that Pip Archer pledged to only eat food produced within five miles of her home during Lent. By the time she was a couple of weeks into this diet she was persuaded to add Fairtrade products to her plate too.

The Garsington lunch proved so successful that Annie hopes that their success will spur other organisations and communities to stage similar events. “Those who cooked a local/Fairtrade dish were surprised at how easy it was to obtain the ingredients – it’s just a matter of shopping around,” she said.