A festival of food!!

Total rest day today, was no blog yesterday as we have my youngest niece to stay for the weekend, but have made sure I have time to blog this evening.

We have had a lovely day, we went to the Aldeburgh food festival in Suffolk which is fantastic, we go every year.  Lots and lots of local fresh producers selling their goods in one place, you get to taste loads of different things, (spend a lot of money!)  and watch local and celebrity chefs do demonstrations, although we didn't actually watch any of the demo's as my niece felt poorly, (not from the food, she has a nasty cold!).

But it was a brilliant day. Today's blog will mainly be photo's from the day, a little different than usual.  No exercise has been involved today, apart from lots of walking around the food festival, but I think that just managed to walk off the various 'tit-bits' we tried!!

To start the day off, before we left for the festival, we had toasted crumpets topped with honey and one of my gorgeous berry smoothies.

One of the first things we had at the festival was the most amazing freshly made frozen yogurt.  They use frozen natural yogurt, you then choose which fruits you want blended in and they make it up for you there and then. I chose apple and mango, my niece chose banana and black cherry and my husband chose raspberry and strawberry.
  

Afraid most of it had gone by the time we remembered to take a picture, but they were fantastic.  We had tubs rather than cones.  I think my niece chose the best flavour combination to be fair, it was gorgeous, but they all were. They put a good 5 chunks of each fruit in each one.  I really want a frozen yogurt machine now!! ;)

So many brilliant stalls there, selling things from delicious cakes, bread and pastries, pesto, oils, sauces, mustard's, chutneys, cheese, meats, fish, flours, drinks, sweets, vegetables and so much more!!  All locally sourced, all very beautifully presented.  Ofcourse the cake stalls were the most impressive, they would be wouldn't they, temptation to the max!!  We purchased 2 chocolate brownies, one for my husband, one for my niece, to take home with us and my niece also couldn't resist a little chocolate cupcake made to look like a sunflower with an Oreo cookie as the middle!

Although after a few bites she decided it was too sickly (how can chocolate cake ever be too sickly!!??), so that went in the bin!

Some of the cupcakes just looked amazing. 

Unfortunately they were all I managed to get pictures of as it was so crowded everywhere, I really wanted to get pictures of the fresh vegetable stall as it was so beautifully displayed, like a work of art, but I just couldn't get near.

 

But this is what we purchased today:-

 

So, we bought smoked chicken breast, smoked duck breast and smoked mackerel, various flavours of Munchy Seeds (various seeds roasted in flavours, we bought honey, soy and chilli), Purely Pesto .... THE best pesto ever, made with cashew nuts, herbs/tomatoes and rapeseed oil (we chose coriander, rocket and sundried tomato flavours), beautiful rainbow of plum tomatoes, kale, fresh lobster and crab and the most gorgeous flavoured vinegars, (we chose walnut, rhubarb & ginger, elderberry and .... chocolate!!).  These vinegars are amazing, beautiful subtle flavours, no fat, will make brilliant salad dressings, I used the chocolate one for a dessert tonight, see later in the blog!

We then left the festival and went for lunch in a lovely little country pub nearby.  I had the most amazing fennel, tomato and fish stew.

It was full of octopus, scallops, sea bass, monkfish and little brown shrimps and bursting with flavour.

It came with two fried croutons on top topped with a massive amount of  rouille, (a sauce made from mayonnaise with copious amounts of garlic), on top.  You are supposed to stir this into the stew, but I didn't bother, it didn't need it, the fish flavour spoke for itself and it was so fresh tasting, I absolutely loved it.  Instead we dipped some of my husbands chips from his dinner in some of the rouille, but we left most of it.

For dinner this evening we had a salad using the crab and lobster we bought today.

It was lovely, but crab is by far my favourite, I think lobster is very overrated, crab has much more flavour.

This was served with a salad of the rainbow tomatoes we purchased today, some avocado, beetroot and spinach and mixed leaves, topped with a dressing made from rapeseed oil mixed with the walnut vinegar we also purchased today.

My niece and I also made a loaf of homemade seeded wholemeal bread which we had with it.

To finish this day off, which seems to have revolved completely around food, I made baked bananas with chocolate vinegar.  Keeping the bananas in their skins, I slit them down the middle but not all the way through, opened them out a little and drizzled the chocolate vinegar into them.  Wrapped them in foil and baked at about 200oc for approx 25 minutes.

The served with frozen fat free passion fruit yogurt!  Yum!!!  Luckily it was only a very very small bottle of chocolate vinegar purchased, all gone now!!


Although I am now itching to get some exercise in tomorrow, my rest day was fabulous!

Ooo, this is the website for Munchy seeds .. I promise you they are seriously good, you can also buy them in many supermarkets, but they are Suffolk based! Munchy Seeds 

And this is a link to Purely Pesto.  Their pesto's are amazing, I love them just spread on a Dr Karg seeded cracker or oatcake as a little snack, or just mixed through some wholewheat pasta.

Thanks again for reading
Jo
xx