All over for another year – BBC Good Food Show Summer 2011 Highlights

Wow, I can’t believe the show is over for another year! Time seems to be going so quickly at the moment. I have a well needed day off today so am taking the opportunity to run through some of my personal highlights of the show. I hope you enjoy them, and if you visited I […]

Wow, I can’t believe the show is over for another year! Time seems to be going so quickly at the moment. I have a well needed day off today so am taking the opportunity to run through some of my personal highlights of the show. I hope you enjoy them, and if you visited I would love you to add your highlights in the comments section below!

The thing I loved most about this show was that everyone seemed so happy! This year we made all our aisles bigger, added in more seating and made sure there were more people around to help if needed. It really helped, and even on Saturday, when we had nearly 30,000 visitors at the show (I still can’t believe this!) it was still a pleasure to be there. The producers at the show all made friends with each other early on and there was a brilliant community feel to the show.

Some of my favourite bits…

Joe Delucci’s Ice Cream not only has really delicious ice cream but the company owners are rather fun and very generous with their ice cream! They mixed their crème brûlée and cherry ice creams for me to create a new cherry custard flavour, which was delicious. I then walked past the Holly Cupcakes stand and was offered some cola Fizz Wizz (popping candy), tipped the sachet into the ice cream and voila – Fizzy Cherry Cola Ice Cream! Yum!

It was the first time The Handmade Oatcake Company had been to one of our NEC shows and they had a brilliant time. I loved the effort they put into their stand – especially these beautiful oatcake canapes, and the various flavours of oatcake are very tasty.

Everyday I had a good look at the Polish pottery on the Polkadot Lane  stand, there was some really unusual and beautiful pieces – even yorkshire pudding trays made out of pottery! Unfortunately I ran out of time to buy anything so am going to plan in a visit to their shop in Hebden Bridge as soon as I have the time.

I’ve been trying to convince the The Handmade Scotch Egg Company to come to our Summer Show for years and finally they came this year – naturally I was right about them being perfect for the show and they were one of the most popular stands, selling out by 2pm everyday! (Sorry to those that missed out – you can buy online through their website). They have over 40 flavours and my favourite this year was the ploughmans – can’t go wrong with free range pork, cheese and chutney! See Neil below having a well deserved pint in the afternoon – cheers!

The celebrity chefs loved Charlie Bedlam’s Cotswold Gold rapeseed oil and used it on the Summer Kitchen Theatre – this may have played a part in Charlie having to franticly cut up more bread so customers could sample his last few bottles of rapeseed oil!

Tim Kinnaird, finalist from last year’s MasterChef series, proudly presented his Macarons and More … His macarons are divine and the ‘more’ included thick hot chocolate and mexican spiced nut brittle – I couldn’t help but have a few samples!

I wish I had remembered to buy some jars and bottles from The Jam Jar Shop , who have the most amazing selection of jars, bottles and ‘jamming’ equipment. The British Tomato Growers always provide me with a mound of tomatoes at the end of the show so it would have worked out wonderfully if I had bought some bottles for the ketchup I plan to make with them!

The show this year was an all round success – visitors happy, producers happy, organisers happy – a sell out show both for many producers and for us organisers too! Can’t wait for the next one!

Right, thats it for now – I hope you have enjoyed some of the highlights, and please do add your own for me, I’d love to hear them.