Mark has given me a gentle nudge to remind me that I still haven’t posted about the Good Food Summer Festival yet - we visited this at the same time as Gardeners World Live at the NEC.

It was the first time I’d been to a Good Food event, so I was really quite excited. We went inside around lunchtime, having spent the morning around the Gardeners World side of the event and were looking forward to plenty of free samples! I think most people must have had the same idea, as it was really quite crowded. Unfortunately this meant on a few occasions we didn’t stop at interesting looking stand, as the stand owners were already busy talking to other visitors.

I was specifically looking out for cheeses, my current foodie passion, but was actually quite disappointed. One stand had a range of flavoured cornish cheeses which looked lovely and I was tempted to buy them, but the added flavouring overpowered the cheese and so we moved on. I did taste an excellent Gruyere cheese, but really wanted to buy a British cheese on this occasion, but decided that as nothing at the show overly appealed, I will be heading off to the small deli in our town instead.

Lunch came from the Supreme Sausages stand - Mark had the Pork, Venison and Mushroom sausage while I went for the Wild Boar and Apple, both were very juicy and tasty, we both enjoyed our lunch.

I was very taken by the Gift of Oil stand, and we enjoyed tasting the beautiful olive oils and balsamic vinegars on display. So much so that I came away with a bottle of single estate garlic infused olive oil, one of the single estate basil infused olive oil, and a small bottle of balsamic vinegar. Mark was making noises about my ‘reasonably priced’ oils for the rest of the afternoon, but I can assure you that they were worth every penny!

My final temptation came from the Fudge Kitchen stand - I generally prefer savoury foods to sweet, but these slices of hand made fudge looked divine, and the stand owner had a fine line in patter. So I bought a slice of the double chocolate fudge, and I am happy to report that it tasted every bit as good as it looked. Apparently the fudge will keep for 7-10 days, I can’t really say if that is true because it certainly was eaten quicker than that in my house! I’ll definitely be ordering some in the future, both for my own family and as gifts.

In all, I really enjoyed the Summer Festival and I am hoping to get down to London for the Good Food Show in mid-November, if time allows.