Food festivals are a fabulous place to discover wonderful local produce, products, and suppliers along with delicious food and wine.  This is a great one for all of that.  There is also the opportunity to get great tips, ideas, and advice from the cooking demonstrations.  It was my first time here, but it certainly lived up to the hype from S and R.  And to top it all off, it was a glorious sunny day.  According to S and R, the sun always shines on the Thame Food Festival.

The festival is great for absolutely everyone, even those with dietary restrictions.  S was particularly delighted to find many stalls well aware of food allergies and intolerances and catering for this.

As Raymond Blanc, ambassador for the festival, passionately preaches, we need to live sustainably, and that involves buying local produce in season.  Many stalls proudly sold British produce, with most of those originating very locally to Thame.  Most meat sold was also free range, but not all.  I am pleased to say that S refuses to buy any meat that is not free range (naturally I am all for happy animals) and was put off buying sausages from one stall because of this.  Thankfully the day was saved as she found gluten free sausages from free range pigs at a couple of other stalls.  Hurrah, this made for a very happy R as he was allowed to buy his much loved sausages!

Speaking of Raymond, one of the highlights of my day was watching his cooking demonstration.  Well, I say his demonstration, but in fact, he was talking and giving sage advice while good old trusty Adam (you can just see him in the top mirror hiding behind the oven in the pic above) was doing all the cooking.  I even got to taste the food at the end (drool…)!  But even better than that was actually meeting him!  Yes, I got the evidence:

The great thing about food festivals is that you can grab a bite to eat whenever you are hungry and you can buy a glass of something yummy to drink while perusing all the stalls.  After snacking on gluten free Brazilian cheese balls (Pão de Queijo – yum!!) and a glass of prosecco, I wandered from stall to stall, looking, questioning, and tasting, as well as chatting and making new friends, like the lovely Clare:

So, my haul for the day? 

• sausages (free range and gluten free!)
• a case of wine (delicious Argentinian Bonarda Reserve from Cupari Wines)
• chillies
• cheese
• a couple of bottles of wine
• chorizo and spreading chorizo (yes, spreading – spread it as a base on your next pizza.  Oh, and as a side note, S makes an amazing gluten free pizza base!)
• chilli hot sauces
• smoked seeds (from Wil’s Smoke House)
• early harvest extra virgin olive oil and balsamic pearls (little balls of balsamic made by spherification that go beautifully on smoked salmon, amongst other things – from Belazu)
• dark balsamic vinegar (made from the Pedro Ximinez grape and aged for 25 years! – from Fino)
• sundried tomato paste (gorgeous and well balanced, so much nicer than what you get in the supermarket)
• saucisson (cured sausages)
• another case of wine (horizon-broadening new finds from Trailblazing Wine)

There was a bit of a struggle getting everything back to the car.  We decided to do two trips.  About halfway there on the first trip, R started getting a little stressed about S getting in his way (he was lugging most of my purchases along with a case of wine on his shoulder!) so I suggested that S and I wait on the corner with everything while he went to get the car.  That worked a treat!  We then parked in the Waitrose carpark (free parking for 2 hours) and went back in to retrieve the second case of wine (and picked up some last minute stuff at Waitrose on the way back).  Whew!

Check out some links to some cool producers/suppliers on the links above or on the official LINKS page if you are wondering where we found some of my haul.  Feel free to post your findings in the comments below too so that I might discover more new things!

Thanks for reading and talk soon.

Big bear hugs from Little Ted xx