Great Food & Drink Festival - Newstead Abbey

For anyone who knows me, even remotely, it’s obvious that I really love food. What is not quite so obvious is that I’m a big fan of locally sourced food, few things excite me more than coming across great quality produce on my own door step. Bearing this in mind I recently attended a local food festival, held at Newstead Abbey, showcasing local producers in the Nottinghamshire area.

I can honestly say I wasn’t expecting much, however when I arrived I was delighted to see a plethora of small stalls with everything from speciality pickles to locally produced biltong, I was even more delighted to see that a good portion of these stalls were providing samples for people to taste. I spent the first hour or so nosing around the stalls, talking to the stall holders and trying every sample possible. I was literally like a child in a sweet shop, I was getting genuinely excited and was loving every second of it.

Having tried a few of the goods on offer, and talked to most of the stall holders, a few stalls had began to stand out in my mind. I decided to head back to these stalls for a second visit, with the intentions of making purchases. First things first, having whetted my appetite on the various samples, my stomach was now rumbling so I headed over to Hartland Pies and picked up a scotch egg and a bag of homemade pork scratchings. Second on my list was the Funky Nut Co to pick up a variety pack of their amazing nut butters. This was followed by some incredible wild boar and venison sausages and 3 massive doughnuts.

By this point it was now almost 12 o-clock so we headed over to the main tent to catch one of the live demonstrations. When the demonstration had finished it seemed liked the perfect time for lunch so I headed over to Cook Caribe for my very first try of Caribbean food. I had rice and peas with curried mutton and it was amazing, I loved it and can’t wait for the opportunity to try it again.

After lunch we took a walk around the grounds of Newstead Abbey before heading into the building itself to explore and see some of the exhibits inside. Newstead Abbey is a truly fascinating place with a lot of history attached to it, the fact that access to the abbey grounds and the buildings was included in the ticket price of the festival made it truly excellent value for money.

If an event like this comes to your local area I strongly urge you to attend as you will find a real range of local shops and producers that you may never have known existed, these people have a true passion and a genuine talent for what they do and deserve our custom and deserve to be celebrated.

August 2015 - Adventures In Scotland

It’s August and that means its summer and that means it’s the six week holidays for Kelly. After spending a few days in Scotland over the Easter period, and having had an amazing time, we decided to visit again for this years summer holidays. We booked a week in a small cottage in the middle of the Scottish countryside at the heart of the Dumfries and Galloway region. To say that the place was more or less idyllic, with the exception of the beds, would sum it up perfectly. A small two storey cottage with shower room, small kitchen area, dining area, TV on the ground floor and small bedroom on the first floor, it suited our needs perfectly.

Being fairly regular visitors to the Dumfries and Galloway area we have visited a fair number of places on more than one occasion, this time we made a conscious effort to look for and visit places that we haven’t seen before. It really paid off, the whole holiday felt like an adventure and it made me fall even more deeply in love with Scotland and the Scottish countryside. The one thing that really completes the whole experience for me is being able to share it with my wonderful partner. Her love and support makes everything I do just that much better, I really can’t imagine my life without her.