Glynde Food Festival 2013

On Saturday we went to the Glynde Food and Drink Festival 2013. It's an event that I'd never been to before, didn't even know it existed, but discovered in my Good Food magazine a few months back. The weather was glorious, which is just as well, as it's held in the grounds of Glynde place in East Sussex. We purchased our tickets in advance, including one for Mini Manley, and so at 10am we strolled into the grounds and started looking around. 

The first real thing that I did, after a quick look around, was to go to my cookery masterclass that my mum had very kindly paid for. This was a class with John Torode, from Masterchef, and was learning how to butcher a chicken and make southern fried chicken from it. I was really nervous about the class, I didn't want to look stupid and I was doing it on my own. But some lovely people came and started talking to me, helping me out and putting me at ease. Thank you to those people around me that helped me settle. When John walked in I eventually calmed down and found him to be really nice and a good teacher. I was worried, since he's such a big name, that he would be a little too big for his boots but he was quite the opposite and very down to earth. He didn't expect us to know anything, perfect, so I felt that I could do whatever and it was fine. John talked us through how to take the whole chicken and cut it into all the different pieces and then how to coat it and deep fry it. I wasn't so interested in the deep frying section but was really pleased to learn how to butcher it up, whole chickens are so much more economical and I can now chop ours up. At the end of the class he said he was happy to have photos done, so here's mine!! 

Me and John Torode

After the class I came out to find Gary, mum and M&M sitting waiting outside. They'd been and explored around and mum had been purchasing a few bits. We had a quick lunch, I had a lamb burger with mint jelly from the Sussex Lamb Company, and we also had a frappe each, I can't remember the name of the company but they were very nice. 

We went back down to the stalls, there were lots of exhibitors, and started making our purchases. 

From Wild at Heart mum bought some chutneys, Wild plum and Red onion. 

Chutneys from Wild at Heart

I managed to convince mum and Gary to purchase me some marshmallows from Dulcibella Marshmellows. These were delicious. The had flavoured marshmallows, some with sauce inside as well. Flavours included banofee pie, rhubarb, blueberry and vanilla. There were 10 flavours in total. I got them all except pineapple. 

Marshmallows from DulciBella

We really liked this fudge from Mini Mouthfuls, it wasn't too sweet and flavours were original. We decided to purchase, from the left, strawberrys and cream, lemon merringue, vanilla with honeycomb swirl and mint chocolate. 

Fudge from Mini Mouthfuls

 Mum purchased these sauces from St George's pickles and preserves. She got 2 barbeque and 1 plum. 

Sauce from St George's pickles and preserves

 Our final purchase was this knife, well mum bought it for me. I used it whilst doing my masterclass and I realised how much better this knife was than anything I'd even used. It was very shape and excellent quality. From Flint and Flame. I'm very much looking forward to using this again, esspecially when I rebutcher a chicken!! 

Knife from Flint and Flame

We enjoyed the food festival and stayed for a few hours. It probably isn't something we would go to without doing the masterclass or if the weather was bad, but in the sun it was a nice day out. It's certainly something I would consider going to again in the future. I should mention there was plenty there that we didn't explore as it wasn't of interest to us, this includes a wine tent and a children's area.