Organic Food Festival 2007

 

Heavy traffic in the M5 motorway nor the generally overcast weather did not deter me and my family to visit the 2007 Organic Food Festival in Bristol last weekend. It was held at the harbour side of the city. A perfect backdrop to some ethically and pesticide-free food and products available in the numerous stalls. Although I have noticed that, excepting the big-name companies, most of the stallholders are from the Southwest England. Hmmm ... I thought this would be a food festival that would encompass all organic producers from the whole of England. Oh well, it doesn't matter much to me as long as I have my fill of high-quality organic produce from whatever farm it came from.

Here are some pictures from that family outing (click on the picture for a larger view):

After paying our reasonably priced entrance fees, we each got tagged with a red wrist band. J3 said she felt like a pigeon (maybe a homing one at that).

 

The Soil Association is the organiser of this whole extravaganza.

 

Here's a view of the harbour and foot bridge at the back of the festival ground.

 

The one stall I forgot to take picture of is an umbrella-shaded wheeled cart with a young lady giving free Yeo Valley strawberry yoghurt. My daughters loved it so much that we kept coming back to get more from the patient lady. Between us we might have consumed more than a dozen sachet tubes! Other big organic companies were in attendance as well:

 

There are of course more of smaller producers represented in the different stalls:

 

One of the most favourite stall (it certainly was mine) is Green & Black's chocolates. They were giving out whole chocolate mini bars in big volumes! They were not even breaking them up in little pieces. You should see how they disappeared once the staff laid down one plateful of these gorgeous chocs.

 

My husband and youngest (J3) love cheese so it's just natural that they gravitate to the cheese stalls. One such interesting stall is Villanova Food where J3 particularly requested for a chunk of Grana Padano to buy.

 

I took the opportunity to buy some organic sirloin steaks at a discount (they were doing a buy 2 get 1 free promotion). And Brown Cow's steaks did not disappoint at all. We cooked them on a stove top grill right after we arrived home. It was one of the best I've tasted ever, very tender and flavourful. My only regret was I only bought three thinking my kids won't finish theirs like they normally do. But as it turned out everyone enjoyed it very much that all had clean plates. :)

 

There was also a kitchen demonstration tent where the likes of Sophie Grigson and Darina Allen did some cooking demos.

 

Besides food stalls, there are also other non-food organic stalls that were promoting or selling things like plants and herbs, toiletries, clothes, cleaning products, etc.

 

It's good that they provided entertainment as a minor distraction from all the wonderful food around. Here is the band The Courgettes dishing out funny food-related adapted songs like 'Beat It' which turned out into 'Eat It'. I must say they were good.

 

A different type of music were performed by the Bollywood Brass Band at the main Millenium Square stage.

 

We had a good day out that Saturday despite the overcast skies. I just wish the delicious organic food and produce were all more affordable. Well, just goes to show you can't have the best of both worlds.