BBC Good Food Show 2015

This week I’ve won tickets to BBC Good Food Show in Harrogate. It is a very busy time for us and I didn’t want to buy the tickets, so I was very happy when I won them and the “choice” was already made for me.

When I received the tickets I was so happy. Initially I intended to go on Sunday as I am in Harrogate at a fair, but decided to make another trip on Friday to be sure I have enough time to look at everything. Procrastination gets such an undeserved bad publicity, with a little extra coffee I’ll finish everything from the to-do-list.

I have only one picture from inside the show, as it was quite crowded for a Friday morning.

It was the first time I’ve been to Good Food and I have mixed feelings. We had an enjoyable day at the fair and we bought some bits&pieces.

There were a lot of stands that were selling food: preserves, cheese, olive oil, wine and meat. I think all of them had samples to taste and that was so important. Hubby tried a preserve and decided against it after tasting it because it was similar to what we already have. There were a few stands with pans and baking trays, nothing special, seen them before at Ideal Home in Manchester.
There was a stand that had a lot of things for pasta, like ravioli cutters, pasta rolling machine, special rolling pins, dryer for pasta. I liked them a lot, but my kitchen is small and I don’t cook pasta that often.

I saw the presentation of the Vitamix blender and I was blown away by it. It’s a shame it is so expensive at £499 at the show. Although I looked online and I found it slightly cheaper at John Lewis. Anyway, I had the soup done in 5 minutes, the latte, the ice cream made in 30 seconds, juice and everything was tasty, really good. After seeing it, I’m hoping if I can find something similar at an affordable price tag.
I’ll also try to make ice cream in the same way the presenter did, as my Bosch blender has the ice crushing function. As a downside to my Bosch, the container is quite small and it is not as powerful as the Vitamix, that is the reason of the price and quality of the end result. I’ll try making some juice on it as well.

The “not so good part” is that we had higher expectations regarding the diversity of the stands. There was only 1 stand with ceramic plates and while they looked lovely, it wasn’t something that would suit my style. Another stand had teas and teapots, but not all had matching teacups or more precisely the ones that I liked didn’t have them. I couldn’t find anything for decorating with icing or decorating in general. There weren’t any “less than standard” baking trays, like the individual mini-bread tray that is on the shelf at Lakeland. I hoped I can find a stand with molecular gastronomy, even though I didn’t use the kits I bough, so maybe it was for the best. I also wanted some cocoa butter.
It is quite expensive to participate as an exhibitor at this sort of events and it’s quite hard for those who have products for a niche audience.

I received all this in the goodie bag. It was surprising to see something else besides leaflets and cataloques. I’m not too keen on some of the items, but it was nice nevertheless.

We didn’t buy a lot of things, but here are the pictures of what we’ve got.

A knife and a sharpening tool. On the demonstration it looked pretty impressive, so I assume it will be good. We’ve got them on offer, at only £20 for the set.

A set of making pasta from veggies at £15. There was a demonstration and it looks quite easy to cut the veggies. I can’t wait to try it. Also I can make long strings from veggies. I think we’ll have pasta quite a few times next week.

A big and a small pipping bag from a special material (don’t remember the name), that feels a little bit like silicone. It looks very sturdy and I pulled one at the show. I hope it’s good as I’m having a constant battle with my pipping bags or other similar tools. The set was £15.

Not a huge amount of shopping, but it was something that I really wanted to buy and I’ll use. Get ready for new recipes.

As we were in Harrogate, we passed by Betty’s where, as always, there was a queue outside. So, we bought a couple of desserts and we went home. I’m going to make a special post regarding Bettys as I absolutely love their desserts.

Hubby had a tarte au citron and I had Grand Cru Chocolate with praline and raspberry filling cake. It was the dark chocolate heaven.

Have you been to BBC Good Food Show? Tell me about it.