The Brighton Food Festival.

Horay it's the Brighton Food Festival!! Well actually it started on the 1st of September and runs until the 7th of October but due to no internet I can only blog about it now.
As part of the celebrations today was the fiery food Chilli Festival that I went along to with my lovely friend Becky.
I do love spicy food but I can't handle very hot stuff as I found out today when I accidently ate the hottest chilli jam in the world. I saw a pot with 'Apple and Chili' jam written on it in the tasting tent and thought 'yum' that sounds good and so had a try, within in secomds I though my throat was going to close up and it was on closer inspection that the description next to jam claimed it as the hottest in the world due to the type of chilli they used in it, never again is all I can say on that one.
To cheer myself up I bought the most beautiful chilli plant called 'Numex Twilight' which has little chilli's that start off purple, then yellow, then orange before finally turning red when they are ripe.



All in all it was a lovely day with some great produce and lovely food and I will be going again next year for sure. Sorry about the lck of pictures but I did not have my camera with me, foolish I know.

Camping and cooking in the Kent countryside.

Hello again, it's been far to long and I have really missed my little blog and the few lovely people who read it! I am once again connected to the internet and so can at last update you all on some food realted things starting with a three day, last minute camping trip with my wonderful best friend Gem to the idiylic Kent countryside for a little adventure! Unlike me Gem can drive so we packed up her car, not entirely sure where we were going to camp but full of positive thoughts so off we went and found a few campsites but none of them were really what we looking for and we had been driving around for rather a lot longer than we had wanted to, so we bit the bullet and I rang my Mum, yes I know a fully grown 26 year old woman ringing her Mum for help but it had to be done and I am so glad I did! Her and her lovely husband Dave looked on the internet while me and Gem sat in a pub car park waiting for some good news and of course my Mum came through as she always does and told us of a very delightful campsite called 'Bedgebury Camping' where you could have your own campfires and there was a stream, sounded great and I can happily say it was!
We bought a two burner camping stove with us which also had a little grill and it did us proud! On our first morning I got up very early and started to make a proper fry up in the dewy morning air, and it was totally blissful.
For one of our evening meals I decided to make pork loin, with pan fried apples, cider sauce, sauteed potatoes, spring greens and romanesco caulifower cheese which sounds like a ridiculous thing to cook on a camping stove, but I did it, it worked and I have the pictures to prove it....behold.

Here is a selection of the local, organic produce I used to make the meal, including a free range organic pork loin from a farm shop we visited.







Here is the lovely pork loin that I pan fried in butter before adding apple that I scrumped( is that a real word?)from an orchard (naughty) with onions and cider.
Next to the pork are my florets of Romanesco Cauliflower boiling away, before I covered them in cream and local chedder cheese and put them under the tiny grill.
I just par-boiled the potatos before finishing in the pan I cooked the pork in. It was a ridiculous juggling act but it worked out well in the end!



Here is the finished meal.



Until next time...