BBC Winter Good Food Show

We went to the BBC Winter Good Food Show at the NEC in Birmingham on Saturday and had a thoroughly good time. It took about an hour and a half to get there. We were there for an hour and a half, then it took another hour and a half to get back!!!  Mind you, we had a good run on the roads. There was hardly any traffic.

This might be because everyone but everyone was at the Good Food Show! It was very busy. And it was quite perilous going around. People were pulling shopping trolleys (not nice supermarket shopping trolleys that you can see, but Little Old Lady shopping trolleys that you pull along behind you which other people can't see) or boxes on wheels that they pulled along on sticks.  I tell you, if just one more person had pushed a shopping trolley into me, I was going to stomp on it.  And if that trolley was one of the Good Food souvenir trolleys they had bought as they came in, they might not have been entirely delighted.  But my ankles weren't entirely delighted either!! I probably wasn't going to stomp on one of the boxes, though.  My foot might not have enjoyed that

Trolleys and boxes (and people who just stop dead without paying attention to who might be walking along behind them) aside, we really enjoyed the show.  We enjoyed admiring ovens and stoves, kitchen equipment, gadgets and decorations. We really enjoyed looking at the producers' stalls and the craft stalls.  We weren't quite so interested in the wine and spirits stalls. I hadn't bought tickets to any of the demonstrations or classes, although I will next year. I did buy some balsamic vinegar, some rose veal escalopes, and a few other bits and pieces.  We both enjoyed the chicken wraps we had for lunch, and the sausage rolls we had before we left from a Cornish stall selling pasties and sausage rolls were absolutely lovely . But though you may look at me askance, dear stall holder, when I ask if you have any tomato sauce, allow me to assure you that sausage rolls NEED a tomato sauce of some sort to show themselves off to their best advantage.  Doesn't have to be a supermarket sauce; a home made salsa would do. But sausage rolls NEED sauce!

So, for next year, I'll buy tickets to some of the demos and events, and I'll use the map that they thoughtfully provided in the programme which I didn't notice until after we had left. And we'll go on a Thursday or Friday when (I assume) it won't be quite so busy. The downside to that is that not so many of the chefs are there. The upside is (I hope) that you might actually be able to see what's going on. Might buy tickets to the summer show too.