Thursday 21 June 2012

The West Wales Food Festival 2012


May usually means just one thing to both Aimee my eldest daughter and I....The West Wales Food Festival! Other months conjure up images of other events and locations, but May has to be the glorious setting of the National Botanic Gardens of Wales, home and birth place of one of West Wales' great food events.  I was sure of a dry and humid time at the West Wales Food Festival........I was cooking in the Great Glasshouse! What a place to cook! Apart from being warm and dry, it has to be the most beautiful place in the country to run children's cookery workshops.

The  two days were jam packed with cookery demonstrations and workshops by the best of Welsh chefs. Plenty of top quality local produce to taste and take home. The Pumpkin Patch made several batches of bread with groups of children and their interested parents. Some dough to take home and some we shallow fried with black onion seeds to create flat breads, perfect for summer barbecues!
 On the Saturday morning we had the final of the Junior Chef competition in the chef's marquee. What a morning! Lara and Martha the two fourteen year old young finalists cooked with such confidence in front of an audience and several accomplished and well known chefs. They did well, and Angela Gray, Dudley and myself did our very best to ease their nerves as we interviewed and judged the menus and cookery skills. There were no losers, just winners and a lot of very tasty food to enjoy, well done girls!


Where next?
Well, having cooked at Carmarthen Barbecue Week I'll soon be at the River Festival and then I'm off further afield... but not too far! I still need to regularly tend to The Pumpkin Patch gardens and make the most of the summer harvests. The Holiday Club is in full swing during August and that should keep me busy! The regular Pumpkin Patch Junior and Teen workshops will start back as soon as school resumes it's normal hours, but for now I'm going to enjoy the summer...well once the rain stops!! 

To check where we'll be and what we'll be doing over the summer please check
the web site thepumpkinpatch.org.uk  for up to date details.