Good Food and Wine 2011

Hello Again!

I'm only 2 days late. I'm not sure anyone is reading, anyway.

Here's the story about Eddie and Deb's adventure to the Good Food and Wine Show on Saturday, July 3rd.

We arrived at about 2pm and it was THROBBING. People everywhere and many of them had trolleys! We had to grow accustomed to being run into, run over AND elbowed. We managed!

I spied an interesting stand not long after entering, a selection of jams and pickles by Anathoth NZ. After tasting a wide variety, I decided on the tomato relish and farmstyle pickle as both rank high in tastiness. Unfortunately, both also rank very very high in sugar. I suspect as high as the jams. Nevertheless, occasionally, treats are OK. I'll refer back to this statement frequently :)

Eddie was hungry so we had to find the mini burger stall for him to sample their wares. Once we had roamed and filled our bellies with a free selection of tasty treats, Eddie was next to flex his spending muscle. Below is what he purchased - the KLEVA Sharp, which came with a free grater!

 

Ed has been gone for days on his knife sharpening frenzy, but I'm sure he'll come home soon.

We wandered through the whitegood pornography supplied by Fisher and Paykell as well as its budget range by Haier. We were excited to see one of our favourite wines EVER, the Pinot Noir by ARA, on display - we stayed well away from all things wine though, it IS Dry July after all! We sampled many delicious smoothie cube flavours by Creative Gourmet, black pudding and potato bread by The Irish Butcher and the full range of Gü's puds and naughties (lime pies OMG). 

We don't normally like Gloria Jeans, but we did on Saturday. They did some awesome treats! They had these caramel filled wafers that melted into your free tiny coffee and were delicious. They also had free carrot cake AND lamingtons. We were spoiled... by the power of hillsong! We figure its OK cos we didn't invest $$.

 The rest of the purchases were made by me :) The chocolate chai above is AMAZINGLY DELICIOUS and nearly all gone already - I'm not sure where to? Teehee. I'll be buying more from the real chai website and taking it to Avanti's bridesmaids luncheon, so she can compare it with her mum's recipe. OM NOM NOM.

When I'm feeling run down, I like to put manuka honey in stuff for extra energy. Juuuuust in case all the stuff they say about it's magical properties is true. NZ holds the patent for Manuka and we pay a fortune for it. Beechworth honey have made a manuka that can't be graded because it isn't a kiwi and is therefore less $$. It is tasty (in my chai AND on my pear with natural sheeps' milk yogurt) so I'm winning.

The very last thing I bought were these 2 packets of M n Ms, which made it from Saturday until Wednesday night unopened, but after a massive spin class last night, having trained chest and back earlier in the day, I deemed it appropriate to sample these wares. The coconut flavor tastes like imitation coconut essence, which is an imitation of tastiness. I'm in no hurry to finish these. The peanut butter ones on the other hand will not see the week out. Oh boy! I love peanut butter. I also love chocolate. Whenever these two meet, I die and go to heaven.

Here are some of the samples I collected - two new flavours of herbal tea to add to my extensive collection. They were cranberry and pomegranate as well as Raspberry, Strawberry and Loganberry. I've already had them. How CUTE is that almond tin? I squealed with delight when I saw it and the girls on the stall were kind enough to give it to me on the sly, along with information on what makes Australian Almonds the perfect recovery food. That was music to this little athlete's ears, I'll just at any excuse to eat nuts so I have had my almond tin packed full of almondy goodness and on my person ever since.

Noteworthy mentions from the day abound! I'm excited about the gorgeous range of gluten and dairy free cooking sauces and dressings from Ozganics, but not quite as much as the gluten and allergen free baking mixes from Well and Good! Their everything was DELICIOUS. Best quality gluten free baked goods I've sampled so far - very important in my family.

The most exciting thing, though, by a long way, was the arrival of Harney & Sons teas in Australia. I am a tea NUT. I have a HUGE tea collection. These teas are really the creme de la creme. They smell incredible, they taste divine and they come in tins so pretty you want to display them always and forever. I can't wait to start my new collection!

I hope you enjoyed my food post about the naughty side of Debzillah. I'll talk about healthy food next week, promise :) Xx