Food and Drink Friday.

The Stone Food and Drinks Festival is now in its 4th year. It has certainly grown year upon year and this year is no different. With events having taken place all week, today was the opening day of the festival at Westbridge Park. Despite heavy rain over night, conditions were looking pretty good for the day, even the ground under foot looked to have stood up well to the weather, even though some of the exhibitors had problems with getting their vehicles onto the field, it was soon resolved with the help of the organisers. Keith and were asked to be the official Food and Drink Festival Photographers, so we were on site at 9 am to catch the early photographs of the setting up of some of the stalls.It has to be said that it was rather chilly, and people were running around to keep warm. We noticed some stalls that were at last year’s event, but there were also many new stalls who have come to enjoy the festival. With the stall holders all set up, on hand to open the event was the Mayor of Stone, Mark Green and his wife.Along with the Mayor in the photograph above are Richard Stevens (Chairman of the Stone Food and Drink Working Group) Colin Taylor (compere) and Jill Hood (Festival Administrator), they have all worked extremely hard to organise this event.
Keith and I spent our time photographing the stalls and chatting to stall holders, but we could not resist buying some cheese from Shirevale Cheese makers, who won the Gold Award at the Nantwich Cheese Show.
There was so much to see and try, but one stall that caught my eye was Jimmy’s Farm.I am sure many of you will have seen the program which was on BBC2. We certainly watched it, and enjoyed seeing the progress of the farm and its animals. We will be going back and buying some of the lovely sausages on offer.There were some local businesses with stalls, one being Titanic Brewery, who have the beer tent covered, and with the weather being on the damp side over the weekend, it will be busy no doubt.The local Stoke-on-Trent IWA Branch had a stall at the festival, with WOW all set up to help make the event more enjoyable for the children, who may find all the food and drink stalls a little boring.I was on hand to do a promotional photograph for the sale of the new bags for life, which are on sale at the IWA stall.The bags have printed on them a buckby can with Friendship on it. They cost £4 and all the profits made go to the IWA. In this day of recycling everyone should have a bag for life.
Throughout the day the demonstrations kitchen held cookery demonstrations by local chefs. These included International Indian Chef of the Year Dahmendra Vassaramo of Thornbury Hall, Jake Lowndes (pic below) of La Dolce Vita one of the contenders for Young Chef of the Year, Jake came 3rd in the event, Carlo Crimioli of Pasta Di Piazza cooked up a storm as well. The final event in the demonstration tent was a cook off between two teachers from Walton and Pirehill local schools.They were helped by chefs from Pasta Di Piazza. With school children cheering their teachers on it was going to be a noisy affair.It also got very warm in the kitchen. We couldn’t stay for the result as Mog and Dog needed feeding. Keith and I had a wonderful day and met some fabulous people, we will be doing it all again over the weekend no doubt, so fingers crossed the weather is not as dire as the forecast has just told us. If you are not busy why not come a long and enjoy tasting food from around the country.