Blogging – And All Things Nice

So as I mentioned at the end of my last blog I recently went to the Leeds Food and Drink Festival. In previous years this has been a really great event but the last couple of years, I have to be honest, I feel it has gone downhill! I did go on a Friday afternoon instead of a weekend this year, and the weather wasn’t great which didn’t help the atmosphere but that wasn’t the only issue.

There were a lot of places to get food to eat there and then, too many, even with the best will in the world you couldn’t eat at all of them. Then in addition to this there was a lot of repetition there were three places selling variations on Thai food, 4 stalls selling Indian food (at least three of these were selling Chicken Tikka Wraps) There were two places selling burgers and two more selling hot dogs and another two selling pies, there were at least two stalls selling cupcakes and three stalls selling ice cream.

In addition to this abundance of eateries with bored looking staff there were vacant stalls which might have been getting filled over the weekend but it doesn’t look too great either way. There was also a couple of regulars who have attended year after year who weren’t there this year namely The Cherry Tree and Mr Fitzpatricks Vintage Cordials.

There was also a distinct lack of advertising for the event, I go through Leeds five days a week and I didn’t see any advertising except one poster about a week before and that was for Leeds food and Drink month not for the actual festival, the only reason I knew the festival dates was because I knew it would be coming up and googled it. I also tried to find out a full list of stall holders before the event and found the website completely lacking in information. The whole thing felt like it had been organised with minimum effort by people who don’t really care.

However on a more positive note there were some awesome companies there. We ate at four places Handmade Burger Co., Yorkshire Hot Dog Company, Chaophraya and Northern Bloc. We had a chilli infused burger and chips from Handmade Burger Co. (I’ve also had their rhubarb burger at Wakefield’s Rhubarb festival) they give you everything you could ever want in a burger; the bread is lightly toasted, the burger itself was cooked to perfection and the cool little pipette of chilli sauce means you can add as much or as little as you want. The chips are triple cooked (but of course, aren’t they all these days), crispy on the outside, light and fluffy on the inside and quite frankly are the nicest chips I have ever had! We also had a classic hotdog from Yorkshire Hot Dog Company with onions and cheese on, the hotdog itself was nice but the cheese could have done with being melted and the onions could have been cooked a little better. We also shared a portion of the gorgeously crisp and juicy tempura prawns from Chaophraya, a gorgeous Thai restaurant (I had some of their Pad Thai last year which was also delicious) I will definitely be going there for a meal sometime soon. We also both got an ice cream from Northern Bloc who completely wiped the floor with Just Jenny’s and the Frozen Yogurt stall. That is not to slate either of these companies I adore Just Jenny’s but Northern Bloc definitely brought their A game, their van is stylish and cool and the menu board was filled with beautiful photographs that made you want to try every flavour as it was we just tried roasted strawberry and chocolate & sea salt with fresh raspberry sauce made with real fruit (none of that luminous, plastic stuff you get at a regular ice cream van).

We also bought some things to bring home. A mountain of brownies and blondies from Brown & Blond I can not urge you enough to try these gooey, gorgeous, baked bits of heaven but just do they’re amazing! From The Sawley Kitchen we got some delicious, crumbly white chocolate & lemon shortbread and chocolate and strawberry meringues that were lusciously gooey in the middle. We got a couple of spice mixes from The Twisted Chilli, a tikka masala and a passanda they’re really good and I will definitely be ordering more from their website. We also got two individual steak pies and a pot of gravy from Pie., the pies were really meaty and were complimented really well by the rich gravy. Not to criticise Pie. in any way, they were lovely and the food is amazing, but they’re based in Hull and don’t sell online so quite why they were chosen to be one of the two stalls selling pies at a food and drink festival in Leeds I do not know; I’m sure there are more local companies that could have benefitted from having a stall there. We also got some fishcakes from Chapman’s two with haddock, cheese & leek and two with salmon, lemon & dill they’re really easy for cooking at home and delicious too, you can order direct but they have stockists nationwide, you can find your nearest one on their website. I also got a delicious salty and spicy seasoning rub and some chilli biltong from Barefoot Biltong.

It wasn’t a bad day all told but I really hope they put more effort into the organisation of future years.

I decided some time ago that I wanted to get into blogging but as with many things in life this is not as simple as it sounds. For a start what to blog about? I have many passions in life; I’m a foodie, I am an obsessive photographer, I love films, I’m a geeky gamer girl and I work with animals and have a degree in zoo management. I decided to go with food blogging and photography because it combines two things I cannot live without, food and my camera! Now admittedly I might be being a tad melodramatic when I say I can’t live without my camera but it is in my hand more often than its not!

I love photographing food almost as much as I love eating it. Food can be so photogenic whether it’s brightly coloured sweets, a steaming bowl of soup and rustic looking bread or the art on a plate found in good restaurants. However it’s also challenging and frustrating as it very easily goes horribly wrong leaving you with a cold meal and a shot that looks like it belongs in a dodgy kebab shop window!

I didn’t know much about blogging so I bought a magazine but I had more questions than answers after reading it so I shopped around for blogging courses and found a great sounding course on the Guardian Masterclasses page: Introduction to food blogging and photography run by Joan Ransley. Joan is an amazing food photographer and the author of blogs Cooking for the Sensitive Gut and Joan Ransley Food Writing and Photography. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to learn from her so I signed up.

We needed to take our own food to photograph and I decided I wanted to take sweets, retro sweets, the sort of sweets that would give your dentist a headache! Two of London’s finest sweet shops instantly came to mind; Mrs Kibbles Olde Sweet Shoppe at St Christopher’s Place, a tiny shop packed to the rafters with sweets of practically every size shape and colour you could imagine and the bright, colourful and huge confectionary department of Selfridges & Co on Oxford Street.

As I tried to cram my laptop, all of my photography equipment, my props and my rather large carrier bag of sweets into my sizable rucksack I realised it was going to take a bigger bag… my suitcase! I was a bit worried I’d look daft turning up to the course with a suitcase but fortunately everyone else seemed to be in the same boat and I didn’t look daft at all! Speaking of boats, The Guardian offices are in the most beautiful setting, from the front it doesn’t look much but when you get inside the rooms are floor to ceiling windows looking out onto a rather lovely canal and the coffee and food bars look out onto the canal moorings through equally magnificent windows.

The first half of the day was mainly theory based with Joan passing on her blogging and photographic wisdom to us. Joan took time to get to know each of us, explained things in a way that was easy to understand and happily answered our questions. We covered blogging first and she answered all the questions I had and some I didn’t even know I had. Then we covered photography, Joan is largely self-taught and this comes across in her teaching; she delivers your information in a real world way. I often find that photographers like to make photography sound like some enigma that only the gifted can crack but it’s really not that complex when explained well. The theory side was followed up with a slightly too brief demo of Joan’s photography skills; she works so quickly and smoothly and results are stunning!

After this demo we broke for lunch which was a massive bowl of chicken and mushroom linguine; there was another option but as you will come to realise if you stick with my blogging escapades I love pasta and you pretty much can’t beat chicken and mushroom as a combination so that was a winner.

In the afternoon we put our newly gained knowledge into practice I realised early on that I had too much with me but it did allow me to be selective about which sweets and props went together and which complimented the photo and which just looked like there had been an explosion at Willy Wonka’s factory! Overall I got some decent shots and I’m quite proud of them. I am posting the unedited versions with this blog as I want to show you the results that I achieved on the day.

I’m signed up to the guardian masterclasses mailing list now so that I don’t miss out on any great courses; new courses are getting added all the time and they also have offers and sales on from time to time. They provide a variety of courses so there is pretty much something for everyone and the prices and course length vary depending on what course you choose so it doesn’t have to be expensive; Joan’s was certainly worth the money we paid and I would have happily paid more if it had been a two day course! As for the Guardian’s side of things it was well organised and they sent out plenty of information beforehand. The offices are really easy to find (the big glass building on King St just behind Kings Cross station) and once you’re inside they staff are welcoming, helpful and polite.

I hope you enjoyed my first blog, I’ve just been to the Leeds Food and Drink Festival and will be writing about that next.