This year we hosted our second Food Festival here at the garden centre and once again it was a roaring success. We had a small variety of local businesses and food producers, each individually chosen for the unique food and products they could bring to the event this year. Of course we had some of last years favourites amongst them, including Lymn Bank Farm Cheese, The Blending Room Coffee, Laurel Cottage Crafts Pickles & Chutneys, Special Edition Chocolate, Tucker's Ice Cream and Alfred Enderby Smoked Fish.
Blue Gnu Fudge, Ridiculously Rich by Alana East Yorkshire, Mr Huda's Spices, Cupcakes and East Yorkshire Beer were amongst the new stalls we added to the event this year. Each business bought something individual to the event and as commented on by our visitors it was wonderful to have such a variety of food under one roof.
Of course we also had the Deepdale Garden Centre stall selling some delicious homemade cakes and sweet treats all lovingly made by Celia and Tracey for our visitors to take home and enjoy. Here we also sold locally made Piper's Crisps, White's of Old Cantley Rapeseed Oil and Springtime Free Range Eggs, all of which are available everyday from our artisan food selection in the garden centre.
A few of the stalls were selling food products which we use in our cafe on a daily basis, including the cheese, coffee and ice cream so it was wonderful that we were able to have available some of the items that are most loved in the cafe by our customers.
We were also lucky to have local celebrity chef Nigel Brown at the event holding cooking demonstrations throughout the day and selling copies of his cook book. Lots of "Mmmm's" were heard from Nigel's corner of the event when tasters were given out at the end of his demonstrations, his lamb dish especially went down a treat.
Every year here at Deepdale Garden Centre we like to support the MacMillan Cancer Support Charity in some way. This year we had a wonderful raffle in aid of MacMillan at the Food Festival. We were joined by a couple of lovely ladies from the charity who sold tickets throughout the day. We were astounded at how many tickets we sold and we raised a whopping £339 for the charity! Thank you to everyone who purchased a ticket for supporting the charity at the event.
We have received some wonderful feedback from visitors to the event and the stallholders themselves which has been wonderful and has led to us booking a date for the event next year. So if you missed it this year or would like to come again next year we will be holding the Deepdale Food Festival 2019 on Saturday 26th October, we hope the event will be bigger and better than ever with even more hand-picked local food producers and the same lovely atmosphere as always.
The photos taken at this years event and used in this post were captured by The Deepdale Team and local photography student Katie Miller.