The joys of Abergavenny Food Festival

Abergavenny Food Festival is one of the best there is. There is so much to see and do with loads of stalls, talks and I love how it is dotted all over the town, with the beautiful countryside surrounding it.
I went with my friend, Kaylee, this year and it was absolutely packed! We arrived at 10am and it was a bit quieter but by lunch time the town was brimming with people. There is a really good atmosphere.
We went to a goat talk called The Whole Goat with chef James Whetlor. Lynn Beard was meant to go but she didn't come due to ill health. Instead there was Charlie Westhead of Neal's Yard Creamery and Bob Granleese, food editor at the Saturday Guardian.
James was really charasmatic. He told us about 35,000 male goats are shot and thrown in the bin every year, because they do not make any milk. He is trying to get kid back on the menu and selling it to top London restaurants. He would love to see more people eating goat.
We tried some goat ham, which was a tad strong, and then some goat loin. It was quite nice but quite chewy. Probably take a bit of getting used to.

We also tried some of the Neal's Yard Creamery goat's cheese, which was delicious. I am not a big cheese fan but it tasted really zesty.
Later on we went to another talk with Valentine Warner and Magnus Nilsson, who is the owner of Fäviken, which is on the edge of the Arctic circle. It seats just 12 people. 95% of the menu is grown or caught locally. Summer and winter.
He was quite an inspirational guy. He stores vegetables in his cold store, so you could be eating a six month old cabbage! It also sounds an amazing place to visit.
For lunch Kay and I had a pulled pork roll (Glamorgan Vale Specialist Hog Roast), which was amazing, and a Bubble Tea Iced Tea, which was pretty awesome. They are from Bristol and in the ice tea you have bubbles of flavour bursts! I had strawberry, with lychee bubbles which pop when you crush them. It was great.
For dessert I had a salted caramel tart, which again was fabulous! A wonderful mix of sweet and savoury, with the perfect pastry. THis was from Love Patisserie.
I bought some lovely produce, including Wye Valley Honey, Vanilla Paste from Littlepod (which was £9.99 but is packed with vanilla pods and is really good for bakers!), Salted Caramel Popcorn from Joe and Sephs (www.joeandsephs.co.uk), who have an amazing selection of pop corn, garlic pork scratchings from The Garlic Farm in the Isle of Wight, which were absolutely delicious- think pork scratchings but somehow even better, two pies including venison and chicken from the Poachers Pantry (www.poacherspantry.com), some delicious chocolate buttons from www.chocolate-house.co.uk and finally a rather tasty scotch egg from the Handmade Scotch Egg Company.
A pretty good stash from a really good event. I would definitely recommend going.