My final day of judging had arrived. Again, I had a beautiful group of judges – Rachel Burkingshore (7 years until diagnosis), Paul Degnan, Helen Jones from BFree and Lorna Rhodes from Nutrition Dynamics. We had really good fun and I scored the products in both of these categories higher than any other I have judged. As I said in my last blog post, well done manufacturers – the quality and variety has improved significantly.
MEATY AND FISHY READY MEALS
It was rather odd judging this category at 10:00 in the morning, but I actually really, really enjoyed the products. It was nearly all ‘orange food’ as my husband affectionately calls things like chicken nuggets and breaded fish, but it is definitely a guilty pleasure of mine, so all was good.
There were such a variety of items, it was fab. There was a time when we literally couldn’t buy anything like this before. With three coeliacs in my house and two of us also dairy-free, it is really lovely to occasionally just be able to shove something in the oven with absolutely no hassle.
There was free from scampi, chicken and fish goujons, breaded cod, chicken nuggets, tempura fish and fish fingers. It was all such good quality – tasty breadcrumbs or batter, really flaky fish and nice pieces of chicken. Impressive.
I was introduced to one of my faves, a free-from chicken kiev, at the awards ceremony last year and it was back this year! Oh my, I love it. I really miss chicken kievs.
I have never seen many gluten and dairy-free fish cakes in the shops I go to, so this was quite a unique entry for me. From memory (should have written it down), I think it had sweet chilli in too. They were definitely really tasty.
I also wanted to mention these southern fried chicken fillets. Again, really good quality, and it is so difficult for us to get anything like a KFC or similar. I will have a stash of these in the freezer from now on.
There were lots of sausages and a burger too. I’ve found that there is a great variety of sausages available for us in most stores now. And, apparently the sandwich was really good, although, I unfortunately couldn’t eat it as it had milk in.
There were also some curries – both of which were very good quality and didn’t taste like a ready meal at all. I was really pleased that they didn’t have milk in and I got to treat myself. Result! I definitely didn’t need much lunch and had overdosed myself on salt, but I managed to try 20/22 of the products so I was a very happy judge.
CONFECTIONERY AND CHOCOLATE
Next it was confectionery and I had learned my lesson from the day before and very carefully took small amounts of each chocolate, chuckling at the others falling into the sugar trap. I believe my chuckle was actually described as a cackle by the lovely Cressida, how rude. Hee hee.
The designs of the above chocolates were amazing – sparking gold on one and the texture inside looked fab too – unfortunately I couldn’t have them due to the milk thing (again).
Michelle ramped up the entertainment in this section by smashing the chocolate eggs. I was so focused on videoing that, I nearly forgot to try two products as they were passed around the table.
There were chewy sweets and lots and lots of chocolate.
Michelle had her best crockery out for the occasion – beautiful plates and presentation, which made everything look even better.
There were some luscious truffles, and as for the gifts category, I was so impressed with the range of chocolates this year. Lots of flavoured entries that I hadn’t tried before.
These sessions both got my top marks of any category I have ever judged. Again, well done manufacturers – really upped the game.
These two entries were pretty unique indeed. Guess what the product on the right is? Well, they’re cappuccino and dark chocolate roasted chickpeas obviously. I mean, talk about innovation. They weirdly reminded me of Revels – but I loved them. The ones on the left were coconut flavoured.
It was lovely to see so many seasonal entries too, with two tricky-eating kids, I know how much difference it can make. There were Easter bunnies, Christmas themed chocs, Santa lollies, and beautifully flavoured Easter eggs. And, once we had worked out who would receive the sweet victory, my time judging was over for 2020. Can’t wait until next year already.