It was the second day of judging for the FreeFrom Food Awards (FFFA) for me and what a lovely panel of judges we had. It was great to meet Lucinda, founder of Genius and fab to catch up with Emma Amoscato from Free From Farmhouse, Nicki Clowes and David Johnstone. What a fabulous bunch.
BREAKFAST
What better way to start the day, than by judging the breakfast category?! Unfortunately, this was probably the worst category for my dietary requirements. As you probably know, I am gluten and dairy free. Sixteen of the products had oats in and a few had milk in too. So, I could only judge a third of them. As you can see from my face in the photo above, I was rather upset about this.
The subject of coeliacs and oats really intrigues me. I know the percentage of coeliacs that react to oats is supposed to be really low, but every other judge I met that had coeliac couldn’t eat oats either. Very odd.
This session kicked off with vegan sausage. I normally don’t like veggie sausages, but these were really good – they did remind me very much of stuffing, but what’s wrong with a bit of sage on a morning?
There were muffins, croissants, cinnamon and chocolate danish pastries galore. Unfortunately, the danish pastries and croissants had milk in – sob! A random chocolate crispie cake entry and A LOT of porridge.
There were quite a few cereal entries – bran flakes, corn flakes and different granolas and muesli. The flakes were surprisingly tasty, and there was one that was made out of the teff grain which is unique.
My faves in this section were surprisingly a soya-based cocao drink and the veggie sausages I talked about earlier. Two things I would not have expected at all.
We always get the most amazing lunches at Michelle’s – amazing fresh salad and dips. Check out the gorgeous variety of colour and beautiful fresh veg. She has to cater for a very large amount of dietary requirements too, as you can imagine, so we all salute her skills. We definitely need the lunches to be light as you usually end up eating a fair bit in most categories.
GIFTS
The gift session started by luring us into a false sense of security with an oat cake (which I couldn’t eat obviously). I have never done a category like this one before, so was not aware of how it was going to go. But, I was just about to find out…
Next up were some cookies and cake that I also couldn’t eat – so brain and stomach totally intact.
And then it was… how should I put this… basically death by chocolate!
Every one of us put a whole chocolate in for the first product. Michelle
said, knowingly, I wouldn’t eat that much of each product. There were quite a few variety packs, so you had to try a piece of more than one chocolate too.
Soon, the realisation kicked in. My goodness, you get such a crazy sugar hit that you go into a complete haze, daze… I don’t know how to describe it – it was weird. We most definitely experienced a chocolate overdose.
I was soooooo impressed with this category. The range of free-from chocolates and truffles was absolutely fab – really innovative. Beautifully presented, a huge range of colours and to top it all, amazing quality. I scored nearly all of the chocolates really highly.
Thanks so much manufacturers – you are making life so much better for me and my daughter. Gone are the days of having to settle for plain dark chocolate all the time. I was so excited – honestly like a kid in a sweet shop. I’ve cut down my chocolate consumption significantly since being dairy free, but I am most definitely still a chocoholic, so watch out waistline! And here’s my ever-so-subtle hint to friends and family of what to buy me as a gift.
We then scored each of the products – we were in slightly crazed states, so needed to recruit Boris to come and help us. I believe he is also going to help Michelle with the awards presentation on Tuesday. What an amazing cat.
We then set off to try and walk off all of the sugar. I always find a good old Coke Zero helps to sort me out too. At this point, I was actually a little scared that I was judging confectionary the next day. Eek! What was I in for.