Glastonbury Eats

As one who typically plans what she's eating 2 to 3 meals in advance, I was slightly worried about my first Glastonbury experience. In short I packed enough food for a family of 4 to survive the long weekend. Needless to say there was a fair bit that got binned in the end.

Weighing down my backpack:

3 litres of red wine
1 litre cranberry juice
1 litre tonic water
1 litre apple juice
Assortment of bottled water
Tins of tuna (3)
Cashews
Granola Bars (10)
Home-made banana-nut muffins (10)
Home made “Hidden Treasure” biscuits (20)
Thai Green Curry Rice Cakes
Harvest Grain Snacks (aka Sun Chips)
Apples (7)
Clementines (10)
Package of Ryvita
Package (large) or starbursts
(Miscellaneous items which I can’t completely remember)

It was a brilliant idea to bring food for breakfast; those apples and granola bars got eaten right up. Probably the only place I really got it wrong was with the beverages. We used up the tonic water and apple juice when mixing our daily cocktails but probably 2.5 litres of the wine went to waste. Not surprisingly none of us really felt like drinking red wine when it was about 85 degrees out (unless it was chilled and being served in a sangria jug) which clearly it was not.

I’m not sure what I’d expected to see when it came to food at Glastonbury but there really was something for everyone. Worried that I’d be resigned to greasy burgers I managed to do quite well gobbling up a very tasty falafel wrap on the first day, some jerk chicken and salad which much to my surprise was perfectly ‘jerky’, a “Heidi Pie” (goats cheese, red onion and butternut squash) from Pieminster, late night post-Neil Young fish and chips, and one of my personal faves - the noodles with veggie tempura that I happened upon twice in 36 hours.

Surprisingly enough we actually only managed around 1 meal a day (not including breakfast detailed above). Occasionally there was also a midnight snack to be had. Clearly we were resigned to consuming most of our calories in a liquid version - found primarily in pints of cider throughout the day.

Winners and Losers

This month there have been some clear winners. Some of the losers have come up just a tad short and others miles off. For those that weren’t up to snuff…there was an element of rushing (trying to get two desserts out of my oven between 11 pm and 6:30 am (mid-week)) and others just didn’t fit as snugly as they should - although it didn’t stop me from eating them.

Winners:
Individual crustless cheddar, prosciutto, asparagus, mushroom quiches:
1. Filling
2. With salad, perfect for a mid-week dinner
3. EASY to make

Caramel cake (cupcakes) – both versions with slight variations made within a 72 hour period
1. Heaven
2. on
3. a
4. plate

Spinach Salad with roasted Aubergine, toasted pine nuts, grilled garlic chicken, pickled beets, feta and dried cranberries
1. Healthy
2. Perfect sweet, salty, bitter, tart combo
3. Except for setting of my smoke detector three x roasting the aubergine, EASY


Runner-up:
Chocolate brownies with fresh raspberries

I was told by one event attendee that the brownies were “the best brownies I have ever had in my entire life”. But seeing as the comment came from a professional nutritionist who eats products with sugar only once every 10 days I wasn’t sure if it was her sugar-deprived mind talking. I mean, I almost thought it could have been spoonful of fluff and she would have said the same thing. WEIRD.

2nd to last place:
Peanut chocolate caramel brownies

With a name as heavenly as this how could these have been bad? Well whatever random combination I threw together resulted in a cake like brownie – not a gooey fudgy bliss bar that I’d been hoping for. I really wanted to like them as indicated by eating 4 in a row – almost willing it, but in the end I just thought they were ok. Again, lots of friends thought they were great – but I wonder sometimes about these friends of mine…that maybe they're using the old positive reinforcement to just keep the food coming. I’m on to you guys!

Last place – relegated to el dumpster-o.
Coconut almond macaroons

Trying hard to get something made as quickly as possible and not having any time to make it to the supermarket resulted in these tasteless and gummy like cookies. Not my shining moment. Even when doused in really good dark chocolate - it was like wrapping Pamela Anderson up in Chanel.