Head Along to the Colne Food Festival on Saturday 16 November

This weekend, Saturday 16 November, I should be popping along to the new Colne Food Festival in Colne, Lancashire. It’s the first time that Colne has hosted the event, and the organisers, Ashley Sutcliffe and Charles Bolton, hope that it will become an annual event that showcases the best that the town has to offer.

The festival will be taking place at the Colne Muni from 10am until 4pm. I can’t get down in the morning but I'm hoping to pop along with Alex in the afternoon as there seems to be quite the selection of things going on there. The festival is expected to have more than 50 stalls, covering everything from gourmet hot dogs and pizza to chutneys and chocolate. There will also be live cooking demonstrations, information about how to cook on a tight budget (I need this!), a cupcake decorating workshop, vintage tea room, ciders, face painter and much more. It sounds like a fantastic event and will hopefully do a lot for the town of Colne, as it really deserves the praise with all the cultural activities they've been doing over the last few years.

Ashley and Charles are both local traders; Ashley owns interior designers Live Like the Boy while Charles runs Let’s Get Crafty (which will also be hosting a food and craft fair the following day in Whalley).

I'll be sure to write up a report on our visit this weekend, but if you live close to Colne then please pop along and join in! More information is available on the fair's Facebook page.

The Star Wars Mos Eisley Cantina - Made With Rice Krispies!

One thing I love about baking is that it allows you to combine two different loves in one. One of them is cooking/baking, of course, and the other is whatever topic takes your fancy. Here we’ve got one of my own geeky loves thrown in; Star Wars!

This fantastic creation is a small scale replica of the Mos Eisley Cantina from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. The food element is that all the walls are made from Rice Krispies and snicker doodles stacked on a Styrofoam base; the bar made from cookies. There's even a tiny MP3 player and speaker under the dome area that's playing the music the band are playing in the film.

Creator TK Peggy even populated the Cantina with Hasbro Star Wars action figures, so you've the band playing in one corner while Han Solo sits in a booth with his weapon drawn against Greedo (Greedo is holding his too, but who shot first?). You can see even more pictures and get the full instructions of how to make it yourself over on her blog.

I love it when people put such attention to detail into their baking, and this just lights the fire of my inner geek (although it is very much rather an outer geek, and I'm proud of that!). I'm now just waiting for someone to make a Death Star out of chocolate cake!

Snack Spot: These Tesco Doughnuts Are a Bit of a Dough-No!

I apologise for that terrible pun!

Last night Alex sneaked these into our basket at Tesco, as they were conveniently placed near the entrance with a big ‘£1’ sign. Forgetting supermarket placement psychology for a while I thought “why not?” as I haven’t had doughnuts for quite some time. Unfortunately I was ultimately disappointed, but I'm not sure what you can really expect from a supermarket batch of mini doughnuts that you can buy for a mere pound coin.

But then I remembered Blackpool’s doughnuts, those warm slices of heaven that have a smell that can draw you in from halfway down the promenade. I'm well aware that they're not exactly good for you and are fried as you wait, but I’m a real sucker for being pulled in by a good sweet smell. At least those are nice and soft, the dough melting in your mouth as you chomp your way through their warm inner layer. The doughnuts from Tesco, meanwhile, we're too dry for my liking and didn't have as sweet of a flavour as I expected.

We did make them slightly better by popping them in the oven for a few minutes, in order to try and replicate that freshly cooked batch taste you get in Blackpool. This did make the outcome a lot more bearable, but the flavour was still disappointing.

I'd love to try making doughnuts myself some time, and this WikiHow article makes the process seem quite simple. However, given that I managed to mess up making an omelette not too long ago I'm probably not exactly there ability wise just yet. But that’s part of the reason why I'm writing this blog, to learn from my mistakes (and show to hilarious results) and become a better cook over time. To do that you obviously need to eat – and make – some rubbish along the way.

The Mealtime Report: Lasagne Leftovers and Stir Fry

Ever since we moved into our first home in January, I and my fiancée Alexandra have been big proponents of making use of leftovers. When you have to live on a budget, coming up with cheap meal ideas and cooking a bit extra than two people actually need is the right way to go about it. Our freezer is packed full of frozen lasagne, as when we realised that Alex always seems to make far more than we need – no matter how hard she tries – it made complete sense to save the extra and have it another day. So instead of popping into the ASDA supermarket across from where I work, wasting money on sandwiches and ‘accidentally’ buying packet of HARIBO sweets on offer, I now take leftovers to work and heat them up in the microwave. Not only am I saving money, but I'm eating better food than the cheap packet sandwiches that aren't exactly about to be hailed as culinary masterpieces.

Today was no exception, as I carted a sandwich box full of last night’s lasagne dinner to work. Alex cooked it, and did as good as a job as always. She’s trying hard to emulate her mum’s tasty lasagne recipe, although she hasn't quite reached those lofty heights just yet. Her efforts are turning out beautifully though, and the lasagne gets tastier every time we have it. The mince was cooked to perfection, with the only issue being a slight hardening of the pasta in certain sections. This is something she is still trying to figure out how to overcome, and next time I think we should put a real effort into making sure the pasta remains soft and smooth throughout. I really want to have a go at cooking it next time, as I'm yet to try anything that involves building up the layers (I told you I was an amateur).

Lunch

I heated it up the lasagne at work for that lovely sizzle and it tasted just as a good – if not better – than the previous night. The only issue is that a lot of the minces juices collected at the bottom and made that portion really oily, but that doesn't bother me other than having to wipe the extra grease from around my lips. It also always happens to get on my fingers somehow, which probably just signifies that I'm a bit of a messy eater. Since I ate the lasagne out of a bowl, the best way to tackle it is to cut it up into manageable chunks with a knife and fork, otherwise you end up looking like a dork with half of the pasta hanging out of your mouth (which is usually the case with me)! It’s not the most presentable of meals, but it tasted good so I'm not that bothered.

A few years ago I probably would have laughed in your face if you told me that Aldi did quality and tasty food. These days I know better, and Aldi have really upped their game over the last couple of years. We do most of our shopping there because it's cheap, and an £80 shop can get us through the month with a bit left over. In these days of economic turmoil you've got to stop turning your nose up at places like this and just go and shop there, because you'll save a lot of money and the food is surprisingly good too. In fact, I would go as far to say that the food is better than the likes of Tesco and ASDA.

The crisps are a good example. The cheap Tesco brand crisps are absolutely dire, with flavour so bland that you'd probably have a tastier experience licking a door mat. I love the Aldi Snackrite Crisps because of the strong flavours; of which the Cheese & Onion flavour is a damn good example. Another plus is that a multi pack of 30 is just £2.69, a bargain compared to the prices you pay for branded crisps! The only downside is that the packets are quite small and a lot of the crisps end up crushed, but it’s perfect fodder for adding to a sandwich.

Then it was on to a Strawberry Shortcake Muller Yoghurt. This seemed to disappear from my local ASDA for a while, so I was pleasantly surprised when it came back. It’s basically what you’d expect, but the strawberry yoghurt is very moreish. I just hope they bring back the Jaffa Cake one next!

Dinner

For dinner Alex made a lovely sweet and sour pork stir fry. We didn't get back home until after 7pm, so we wanted something that could be made quick and eaten with relative ease. The sauce was out of a packet from Aldi (Asia Specialities) with vegetables and pineapple mixed in. As for the rice, she didn't make her own (we both need to master that part to be fair), so we bought Uncle Ben’s Basmati Rice instead. This soft rice was the perfect accompaniment to the tender pork.

Alex didn't think there would be enough sauce, so she added some Encona Thai Sweet Chilli Sauce to the mix, giving it a wonderful kick. It’s always good when you experiment and find a new taste experience, which is why I really want to cook more.

It's not often we have a proper desert; it's usually just a few biscuits or a cake bar. Since we've just got engaged though we've had two cakes baked for us to celebrate. One of the cakes was consumed last week - made by Alex's friend Bex - while the other was brought in by Alex's work friend Christine for us to delve into tonight. This was quite honestly one of the moistest chocolate cakes I've taste in a long while, topped off with a sweet butter cream, some icing roses and tiny chocolate hearts.Yum!