Summery Picnic

 

Today my lessons finished at 11.00 and to take advantage of the beautiful weather, I met J at his school and walked down to the river for a picnic in the local park.

I've mentioned the Suffolk Food Hall in a couple of posts, and I stopped off there to get our picnic.

 

Whenever I go their deli tempts me in with their tartlets, they tend to change every time I go, varying from chili beef tartlets to salmon with cream cheese and broccoli.
This time I went for spinach, nutmeg and ricotta.

And roasted vegetables with mascarpone.

Tartlets are probably one of my favourite things and both of them were delicious, the nutmeg and ricotta added an essential kick but the roasted vegetable tartlet was perfect if lacking a little seasoning.

 

 

 

I also grabbed a sausage roll, remembering how much J likes them.

 



 

 

The food hall also sell lots of unusual (unusual to me, anyway) treats, I found two "flavours" of these crisps, tangy and sweet, as you can see I went for tangy and they were really good! It isn't often that healthy treats taste great!

The obligatory dried mango.

In their bakery section not only do they have the most delicious smelling baguettes, loaves and rolls, but they also do pastries, which often change as well, bar their staple scones and brownies.

J has a certain penchant for caramel, so when I saw this, not only was I rather excited (I lead a simple life) but I had to get it too.

On a side note, all their tasty treats in the deli or tea time goodies come in these little cardboard parcels.
Just be me that gets excited by things like this?

 

Anyway, I had got J a caramel and popcorn tart.

It was almost a bowl made out of sugar encrusted pastry, piled high with caramel topped with toffee popcorn and drizzled with more caramel.

 



Now, when I bought this I had expected the caramel to taste like boiled condensed milk, or dulche de leche, but in fact, it was quite odd and almost tasted alcoholic, I don't know if it was just because it wasn't what I was expecting but I was a little disappointed.
Someone managed to put it away though!

We attempted to walk off some of our lunch with a stroll along the Deben.

But that idea was halted when we spied a huge park and an ice cream stall, J got mint, and I got toffee.

Writing this has given me a real hankering for one of those tarts, I might have to stop off on the way to school tomorrow!