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!

The Cookhouse

It seems that a lot of people around me have birthdays in April, on the last day of term I posted about celebrations for M's, A's and L's birthday, but it actually worked out that L's birthday was the today, the first day back, and so naturally, the celebrations continued in the classroom with the usual cheese pies and chocolate chew balls.

L had found out about her mum's well kept surprise lunch with our form but that didn't mean we couldn't go all out on the tasteful decorations which were not only hung up around the classroom, but also where we were having lunch, The Suffolk Food Hall's Cook House.

The Cook House has amazing views onto the Orwell River, and the Food Hall itself is a working farm, hence the cows in the foreground, or should I say middle ground, seeing as poor B unwittingly jumped in the photo!

H, L's mum had had some Buck's Fizz jazzed up for the ultimate embarrassment/hilarity factor.

Then, the food started arriving,

G, and the majority of the girls, had plumped for the chargrilled rump of beef with onion chutney
and dressed leaves on granary bread.

Another popular dish was B's, the Ploughman’s Platter consisting of honey roast ham, scotch egg, Suffolk Gold, brie, pickles, rocket and a cottage roll.

I had soup of the day, which I didn't get a photo of, but it came with an enormous basket of freshly baked bread which I rapidly devoured.

Next came pudding, only a couple of girls wanted pudding and all but me opted for a chocolate tart topped with caramel ice cream and chocolate sauce,

 but I chose rhubarb parfait accompanied by roasted rhubarb and tuille wafers.

And finally, a surprise for us all, the cake, or cakes, arrived.

My favourite bit are the envious couple in the corner, or maybe the couple who's meal we disturbed by being so excitable.

The most beautifully decorated cupcakes that H had ordered, with the softest and lightest sponge cake and lashings of flavoured buttercream, lemon, mint or strawberry were the ones we came up with.

H insisted that we all take one with our initial on, this proved difficult as there are two Ms, three As and two Ls. So we had to be creative, the birthday girl had the L and I turned my number 1 upside down, who could tell?!

 We all went back to school worn out from laughing and I for one know that I was wishing that I hadn't worn jeans because I ate far too much!
The food hall is absolutely brilliant and I can recommend The Cookhouse for their delicious food and their relaxed atmosphere with beautiful views of the river, not to mention the reasonable prices!