*Love Lincoln* - The Lincolnshire Showground Food and Gift Fair

We were lucky enough to be invited to the Lincolnshire Showground's annual food and gift fair. This showcases the beautiful products, shops and craftsmen that Lincolnshire has to offer. Most of the Exhibitors are from this county and have a great amount of talent and skill in what they are there selling. Whether it's local shops from Lincoln itself or independent traders from around the county, they filled the Epic centre at the Showground with bundles of gifts and foods that were just teasing you to buy them.

The fair is there to offer local traders the opportunity to showcase their goods. There was the opportunity to buy handmade crafts, gifts, foods, drinks and so much more. It really was a treasure trove filled with amazingly talented people and skills. What it does highlight to visitors is the amount of talented companies based in Lincolnshire who are offering a high standard of product and selling quality goods. Whether it is a small crafter or a much larger food manufacturer; they are all showcasing what their hard work has achieved.

The food court houses some of the finest food manufactures from our area. The smells fill the air and you can get full on the amount of samples that are offered around. What we are so lucky to have in this area is that so many of our food related businesses are award winning. There are so many talented companies from Lincolnshire who are producing such high standard food products. Uncle Henry's has just won 'The One Show's - best sausage award' and 'Cote Hill Cheese' has a 'New Best Cheese award'. However so many stalls there offered award winning products and it really opened your eyes as to how talented these companies really are.

Making your way between the two buildings was an area dedicated to fresh hot food. As it just looked so appetising we had to stop in the picnic area to have some wood fired oven pizza and some burgers from a company based in Sherwood.

The stalls also housed all local independent shops and crafters who had brought along their products to demonstrate some of their fine skills. So many talented artists and craftsmen had a range of work displayed and were quite happy to stand and chat about techniques and ideas to help wandering crafters. What was also lovely was that some of the stalls offered little workshops where they sat with you and made things. This was great for the kids and gave them a chance to take part in an activity between the walking round. Raphael made a tree decoration and Etta and I made some bunting. It was all child friendly and even with really little ones it was nice to pause with them and do something together.

One of the main attractions to the fair is the demonstration area where you can see some talented culinary wizards give a masterclass on anything from cocktail making to baking. This is definitely the place to be if you are a foodie as you can just sit all day and watch as the masters display their talents.

With a local choir singing and the Epic centre ceiling covered in fairy lights, this whole experience really put me in the mood for Christmas. Considering we had a double pushchair with us and there were crowds of people, everyone seemed to be in good spirits. People just flowed through the buildings and perused what was on offer. The times when the main hall was most busiest was when Nancy the winner of 'Great British Bake Off' did her demonstration. And why wouldn't that be the busiest point? Everyone wanted to see her!

Something that we are really enjoying about this blog is that we are seeing how important it is to support local shops, products and events. We have done posts on independent shops and on events we have been to and it really highlights how important it is to go to your independent traders and support what they are doing. If we don't it will end up being only the high brand mainstream stores on the high street and all of these lovely little business and people's skills will go to waste.