Nov 11 2011

3rd Annual Foodbuzz Gala Dinner

The rain started pouring down – so I was very excited to be staying in the hotel where the gala dinner was being held. Bloggers were coming through the front doors with dripping umbrellas. A group of us made our way down to the cocktail reception and were welcomed with big tables full of Alexia fries.  I had my fill at the tasting pavilion, so I just grabbed a glass of wine and tried to find some familiar faces. I ended up having a fabulous conversation with Devaki Das – who blogs over at Weave a Thousand Flavors. Devaki has lived in some amazing countries and I’m excited to have a new blog to follow. As the fry fest went on, I spotted Kara at a table with a group of girls. I’m so glad I ventured over in her direction – such a fun group and great company for the rest of the evening.

Sometimes I wonder if I secretly would be a better home decor blogger… because the flowers and table setting interested me more than the food.

Typical hotel banquet style tables and set up. Lots of glasses, dishes and flatware.

We started with wine and family style appetizers. Butternut Squash Risotto Bites w/Roasted Wild Mushrooms, Vegetable Samosas w/Tamarind Dipping Sauce and Veggie Sushi.

I tasted small bites of each thing – but wasn’t really a fan. I was more interested in the entertainment for the evening.

My foodie boyfriend – Tyler Florence hosted a live cooking demo for Alexia. He first introduced four new “Reinvent a Classic” flavors from fellow bloggers:

  • Bruschetta Waffle Fries (created by Farihah Ali of Spice’s Bites)
  • Classic Dill Julienne Fries (created by Angela Williamson of Fab Find Foodie)
  • Thai Spiced Sweet Potato Julienne Fries (created by Marla Meridith of Family Fresh Cooking)
  • Herbes de Provence & Garlic Sweet Potato Julienne Fries (created by Chrystal Baker and Amir Thomas of The Duo Dishes)

We were encouraged to go vote for our favorite flavor on the Alexia Foods facebook page – voting is from November through March.

Tyler then started cooking. The demo was broadcast live on Alexia Food’s facebook page. He let us know that he would be cooking brined and pan roasted pork chops over braised red cabbage with chive spaetzle and a mustard and crème fraîche sauce. Yes please!

Tip from Tyler – A nice caramelization is a very good thing. “Color = Flavor”

Kind of hard to engage a roomful of chatty food bloggers, but his enthusiasm for food and technique made me want to listen. Plus… he’s hot and I’m a huge fan of  “The Great Food Truck Race” and he dished a bit about team Korilla and the cheating scandal (them adding $2000 to their cash drawer) and getting kicked off the show.

My table was really far from the stage, so I could only see the details of what he was doing and the final plating on the big screens.

Then it was our turn to enjoy dinner…

Kara from Kara In the Kitchen, Elise from PhD Strides, Julia from Jogging My Memory, Mellissa from A Fit and Spicy Life and Melissa from Melissa Likes to Eat

The salad course was a bibb lettuce salad with honey roasted pears, glazed pecans, bleu cheese and bleu cheese vinaigrette dressing. I really liked it, but I’m not a huge bleu cheese fan, so I wasn’t jumping out of my chair with excitement. I felt bad for Elise, it took our server over 20 minutes to bring her an alternative salad and dressing. She requested a special meal when she signed up for the festival – she has a dairy allergy.

Our entree course was Brandt Beef Farms filet mignon with a peppercorn demi-glaze and Meyer lemon roasted prawns, asparagus, heirloom carrots and celery root puree. Not bad at all,  but not incredible like the meal we had last year.

Dessert was a San Francisco Trio – Cowgirl Creamery Cheesecake, Sourdough Bread Pudding and Scharffen Berger Chocolate Mousse.

The cheesecake was my favorite on the plate.

The chocolate mousse was also pretty good, but the bread pudding was “hockey puck” hard – not sure what happened there. You pretty much needed a steak knife to cut through it. All in all it was a very nice evening. I got to see my foodie boyfriend in action, I got to share stories with my fellow bloggers and the bonus is that Kara, Elise and Julia all live in Northern CA. I’m hoping there will be some future meet-ups.

We all parted ways – Elise had a 1/2 marathon to run the next morning, Kara headed home to her kiddos and I ventured back to my room. A very drunk wedding party crashed my floor at around 2:00 a.m. – yelling, screaming, singing… it lasted FOREVER. Hotel guests were telling them to STFU, and finally security came…but I had trouble falling back to sleep. I ended up checking out around 7:00 a.m. – The Hyatt made it right upon checkout, great customer service. I skipped the farewell brunch and headed straight to my niece’s soccer tournament. It was a great decision… I didn’t hit any traffic and I got to spend the rest of Sunday with my family.

I’m very happy that I braved the festival for the second year in a row. It’s always major anxiety going into a situation where you basically don’t know anyone very well. I have a small blog compared to some of the ones I read. I plan to change that. This won’t mean me making a single change  to my blog, it will mean me thumbing through the stack of cards I got at the festival and finding new blogs to enjoy and new bloggers to connect with.


Permanent link to this article: http://foodiddy.com/?p=6473

Nov 10 2011

3rd Annual Foodbuzz Food Blogger Festival – Day 2

Day 2 started with sleeping in a bit – The blogging session programming didn’t start until 9:00 a.m. – I usually am up by 6. We were on our own for transportation, so I decided to walk. Foodbuzz – Federated Media Headquarters was entered into my iPhone and I used the walking directions to get there. I only made one wrong turn… actually passed the building.

Even though I looked at the mileage, it seemed much further in ballet flats.

There is just something about the energy of a city… lots of friendly runners and walkers were out Saturday morning.

The main event space was set up and ready for my first session – A Featured Panel Discussion – Taking Your Blog to the Next Level. Federated Media provided a light breakfast buffet.

I stopped at Starbucks and grabbed a green tea… and then grabbed a small plate.

Fruit and some spiced pumpkin bread. I wasn’t feeling too hungry, just wanted to start the day.

The “Taking Your Blog to the Next Level” panel consisted of:

Jessica Merchant – How Sweet It Is
Kath Younger – Kath Eats
Sarah Matheny – Peas and Thank You
Joy Wilson – Joy the Baker
Tracy Benjamin – Shutterbean

I’m very familiar with Kath, Sarah and Joy’s blogs – so I was excited to hear what they had to share. The cool thing about blogging is that you create your own voice and vision. The panel all had very different styles. Some blog multiple times a day, others focus more on engaging their readers. All panelists felt that photos were an important part of blogging – photography engages your readers within the first 5-10 seconds. I don’t post daily or multiple times a day, but I do take my time and feel like quality is much better than quantity – but then again, I don’t blog for a paycheck.

My take away items – I’m glad that I blog for fun – less pressure and criticism from the masses and I pretty much want to be Joy’s BFF – she is freakin’ hilarious! I think I am even more in love with her blog now that I’ve seen her in action. She also talked about HomeFries and her podcasts.

I’ve been reading Peas and Thank You for years – when Sarah talked about her book – she also mentioned that she had some of her famous dough balls with her. I had exchanged comments with her on her blog – letting her know that I was going to bring her book in hopes that I could get her to sign it.

She was more than happy to sign it – she grabbed the book and didn’t even ask me again for my name or how to spell it. She really does make an effort to engage with her readers and I appreciated that.

… and she had dough balls… I tried the Vegan Pumpkin Molasses Cookie Dough Balls and they were super tasty!

My next session was “The DSLR Free Zone – Taking Gawk-worthy Photos” – I was kind of bummed that it was the only session left when I registered, but it ended up being a great session.

The presenters were:

Greg Henry – Sippity Sup
Chuck Lai – Foodgawker
Angi Chau – Rice and Wheat

The main message was that it’s easy to get tied up in the technical aspects, but the main goal is to visually connect your readers. You need good light – it doesn’t matter how amazing your camera is, if the lighting source sucks, so will your photos. Greg mentioned some key words: simplify, narrate, compose, refine… he talked about using the color wheel when composing your shots. Everyone connects to color and has a reaction to it – use that. He also mentioned using simple props.

Chuck talked about using his iPhone camera. His presentation was cool – he basically showed different methods of using your iPhone for restaurant photography when the lighting was good or bad.  Marc Matsumoto from No Recipes was in the audience and he suggested using a paper napkin to diffuse iPhone flash light. Chuck recommended Filterstorm as a good iPhone photo editing app. He also mentioned Photoshop Express, FX Photo Studio and Snapseed – when asked about photo editing apps from an audience member. He is a huge Instagram fan.

Angi talked about micro four thirds digital cameras. She talked about some of the advantages (Smaller size – more portability, smaller sensor size gives deeper depth-of-field) and the disadvantages (sensor is smaller in area, increased levels of noise in lower light, no through-the-lens optical viewfinder).

My last session of the day was “Effective Social NETworking” with Irvin Lin – Eat the Love and Stella Parks – BraveTart. I stopped taking notes because I got distracted by the humor. What not to do on Twitter was LOL. I wasn’t following Irvin or Stella on Twitter before the session, but I am now and the humor continues.

Buses were waiting outside the Federated Media building. They took us over to City View at Metreon for the Tasting Pavillion event.

Lots of hungry bloggers and table after table of amazing food and product vendors.

Now for one of my favorite parts of the entire festival… I was walking by the Alexia booth and an Alexia rep stopped me to chat about their product. I happen to really like their sweet potato fries… garlic baguette had just come out of the oven, so I tasted that too… not too bad as a quick/frozen option. She then asked what I thought of Tyler Florence… my answer – “He’s Hot!” – she laughed and asked if I watched his Food Network shows. I do – so we talked about that for a bit. Then she suggested that I stay right where I was standing because he was on his way to the booth for meet and greets and to sign books. They only had 30 books… so I jumped at the chance.

OMG – Tyler Florence, Tyler Florence…. there he is! Yes… that dialog went on in my head 🙂

Last minute instructions before the book signing started…

I handed my iPhone off to the gal behind me – she wasn’t comfortable using my Canon…

Why hello foodie boyfriend… total highlight of my day.

I pretty much floated back to the hotel. A nice brisk walk, a nap, some TV, a latte… and then it was time to get ready for the gala dinner.

Permanent link to this article: http://foodiddy.com/?p=6420

Nov 07 2011

3rd Annual Foodbuzz Food Blogger Festival – Day 1

I tried to cram 5 days of work into 4 and ended up running around Thursday night like a crazy woman. I made sure that I got in a Thursday evening and Friday morning workout – a necessity before heading into a weekend full of delicious food.

I am lucky that San Francisco is just a few short hours away. I headed out around 1:00 in the afternoon to beat traffic and only ran into a small back up in Berkeley.

My iPhone took me right to the festival hotel – The Grand Hyatt – San Francisco. This hotel has a special place in my heart. 12 years ago… to the day of my arrival – I got engaged to my late husband Ace at the Grandviews Restaurant on the 36th floor. It was a total surprise and my ring came on a platter with dessert while a violinist played in the background. It was a very special night and rather than be upset that the festival was in the same hotel on the anniversary of that – I chose to believe that it was fate – and a reason for me to go back and revisit the memories. The hotel has changed a lot in 12 years – the decor very different. I’m glad I took the elevator up to the 36th floor, wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it… but I did, and it made me tear up, but I ended up smiling.

I made my way to the 8th floor and checked out my room. Nice big bed, contemporary vibe… decent street view…

The windows had mesh drapes – kind of funky… and a switch on the wall to control black out blinds. That part I liked. Mental note: black out blinds would make for very unproductive weekends.

The Sutter/Stockton Street garage is to the left – my friend Paul and I used to refer to it as the Skittles garage – each floor is a bright color and interconnected by circles – you just keep spiraling up or down from floor to floor. We parked there every year for Christmas shopping in Union Square.

This bathroom confirmed that I will never want a raised bathroom sink – water splashed everywhere. Enough of the room tour, I dumped my stuff and made my way to the festival registration to pick up my badge and swag bag.

The bag was full of stuff from Oxo, Godiva, Lollihop, Cascade, Jalrsberg, Duncan Hines, New England Naturals, California Walnuts and the best thing – the DIY Cocktails book by Marcia Simmons and Jonas Halpren – editors of Drinkoftheweek.com – A simple guide to creating your own signature drinks – Yes please! I also used my Godiva Coffee travel mug this morning.

I chilled in the room for a bit and then hit Union Square for a little shopping before the welcome reception. A mega story Willams-Sonoma was right around the corner from the hotel. I am a gadget freak and I had to refrain from bringing the entire store home with me. I made my way back to the hotel with enough time to change before the shuttles arrived.

We loaded on to big red buses and headed towards Terra Gallery for the welcome reception sponsored by Sabra. I linked to their photos page because it was really dark for the reception and my pictures do not do the building justice. We started off in Mer, the lower level – and were greeted with a Sabra hummus and appetizer welcome station.

The welcome station menu included:

  • Sabra Hummus Pastries in Classic, Roasted Red Pepper, Tomato Basil and Wasabi Pea
  • Sabra Hummus – Classic, Roasted Red Pepper, Roasted Pine Nut, Basil Pesto and Holiday Flavor served with Toasted Pita and Orange Scented Pickled Onions
  • Dungeness Crab Louie Lettuce Cups
  • Toasted Chickpeas with Course Salt
  • Vegetable Crudités

Cameras started to click and the servers weren’t sure what to think. One of them stopped and asked me if people were going to eat the food or just take photos of it, ha! ha! and so true…

On the bus ride over, I met Julie who blogs over at A Case of the Runs – not the most appealing name for a food blog, LOL… but perfect for her passion of running. She even joked about the name. That’s Julie in the above photo taking a photo of the hummus.

Vegetable Crudités

Dungeness Crab Louie Lettuce Cups

The Toasted Chickpeas with Course Salt was one of my favorites of the evening.

The evening’s passed hors d’oeuvres included:

  • Jalapeño Hummus Mini Pizzas – Corn Tomato and Lime Cream
  • Sabra Rosemary Chicken Salad Puffs
  • Sabra Bruschetta – Crostini Topped with Sabra Basil Pesto Hummus and Fresh Diced Tomato
  • Belgian Endive – Groganzola Dolce, Fuyu Persimmon and Pomegranate Seeds

I tasted bits of everything and had two glasses of wine. Julie and I mingled a bit, met some more new bloggers and then we headed to another floor for the awards dinner sponsored by Electrolux.

The dinner was buffet style. There was a small plates action station, buffet station, comfort food station and dessert buffet. Julie and split up and I sat down at a table where Heather from Heather’s Dish was sitting. I adore her blog and was excited to get to meet her. Then another blogger sat next to me. Kara from Kara in the Kitchen – I’m SO GLAD she just happened to sit next to me. Kara is from Santa Cruz, CA and she’s awesome… we instantly hit it off and I was so excited to make a true friend at the festival. We stuck together for the other events throughout the weekend.

As for the food – I really didn’t sample too many things and it was too dark for photos, so I just enjoyed the table conversation. I did try the baked four cheese macaroni, a ceviche shooter, housemade beet ravioli and some lentil salad. I wasn’t really feeling that hungry… but wanted to save room to try some of the desserts. The beet ravioli was my favorite thing on my tasting plate.

The Foodbuzz Awards started as dinner came to a close. Deanna Brown, CEO of Federated Media spoke and introduced Jennifer Che from Tiny Urban Kitchen, winner of last year’s Project Food Blog competition. Jennifer spoke about the charity she supported with her winnings from that competition – The Boston Rescue Mission.

The award hosts – Joy Wilson (Joy the Baker) and Marc Matsumoto (No Recipes) presented this year’s blogger awards.

Top Chef Dessert Winner Yigit Pura’s Selected Desserts inlcuded:

  • Heirloom Pumpkin Tart – Gingersnap Tart Shell, Candied Pumpkin Seed Nougatine and Milk Chocolate Crunch Center
  • Creamy Italian Nougat and Valrhona Chocolate Ganache Bites – with Marcona Almond
  • Double-Gem Pate de Fruits – “Magroni” Blood Orange Campari and Asian Pear-Gin | Orange Cardamom and Strawberry
  • Colorful Christmas Macaroons – Gingersnap, Red Licorice, Mulled Wine and Blackberry, Olive Oil Ganache
  • Chocolate Coffee Cream Star Cookie Sandwiches
  • Silky Pomegranate, Candied Kumquat and Fresh Pomegranate Seeds
  • Mascarpone Cheesecake – Calvados Wuince and Gingersnap Crumble
  • Dark Chocolate Pomponetes – Flourless Chocolate Cake, Candied Chestnut and Dark Chocolate Cream

My favorites were the Gingersnap Macaroon, the Double-Gem Pate de Fruits and the Heirloom Pumpkin Tart.

I really enjoyed my table and the evening was a great kick-off to get us excited about the next day – The morning blogger sessions at Foodbuzz (Federated Media), the taste pavilion, cooking demo with Tyler Florence and gala dinner. I’ll write about those in my Day 2 post coming soon.

Permanent link to this article: http://foodiddy.com/?p=6365