Archive for: event
On June 11th, I was lucky enough to be invited to an event at Dodger Stadium here in Los Angeles hosted by the California Table Grape Commission. Tyler Florence is working with the California Table Grape Commission, as well as with other organizations, in an initiative that promotes healthy eating at ballparks across the country, including the homes of the Los Angeles Dodgers, St. Louis Cardinals, Baltimore Orioles, Toronto Blue Jays and San Francisco Giants, since ballparks are not typically noted for their healthy fare. I attented with several other bloggers, including In Erika’s Kitchen, Created by Diane and La Fuji Mama, and we got to eat lots of good food, watch the game and meet up with Tyler himself!
The event was a blast. It was great to have a chance to meet up with everyone – it’s always nice to match a face with a blog when you’re meeting bloggers – and chat. The suite where the event was held was amazing, with great views down the first base line of the ball field. Not that you needed to sit out on the deck to watch the game, when there were a half-dozen TV screens inside so that you didn’t miss a moment of the action while you ate or visited with people.
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I love pie, so when I had the opportunity to become a judge at the Crisco 2010 National Pie Championships at the American Pie Council‘s Great American Pie Festival, I jumped at it. This is the biggest pie contest in the country, with categories for commercial pies – such as those you find at grocery store bakeries and in restaurant bakeries, like Kroger and Baker’s Square – amateur pies made by home bakers, junior pies made by kids and professional pies made by bakers. So, I flew out to Kissimee, Florida this past weekend to try some pie.
I ended up being one of about 100 judges judging the amateur pie division on Saturday. This is a popular division, with about 400 entries of just about any flavor you can imagine. It was broken up into 15 categories, ranging from Peanut Butter to Apple to Cherry to Chocolate Cream. There were 6 or 7 judges for each category, all seated around a circular table. The judging was fun, but there were a lot of points that we had to hit as we looked at each pie. We judged overall appearance, sliced appearance, overall flavor, filling, crust and creativity. The scores were tallied up by officials in another room, so while we did discuss the pies we liked best at our tables, we didn’t have to come to a consensus about a winner ourselves.
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This week (and this upcoming week of Jan 31- Feb 5) was restaurant week in Los Angeles. This means that some of the restaurants around the city are participating in an event called DineLA where they offer special, three-course set menus at a special price. I took advantage of this to take in a lunch at Spago. The restaurant was lovely, the food was delicious, but I have to say that the highlight of the meal was meeting Wolfgang Puck himself. He made the rounds of the dining room and patio several times, shaking hands with guests and even sitting down a few times to chat. I think that I was the first to break out a camera, but I was certainly not the only one in the restaurant who wanted to capture the moment and many cameras popped out as he posed with diners. I was a little flustered (perhaps the food blogger’s equivalent of being slightly starstruck), but found him to be nothing by incredibly friendly. Also, for the record, I think that he looks much younger in person than he does in photos and on TV. Lest you think that he was only making a show, he also went back to the kitchen (my table shared a glass wall with the kitchen) to work on the food.
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Last week, I had the opportunity to take a trip out to Orville, Ohio with a few other bloggers and take an inside look at the Smuckers company. Smuckers is known for their jam, but what you might not know is that the family-owned company actually owns quite a few other brands, including Crisco, Jif, Folgers and Eagle Brand, just to name a few of the most well-known. The event that Smuckers put on for us was just wonderful, giving us a preview of some new products, a change to test out some of their existing products, tour their test kitchens and even take a trip through the factory while they made a batch of seasonal Apple Cider Butter, the recipe that started the Smuckers brand off almost 100 years ago.
We started off our tour at the Smuckers store, pictured above. The store is a fully operational store and cafe, but it is also a huge showcase for all kinds of Smuckers products that you won’t necessarily see in stores because they’re regional or simply on limited distribution. There were all the standard jams, of course, but also organic jams and more gourmet lines, such as (my favorite) Smuckers Orchards Finest. I’m a sucker for food shopping no matter where I am, and it was fun to look through all their products. The store had been decorated for Christmas and cleverly incorporated jam into several of their decorations. The chandelier below is made with jars of jam!
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This past Saturday, I headed up to San Francisco for the 2009 BlogHer Food conference. It’s the first of what I think will be an annual conference series from BlogHer and was aimed at food bloggers. All of the breakout sessions of the conference covered topics that would be of interest to people who write recipes, review products and just like to write about food in general. The topics varied widely from how to attract readers to your blog, how to take better food photos and how to translate your love of cooking or photography into other venues, to name just a few topics. The speakers included (by blog) Simply Recipes, Pioneer Woman, Veggie Venture, Kalyn’s Kitchen and Matt Bites, again to name just a few of the many, many bloggers in attendance.
I skipped the lunch served at the conference because it was – no kidding – frozen Italian food. A food conference is a great place for product placement, but not in place of what could have been a more interesting meal. I instead went out to lunch next door at the SFMoMA’s Cafe Museo with Cooking with Amy and San Diego Food Stuff. I noticed several other conference attendees in the room with us, as well. Lunch was delicious. I had a ham and fontina panini.
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