Last week, I had the amazing opportunity to exhibit our gourmet cookie mixes at the International Fancy Food Show in San Francisco. Going to that show is one of my favorite things to do for the whole year! This picture is our booth on set-up day. Well, normally, I'm a complete pig when I get to this show - there is no other way to put it! Imagine yourself confined to a convention center for 3 days where there are literally several miles of aisles of booths, all sampling gourmet and specialty food from around the world! It's hard to not eat your way through the show.
This year, I decided that I was going to approach my sampling habits at the show a little differently. On Day 1, my goal was to wait until the last hour of the show to start sampling, and then to only sample 5 items! Yes - sounds crazy for a pig like me, but I had to try. And, it was very interesting (to me, at least). As I walked through some of show booths, I would scan for something that looked "tasteworthy". There were many items that I would have eaten "just because it was there" if I had not made my 5 tastes goal. I saw a few things that I've had many times before and absoultely love, but I know where to get them after the show is over (one favorite was specificially those Guylian seashell chocolates), so I passed them by, too. As I talked to representatives from each of the companies listed below, I decided to document each "taste" with pictures of the product, too.
Now for the moment you have been waiting for......here's what I tasted and my thoughts on each...
1. Jer's Chocolate Peanut Butter Squares - delicious peanut butter middle with krispy cereal pieces, all coated in milk chocolate. The company is from Salt Lake City, and they have a fabulous line of chocolates!
2. Three Twins Organic Lemon Cookie Ice Cream - super creamy ice cream with a great flavor! No weird aftertaste like you get with some fake lemony flavored desserts - all natural and delicious! I meant to go back the next day and taste their Cookies and Cream flavor, too, but forgot to - however, I'm sure it's delicious! 
3. Braswells Balsamic Sweet Onion Jam - this won a Gold SOFI award last summer, so I had to taste this jam. I absoultely loved it! They were serving it over cream cheese with crackers. I'm sure there are a lot of more complicated things you can do with this, but why? It tastes so wonderful and this is so simple! The guys at Braswells have outdone themselves with this one!
4. Olympus Authentic Greek Feta Cheese - maybe this is a lame thing to taste, but honestly it was about time for the show to close and I was only on taste 4! I do love Feta cheese, and wondered what "authentic imported from Greece Feta" tasted like. Well, let me say that it's pretty much like what I get at the grocery store.
5. this is hardly worth mentioning and certainly not worth a photo, but......after taste #4, I looked around and realized that the booths were closing, and no one had samples out anymore. So, I just went back to the Olympus booth, where they had another cheese to sample. It was a semi-hard cheese, and it was just OK.
After my experiment in tasting, I decided that Day 2 would need a few more tastes, and it would have to start a little earlier in the day. More to come...
This year, I decided that I was going to approach my sampling habits at the show a little differently. On Day 1, my goal was to wait until the last hour of the show to start sampling, and then to only sample 5 items! Yes - sounds crazy for a pig like me, but I had to try. And, it was very interesting (to me, at least). As I walked through some of show booths, I would scan for something that looked "tasteworthy". There were many items that I would have eaten "just because it was there" if I had not made my 5 tastes goal. I saw a few things that I've had many times before and absoultely love, but I know where to get them after the show is over (one favorite was specificially those Guylian seashell chocolates), so I passed them by, too. As I talked to representatives from each of the companies listed below, I decided to document each "taste" with pictures of the product, too.
Now for the moment you have been waiting for......here's what I tasted and my thoughts on each...
1. Jer's Chocolate Peanut Butter Squares - delicious peanut butter middle with krispy cereal pieces, all coated in milk chocolate. The company is from Salt Lake City, and they have a fabulous line of chocolates!
2. Three Twins Organic Lemon Cookie Ice Cream - super creamy ice cream with a great flavor! No weird aftertaste like you get with some fake lemony flavored desserts - all natural and delicious! I meant to go back the next day and taste their Cookies and Cream flavor, too, but forgot to - however, I'm sure it's delicious! 
3. Braswells Balsamic Sweet Onion Jam - this won a Gold SOFI award last summer, so I had to taste this jam. I absoultely loved it! They were serving it over cream cheese with crackers. I'm sure there are a lot of more complicated things you can do with this, but why? It tastes so wonderful and this is so simple! The guys at Braswells have outdone themselves with this one!
4. Olympus Authentic Greek Feta Cheese - maybe this is a lame thing to taste, but honestly it was about time for the show to close and I was only on taste 4! I do love Feta cheese, and wondered what "authentic imported from Greece Feta" tasted like. Well, let me say that it's pretty much like what I get at the grocery store.
5. this is hardly worth mentioning and certainly not worth a photo, but......after taste #4, I looked around and realized that the booths were closing, and no one had samples out anymore. So, I just went back to the Olympus booth, where they had another cheese to sample. It was a semi-hard cheese, and it was just OK.
After my experiment in tasting, I decided that Day 2 would need a few more tastes, and it would have to start a little earlier in the day. More to come...
1 comments:
Sounds delicious!
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