Sunday, September 26, 2010

Busted

Are you ready for something you've never seen here on Running Foodie?


Pancakes!!

Today is National Pancake Day, and I didn't even know until after I had made pancakes, which is totally random because I never make pancakes! For some reason, I just woke up this morning thinking, "I should make pancakes."

I used Tina's Really Good Pancake Recipe and added about 1/2 cup of pumpkin puree and a few shakes of pumpkin pie spice.


They were a hit!

I was really looking forward to telling you about yesterday's Cake Wars, complete with incredible pictures of luscious cupcakes but... it was kind of a bust. I didn't take a single picture!

We got there about 45 minutes after it started and there was super long line. We thought we might never get in. Fortunately, Lindy and Ryan had arrived at on time and were just then getting to the front of line. We jumped in with them and got right in!

Inside, it was a total madhouse. Herbst Pavilion is big and it was packed.

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There were 6 bakeries competing in the cupcake wars and all of them were supposed to be offering tastings. However, only one hour into the event (it went from 4-9pm), two of the six  had already run out of samples and were only selling full-sized cupcakes! Also, the samples available were very small bites (maybe 1/4 of a bite-sized cupcake?), not really enough of a taste to base any judging off of. We did have a really delicious Cinnamon French Toast Bacon Praline cupcake from From Scratch, sf that tasted just like Sunday brunch (it was so yummy), but I didn't think the rest of them were very special. Plus, it was just so crowded!

Frustrated with the cupcakes, we decided to get our wine tasting on. We bought tickets at a discount through Groupon (which probably accounts for the crowds) and also got a $10 voucher per ticket to put towards wine purchases. There were 30+ local California wineries and we sampled a lot of wine (another reason I didn't take any pictures). We had a lot of favorites, but ended up purchasing a 2008 Chardonnay from Rielle Wines in Petaluma.


After about 2 hours of fighting the crowds and the heat (it was 85 degrees on the water in SF!), we decided to grab dinner at 21st Amendment Brewery in SOMA. They have some pretty incredible beers on tap, including the Come Hell or High Watermelon Wheat, which seriously tastes like a light wheat beer that has watermelon Jolly Ranchers dissolved in it! I didn't order any beer myself (I was feeling a little loopy from all that wine!), but I had several tastes of B's! It was delicious!

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In the end, it ended up being a fun afternoon with friends, but I was disappointed that Cupcake Wars was not more prepared for the crowds, because the wine market was definitely on top of their game.

What are the rest of your weekend plans?
This morning we are going to church, then cleaning the house/grading, and having dinner with my parents.