Friday
Street Food Fair! This was a really fun event at Herbst Pavilion for mingling, exchanging our foodie gifts (I scored some Michigan granola from Wendy at The Local Chef!), and enjoying some serious food truck yumminess. I ate way more meat and cupcakes than normal and was a little miserable when I went home that night.
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| Snacks from Frog Hollow Farm |
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| Pear Tarts! |
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| Getting ready for our gift exchange! |
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| TACOLICIOUS! |
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| ROLI ROTI |
Saturday
Breakout Sessions - I didn't snap any pictures during my first breakout session because we were learning about food writing. As an English major and teacher, I was really interested in this but basically, I learned not to use words like delicious or yummy. Um.... OK, thanks. One good thing that I did take away from that session though was an exercise in which we had to describe a food in terms of the memory it gave us, and not necessarily how it actually tasted.
Then, I headed over to a demo by Alaska Seafood. Mary Sue Milliken from Border Grill made some crazy delicious fish tacos that I got to sample later at the Tasting Pavilion. I didn't have the best seats to get good pictures, but Mary was hilarious and so fun. I can't wait to try some of her recipes at home.
Alaska Seafood is hosting an awesome Wild Alaska Fish Taco recipe contest from November 3 to January 31. The winner gets a 3-day/2-night trip to Santa Monica and will get to ride along and serve their winning taco recipe in the Border Grill Taco Truck with Mary Sue and Susan Feniger!
The last session I went to was about "Blogging Success." It was run by a panel consisting of Tina, Damaris, and Stephanie. I was a little distracted trying to coordinate lunch plans on Twitter, but I did hear a few things that resonated with me - namely that "successful" bloggers do not necessarily blog daily (hooray!), commenting on blogs is a way of telling the author, "I appreciate that you took the time to write this!", and it takes a while to find your niche, but just keep working at it.
Farmer's Market Wandering with Ally! I love the Ferry Building but had actually never been there for the Farmer's Market, so after having our picture taken in front of a Hearts in SF in Union Square, we headed down to check out the produce.
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| They're putting up the Christmas tree in the background! |
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| Jam from Swanton Berry Farm! |
Tasting Pavilion
Then we walked over to the Tasting Pavilion at the Metreon where I basically ate nonstop and took only one picture, but at least it was a good one:
Gala Dinner
Then we got all prettied up for the Gala Dinner in the Grand Hall of the Ferry Building.
There were passed appetizers and wine and then an incredible four-course meal catered by Paula Leduc with Bonny Doon wine pairings. It was about a million degrees upstairs in the Ferry Building (or maybe we had just had too much wine...), so Teri and I sneaked off to the bathroom and removed our tights before dinner. I didn't snap many pictures (and even my pics of the food are a bit dark), but Ally, Teri, and Heather were excellent dinner company and we had an incredible time.
Sunday
We ended our time in SF with a brunch sponsored by Nature's Pride. The food was not the best and the weather was very unpleasant, so Teri and I later found ourselves holed away in a corner of Leland Tea Company for an hour or so eating scones, drinking tea, and talking about work, blogging, and life. It was a great way to end the weekend!
Lynn from The Actor's Diet (so glad I met her!) put together a great little video from the weekend. You can watch it here. It's a great review of the weekend!
