FANCY FOOD SHOW PART 2

Yesterday I gave you highlights of Sunday.  I forgot one really fun product. 

                     

Do you know what you are looking at?  

Stacked glasses of wine.  Four connected glasses that contain the equivalent of a bottle of wine.  All plastic, each glass snaps off, the lid peels off, and it is ready to drink.   Great for picnics, tailgating, pool parties.  The wine was average, but the concept is great.

Now on to Monday.  This was the day for the really wonderful exotic, expensive foods, and for great pizza, chocolate, teas, bar b que sauces.  First we went to a small hall that was for new products. 

                                      

This young man told us about his product: frozen pastry wrapped brie.  It can be frozen for up to a year.  You pop it into the oven and presto, a fancy dancy appetizer.

Aren’t these good looking purses?  Wrong, they are lunch boxes for the working woman.

Now to the huge hall where the International Foods were.  I wait for this all year ham, salamis, bacons, pates, foie gras.  Now they have lots of other wonderful foods and drinks, but the meat, heaven.

I found this wonderful meat case.  Prosciutto, speck, jambon, serrano,  I see it in the case.  What!!! They weren’t cutting any. Tightwads.

                                                                      

This is what I was looking for.  So very good.  There were lots and lots of people carving meat.  Very few had the knife skills of this man.  Most were using a commercial slicer.

Now this is a booth!  This trailer has a kitchen and serving windows on either side.  They were serving pizza.  Really really good pizza.

Sometimes food is not for eating.  It has other uses.

                                                                           

This man was carving animals, fish, flowers, birds etc. out of food.  He has a shrimp in his hands that he is attaching to the large arrangement.  Check out the watermelon.

This just might be my favorite booth, Hudson Valley Foie Gras.   I love foei gras  They produce their foie gras humanely.  Yes, the ducks die, but they are not forced fed.  The vendor is very generous with his samples.  In California it is illegal to sell foie gras.  But you can give it away.  Some restaurants serve it without charge.  Trust me, they make the cost up somewhere.

Next up Japan.                                                                                                 

The chef spoke no English.  He talked as he demoed a couple of dishes.  She translated.  First he made a roasted onion appetizer.  It was to be marinated in a special soy sauce made from the bubbles as it fermented.  You can see the onion in the bowl reflected in the mirror.  He then made a yellowtail sushi dish.  It was so good.  And that is coming from a woman who doesn’t eat fish.  But I ate this raw dish.  Fabulous.  

Eating all this rich food was thirsty work.

We went to a German wine tasting.  We tasted 5 wines that were excellent.

 

Big signs at this booth, CAVIAR.  I like caviar, but never buy it because it is so expensive.  This booth is doing tastings.  Well, it was not real caviar.  Again with the fishy icky roe of lumpfish and other non sturgeon eggs. 

                                                                                                                    

Marty loves the hams just as much as I do.  He is going for prosciutto here.

We are in the Mexican pavilion.  We were drawn to the beautiful bottles.  We tried some of this tequila.   Beautiful bottles do not equal good tequila.  A direct quote from Marty, “It taste like liniment.”  Several booths later we found some good tequila. 

Pate.  All made by this man’s wife.  The pates were displayed beautifully.

And speaking of beautiful displays. I had a wonderful chocolate mousse cake thing.  Marty had a cheesecake.  While we were eating, a woman came up to me and asked how they tasted, do they taste homemade, I answered they were worth the calories.  I then told her she should have won.

And this is the lovely woman, Penny Davidi.  For those of you not addicted to food shows:  Penny was on The Next Food Network Star and Chopped.  She was at the Food Show representing the Food Network.  She talked a little bit about having a show coming up soon.  I would watch her.  She was shown as the villain on  The Next . . . Star.  We loved and hated her on the show.  In person, she is a charming lovely woman.  Much prettier in person, not as hard as they they showed her on the show. 

We then walked another two hours tasting and grazing.  

As you come up the escalator, this sign notifies you of the next show.  We already have it on our calendars.

This was a great show as always. I did not begin to tell/show you all we experienced.  I hope I did give you a great snapshot of the show.