This weekend was on of those times where you want to record every second so you can remember all of the amazing experiences you just had. In a 48 hour time period I met a few new friends, tasted amazing street food from San Francisco, learned how to truly enjoy olive oil, walked around the amazing farmers market, stuffed myself with samples of cheese, wine, chocolate, and lots of other goodies, learned about merlot, had a once in a lifetime experience of eating dinner in a produce warehouse and then topping off the weekend with a great brunch. Wow! And to add a few things into the mix I caught up with two of my cousins that I never get to see. There are lots of incredibly detailed and well written posts around the blog world about what they ate and did while at the FoodBuzz Festival in San Francisco this weekend. So I am not going to go into specific details about every second of the weekend and everything I put into my mouth (and it was A LOT). What I am going to do is highlight my favorite things and a few amazing lessons learned from some incredible people in a few posts.
Saturday Morning Highlights
I signed up for the olive oil tasting because it is not something I had every done before and I wanted to learn how to taste and appreciate the oil. The chef is the Executive Chef for the new Joie De Vivre hotel in Sacramento, and he has a passion for olive oil! To taste olive oil you follow the 4S method:
- Swirl- hold the container in your hold and swirl the oil to release all the aromas
- Sniff- uncover the container, bring it up to your nose and immediately inhale. Take note of the first descriptor you smell
- Slurp- just like you do with wine, take a small sip while bringing in the air.
- Swallow- notice the sensation in your throat, does it make you cough just a bit.
We tried 6 different olive oils and they were from California, Italy, France and Spain. All of them had very different flavor profiles and very unique smells. The most interesting thing I learned in the tasting was to actually taste the olive oil by itself, don’t dip anything into it because you will taste that food item and not the pure flavor of the olive oil.
After the olive oil tasting I meet up with Amie and we went to walk the farmers market and it was so much fun! We checked out all the stands outside and wandered the shops inside as well, everything looked and smelled delicious. A sage sausage breakfast burrito looked amazing and I knew I needed one, every bite was delicious. To enjoy after my burrito I picked up a few beautifully colored pluots and they were incredibly ripe and juicy. Fresh fruit is so amazing and I had to take advantage of being in a city that still had local fruit in November. Obviously we are not getting much fresh fruit in Minnesota in the winter 
All of the stands had great color and variety, the peppers were my favorite since they were in all colors of the rainbow. I think farmers market photos make great pictures for the kitchen! They match every color scheme and really bring some fun to a room.
Saturday Afternoon
After a good walk around the city I headed to the Metreon for the afternoon tasting and session. It is a beautiful space downtown with amazing views of the city. My two favorite booths were the Kerrygold Cheese booth and the Black Stallion Winery. The Kerrygold booth had samples of their delicious salted butter and one of the best cheddars I have ever had. Cheese really is my favorite food! The women staffing the winery booth was such a wealth of knowledge, we spend 15 minutes talking about how they create their wine, the type of ageing processes they use.
The Merlot tasting was a lot of fun, I sat next to Lisa of Snack Snoops and Elizabeth of the Dallas Celiac and we had so much to talk about! Alder from Vinography.com talked about why Merlot is a good wine and how it really can go with a wide variety of foods. Merlot producers saw between a 25 to 40 percent drop in Merlot sales after Sideways. Talk about the power of Hollywood.
After the wine tasting I hurried back to the hotel to get changed quickly and head to the Hotel Vitale to hope on the bus for dinner. Part 2 is next!
