WE ATE OUR WAY AROUND THE WORLD

We have spent Sunday and Monday at the Fancy Food Show . There are at least 2000 exhibitors , 24,000 attendees, 250,000 products and 81 countries represented at the show. And miles and miles of aisles to walk. You walk, you talk to vendors, you taste samples, and sometimes you spit out what you taste. My feet are swollen and my legs are so tired. We had a wonderful time.

Every food related product you can think of we saw: smokers, portable kitchens, packaging, wines, waters, cheeses, chocolates and more chocolates, sausage, hams, fungi, candy, pasta, sauces, olive oils, caviar, pate, prepared desserts, prepared meats, and on and on and on.

Many of these are businesses tying to be picked up by Safeway or Whole Foods. We talked to one woman who had a good food product. She told us how hard it is to get on a grocery shelf, especially since she had a full time job other than her food line. There are dreams at this show also. Many are trying to get the food service industry to use them. And many are companies we have used for years. Marty and I looked at all the prepared foods and wondered just how much is really made by the restaurant chefs.

One of the things we noted was the range of cleanliness at the booths. They are showing in California. We thought that California health laws would be in play. Evidently not. Most booths the samples were served by people with latex gloves on. They would have either little spoons or toothpicks to pick up the food. Other booths had no gloves and would have some toothpicks. They picked the food up with their bare hands. They would offer you food, there would be no more toothpicks and they expected you to reuse your toothpick. Some didn't have any toothpicks, you just picked up the meat or cheese and tried not to touch the rest of the food. We decided not to let this bother us too much.

We had some incredible prosciutto and Serrano hams. The pates were lovely, more cheeses than I knew were out there. We found great store bought Italian sauces made by Rao's (found in your local Safeway ). We bought some tonight for dinners we are too tired to cook from scratch.

We decided some of the hot items are wasabi flavored anything, honey, waffles,( they used them for dessets, breakfast, little tiny ice cream cones, appetizers ), and chocolate. I think ratio wise there were more chocolate booths then anything else.

This was a great two days, and it continues Tuesday. We are too worn out to go another day. Plus Marty has to work and I have things to do also.