latest obsession: Scharffen Berger cacao nibs
November 12, 2008
The MacKenzie Agency just recently worked with Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker on the public relations support for their 2nd Annual Chocolate Adventure Contest. As part of the promotion, we used Scarffen Berger® Roasted Cacao Nibs.
Of course, I had to test them out to make sure they were suitable to go out to writers, so I tried a few and fell in love with the nutty crunchy and toasty flavor of these crushed and roasted cacao beans.
Yes, I have had cacao nibs in my favorite Scharffen Berger® Bar, a 3oz 62% cacao Nibby Bar, but never in anything else, especially anything that isn’t dessert. Inspired by the contest, as well as Alice Medrich’s recipe for cacao nib salad, I decided to test out these nibs in my everyday food preparation to see if they were really as good as everyone says they are.
These past few weeks I have been dicing up cacao nibs and putting them in everything: green beans, salads, pasta dishes and sweet potatoes. My two roomates, who seem to only eat flavorless chicken and sweet potatoes every night even loved the unexpected burst of flavor they gave to the sweet potatoes…. Even more so when paired with some chili peppers.
I am even inspired to test out a new recipe that I have wanted to create using the rules to Chocolate Adventure Contest. I cannot wait to see if I end up buring down my kicthen, or actually creating my first recipe….
images from the wine blogging conference.
October 27, 2008
As I sit here and think about where I want to go with my post(s) about this past weekend at the Wine Bloggers Conference, I keep going back to some of the images that I took over the last three days (yes, when I remembered to bring my camera) and reminiscing on how great it was to meet wine peeps I have only talked to on twitter or facebook.
Though there is one SPECIFIC picture that I was asked not to show anyone, but all the rest are up and viewable on my Flickr stream.
A couple favorites:
Soon after everyone else gets home and sobers up, I am sure there will be many more. Click on this one from Brittney from WineQ (aka Wine QT) so see the power of Twitter. As of 11/5 this image has over 340 unique views!
Altogether, a great networking and educational conference (i.e., A SUCCESS).
wine bloggers conference.
October 24, 2008
It is all about the First Annual Wine Blogging Conference this weekend. The entire Flamingo Hotel in Santa Rosa will be taken over by some of the best professional wine lushes in America.
My dumb ass was too much of a procrastinator when it came to actually purchasing a ticket so I wasn’t able to buy one before it sold out. Thankfully, I am now helping out with the CIA’s Blind Tasting Challenge so I am now able to get in! Whoo hoo.
The best part of the event: meeting all of the people I talk to on Twitter on a daily or weekly basis, including @winebratsf (whom I have already met and already know she kicks ass) of Vinquire and Luscious Lushes Wine Blog, @Sondara of WannabeWino, @DrXeNo of WineLog Blog, @smellslikegrape of Smells Like Grape Wine Blog and those are just the ones I talked to today… There will be many, many others that would take me all night to write down.
Any wine bloggers reading this right now: I will be the one handing out Scharffen Berger chocolate, so look for me at the event!
More about the event next week, for now I leave you with a quote from everyone’s favorite internet wine geek, Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV.
“People are always talking about what you’re doing now… To me, it’s not what you’re doing now, it’s about where you’re going.”
new house, new roomies.
October 4, 2008
Last night was my first night in my new house. Going from living by myself in a one bedroom apartment (with no laundry on the premise) in downtown Healdsburg to having three GUY roommates in Alexander Valley will be a huge adjustment for both me and the guys….
Until I have more stories, here is picture I took while lying down on my bed:
more recipes i have found.
September 22, 2008
More food blogging research has led me to a new site called Tastespotting which allows visitors to browse recipes and food articles based on the visual aspect of the recipe. It is my new favorite site and simple to use…. Just look through their homepage and if you see something that interests you, click on it.
“Founded on the idea that we eat first with our eyes, TasteSpotting is our obsessive, compulsive collection of eye-catching images that link to something deliciously interesting on the other side.”
I posted my happy pepper post on their site and that day I received over 300 visitors, and here I am basically writing to myself.
Some of my favoirte recipes from this week:
Butternut Squash with Pecans and Blue Cheese from Tea and Wheaten Bread
Peach Gnocchi in a Champagne sauce from 101 Cookbooks
Green Lemonade from The Toddler Cafe (don’t let the blog name fool you, there are plenty of easy adult recipes here too… Or at least easy to make recipes for newbies like me). The images on this site are some of the most eye catching out of any food blog, a perfect site to be promoted on TasteSpotting (see picture above for the Green Lemonade).
I will be trying out the Green Lemonade drink this week…
chocolate adventure event #1.
September 21, 2008
Last Wednesday was spent in San Francisco helping to host the Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker and TuttiFoodie.com’s Chocolate Adventure Contest Events held for food bloggers and members of the media based around San Francisco. There will be another post about the contest itself because I have learned so much at this event to justify a separate blog post (like there ever has to be any justification for this). A second event was planned for Thursday, but with Robert Steinberg’s passing, SB decided to postpone it.
Orson, Elizabeth Falkner’s new restaurant on 4th Street was the venue. Food Bloggers such as Melissa from the Wine Chef, Anita from Dessert First and Michael Procopio mingled, checked out the Adventure Ingredients & SB’s product display (put together by yours truly) and ate adventurous chocolate appetizers (fried pig skins dipped in chocolate?) put together by the Orson staff.
We all sat down for a blind taste test held by John Scharffenberger (one of the creators of SBCM, click here to read his tribute to his friend’s passing). He had guests try unsweetened chocolate from Madagascar, Trinidad and Venezuela as he discussed how each region provides different flavors of cacao, thus providing a final product where each of the unique flavors complete each other.
The end result in this case is the Finisterra Bar, SBCM’s 10th Anniversary chocolate bar, a perfect blend of all three regions. Participates then tried this bar and some were even able to taste the hit of citrus from Madagascar and the spicy cinnamon flavor of Trinidad cacao
Afterwards Elizabeth showcased some more courses that combined chocolate and an adventurous ingredient from the contest ingredient list (the avocado, mango and cacao nib salad was amazing) while she discussed using exotic ingredients and how any chef – professional and at home – should never be afraid of being adventurous with ingredients.
My photos:
Cheryl Mazak’s photos:
My most memorable experience was sitting down with Marcia Gagliardi from the tablehopper (and the event coordinator) and a few others discussing how people don’t seem to enjoy food anymore. Everyone is worried about the fat/calorie content of their meal or in my case most weekdays, they are too busy to even bother tasting the food — To truly enjoy and appreciate the meal that they are eating. This conversation made me question my reasoning behind why it is that I always feel that I am too busy to take a little extra time to make something before work for lunch, or hell, why I don’t even make the time to go to the store to buy any ingredients to make anything.
Hopefully this will change when I move in with my new roommates in two weeks.
robert steinberg, creator of scharffen berger has passed.
September 18, 2008
Robert Steinberg, one of the founders of Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker passed away last night. Robert, a former physician, was diagnosed with Lymphoma around the same time him and John Scharffenberger started SBCM with a coffee grinder, mortar and pestle, an electric mixer, and a hair dryer to produce their first chocolate, in his home kitchen .
A statement from John Scharffenberger is up on Scarffenberger.com.
In the mean time, David Bovitz, a pastry chef, chocolate cookbook author and personal friend of Robert’s wrote a tribute to my favorite chocolate company.
Our Chocolate Adventure Contest Event today was postponed and I ask anyone reading this to go out and buy SBCM’s 10th Anniversary Finisterra Bar (or any SB chocolate) in the memory of him and his contribution to chocolate.
happy pepper.
September 2, 2008
The first night of my Labor Day weekend was spent drinking Papapietro Perry pinot noir and making vegetarian tacos with one of my own personal favorite chefs, my friend John. We picked tomatoes and bell peppers from his garden to make the veggie kabobs (bell peppers and onions) and salsa. As John went to throw away the stem of this bell pepper, I noticed the happy face on it. Needless to say, I had to send it to TwitPic, and later to my “things that make me laugh” album on Facebook.
Since Labor Day is the last “hurrah” of the summer, this weekend got me thinking about the next season and my personal favorite – Autumn! As I say time and time again, it is the little things in life that make it all worth it. Having my birthday land on the very first day of my favorite time of year just adds the cream cheese frosting to my cupcake or the happy face to my bell pepper. I am a huge fan of simplicity. It is that one simple moment that something happens that you know YOU were meant to see. That one glimpse of the cute guy looking you up and down, the butterfly that chose to land on your hand when you were just about to scratch your nose, or that nature-made happy face on a bell pepper.
One of my favorite simplistic fall activities is finding the dried up oak leaves that just fell on the ground and stomping on them, making the crushing sound. When I find a huge pile of perfectly dry oak leaves and make my first jump, nothing else in the world matters, it is just me, my ears and the leaves.
So many other things to look forward to: stuffed squash, heirloom tomatos, Australian boys in town for Crush, carmel apples, Halloween, sweaters, Pumpkin Ale, pinot drinking weather, the smell in the air here in Healdsburg during Crush, Halloween costumes, my move to Alexander Valley on October 1st and most importantly my second annual black and white birthday bash.
new obession: cheese plate.
August 29, 2008
This obsession is actually a relatively new one for me, it started a year ago when my friend LoriAnn and I wanted to get cocktails at Barn Diva in Healdsburg. We decided to order a cheese plate to soak up the alcohol we were drinking. The appetizer had the staples that make up the typical cheese plate you see anywhere: blue cheese, a parmesan, another hard cheese and some goat cheese.
After we both realized the other’s passion for a single plate of cheese, we agreed that it was out “thing” to go on our cheese plate and wine dates. For the last year we will go on our “dates” to places around Healdsburg like Scopa, Charcuterie, Palette Art Cafe, Ravenous and Willie’s Seafood. OK, we haven’t been to that many places but we are both of very different schedules which has not deterred our love for the cheeses.
We are planning on meeting soon to enjoy the cheese plate at Diavola, the new gourmet pizzeria in Geyerville, Ca (amazing beet salad) and then shortly after that we have a scheduled field trip to Pugs Leap Goat Cheese, located right in the middle of Dry Creek.
Watch out for more blogging and pictures on our cheese adventures.
hi my name is shana and i am obessed with waffles.
August 18, 2008
If you have been paying any attention to my tweets, myspace status or facebook status over the past week, you know that I have had a lingering obsession with waffles. It started last week when all I wanted before work was a waffle from snobunny, so my friend Sean and I go there only to find they just started serving them on the weekends ONLY.
Since then, every time I attempt to get a waffle has ended in failure. Either because of the time of day, or my own personal time constraints. I was craving one so bad that I went out and bought some Safeway brand toaster waffles that satisfied my craving for maple syrup, but not for the fluffy goodness that a restaurant waffle can offer. There is no comparison of the thin, crispy toaster waffles to a fluffy warm one that just came off a waffle maker.
My friend Scott only fed on my obsession by going to get a waffle of his own, fully knowing (I assume) that I wasn’t able to get one of my own.
Why am I talking about this? Well, I am still obsessed and for some reason, beyond my control… I still want one. Bad. So like I do when I cannot stop thinking about someone or something, I write about it.
My new found obsession even made me remember that my love for waffles isn’t a new thing. Years ago on a family road trip to Seattle, I remember fighting with my dad because all I wanted to eat the ENTIRE trip was waffles with strawberries and whipped cream, it was my beginning stages of becoming a vegetarian (yes, at age 11) and I refused to eat eggs or BACON (yes, I have denied bacon since I was 11) and I loved waffles so much, I wanted them for every meal. I am not sure if I got my way or not, but I do know every breakfast and most dinners were mostly waffles.
If anyone wants to meet me for lunch or breakfast this week to eat waffles, then let me know. Or if you have an amazing waffle recipe, post it here…. Oh. Also, let me know if you think I have a problem…. I may need help.
