Please note: Foodzie isn’t hiring at the moment, but we want share an awesome opportunity for others to join the Boulder startup community.

100 software developers get an all expense paid trip to Boulder Colorado to interview with 20 startups. Apply here.

Okay - that was the hook. Now, let me explain it.

Even before Foodzie was accepted into TechStars, we knew that Boulder was an incredible place. At your fingertips you have some of the most majestic natural landscapes in the nation, providing you with world class rock climbing, kayaking, trail running, skiing/snow boarding, and my favorite: cycling.

After moving to Boulder we’ve seen a town with such a positive, balanced culture that it is hard to imagine a better place to live and work. Couple the backdrop I’ve just described with a fast-growing tech scene that is rich with exciting companies and you have one of the best environments for a software developer.

The innovation and collaboration within the startup community in Boulder is impressive. One of the latest examples is the Boulder Colorado Job Fair. 20 startups are banding together to fly out 100 rock-star developers, put them up for 2 nights to show them around Boulder as well interview for jobs with all 20 of the startups.

See below:

Every one of our sponsoring companies is looking for really smart developers and engineers just like you, so they’re contributing to a fund that we use to fly in up to 100 qualified candidates. We pay for your airfare, hotel and transportation. (We’ll also make sure you don’t starve while you’re here.) You’ll spend three days and two nights here in Boulder; one day will be spent checking out Boulder, another day will be spent meeting with all of the sponsoring companies, and yet another day will be spent following up with the companies you’re most interested in. In short, there is no easier (or cheaper) way to explore a really cool town, learn about a bunch of killer startups, and search for your next career change, all in one. Don’t wait to tell us about yourself.

TechCrunch weighs in.

Just on the edge of The Mission District, a San Francisco neighborhood with strong Latin American influences, sits a contemporary looking building with the words La Cocina (meaning “the kitchen” in Spanish) stretched along the wall. Inside the building magic happens in the form of magnificent food creations. We were lucky enough to be a part of that magic last Wednesday night for their “Magic of Mole” cooking class, taught by Irma Calderon - a student at La Cocina.

It started with Irma’s recipe that’s been passed down through her family for many generations. But the recipe wasn’t the usual suspect we find in cookbooks. There were no instructions, no exact measurements. Irma’s recipe is one that relied on the ingredients available at the time, along with an expert palette to taste and tweak as the cooking process moves along.

Irma taught us all about Mole, which I was surprised to learn (along with most of the rest of the group) that it didn’t have to include chocolate to be considered a true mole sauce. Dried chiles, nuts and spices are all staples in the dish.

Jason (on the left) and Caleb (on the right) run the La Cocina program and lead the cooking class. Part of the class was learning how to butcher a chicken (the chicken was a key ingredient in the mole dish). Jason walked us through the process and helped us to sharpen our knife skills.

Nik, myself and Rob, were all suited up in our aprons cooking away. I think at this point we had already enjoyed a few glasses of wine (you know it’s a good cooking class when the keep your wine glass full…).

Irma gets some of the freshest ingredients from Mexico and these chiles were some of the best I’ve seen. They were dried, but still soft and fresh. These are the key ingredient to a classic mole sauce.

Almonds, walnuts, cinnamon stick, garlic, prunes and raisins get sauteed in olive oil. The combination of these fruits, nuts and spices create the rich complexity of the mole sauce.

Once the cooking was complete…it was time to enjoy our masterpiece.

The dinner table, in the middle of the kitchen, was all set for our authentic Mexican feast.

We enjoyed a meal of roasted chicken with Irma’s famous mole sauce, refried pinto beans, mexican rice, and a fresh garden salad. Fantástica!

We’ve been in San Francisco for the past few days, primarily for the TechStars Demo Day, but of course we always squeeze in lots of food-related fun. I just happened to call Caleb, the Director of Operations at La Cocina (an incubator community kitchen I blogged about awhile back) to chat with him about Foodzie. He made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. A free invitation (a $100 value I might add…) to their “Magic of Mole” cooking class at the La Cocina kitchen in the Mission District. We are paying our way with “The Dough-Nut” cookies. A fair exchange I’d say! We are looking forward to lots of learning and eating.

For the next few days, Rob and I are in Columbus, Ohio to attend a wedding for one of my very best friends from college. I am looking forward to a beautiful wedding this weekend. A friend asked, aren’t you going to be bored with a few extra days to kill in Ohio? My response…even in a small city there is great food to be discovered.

As I started to do my homework, I found several producers that I’ve either met or read about that are located right here in Columbus. I am excited to check out Mockingbird Meadows, a honey producer located alongside the Darby Creek. Mockingbird Meadows was one of the top honey producers selected to come out to Slow Food Nation a few weeks back and I had the chance to sample some of their delicate, sweet honey.

Jeni’s Ice Cream is another Columbus find. It’s a super high-quality ice cream that’s handcrafted in small batches and served in the world’s finest pastry shops and restaurants. Certainly good enough for me! Some of the flavors from her signature line that had me dying for a scoop include Salty Caramel, Pistachio & Ashland County Honey and Cherry Lambic Sorbet. Yum, yum and yuuumm.

Pistacia Vera is a super cute dessert boutique that looks like it was plucked out of Paris and landed in Columbus. They make traditional French Macarons, Pate de fruit (with exotic flavors like blueberry key lime) and their signature is a beautiful florentine with nuts and candied fruits baked in a honey, citrus caramel, atop a flakey butter crust.

I am looking forward to this visit of course for the wedding, but I am certain with this list my sweet tooth will be satisfied too!

I just recently wrote about our visit to Wild Boar Farms and the delightful time we had discovering new varieties of heirloom tomatoes. While we were there, Brad shared some of his heirloom melons (out of this world good) and on Saturday I just picked up some heirloom lemon cucumbers at the Boulder Farmers Market. It’s been amazing discovering all these new varieties of vegetables that are new to me, but obviously have been around quite awhile.

It made me rethink what I plan to grow in the spring. Usually I just pick out some plants from the farmers market to get me started, but I don’t do much research into the actual variety and what they taste like. I mean garden fresh to start is better already. But to imagine I could grow all those heirloom varieties in my own backyard… I learned about seedsavers.org which is a non-profit organization of gardeners dedicated to saving and sharing heirloom seeds. Gardeners share rare seeds with other gardeners to keep heirloom varieties around. Of course, the best way to help is to buy some seeds, grow the plants and give seeds back to the program. As I perused through the site, I was excited to see the garlic page with 18 varieties of garlic…18!! The “Moon & Stars” watermelon also caught my eye, with a dark outer rind covered in small yellow spots (stars) and usually one big yellow spot (moon). If you grow a garden, take a peek and see if any fun varieties grab your attention.

Anya Fernald was integral to the planning of Slow Food Nation and has been writing posts on their blog recapping the event from a “behind the scenes” perspective. To put on the Slow Food Nation event in San Francisco last week it not only took a lot of time, but also a lot of dough - the green paper kind. One thing that really hit me as I was reading her latest post, The Backstory of the Taste Pavilions, was how much they wanted to ease the burden on small producers financially, which thus affected the price of a ticket for consumers into the Pavilion. When I first purchased the tickets and saw it was $65 for half a day at the Pavilions, I admittedly gulped as I clicked through the checkout process. After attending the event, I certainly felt differently. My money was well spent, but there was something in Anya’s post that made me feel even better.

One thing I had heard loud and clear during our initial outreach was that farmers and food artisans were tired of coming to events (Slow Food and other) and being asked to do everything for free, including donate product and work, for the benefit of (often well-heeled) ticket buyers. So we came up with the idea of buying all the products and building the stands that would feature the product for our event. If the producer had the means and desire to attend, they were welcome, but this event would support them and would strive to not be a financial burden on the people we were trying to help. The only exception was the wine pavilions, where we asked each featured producer to donate one case of wine because we simply did not have the financial resources to purchase them all. This would turn the trade-show concept on its head—no stall fees, vendors, or sponsor zones.

Being involved in the specialty food business, I am well-aware of how most food shows work. And they don’t work for small producers. The Fancy Food Show for example has made the cost so high for vendors to attend (I’ve heard that it’s around $15,000 for booth space, samples and travel costs) that it is simply unreasonable for small producers to attend. I applaud Slow Food for the decision they made, albeit a difficult one, to get creative in the way they funded the Slow Food Nation event. It was the right choice to put some of the burden on us, the consumer, to have the opportunity to taste and learn about some of the finest food being produced in our country.

With all the food blogs I read, there are very few that concentrate specifically on artisan food producers. Most food writers like to write about recipes, cookbooks, restaurants, food gadgets, but rarely small producers and their products. I came across this blog Artisan Food Discoveries that shares my same passion for sharing the stories about artisan food producers.

The blog is well-written (nice work Susie!) and full of good content. Definitely at the top of my food reading list. If you like learning more about artisan food producers, I’d recommend you add it to your list too.

The Copia Edible Garden Festival in Napa, CA was just one of our stops during our “food tour” of the Bay Area. That’s where we had the chance to meet Brad, the farmer who runs Wild Boar Farms and produces some of the most stunning and delicious heirloom tomatoes.

He invited us out to his farm to check out all his varieties and see where the magic happens. Along the way he taught us a lot about growing great tomatoes. Brad’s secret to getting that firm tomato that’s packed with flavor is to starve the tomato of water the last few weeks. Water can cause the tomato to get that mushy texture and dilutes all their flavor. Based on the several tomatoes I devoured like an apple (which I never thought I’d ever be able to do…), I concur with Brad that his method creates the perfect tomato.

Brad is constantly working at how he can adjust his growing methods to produce a tomato that is in the top of it’s class when it comes to taste. He said commercial growers make their money based on the weight of their produce and how pretty they look, with taste at the bottom of the list. “They never have to meet their customer face-to-face, so it doesn’t matter what it tastes like.”

I thought this statement was pretty powerful. If a producer never has to face their customer, do they really care if their product is top-notch or if you are happy?

So, needless to say, we had a great time hanging out with Brad at the farm and even got to pack an order for Chez Pannise. I put together a short video from our visit. Enjoy!

Wild Boar Farms from Foodzie on Vimeo.

So we’re back in Boulder and while I openly admit to how much I love food - 10 days of really good eating can start to weigh you down - umm literally. I’m glad to be back in the “fittest town in America” with world-class athletes around to remind me what I need to be doing to work off the 3 trips I made to Taylor’s (if you’ve been there you’d agree it’s worth it).

As you probably know, Rob and I have been out in the bay area traipsing around San Francisco and Palo Alto and we even made a quick trip up to Napa for a weekend. Between the Copia Food Festival, Oxbow Market, The Ferry Building, Slow Food Nation Farmers Market & Taste Pavilions and then plenty of restaurants crammed in-between…we ate well.

My best spent calories include:

Heirloom Tomato Panzanella (Copia’s Edible Garden Festival - Napa, CA)

I went back for seconds after trying this dish. So good. Of course the key was the fresh heirloom tomatoes. Fortunately for me the farmer who grows the incredible tomatoes was just a few booths down. So Panzanella led to an hour long conversation about tomatoes, which led to an invitation to come check out the farm, which led to a farm visit of eating lots of tomatoes and helping to pack an order for Chez Panisse. There will be more on our fun at the farm soon!

Pica Pica Maize Kitchen - Corn Flatbread (Oxbow Market - Napa, CA)

I enjoyed a corn flatbread ham and jack grilled sandwich, which was great but I was most intrigued by the bread itself. It was sweet corn, soft bread but crisped up nice around the edges. I had never seen anything like it. The cool part is that the bread is gluten-free. Since a gluten-eating gal like myself went crazy about it, I was especially excited for all my gluten-free friends (Andrew, Jan…) about a non-cardboard tasting bread alternative.

Taylors Automatic Refresher - Texas Burger - (Ferry Building - San Francisco, CA)

I think I already let the cat out of the bag that 3 meals during the 10 day trip were consumed at Taylors Automatic Refresher. Usually I get more creative and vary my options, but oh was it good. We tried several things, loved the BLT - but I think my favorite was the Texas Burger, topped with jack cheese, fresh guacamole, salsa, mayo & pickled jalapeños on a toasted egg bun. Gourmet junk-food. Yummo.

We Love Jam - Blenheim Apricot Jam (Slow Food Nation - San Fransisco, CA)

If you’ve been reading the blog for a little while you’re probably now thinking I have some strange fascination with apricot jam, as I seem to talk about it often. Not sure how to explain it except for the fact that it’s a hard product to produce well and for those that do, I like to talk about. This apricot jam is made with Blenheim apricots which actually are considered an endangered variety of apricots - who knew? They started with a small batch (100 jars) from one very old tree and then it made it into Food and Wine mag and had thousands of orders coming to them. So now they are making more jam, which means they are working with farmers to grow more Blenheim apricots. An apricot jam with a cause. I love it.

Hodo Soy Beanery - Satay Soy Noodles (Berkley Farmers Market - Berkley, CA)

Chris Shipley, a mentor for us at TechStars, gave us her list of favorite food products and Hodo Soy Beanery was one of them. In her words, “Let’s just say that this place has me eating soy/tofu products.” Since they only sell their products locally in the Bay area, we were excited to get to try it on this trip. Carolyn, one of the producers, says the key to good tofu is really, really fresh tofu. She let us sample everything and even gave us some Spicy Soy Croquettes (Rob’s favorite) to take home with us. My favorite was the Satay Soy Noodles and was quite impressed the tasty noodles I was munching on were merely tofu that had been pushed through a pasta extruder. She only sells the product locally - so you have to make a visit to the Bay area to get a taste. Absolutely worth it.

Needless to say, we enjoyed our trip and definitely enjoyed the Bay area. It’s filled with foodies that shared our same passion for artisan food.