So we just entered into October, fall is officially here and windows are starting to become filled with miniature graveyards, cob webs, and funny looking masks. Believe it or not, Halloween is just around the bend.
I think I still get just as excited as I did as a kid to create a clever costume and partake in all the silly antics that accompany the holiday, particularly the part about eating candy. That never gets old. I will say though that I’ve out grown the treats I used to parade around the neighborhood collecting and organizing at the end of the night. I was excited to see an article in the October issue of Bon
Appetit’ that gave upscale alternatives to the classics (snickers, twix, nestle crunch, reeses cup…).
For example, instead of a Crunch bar with mediocre chocolate and rice crispies they suggest
MarieBelle’s Croquette au Chocolat, a sophisticated bar with delicate, buttery European cookies enveloped in dark and milk chocolate. Umm…yes please!
You can check out the rest of the list at Bon Appetit.
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.
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.
Rob and I arrived in San Francisco yesterday morning to cool weather, cloudy skies, and of course more food than we could even begin to think about cramming into our bellies. And we were thrilled. This is actually my first visit to San Francisco (I know…how can I even call myself a foodie??) and I’m on a mission to find all the artisan food producers in the area for Foodzie.
Yesterday we stopped into Tartine, the famous bakery in San Fransisco’s Misson District with a constant stream of foodies drooling outside the door. Just about every food writer swoons over the creations that come out of the bakery, so we knew we had to try.
As soon as I walked in, I was lusting after a slice of coconut and passion fruit cake with Bavarian cream, but was turned down by the lady behind the counter. Apparently it was too late in the day to cut into a fresh cake. So instead, we shared a slice of their lemon meringue cake (below) and a heaping bowl of their brioche bread pudding with fresh berries. Both were good, but surprisingly not the exceptional quality that I expected.
Around the corner we stopped into a local market and I found shelves full of California treasures. Plenty of chocolate, cheese, crackers, coffee, honey, jam and a ton of great olive oil. One of the employees setup a tasting of the oils and I found a few favorites. Katz was light and grassy with a peppery finish. Balzana was smooth and buttery. Both fantastic.
Today and tomorrow we’re in Napa. Thanks to the recommendation of a fellow TechStar and foodie friend Susan Mernit - we hung out at Copia’s Edible Garden & Food Festival. We met some really great producers. There was an artisan coffee roaster that turned me (generally not a coffee-lover) into a believer. We have lots to share - check out the blog tomorrow for all the details.
Yesterday was a huge day for the entire Foodzie team. It was Demo Day, the culmination of a busy summer at TechStars building our business. Each company had the chance to show off the product they’ve built in a presentation to a group of 300+ that included investors and people from the tech community. Every team absolutely rocked it.
After we finished the presentation, we were able to share our idea with a ton of investors one-on-one and it was exciting to hear that people were really looking forward to using our product.
Yesterday was also the premiere of a fun TechStars “LibDub” video that shows off the TechStars office and all the great people we’ve had the opportunity to work closely with over the summer. A big thanks to Andrew Hyde for choreographing the video. Check it out!
Rob and I sat down with Rebecca Cole from Colorado Biz Magazine a little earlier in the summer and chatted a bit about Foodzie. I have to admit, I am definitely still a rookie at the whole video thing. I was supposed to keep my eyes glued to Rebecca, but you can tell I occasionally glanced at the camera. Oh well, hopefully I will figure it out one of these days.
We all love a good cup of tea here at the Foodzie homebase. In fact, it’s one of my favorite ways to wind down at the end of a long day. Which is why I am particularly excited about the 3rd producer we are introducing on Foodzie, Tetulia Teas.
In my opinion, the best teas are also usually the freshest. Fresh teas need less time to steep and are incredibly aromatic.
Tetulia teas come directly from their garden nestled against the Himalayas to the North and the Brahmaputra and Ganges Rivers to the South. Their teas range from an organic full bodied black tea to an organic light, delicate white tea. Most of their teas are available loose or in a tea bag.
The cool part is that they not only produce incredible organic teas, but they care about the farmers and the environment too!
The Tetulia Cooperative has established revolutionary education, health and cattle-lending programs for the people working in the garden and surrounding areas. All sales of Tetulia Teas contribute to this mission, helping to better the lives of Bangladeshi men, women & children while rebuilding the local ecosystem. Their tea bags are all biodegradable and the canister is compostable.
So check out their store and all their fabulous tea and support both Tetulia Teas and Foodzie!
Summer’s bounty is officially here and it’s been helping me to satisfy those cravings I have all year long for fresh tomatoes, sweet cherries and tender greens like chard and butter lettuce. But because I spent 18 years of my life growing up in Maryland, summertime also makes me crave something I can’t find in the land-locked state of Colorado and that’s a good ol’ pile of Old Bay covered, steamed…Maryland Blue Crabs.
In Maryland, steamed crabs are the delicacy of summer. Anyone with good taste can appreciate a true Maryland crab cake (mostly lump crab meat, little to no filler…that’s a debate for a different day), but it takes a true Marylander or what I’d call an “adventurous outsider” to enjoy the sport of pickin’ crabs.
The setup is simple. You start with a newspaper-wrapped picnic table and simply dump the steamed crabs in the center of the table. Of course you need mallets, cold beer, a roll of paper towels, a bowl of lemon water, clean hands (that are prepared to be covered in Old Bay), and lots of time. It takes a good 15-20 minutes to pick just one crab, I think with a net result of about 1 oz of crab meat (yes upon this realization, this is when most “outsiders” bail). So yes, it seems kind of crazy to pay a heck of a lot of money, to get a pile of crabs that you then have to pick yourself, for a relatively small amount of meat and of course the added bonus of crab shell battle wounds on your fingertips. But I love every minute of it.
If you’re a true Marylander like me that has now ended up in some other part of the country and long for tender lump crab meat and Old Bay on your fingers and lips here are a few places that will ship Maryland Crabs - fully steamed - across the country.
Food shows are a great way for us to discover new products and the NY Fancy Food Show is just about the king of all food shows. There are so many producers that attend and there is what seems to be endless rows of booths with a total of 180,000 products to taste. It usually takes about a week post-show to start feeling hungry again. It’s a tough job, I know.
Many of the producers that attend this show are much bigger than what we’re looking for because of the $10-15k producers have to fork over to attend. The little artisanal gems we find at these shows are usually the ones that have doubled up on the smallest booth space and lack any fancy, attention-grabbing signage. This year we didn’t attend because we are up to our ears just trying to get the Foodzie marketplace ready to launch. But that didn’t stop me from seeking out the best-of-the-best lists from some of the foodies that attended.
Tetulia teas come directly from their garden nestled against the Himalayas to the North and the Brahmaputra and Ganges Rivers to the South. Their teas range from an organic full bodied 
