San Francisco June 2011

Purpose of Visit: Visit 3 customers - 1 at a food vendor summit and 2 other customers. One will be talking about Halloween and Christmas the other will be Easter and Valentine's Day -can you see why I never know what the next holiday is?

Best Thing I Ate- Mama Chia drink I purchased at Whole Foods. Cherry Lime juice with whole Chia seeds in it. It is pretty good.

Favorite Purchase: Shoulder and Neck massage at Bliss Spa. Wow I totally needed that after all the crazy plane rides I have been on the last week.

Something to remember for my next visit: Remember the Mark Twain quote about summers in San Francisco and bring an umbrella and a jacket. I am soaking wet, freezing and the proud owner of another $5 umbrella.. Also, establish a budget before I leave. I have spent a boatload of money.

Creative Inspiration: The Ferry Building - from baking, gardening and beekeeping I was inspired by everything and can not wait to get home and work on some fun new projects.

Freak of the Day: Not so much freak of the day but heartbreak of the day - I hate seeing the homeless with their dogs.....breaks my heart. More for the dogs than the people....maybe that makes me freak of the day.

Books Read during this trip-
Rachel Ray Magazine- Not a huge Rachel Ray fan but I am now in love with this magazine.
Vaniety Fair - Great as always -my favorite travel magazine
Kipplingers Guide to Retirement - Boring but necessary
Live it, Love it, Earn it,- Not sure how much I like this one yet.

Special Note: I missed the Pride parade by about 40 minutes- I would have loved to see it. The streets were totally decked out this rainbow flags. A lot of the retail shops had changed out their displays to rainbow colors. Tons of people on the streets in rainbow clothing. I think they go all out here. I have been in NYC a couple of times for the parade and it never seemed like as big a deal as it does here.

Crab Dinner in San Francisco

While in San Francisco for the Fancy Food Show we went to dinner with our Northern California sales rep Barbara E. She is a source of fantastic food recommendations. This year was no exception she took us to a little out of the way place named Thanh Long. This place has the reputation for making the best roasted crab in the city. The reputation is well deserved.
It was delivered to our table soaked in butter and "secret seasonings"....by the end of the evening my fingers were dripping in butter.

BEFORE -

AFTER - check out all the butter left on the plate

I am predicting this will be in the top ten meals of my whole life......loved it!

Remember To Visit These Places

I have spent most of my work day on the internet looking at photos of old fashioned candy stores for a new little project I am working on. I found 3 very cool candy shops that I need to remember to visit.

San Francisco Area
The Candy Store

Miette Patisserie and Confiserie

I have been to the shop at the Ferry Building in San Francisco but I am now curious about the Candy shop. It looks like there are 2 additional locations one in the Hayes Valley and Marina areas. This is so on my list!

I think my favorite new candy store find might be this store in Seattle.

The Confectionery


This place looks like it would be so fun to visit and they have a great blog that shows all of their amazing packaging and cute products.

Favorite Finds From The Fancy Food Show

I love going to the Fancy Food Show and seeing all the new creative companies in the food industry. Here are a few of my favorites...top three are women owned by the way.......

Sables

Gourmet Cookie Dough

They package ready to slice and bake cookie dough in the same way as the pilsbury dough you buy at the local Walmart but the packaging is beautiful and the flavors are amazing Ginger Spiced Almond, Orange Pecan are just two of the six flavors they offer.

Caroline's Desserts

This company has taken the classic Rice Crispy Treat up a notch. They cover the rice crispy treats with toasted marshmallows, peppermint bark, caramel and coffee beans. I think the packaging is so elegant.

Butter

This is a company from Canada. They had a display of the most beautiful handcrafted marshmallows. The marshmallows were offered in vanilla, strawberry, mint, matcha tea, coffee, raspberry, coffee and toasted coconut. This company is run by a mother daughter duo and they really seem to have it all together. Their handouts, web site and retail store all looked beautifully put together.

Bee Raw Honey

I love this company!

They have all sorts of varietal honeys that they source from individual beekeepers around the country. The honey is made from raw, unfiltered honey from a single flower variety. It is offered in the following flavors- basswood, blueberry, buckwheat, cranberry, orange blossom, sage, sourwood, star thistle, sweet yellow clover and wild raspberry. It is amazing the wide range of flavors honey can have depending on the flower it comes from. I love that they are supporting small time beekeepers..

Fancy Food Show 2009 San Francisco

Here is the deal I love going to San Francisco just for the food.  So get ready for a post where I just ramble on about what I ate.

Friday

Friday night I met up with my cousin Shelly, who lives in SF and is totally in the know on all the hip, exciting places to eat in the city.  She has yet to disappoint. We had dinner at Farina in the Mission district.  It was a beautiful restaurant with fantastic light fixtures and beautiful white marble counter tops.  We sat in the bar and watched the pasta chef make fresh pasta and foccacia. My favorite thing I ate here was the antipasti. It is called Prosciutto Di San Daniele E Burrata Su Focaccina. Which was a slice of focaccia bread topped with burrata cheese and prosciutto.  What is Burrata cheese? I had no idea so I looked it up......I found out that burrata cheese is fresh mozzarella cheese with cream on the inside.  Yumm.  It was so good. I had some sort of ravioli with truffles. It was ok I guess I don't really remember it so well so it must not have been that great. Shelly had tortalinni with a pesto sauce made with walnuts.  I remember this dish because it was really good. I think I would get the pesto next time

We stopped by Tartine so I could get a couple of pastries for breakfast the next day. Then we walked up to the Bi-Rite Creamery. 

They make ice cream in small batches using organic milk and organic flavorings and fruits.  I had the salted caramel and roasted banana ice cream. Delicious. I spent most of the rest of the trip trying to figure out how to get back to this ice cream shop..taxi? bus? tram? who knows I will need to figure that out for the next trip.

Saturday

Lunch at Whole Foods. I love this place.  Why is there not one near my house?...I should think about moving.

My coworkers have arrived and they want to go to the Cheesecake Factory in Union Square.  I ordered my favorite avacado eggrolls and decide to step out of the comfort zone and get something I have never ordered.  I am not really sure why but I decide on the famous cheesecake factory meatloaf.......did not love it!  I should stick with the tried and true favs.  I tried the Lemoncello Cream Torte which might be my new favorite.

Sunday

Spent all day eating cheese, olives, cookies, candy and green olives at the Fancy Food Show.  Sunday evening one of our vendors took us to dinner.  We ate a Wolfgang Puck restaurant, postrio.  It was a fancy looking place. Our server was totally into his job.  as he was telling us about the menu he circled the table and waved his hands in the air as he described each dish saying things like  " we take a ravioli and deconstruct it" and "the pork lion and the potatoes represent the ying and the yang of the pork".......wow such passion for your job.  I had the bacon wrapped sea scallops the first time I have ever ordered scallops and I loved them.

This is a photo of my dessert...I can not remember what it was but I know it was great and had salted vanilla ice cream. It was sure good I wish I could remember what it was.....

This is the dessert my coworked ordered.  It was some sort of chocolate cake, toasted marshmallow cube, ice cream and a garnish of caramel popcorn.  

Monday

Buba Gump's at the warf. No comment. I hate chains. But the peeps I ate dinner with seemed to like it so whatever. 

 

Places to Go.....

I must remember to visit this cute store, Fiona's Sweetshoppe, when I am in San Francisco next.

Cool Letters in San Francisco

For years I have torn articles out of magazines and newspapers and put them in a folder marked "travel" and then never looked at them again. So my new plan is to put them on my blog. It will be so easy to pull up the San Francisco folder on my blog and get a list of all of the places I want to visit when I go to a new city.

So here is a place I have wanted to go to for awhile and I keep forgetting about it. Timeless Treasures. They have ton of antique letters that you can do fun things like this.....

Also, lots of fun vintage finds like these.....

Next time I am in San Francisco.....

I must, must, must visit this garden shop called Flora Grubb Gardens which is owned by a girl named Flora Grubb (yes Flora is her real name).

I looks like just the type of place I could totally spend the whole day exploring.