15th Annual Tomato Festival Delivers!!!

This year's tomato festival, my first, was a blast. As a foodie with the exacting eye of a former special operations soldier, I can be highly critical and miss few things. Saturday's display was, without a doubt, the finest event of that nature I've been to.

The list of food vendors was as great as was the food itself, the wines were delicious and flowed from multiple locations around the beautiful, grassy venue and the ambiance was one of quiet energy. The Carlos Herrera Band set the tone for the day with upbeat but mellow Spanish-inspired rock-and-roll, and former Top Chef contestants chopped up the competitor's stage with a happy, fun energy that was new to me, as cooking shows always strive to convey the gravity of the moment. All the while thirty-minute seminars on various wine topics educated the truly curious from the flanks of the venue.

The day started with a quick little wait in line as we were greeted by volunteers who ran the event, given wristbands, bamboo plates emblazoned with the Kendall Jackson logo, and the obligatory wineglass. (We also received 6 tickets each for wine tasting.) I particularly enjoyed three of KJ's wines: their Riesling, their Cabernet Sauvignon, and the steel-aged Chardonnay. 

As for the food, I got down on everything! From the tomato tartlet with tomato ice cream to rosemary french fries with heirloom tomato ketchup to gazpacho to sausages to cheeses and on and on and on... My favorite ended being a pulled pork taco, but almost everything was incredibly delicious. And then there was the tomato tasting tent!!! Four tables making a rectangle with a different type of tomato every foot or so!!! For myself, I restricting my tastings to only tomatoes that were yellow or deep red/purple. I wasn't disappointed. Asking which one was best is like asking which one of your guns you like best: its unanswerable, as you love them all!!!


Once I had sampled all I cared to, I grabbed a glass of Riesling and went over to the competitive cooking stage, where former Top Chef contestants Jenn (Jen?) and Kevin were getting down on a thirty-minute competition featuring tomatoes. The winner? The freakin' judges. And me, because I got to see it all, right there in living color. It was sooooooooooooooooo cool seeing two professionals putting together a three-course meal in thirty minutes, featuring tomatoes and pairing it all with one of the wines KJ was serving that day! And telling jokes and talking techniques and ingredients. Truly impressive.

I ended up getting to meet both chefs by the end of the day, and capped it all off with meeting Guy Fieri at Johnny Garlic's booth (where they were serving a smoked tri tip wrap).

It was a great time, and I'll be back next year.

Enjoying a Bier's Identity Crisis

It is the second week of a new semester and I'm all settled in to my class schedule for the fall, so to blow a little steam off, tonight I'm trying out a new beer--just one--that has been eyeballin' me from the shelf every time I walk into Pacific Market (where my brother, Benjamin, works) for several weeks now.

I don't know German, so I looked up the title on Google Translator and, according to them, translates to "Reported Noble and White." Hmm.... Interesting.

I am dubbing this beer "Identity Crisis," because it truly doesn't know what it wants to be, in a wonderfully tasty way!!!

The confusion begins when the bottle fails to define exactly what the bier is, only stating the history itself of the recipe. So, I began tasting with an open mind (and palate) and found that this bier combines two of my favorite bier characteristics: lightness of body and the flavor of a wheat bier=delicious!!! Another thing I really like about it is how mellow the flavors are. It isn't a mild flavor--the flavors themselves are still present and pronounced--it is just mellow.

All in all, loved it. I would pair it with something sweet, like a light salad of butter leaf lettuce with a citrus vinaigrette, or drink it as a session bier (if I can find at less than $4.50/bottle!!!).