Foodbuzz Blogger Festival

So we spent last weekend in San Francisco attending the Foodbuzz Food Blogger Festival, 3 days of eating, drinking, meeting fellow food bloggers and eating. It was downright exhausting but definitely worth going. For those readers unfamiliar with foodbuzz or the festival, you can check out the info page here. We got there on Friday afternoon and after checking into a hotel a few blocks from our old apartment we headed into Union Square to catch the festival buses heading to Fort Mason for the first event, the Street Food Fare. This event was in a giant warehouse and consisted of some of the better street foods of the city along with a handful of other select vendors. We fell in love with Mission Minis and got to talk to the owner Brandon who's got some sort of show coming up that they were filming for. Yay for TV time! We're not sure it when it is airing, but it'll either be on the food network or that new cooking network and hopefully they'll use our interview in it. Check out the cupcake pictures after the brake and join us in a "Yum" for how crazy tasty they are, then hit the mission on your next trip to The City. It is here too that Eric, who does most of our photography got a huge dose of reality. While we've built ourselves a very consistent easy to adjust photostudio in the kitchen, shooting food in the wild is hard. Wildly bouncing and inconsistent light, crazy shadows and trying to get a good shot of the plate your holding without spilling your wine makes for generally lousy pictures. He actually spent a good deal of time ogling all the lenses strutting about the place. Charisse was a little nervous about heading out to meet all these random strangers but pretty soon realized that she actually knew quite a few people from Foodbuzz. It was great getting recognized when we did and meeting the people behind the blog. Because we made a decision to keep people out of the blog as much as possible, people didn't recognize us on sight the same way they might recognize someone like Chef Dennis (one of our favorite bloggers out there, and a heck of a decent guy). We had a handful of breakout sessions on Saturday morning (little workshops) and hit the Tasting Pavilion in the mid afternoon for more eating. Saturday night was the Gala Dinner, quite the splendid meal put on by Foodbuzz. We had a great time sitting with a group of bloggers from the East Coast as Eric had hit it off with Jeff of High/Low Food/Drink. Sunday was a farewell brunch and everyone was looking a little worse for wear. They had some of the best applewood bacon and we didn't think about taking a picture of any of the food until we were pretty much fed. So that was our weekend in a very very small nutshell, no cooking to be had, but lots of shwag, new friends and great memories. Thanks again Foodbuzz!

Potato Leek Gratin

Readers beware... you are about to hear about the ooey-est, gooey-est, cheesy-est potato dish of all times and don't say we didn't warn you because your going to be addicted! We first made this potato leek gratin for Christmas Eve dinner and we haven't stopped talking about it since. With summer fast approaching we wanted to make this hot comfort dish one last time, and we think the people who sunk their teeth into it were more than grateful. Sure this gratin's got it all...potatoes, cheese, cream...but the real key to the flavor and smell of the bubbly goodness are the leeks! Who knew how awesome leeks were?! We've seen them in some obscure part of the produce section at the grocery store in passing, but have never thought about what they might be like. Truth is...they're amazing! Crispy with a mild onion flavor, they give a great boost to the regular gratins of the past! Of course this is not a dish one would eat on a daily basis, but it is worth making some cold evening when the ultimate comfort is just what the doctor ordered.


Pictures and Recipe after the break

Our Kitchen

In our last post we talked about some of the great kitchen tools we used, today we’ve got a quick tour of our kitchen so far. I say so far, as the kitchen is in need of a major update and overhaul. As an aside, here’s a little background on the kitchen and house we have now. The house belonged to Charisse’s grandfather, Erv. Her dad Patrick grew up there before moving to Willow Glen a few miles away. Erv lived there for 57 years before moving into an in law unit Charisse’s parents built for him. We moved into the house and started renovating it, bit by bit. Its been about a year and we’ve finally gotten things somewhat settled. Now that doesn’t mean the house is done, but it is a long way from where it was when we moved in. Far enough along that were willing to post some pictures of it. Here's the Kitchen as it was when we moved in



This is where we have it now:

Some of the features we’ve focused on are the floors, pot rack dishwasher and refrigerator corner. When we moved in, a pot bellied stove had displaced the refrigerator (left), so that was project 1. No chef in their own house should have to get by without a dishwasher, though its too bad those weren’t standard in 1950, so I built that in, and a friend of ours helped build the cabinet. Lastly We got ourselves some new flooring for our first anniversary (aren’t we romantic?).
    After all that, we’ve hit a point where we’re basically happy with the way things are, a few more coats of paint and finishing touches (like a new stove) and we’ll be all set. Speaking of the stove, as you can see from this picture its at least a million years old. Butt that’s the benefit of cooking with gas, you don’t need to worry about any faulty coils or burnt out elements, as old as this stove is, it works just fine. One day we’ll get a new one, but until then, this will do.

 And that’s it, whenever you see something amazing here, you know where it was made!

Budget cooking, phenomenal results!

Welcome to Foodies @ Home, a blog brought to you by me Eric AKA The Written Geek  and my wife Charisse. As Foodies on a budget, we've spent a lot of time and effort finding ways to come up with amazing meals for not much money, which goes along way to explain why all of our friends like to make "reservations" at Ristorante de Petruno. We have so much fun cooking (and our friends have so much fun eating) we've decided to chronicle our foodie attempts here in a blog. Look for lots of pictures, tips, recipes and reviews of things we have or buy as well as ideas on how to shop local or where to look when you need something... interesting. I'll also be documenting my experiences learning to photograph food on my photoblog Thewrittengeek.