My, oh my... what a way to spend a Sunday. Truly, in the company of greatness -- great people, great food, great wine, great everything. Even great weather, as luck would have it.
Yes, I'm speaking of the SF Food Bloggers Picnic, the first of what I hope will be a semi-regular gathering -- personally, I'm already thinking about hosting a holiday party (or perhaps a post-holiday-decompression party) for all my lovely peers. Any takers?
With four other fabulous bloggers (Dr. Biggles, Amy, Sam & Jen) and the Biggles' family's hospitality (and smoker), we rounded up a crew of some 40 guests. Each guest was charged with bringing something to share, while Biggles manned the smoker & grill.
From an informal tasting of bacon (Biggles will fill in the blanks, I'm sure)...
to an Absinthe demonstration...
and a gaggle of homemade andouille (courtesy of Haddock)...
...this was a day I will surely remember for many moons.
Five Pints (whose name I've seen but whose blog I had never visited) made a Kabocha dish with squash about as local as it comes -- from his very own garden.
Sam, of course, in keeping with her Eat Local challenge, oven-roasted some delish Early Girl tomatoes and paired them with purslane and sorrel. Her gougeres were equally delicious, and not too salty in the least.
Biggles, of course, graced us with only the very best from the smoker and grill -- Heritage Farms beef, Fatted Calf Porchetta (which, ohmigod, let me tell you is the best pork roast in the world), smoked free range chickens... Well, here, take a look for yourself at the fruits of his labor:
Of course, I haven't said a WORD about the desserts. Shuna made two gorgeous pies with the best. crust. ever. Both loaded with plums and berries, and fragrant with rose geranium. Kim G, who contributes to Bay Area Bites, brought a galette of rhubarb. The Bunrabs (charming couple!) contributed heavenly chocolate macarons, which were my utter downfall -- I ate far, far more than my fair share of those.
Fortunately, Steve from Blue Bottle Coffee was on-hand to brew perfect cups of joe to help aid in the digestion of all these gustatory pleasures.
I finally got to meet some of the bloggers whose work I enjoy so much, including Elise (who so generously shared her apple butter with each of the co-hosts), Joy (and Jon, who shared tales of the Googleteria), Catherine and Mr. Food Musings (who, I'm sure gets told daily that he looks like Vincent D'onofrio) and CookieCrumb and her other half.
There are SO many other people whom I haven't mentioned. Please forgive me. I utterly enjoyed all of your company, and could never do yesterday proper justice. It's the kind of day that you can't properly explain to anyone, except to say, simply, that is was PERFECT.
Tomorrow, I shall post the Kashk-e Bademjaan recipe that several of you asked for, and which was my contribution to the picnic.