I’ve already told y’all how I just love all things food so when the opportunity was offered to possibly receive a media pass for the Metropolitan Cooking & Entertaining Show while was in Atlanta, I said “YES, PLEASE“!
Saturday morning, bright and early, I met my blogger friend Yoly from Cuponeando and off we went for fun and food!
There was so much to see, as you can tell by the list of workshops!
We first checked out the Asian Snack Attack presentation from the Chinese Southern Belle. We were given samples of assorted asian snacks to try as they were explained in detail from Natalie Keng. Such fun! My favorite had to be the ginger chew. I definitely could have used these back when I was pregnant with Jed since ginger helps with nausea. While carrying Jed I was blessed with morning all day sickness.
Next we moved on to checking out some of the booths. It was exciting to meet chefs and cookbook authors like Judith McLoughlin of the Ulster Kitchen who blends her Irish heritage with down home flavors of the south (http://www.theulsterkitchen.com/).
And speaking of the south, how much more southern can you get than writing a cookbook and creating biscuits and cookies using grits like Diane Pfeifer of http://www.gritsbits.com/. Personally I love grits, now I can love them even more blended into cookies! Sweet!
Another big draw for attending the show was to see some celebrity chef presentations.
I was there on Saturday, so I was able to see that the talented Giada De Laurentiis is as lovely in person as she is on TV. She is so petite! I couldn’t believe it! Absolutely adorable.
There were really cool items that I left dreaming about being able to purchase some day, like these Himalayan salt blocks and plates from Salt Rox.
You can serve or cook directly on the slab of salt (as shown below) by heating it on your preferred style of oven, grill or stove top. Very cool!
I also found some truly unique food items I have never seen anywhere else before too. At one booth I was completely intrigued by their offering samples of Crawfish Jelly. Yes, you heard me correctly.
Crawfish jelly.
This item and their creators, as well as some others (ie: Slatherin’ Sauce) are too awesome to not go into more detail. Helloooooo…recipes anyone? So you’ll have to stay tuned for the future posts spotlighting some more cool items I found at the show.
If you are on Twitter you can also check out the past tweet stream using the hashtag #MetroCookingATL. There are lots of fun tweets and pics shared from the event.
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Disclosure: I did receive free entry to the show with a media pass, and I want to send a BIG thank you to Piera over at her blog Jolly Mom for passing my information along to her PR contact. 🙂
It was a wonderful time and I hope to go again next year!
I was there later that afternoon to see Paula Deen. She was absolutely hilarious. I think I wet my pants laughing so hard. It was a great event.