Calcium water. One of the products that intrigued me at the Winter Fancy Foods Show was a natural mineral water called Contrex. I found it at my local Molly Stone's so decided to bring some home. Each bottle is about two servings, and each serving contains 11.5% of your daily value for calcium, and having 23% of your calcium for the day done with a no calorie drink seems like a great idea. Yes, it has a definite mineral taste, more like a heaviness of the water rather than anything.

It also hints that it will improve your shape, the bottle sporting a bikini in its promotional flyer. That wouldn't be a bad thing either.

Lovely Luvli. I tried a surprisingly tasty tomato juice at the Fancy Food Show called "Smashing Tomato". Since it comes out of a jar, my expectations weren't high, but it was quite fresh and vital tasting. Enough for me to try sometime when it's offered at retail on the West Coast. Luvli hails from Boston and is making its way west. Wish I had some right now, sounds like a healthy thing for a cold.

Are you a food adventurist? I picked up a free magazine at the Fancy Foods Show - Foodspring the magazine for the food adventurist. It is thin, nicely put together and has lots of fun food items to drool over. To get a free subscription, just go to www.foodspring.com/subscribe. There are a lot of high end things in it, but I also noticed a piece about 100% recycled aluminum from If You Care. Nice eye candy and some interesting recipes too.

Winter Fancy Foods Show SF: A biased report. How could it not be with 80,000 food products on display from 1,100 exhibiting companies and just a few short hours? So this is a taste of my experience of a few short hours wandering around and sampling. Fellow bay area bloggers' Becks & Posh and Bunrab have written about their experiences there as well. I didn't bring a camera as the materials stated only credentialed press could take photos. But I have a new flatbed scanner, and I picked up materials!

My favorite taste of the day was of White Truffle Cream from Italy, scanned image above. It was an amazing taste! It had a sharp earthiness that resembled garlic, but garlic is not one of the ingredients. It's basically pure cream and truffles. It would make a great flavoring for risotto, perhaps, as my chef friend suggested - one that included scallops and champagne. ohh - decadent! A gentleman from PanExotic is the local contact and this company will also sell this product as a retailer.


Then there was the kind young man from Lykovouno who taught me to be an olive oil connoisseur. And now I've tasted #4 of Food & Wine's 100 tastes to try in 2007, although I'm sure I've had Greek olive oil before.


I have to close with a fun one. Monkey Treats by Emma's Edibles. You eat the Monkey face, filled with real frozen fruit, and the stick underneath reveals a plastic replica of the monkey face you just ate. So fun for kids!

I intended to return this afternoon for more, but alas, I've come down with a cold and am not up to par. I tasted a lot more yesterday, but I'll save some of the goodies for future posts so as to not make this too long.