Rosemary Lavender Scones with Strawberry Earl Grey Jam

FoodBuzz and Electrolux tasked FoodBuzz's Featured Publishers with coming up for the perfect Tea Party Treat for our very own Virtual Tea Party hosted by Electrolux spokesperson Kelly Ripa.  Not only do I love tea parties and doing a proper Afternoon Tea, but this is also for an extremely good cause, raising money and awareness for Ovarian Cancer Research.  For every post that a Featured Publisher writes FoodBuzz will donate $50 to Ovarian Cancer Research.

You mean I get to make my favorite tea party food and raise money for Ovarian Cancer Research all at the same time?  And I get a chance to be featured in FoodBuzz's Top 9 on top of all of it?!  Sign me up!  You can take part too, even if you aren't on FoodBuzz or a Featured Publisher, for more info check out Kelly Confidential.

When I think of tea parties or Afternoon Tea I think of the first time I went to London, right after college.  I had spent some time traveling Europe with a friend and at the end met up my mother in London.  Needless to say after a few weeks of backpacking I was tired, dirty and kinda over it poor student travel.  So when I got to the posh hotel where Mom & I were staying all I wanted was tea and scones.  We had afternoon tea each of the 3 days we were in London, once at Harrods which was pretty fabulous. Now more than 10 years later, since I moved to Toronto I'm back on an afternoon tea kick and have gone to both the Windsor Arms & The King Edward Hotel, two of the nicest places in town for tea.  The Windsor Arms wins for their gorgeous and oh-so-girlie tea rooms and lovely eclectic teapots.  The King Eddie wins for their varied menu, mouth-wateringly delicious food and beautiful matching china.  Needless to say I have all kinds of inspiration for tea party treats.

A Fabulous Food Buzz Weekend Take #1

First off I'm so sorry for the delay of this write-up, catching up on real life after all of my travels of the past few months got the best of me. That being said I just had to share some of my experiences in San Francisco during the Food Buss First Annual Food Festival. I was fortunate enough to go to San Francisco for this event. Believe me when I say I was fortunate, not only did I get to visit this wonderful city and see my good friend Suz from You Can't Eat What but I got to spend the weekend with a bunch of other foodies eating and drinking twice our weight.

The weekend started on Friday evening, after registration and gift bag full of all kinds of swag, stay tuned for review of some of the products. We then went to the welcome cocktail party on the terrace at the Hotel Vitale, with a gorgeous view of the Bay Bridge and the Ferry Building. There were a few custom designed Sky Vodka cocktails, though I went straight for the bubbly. After some cocktails, Mac & Cheese with Bacon and meeting up with Jessica from A Fete for Food we headed on over to the Ferry Building for a fabulous Street Food Festival.

The Street Food Festival featured everything from delicious mini cupcakes (my fave was the horchata)
to deliciously rich and fresh organic vanilla ice cream,

to braised beef tacos, to delish cocktails. The favorite of the majority people of the night seemed to be the Porchetta Sandwiches and while they were great I was partial to the Kumamoto Oysters and The Pie Trucks Steak & Gruyere Pies.
I also had an awesome Basil Gimlet from the guys at Rye.

Filled to the brim and a bit jet lagged we decided to go to the Slanted Door in the Ferry Building for a cocktail I had a Ginger Limeade that was so perfectly balanced and exactly what I wanted. Of course me being me I completely knocked my own drink out of my hand, it hit the carpet and shattered! Big surprise to those who know me. The best and most surprising thing about it was that in 3 minutes flat the staff had cleaned the glass and gave me a brand new drink. Now I've drop alot of cocktails in my time and never once have I been brought a new one by the bar. Aside from how delicious the cocktails are, the Slanted Door is my new favorite spot, anywhere based on the graciousness of the staff. Did I mention that they use fresh and real cranberry juice too, not cocktail crap. That makes a real Cape Codder, deliciously ruby red and quite tasty according the Jessica who sampled one.

After a nice sleep, we were up and at it again on Saturday. First order of business was a trip to the Ferry Building Ferry Market. I'm a farmer's market junkie. This past summer the boy and I would take a different back road up north each weekend in order to discover a new hidden gem of a market. As much as we found some great markets, the Ferry Building Market put them all to shame.
From mounds of gorgeous multi-colored peppers to the St. Benoit freshly made Meyer Lemon yogurt, which I was too busy eating to photograph, to honey collected from hives strategically set up all over the region. The amount of delicious and farm fresh products was overwhelming especially considering in Toronto the Farmer's Market season has wound down.
This visit offered me my last fix before winter sets in. My one regret is that I wasn't staying somewhere with a kitchen to be able to by and use some of these fabulous products. The reality of having to pack anything I bought forced me to managed what I picked up, so I stuck to some posole, something I can't ever find in Toronto except at a specialty market, some honey collected from hives at the CIA in St. Helena and a jar of Strawberry & Ollalieberry Jam from Swanton Berry Farm.
The last thing for Saturday morning was getting to meet Pim from the Fabulous Chez Pim. I love her blog, her marmalade and jams and was very excited to meet here and have her sign my copy of her new book "The Foodie Handbook: The (Almost) Definitive Guide to Gastronomy." She was so lovely and gracious and completely encouraged me to use my love of jam making and start making marmalade this winter. I read the book on the flight home and it's great too. Stay tuned for a review in the coming weeks.

I'll end this first part of my write-up here. Stay tuned for more of Saturday's events from a Farm-to-Table discussion to the amazing Tasting Pavilion and Outstanding in the Field dinner. I am still smiling thinking about the weekend and can't wait to share more with you.

Enjoy!

Food Buzz Festival Day 1

Well as many of my other fellow bloggers here in lovely San Fran this weekend, I had every intention of posting day by day updates of the food I ate and the goings on. That would have been great had the oh so intelligent Ms Piccante Dolce not left the memory card reader and cable for her camera at home in Toronto!

So you get one pic:


The only photo I have is one taken with my phone of an oh so delicious Ginger Limeade cocktail from the Slanted Door in the Ferry Building. It's not great because it was taken with my blackberry, but let me tell you it was one fabulous cocktail. Even better because I dropped my first one and not only did the staff clean it up in a timely manner but they, without question, brought me a new one! It was awesome. The Slanted Door is a clumsy girl's savior, if you are a clumsy girl like me who managed to throw her cocktail no matter how sober she may be!

All in all it was great first day, I'll post about the food when I'm back in TO and able to post pictures. But it was a pleasure to meet some great FoodBuzz peeps (Ryan, Alexa & Dorian) and put face to Twitter Friends (@EatitTweetit).

Enjoy!