M invited me over for dinner the other night, and how could I refuse. She always makes the bestest and fanciest meals! I wanted to bring her something, so I brought her some chestnuts. M had never made chestnuts before, so she quickly looked up some info online, and ended up roasting them in the oven. After scoring them, she drizzled some oil over them and then let them bake. To make sure they would get cooked all the way through, while they were cooking, we added some water to help them steam. They ended up great! While some of them were a pain in the butt to peel, they tasted delicious.

We started off with a citrus and beet salad. She also made the dressing. Who makes dressing?  Delicious, as usual.

For the main entree, we had seared scallops with a buerre blanc. The buerre blanc included shallots and fennel and white wine vinegar, so it was extremely tangy. The scallops were cooked really well, still somewhat rare on the inside, and the buerre blanc was perfect with them. We also had a side of parmesan polenta and wilted spinach. I have a weird attitude towards spinach. I love raw spinach in salads, but I’ve always disliked cooked spinach. That’s why I was so surprised to enjoy this wilted spinach. I wouldn’t necessarily want to eat this all the time, but it was good! See that, I’m still growing.

For dessert, F brought a beautiful little square layered cake. I don’t know what all the layers were, but the cake was incredibly rich and delicious. It was another great dinner with great friends. Thanks M!

I love any party that has shrimp cocktail, don’t you? I had the honor of attending another party by the ever gracious R, and this party had a theme. It was a holiday pollyanna, but the opposite of “healthy and clean”. I’ll let you all figure that out on your own. Shrimp cocktail. I could eat this all day. Grapes… and a lovely salad that A brought.
This bean dish was definitely the appetizer hit of the evening. A mix of pinto, black-eyeds, pimentos, white corn, onions, vinegar, sugar, etc… it was the perfect topping to the chips below. I could have eaten this whole thing. In fact, I probably did eat most of it. Sorry!

A variety of cheese and crackers, as usual, along with some other tapenade type stuff. Did I mention how many chips I ate?

This is where I always go wrong… I stuff my face with appetizers so that I’m already practically full when the main course comes around.  Here we have some roasted tomato and fennel soup (seriously, who makes this kind of stuff?) and a three meat lasagna. Both were excellent, as always with R’s gourmet cooking. He puts the rest of us to shame!

In keeping with the theme of this little party, E created a special dessert. Let’s just use our imaginations to figure out what this dessert is shaped like. It is banana wrapped in bacon (yes, this dessert had bacon in it!) with two scoops of ice cream. :-) And this whole thing was flambéed! Using cognac, we lit these puppies on fire to burn off the alcohol. The fire looks fake in this photo, but it is totally real! I saw it! I felt it! It was so fun! And even though the dessert sounds odd, it was delicious! Thanks for another great party!

The kind people at Foodbuzz (–> I am a featured publisher!) held the inaugural Foodbuzz Food Blogger Festival in san francisco this year. That was my other reason for going out there for this trip. On the first night, they had a street food fare at the Ferry Building. Street food… Ferry Building… put them together and it’s like a dream! There were tons of local vendors who let us grub on their fine grub. It was a nice variety as well, and everyone was super friendly. Even though we only ate little plates, I was beyond stuffed by the end of it. And yes, all this food was prepared on the site!
What’s a trip to sf without tacos? Beef, of course!
The food above is not only completely vegan, but also completely raw. Scary sounding, I know, but surprisingly tasty. The cheesecake was good, even though there was a slightly funny this isn’t real cheese taste. I still liked it!
The star of the evening… the porchetta sandwich from roli roti. What is it? Pork belly rolled into pork loin with crispy skin rotisseried the crack up, with fresh herbs, onion marmalade, and curly cress stuffed in between bread. Oh. My. Word. Yes, it is that delicious.
Delicious thin crust pizzas. Yes, the oven was there!
Freshly shucked oysters from Hog Island Oyster!
Mini meat pies! These ones were steak & gruyere. This was my second favorite of the evening!
Adorable little mini cupcakes of various flavors from Mission Minis. So cute and so tasty! You can even find these at whole foods in the sf area! Schmancy!
Freshly fried chicharrones. Ok, obviously, this wasn’t an event for the health conscious.
Ok, here’s one thing that was slightly healthy… vegetables! I had the beet salad which I loved. You heard it here people, I love beets! I love street food. I especially love it when it’s within one confined area so I don’t have to walk far between gourd stuffings.