Jimm suffers so you don't have to pt. 32

Saturday we went to the Fabulous Food Show at the IX Center. We got in free from Janine's employer (or The Cleveland Wine School- not sure which). For free, it was OK. If if had paid $25 bucks to get in, I would've punched someone's fucking jaw loose.

It was your basic maze-of-vendor-booths-type-thing. There were celebrity chefs there and now that chefs are all rock stars, most attendees were in line either for autographs or in the auditorium for the food shows (think: Otters in Pinniped Theatre at Sea World), leaving the vendor floor relatively open. I would've loved to have seen Alton Brown but FUCK THAT. I ain't waiting in line next to Bernie from Berea, running his lip for 45 minutes while we wait to get in. Ain't doin' it for the Gemini at Cedar Point. Ain't doin' it for Alton Brown.

Seriously: Is this pretentious bullshit or am I just a jerk?
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I did see Giada (Giardia?) de Laurentiis , whom I've never heard of before Saturday, walk through the crowd with security. Speaking of rock stars- just like musical entertainers, newscasting and other trite entertainment, women have no hope of getting anywhere in the celebrity chef business unless they could also do a Playboy spread (I'm a Julia Child man, myself). She's fairly attractive and has about a 15" waist. I'm sure she'll be rolling around with Nigella Lawson in the pages of Maxim in no time, smeared with a rich, sweet cassis sauce, no doubt (surprise below). The noise from the TV auditorium was like from a baseball stadium where a home run is hit every 45 seconds. RIDE THAT WAVE guys, there are worse things for people to be obsessed with. Well, now that everyone weighs a quarter of a metric ton- maybe this isn't the best time for all of America to fall in love with Haute Cuisine. In my opinion, this was a place that truly needed Richard Simmons running loose, if ever there was one.

I wrote the cassis sauce comment before doing the image search.
I SWEAR TO GOD!!

As usual, the wine area was full of young women (and very old women) dressed like sluts. But the best part was the huge section devoted to Giant Eagle . It was packed! Hundreds of idiots drove out to the freaking IX Center and paid twenty-five bucks to hang out at their local neighborhood (barely adequate, over-priced) grocery store!

I'm a dude, I like gadgets. I like kitchen gadgets and BBQ grilling gadgets. I was hoping to see some truly innovative stuff. But really, the place was full of people hawking little bags of shit and (what was the word Janine used? ...oh yes-) tacky tchotchkes. Like ("For Instance", for you literate types) a wine bottle holder that was actually a pirate head, "drinking" the bottle of wine . It wasn't even ceramic like Grandma used to make. It was some horrible resin compound surely painted by an 8-year old in China who works 16 hours a day.

You've got to be kidding me.

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I did pick up a Turkey Cannon cheap. It was the only thing new to me. I call it a Turkey Tailpipe. Janine is certain that before this invention people used to do this on Mustang exhaust systems. I can see a turkey on every tailpipe at a Nelson Ledges biker rally. It was provided by the Campchef peoples.

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Other places that were of interest to us:

The first conversation I had was with a fellow from Trevarrow, Inc. named Matt. This place is pretty cool- like the Viking store on MONEY. They sell Sub-Zero and Wolf Products. We had an enlightening conversation about range hoods, which I fear I may need as my entire kitchen has a 3mm coating of bacon grease. We used terminology such as " C.F.M." and "Joist" so I know the conversation was good. He even gave me a heads-up on tech websites like Fantech and Bestbybroan . Very cool, even if their show room is out in Brooke Park. And all of this is new to me. When I first heard about Sub-Zero appliances, I thought the -20 freezers we had at work were coming into vogue.

Calise Outdoor Kitchens -These people make pretty hideous outdoor patios for summer-lovin' yuppies. But I was intrigued by some of the island design concepts and their site is just lousy with pictures of attractive women in warm-weather clothing. What are we selling here? Who cares?

Kitsch*nGlam is a lot of fun. Anna Michelle Wang makes aprons that look like party dresses. She had a nice rack (heh heh) of aprons for $5 each. Further inspection shows that the main inventory is around $40 each, which, while alarming, I think is still cheaper than the ones at Anthropologie. On her website they are (deep breath) $61.60

We met a lovely Amish lady whose husband owns JMJ Alternative Heating out in Middlefield. They had a Quadra-Fire stove on display, which was just awesome. We want 2 wood-burning stoves for our house. I assumed we'd end up with a Soapstone. But Quadra-Fires are better looking. Plus, they use Advanced Combustion Technology ®, TM (how that differs from "Catalytic" burning, I don't know just yet). But I'm still learning about this stuff. I'm happy that they are so close to my home.

Natural Remi-Teas has good stuff. But they didn't seem like they could possibly want to talk to people any less. But hey, you want a giant bag of Star Anise or Hops? It was sittin' right there. I take the Natural Remedies thing with a grain of salt. I mean, I trust that nature does truly hold the cures for most of what ails us. But I do know all-natural Kumquat juice can be sold as Snake Oil. Also, I don't think we necessarily need to ingest more natural extracts to fight unnatural toxins as much as we need to just avoid the unnatural toxins.

Lastly, Leeners is very cool. They've taken the basic beer-making-at-home kit idea and expanded it to pretty much any food that is made with enzymes. I'm THERE. You can likely find links to all other vendors on the FFS website.

So that is all. Be glad you didn't have to go. Don't be sad that you missed Alton Brown either. It would have been a chore.

~Jimm