A certain credit card used to say something along the lines of "membership has its privileges" and I am finding that being a member of Food Bloggers of Canada does indeed. Last month (because of a members' only opportunity) I attended a demonstration at Nella Cucina by John Placko on behalf of USA Rice. Full disclosure: I am not a rice eater. If it is part of a restaurant meal, I will ask for more veggies instead because it is a lame attempt to control how many carbs I ingest. I will rethink this after the yummy food I had that evening.
As we arrived, we were treated to horchata, a rice/sesame crisp with hummus and puffed red rice with goat cheese.
I loved the horchata and may have had a second glass.
First John gave us some history of rice in the US (going on 300 years of growing in the US) and some overall rice facts. He then explained to us some aspects of molecular cuisine, as there would be some in a few of our dishes. We were divided into groups and spent 20 minutes at each of the stations (2 mains and a dessert). My group was lucky enough to have a professional food stylist, so though my pics are not great, they were styled!
Each station was great food. My group really got hands-on with dessert and watched the other chefs prepare the mains. I would have to say that the rice was a nice part of the dish, and tasty, but I still might go without. Except for the arancini balls. Love those! They have become my favourite appetizer (Table 17, Fabbrica) and in dessert fashion even better!
Thank you to Nella Cucina for hosting us, USA Rice and John Placko for the great food and demonstrations and Faye Clack Communications for organizing. A special thanks to Jessica who found my forgotten iPad and returned it to me.
Disclosure: I attended the #eatUSRice event as a guest of Faye Clack through FBC membership. All participants were given a gift bag of products. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Heather Chambers is a high school history and sometimes French teacher with a love of baking, especially cupcakes! She has been blogging at An Uptown Gal for almost two years now and previous blogged about her husband participating in Movember ("Living with a Mo"). She is an avid reader and brunch goer with interests in wine, tennis, hockey, soccer, technology and traveling, and recently took up curling. She is married with two dogs who occupy a lot of her time!
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Lovely. Wish I was there
Sounds like a great time was had by all!
🙂
V