Cleveland Rocks!

Hey! Well, I am slow to post these pics from my visit to Cleveland's Ripe! Food and Garden Festival over the weekend. I headed there Saturday evening so I'd be in town to judge the Healthy Food Fight with Aetna and it was a teeny bit chilly. Inspired by my Hot Choco Loco in the debut episode of the 8th season of Cooking for Real just that very morning, I settled in my hotel room and ordered a hot chocolate ... Ahem, as you can see in lieu of the 2 missing jalapenos, I subbed in two other ingredients :-).I was tired from the flight and this knocked me out! The next morning I headed to Cleveland's Botanical Gardens for the event and settled into a full day of small bites as I judged the competition. Here are some pics I took ...This is a salmon dish, I can't remember her name (Sunny note: it's Stephanie! she visited the blog in the comments section!), but I DO remember her sauce on the side with the chopped scallions. Mostly because after I ate the entire tasty plate, I asked if there was more of her vinaigrette back there some where. She replied yes and brought it out in a glass liquid measure, I took a spoon and went to town! Drank it all!! I don't feel too crazy because one of her relatives chimed in and admitted the whole family laughs at her for doing the same. Well, that's a crazy family! Anyone drinking that tangy, sweet goodness is smart! Thanks for letting me drink the rest! I don't know the tallies on the scores or anything so these are just the pictures I had time to take. Everything was so good!

Here's another contestant with a really moist and sweet apple cake that was a family treasure and she had the recipe card to prove it...That cake was so good we all kept asking, how is this healthy?! It must be, because at this stage of the competition the recipes have already passed a nutritional evaluation. I ate the whole piece and others were trying to figure out how to divvy up the rest of the cake.

Here's a picture of a really soft egg white omelet made by a fun contestant I traded some laughs with ...

The contest is not only judged on nutritional value, but for taste and presentation as well. So, the cool thing is some people really did their best to step it up in the plating and presentation department. Check out these pretty flowers for a gazpacho ... Pretty huh? And the gazpacho was the first of the competition so far, very smart! Actually, her presentation inspired me to get my paarty on ...Teeheehee ... I told everyone I was going to wear it in support of Aarti Party and they all smiled and said they liked her show and the flower! It fits her personality! Have you caught the show? My guy's mom says she LOVES it! There's a cool article she did in this month's Food Network Magazine that details the hours after she won and right through the taping of her first shows! Pretty cool read!

Ok, I'm headed to present an award tonight along with Anne Burrell at the 2nd Annual GLAAD Media Awards in Advertising! Happy to be invited and involved!