Not to beat to death an already overused, though much-loved trope, but this is a liveblog FAIL.
Somehow, and awesomely, we were invited to a... liveblogging symposium? Blogger meet-up? Locavore dinner? I'm not sure how to categorize it. The event, organized by Vance Ely of the Cooking School at Central Market (the OG one, here in Austin), was planned around a 200-mile dinner, meaning that all ingredients were to come from within 200 miles of Austin. The invite list included paragons of Austin's foodblogging glitterati (cough) and the invite itself asked that we bring blogging materials - pens, computers, smartphones, what have you.
The Cooking School has a nice voyeuristic view of people engaging in their shopping.
Look at that sexy store.
We arrived earlyish and quickly met all sorts of people we'd only known through the shared Austin foodblogging experience. Over there, Crystal of poco-cocoa, and wait - is that Jodi from foodtouring? And James, of his eponymous blog? Over here, we have Jenna from great local rag, Edible Austin, Amy from the cool and new-to-me Go Tidbits, and we were FINALLY in the same room as Addie Broyles, the dynamo food writer for the Austin American-Statesman.
Not to mention representatives from Flat Creek and Alamosa Wineries, and the very cool author and agentperson Martha Hopkins. And that's just who we met! I'm wide-eyed with dorky wonder.
There we were, happily meeting and greeting and ruing the fact that we still don't have business cards, like how are we going to make ANY kind of impression in Japan without them, and then the meeting was called to order with salad.
A giant bowl of freshness was brought to us courtesy of New World's sprout salad which includes every freaking sprout under the sun, lots of fresh Boggy Creek Farm veg, Texas Sassy vinaigrette, and carrots from a farm somewhere nearby that is under deep cover because they *technically* aren't supposed to be selling vegetables. Mysteries...
While we nibbled at the mildly bitter leafiness, Chef Vance went into detail with us all about his tripartite mission: to get people to blog Central Market and its offerings, including the Cooking School; to introduce a bunch of solitary foodblogging dorks to each other; and to put us in touch with some of the delicious local foods and wines Central Texas has to offer.
We also had wine presentations from the Johnsons of Alamosa Wine Cellars, whose (shockingly) quite good wines we barely missed serving at our wedding because of a stupid freeze, and Flat Creek Estate's relatively new winemaker, Charlie Kidd. They're bottling five brand new white wines next week! Open to the public! Wanna go?
Moving right along, out came lovely plates piled high with homemade ravioli stuffed with local goat cheese and the last of the chives from Vance's backyard, served with Austin Slow Burn's pasta sauce that had been adulterated with venison procured in the wild by one of the night's chefs and bison from Thunderheart. The ravioli was coated in an egg wash and bread crumbs and baked, or, well, toasted. Nice party snack.
I had no idea, but apparently these guys are really popular in St. Louis, and Addie (a Missourian) seemed happy they were on the menu. I think. "So, you're from St. Louis?" she asked Vance, half jokingly and half accusitorily, like, why have you been holding out on me, fellow Midwesterner? No, it turns out he's not, but he did visit the bar where they were invented.
The ravioli itself was delicious, but I would have rather had it just with the sauce and not toasted. It dried out the delicious handmade pasta. So much work went into these little guys, and I was sad not to be absolutely in love. I should have stolen the leftovers for saucing at a later date.
After a little more chitchat about local foods and wines, including the fact that our local megagrocer's house salt is actually from the Texas gulf coast, a TON more food was put out. Beautifully layered savory eggplant parmesan,
garlic bread, al dente homemade eggy fettucine with Hairston Creek Farms' spinach pesto, spinach sauteed with new spring green garlic, and a decidedly odd chicken fricassee.
Here's where I started to feel really stupid that we'd lunched at 3:30, after getting home from a huge gym workout. Upside? I won't be hungry ever again.
We all clamored for labeling and information about where all these delicious ingredients were sourced, and Vance obligingly showed off a bunch of wrappers.
And as if all this free and delicious food and wine wasn't enough, the engaging Martha Hopkins, already my favorite thing to come out of Waco, hopped up and gave us all copies of her book, InterCourses: an aphrodisiac cookbook! Just in time for Valentine's Day. I'll have to tell you more about this later; for now, I'll just tell you that there's a great shot in it of thinly sliced salmon laid out fastidiously on a nekkid ass. And lots of recipes.
While she was talking, we were given dainty scoops of super-rich frozen meyer lemon and honey custard, and I exploded all over the table. This was intensely rich. Very good, but ouch!
And that was it. If there is a next time, which I hope there is, I'm definitely live-blogging. Vance had power strips set up and spotty internet coverage and everything (just like home- yay)! And perhaps, with liveblogging, this post would have been half the length. And not included any pictures.
How wonderful, meeting lots of people that also like to sit behind their computers bitching about restaurants, testing recipes, and traveleating! Thanks to the Central Market Cooking School and Vance Ely for giving us all this opportunity, and feeding us in trendily tasty locavore manner, as well. 
