200 Sammiches!

This weekend, Dan came into town. He was the first overnight guest we've had since getting the new couch. Yay! More comfortable for him.
Anyways, he was in town for a home and housewares tradeshow for his company, which manufacturers and sells footstools. It's a buyers only show, not for consumers, but since we helped set up the booth we not only got a nice dinner courtesy of Dan's company, but we also got passes to the convention. Corey and I had a blast. It was at the McCormick Center, which is HUGE. There was no way we'd get to see everything, so we stuck to the important parts, mainly the food items. Basically everyone is trying to get other companies to carry their products. In the beginning, as we walked up and down the isles, we tried to be nonchalant about the food samples they were handing out. I even tried to act like I was interested in purchasing for "my company." After checking out stuff for a couple of hours we got to watch the big demos with Alton Brown and then a little later, Mario Batali from the Food Network. If you're at all a fan of the Food Network, you'll know that Alton Brown is pretty entertaining. He teaches in a fun way, while cooking, sort of the Bill Nye of the food world. Needless to say, he was definitely the more entertaining one of the two.

After the demos we decided to go back and say goodbye to Dan, who was working at his booth. Well, we got distracted, because now it was around lunch time and there were even more samples given out. Screw being nonchalant this time. We walked up and down the aisles trying dips, spreads, candies, cookies, popcorn, beer, lemonade, even a grilled ham and cheese sammich. We didn't even bother pretending like we belong. "We're just here for the samples." This time was a lot less awkward trying the samples, since there were a lot more people there. It was like Wholefoods on steroids.

We even got a couple of give aways to take home. Corniest - the fake rose made out of feathers (I gave it to a little girl). Most Nostalgic - A crazy straw. Yummiest - A package of awesome Hawaiian beef jerky. Coolest life changing - a toaster bag. Ok, not life changing, but still cool. It's a little baggy made out of the same material as the McDonald's conveyer belts. You can put anything from a sammich, to pizza, bagels, tortillas...anything really in the bag and then put it in the toaster. This way all the crumbs fall in the bag, not your toaster. You can make a ham and cheese sammich in the toaster! Are you kidding me? That's awesome! We got 2 bags to take home, each with up to 100 uses. That's 200 sammiches!