Meet Our sofi™ Gift Basket Winner

The foodspring.com team made a road trip to Washington, D.C., recently to set up an extensive tasting area of sofi™ award-winning products at The Metropolitan Cooking & Entertaining Show (MCES), a consumer event for food enthusiasts of all ages and skill levels. For $20, food lovers explored more than 250 exhibitors, saw live cooking demonstrations by nationally renowned chefs, like the Food Network stars Paula Deen and Giada De Laurentiis, and were able to participate in numerous cooking and entertaining workshops.

The foodspring booth drew a constant stream of visitors eager to taste some of the winning products of the annual sofi Awards, sponsored by the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade (NASFT). Until recently, this was only a chance that food professionals got at the trade-only Fancy Food Shows. At MCES, more than 1,800 guests tasted and voted for their favorite among these sofi winners and, as a bonus, each participant was entered in a raffle to win a gift basket of 40+ of these extraordinary products.

The lucky winner was Karen Fender from Stafford, Va.—who was surprised to win this delectable prize as the only other thing she’s ever won was a pair of wooden clogs while traveling through Amsterdam. Although she eats out at least two to three times a week, she admits, “I love to cook as well. I would say I’m more of a cook than eater, even though my body would think differently.”

The gift basket—filled with items like Alili Morocco’s Organic Argan Oil and Lucini Italia Co.’s Cucumber & Shallot Dressing—is going to come in handy in her kitchen. “I plan on using every single one of the products. I have more than 500 cookbooks, so I’m sure I will have a blast finding recipes to use them in,” she says.

Out of the 17 products in the tasting at the MCES show, Fender’s favorite items were O Olive Oil’s White Balsamic Vinegar, Dave's Gourmet’s Butternut Squash Pasta Sauce and Lacey’s Dark Chocolate Almond cookies, which was also the overall consumer favorite of the tasting.—Denise Shoukas