A Night with Ocean Spray at the Food & Wine Festival Inside Epcot

Since, It's almost time for the International Food and Wine Festival at Epcot, I thought I would take a stroll down the Cranberry Lane from last years festivities at the Bog.

Cranberry and Sea Salt Cured Wild Salmon

 I was very excited when I received an invite from Ocean Spray to be their guest and sample some cuisine and drinks featuring cranberries. This night would also be very exciting because, it included being able to get right into the cranberry bog located at Epcot, a little bit behind Spaceship Earth. You see I have always been a fan of the cranberry since I was little and saw them in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. It was the bright red color and wondering what makes them float like that? All questions were answered that night.

The Fall is a great time of year. Not only is it the right time to harvest the cranberries, but it is the start of the International Food and Wine Festival at Epcot, which I am a very big fan of too.  I love to include some of my favorite tastes and recipes on my blog and Ocean Spray's private cocktail party did not disappoint. As I entered into the private area for Ocean Spray guests, and I could sample the 4 Cranberry inspired cocktails.

 The Cranberry Bomber was my favorite

4 oz cranberry juice
1/2 oz orange juice
2 tbsp grenadine syrup
1 tsp honey
cola

Pour over ice and fill with cola. Stir and add honey.

This was just one of my favorites the other was of course the Cape Codder, blending Cranberry juice cocktail, Vodka and lemon juice all poured over ice.

Then we had some really great appetizers and they all looked so delicious it was hard to choose a favorite. If you look at the menu above, you can see they all sounded/looked scrumptious and I tried them all just to see how the cranberry flavor combined with the other foods. As I looked at the variety of uses for cranberries and thought this is truly a very versatile ingredient.


The two I loved the best and were surprising to me that the combinations worked were Cranberry Marinated Gold Beets and the Craisins Infused Five Spice Char Kobe Beef.

The Beets were blended with the right amount of cranberries giving them a sweet and crisp with a little tart undertone.
The Kobe Beef was marinated perfectly, very tender. The cranberry flavor gave a slightly tart taste that was also combined with the sweet smokey flavor of the corn. I couldn't get enough of either of these dishes.

After drinks and great appetizers we were invited to go into the bog. So now I have to put on the waders, which was amusing and funny to watch.


 
This is just Part 1 to my night with Ocean Spray at Food and Wine Festival, Next I get in the Cranberry Bog! That was so cool to do ;-)

 Some Cool Cranberry Facts 

 Info Courtesy of Ocean Spray @http://oceanspray.com/ 

And a really big thanks to them for having me..

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