China Retailers Visit Southern California Blueberry Farm

Ten Chinese grocery and online marketers visited USA blueberries on November 24 and saw one of the most unique and beautiful farms in the world!   Thanks to Bill Steed and his crew at Fairfield Farms in Pauma Valley, San Diego California for the wonderful tour and sharing of knowledge.   The visitors included some of the top grocery chains in China from Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai Chongqing and other major cities.   All are anxious for the opportunity to import fresh blueberries from the USA and this familiarization visit sponsored by the USDA Cochran Fellowship Program gave them a unique opportunity to see first hand!

Bill Steed shows group his
blueberry farm with solar electricity generation facility in background.

The Millie Award!

The Taipei Contest was held in honor of our long time Taiwan Representative Millie Hsia who was always known as "Blueberry Millie" by her peers.

Here is Millie's daughter Mandy who is carrying on the family blueberry tradition!

Blueberry Recipes Developed at Taipei Competition

Here are just a few of the great recipes developed at the Taipei Chef Competition:

Interesting dishes!

Above: Chefs look at their day's work!

Below: This one lost something in the translation!

Ingredient Seminar Taiwan

While Chef John Hui was in Taiwan, he cooperated with the USDA Agricultural Trade Office to conduct a seminar for local bakers.  It was a full house at the KaiPing Culinary School in Taipei and attendees learned how to make blueberry cheesecakes, health bars with dried blueberries.  He concluded the days event with an exciting pulled sugar art demo!

More from the Taipei Contest

Here is the team behind the scenes at the United Tastes of America Competition in Taipei!

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From Left to right:
Kathrine Lee, ATO office, Mandy Chen (USHBC-Taiwan), Sue-Sun Wong, Consultant to USHBC Taiwan, Mark Ford, ATO Taipei.

United Tastes of America Chef Challenge! Taipei Round!

The USDA-Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) in Asia are conducting the annual Chef Challenge.  The concept:  several of the regional Agricultural Trade Offices (ATO) in the region are in the process of hosting country culinary contests.   Teams from hotels and restaurants compete in a one day competition.  The winning team goes to the finals in Tokyo in the Spring.

This year, USHBC became sponsored sponsor of the Taiwan competition and participated in the event.   Frozen blueberries were part of the "black box" of ingredients used by the culinary teams.

Here are some photos from the event.



Chef Judges meet in advance of the competition.   On right is our very own Chef John Hui of the Lodge at Pebble Beach who is a big blueberry booster and friend of our industry!



Judges work with the chefs.