The Winter Fancy Food Show is here in San Francisco through Tuesday, sprawling through the windowless, blue-carpeted acres of the Moscone Center. It's huge, filling both the North and South Halls on either side of Howard Street, over 2000 vendors on display, all here to make deals, talk shop, taste, schmooze, scope out the competition, see which way the market is moving. It's the biggest food-product show in the country, attracting all levels of the industry from big distributors with furry-suited mascots to small cheesemakers. The sleek Italians are here, promoting the wines of Sardinia, just a few aisles away from the guys touting a line of wine-bottle carriers and gift bags.

So what's on display? Everything. It's both cheering and depressing at once. Everyone seems to have the utmost faith in their product, a shiny white-teeth optimism that of course America needs bacon-flavored microwave popcorn that's also vegetarian and kosher, or applesauce in astronaut-style squeeze bags. Would you like to try a glass of water shipped from Siberia? Wouldn't you like to fancy up your dessert presentations with chocolate-truffle foam, now in a handy squirt can? Goji berries are good for you, you know. Here, you can eat them in cookies.

Everyone has a gimmick. These truffles are vegan and aligned with Indian ayurvedic practice, stamped with what could be the logo of a yoga studio and filled with coconut ginger-lemongrass ganache. These crunchy little cheese straws are made by real buttery-accented Southern ladies handing them out as if at a United Daughters of the Confederacy tea.

Tabletop wedding fountains spout ginger-haberno barbecue glaze as an entire Hyatt's worth of men in dark blue suits crunch spreadsheet numbers behind brightly lit cheese displays. Pisco sours are being poured in the Peruvian aisle (a good thing), Lincolnshire elderflower soda in the British one. All the chocolate is decadent, all the cakes indulgent but guilt-free. And everyone is still smiling, smiling, under the fluorescent lights, snapping up samples and trading shop talk about warehouses and brokers, reps and prices. All the packaging is bright, brighter, brightest. Hand-sanitizing stations are set up at the end of every few aisles, even as it's impossible to estimate how many fingers have dug into the big bowls of loose nuts on display at this table, or scooped into that oozing wedge of Brie. One uses a toothpick, looks for untouched edges or single-serving cups, and hopes for the best.

So what was worth trying? The new whole-milk ricotta at West Marin's Bellwether Farms, creamily rich and lusciously smooth, the product of months of experimentation by artisanal-dairy matriarch Cindy Callahan and her son Liam. Unlike their Jersey and sheep's-milk ricottas, made the traditional way from the leftover whey pressed out of their other cheeses, this ricotta starts with full-fat milk that's cultured, like yogurt, then left to coagulate and ripen.

The company's sheep herd is expanding, with lambing happening year-round now. This means more milk, which means the rest of the country will finally get the chance to breakfast on Bellwether's excellent sheep's-milk yogurt, as the company finally begins distribution beyond California. Callahan is upbeat; 2009 was a very good year for her sheep's-milk products. Down the road, she hopes, might be a Bellweather blue.

Representing the green hills of Vermont, the Grafton Village Cheese Company is looking back to the roots of its popular Cheddar. Tasty, wax-sealed blocks of easy-to-love New England cheddar made be Grafton's stock in trade, but right now they're most excited about their old English-style wheels of bandage-wrapped cheddar.

Raw milk from their two best farms goes straight from the milking parlors into the cheese-making rooms. Once the cheeses are formed and cloth-wrapped, they're sent over the Cellars at Jasper Hill, a custom aging facility built by the small-batch cheesemakers of Jasper Hill. The cloth wrapping lets the cheese breathe as it ages, collecting more flavor-inducing bacteria and developing an alluring bovine funk over 16 months in the caves. It's not quite up to the grand complexity of a great English cheddars like Montgomery, but it's closer than most. So far, the company is selling it by the wheel to a small number of cheese stores and high-end supermarkets.

Sauerkraut hasn't hit the scene yet, although it feels like a safe bet that it will by next year. Instead, there's the palate-cleansing, corpse-reviving blast of Mother-in-Law's Kimchi neatly balanced between crunch and bite, heat and ferment.

Putting her mother and aunt to work serving up samples is company founder Lauryn Chun, who got the idea after hauling jars of her mother's homemade kimchi home to New York City following every visit home. Friends devoured the spicy condiment and begged for more. Now, she sells her Mason jars of fermented cabbage in fancy New York gourmet shops like Dean & Deluca as well at Bay Area-based online retailer Foodzie. While Chun organizes kimchi-and-wine pairings in Manhattan, her mother stands by a more traditional approach. "Koreans eat it three times a day," she tells curious customers at her daughter's stand. "If we don't have kimchi, we can't eat."

Something to drink? There's lemon-ginger and berry-hibiscus kombucha, ready to retail at $3.50 a pop over at the Honest Tea booth. It tastes like kombucha does, like diluted cider vinegar with a hint of fruit. It will be rolling out nationally in March, and already the spokespeople at the booth can hear the happy hippie ka-ching at the registers of Whole Foods and elsewhere.

More alluring are the Edwardian English-summer drinks from Belvoir: a lightly herbal elderflower pressé the color of pale champagne, a vigorous, not-too-sweet ginger beer. Lovely on their own, they'd also make wonderful bases for summer cocktails, if San Francisco's bartenders ever look up from their current hot-and-heavy with absinthe and bitters. What could be more ladylike than a double-elderflower whammy with the ubiquitous St. Germain elderflower liqueur?

And then, of course, comes chocolate. Chocolate is everywhere. It's still decadent, still indulgent, saving the world through fair-trade sourcing, scouring out those annoying free radicals, filled with everything from red wine to lemongrass. The cream of the crop, though, is elegant Valrhona, still clad in French Vogue-editor matte black. But the doors to the chateau have been eased open slowly, as the company launches an expanded line of baking chocolates geared towards the serious home cook, along with more single-origin bars and bonbon assortments. A box of 52 squares, each a single bite, is divvied up between 4 levels of cocoa percentage (from a 33% milk to a 70% dark) and 4 places of origin. It's the size of a small jewelry box, and much more of a sure thing, especially for the ladies on your list.

Ginger continues its ascendancy, in both sweet and savory alike. But never better than in the teeth-sticking chewies of the Ginger People, who clearly know just what this sample-weary audience needs.

On one of the morning talk shows last week, a woman was discussing a New Years resolution to streamline her online life. She lamented how it’d taken over her "real life," and had calculated how many hours she wastes on twitter and facebook alone. I'm sure we've all felt similarly at one time or another, although maybe you're still guilty of whiling away an hour online on the office clock and spending more time catching up with your Google Reader than your significant other. So this week I thought I'd put together a post for you highlighting a few food MVP's--online sites (many of which are local) where each moment you spend drooling, ogling, and researching will be time well spent. I promise.

Eat

Food by mail. Certainly something people are warming up to, but there's still some hesitation. With thoughts of honey-baked ham and bad coffeecakes, not everyone's jumping on the wagon. But there are some great sites out there, hand-selecting unique, small-batch products that you can't find at your corner grocery store. From small sites stocking heirloom beans (love them), to big-box stores with overnight shipping--you can get pretty much whatever your recipe calls for online these days. But local rock-star site, Foodzie and innovative Marx stand out for their diverse products and way in which they foster community by supporting small artisan vendors, blogging about their experiences, and hosting contests and giveaways.

I can't say enough about Foodzie. First, they're based right here in San Francisco, they're supporting small businesses from all over the country, and every time I sign on I find something cool I'd never heard about. If you're not familiar with the concept, essentially they're an online space, allowing small-time (or bigger-time) vendors to set up a shop. Then buyers purchase directly from these passionate food producers and growers. I've found a few favorite new products like handmade peanut butter cups from the small baking company, a little bit of sweet, and Sunchowder's Emporia unique hand-crafted jams (wrapped in beautiful papers). Their blog has dining recommendations, interviews and recipes, and there's a great "Discover" map that highlights artisan foods made in and around the Bay Area.

Twitter: @foodzie

Before 2007, only high-end restaurateurs knew about Marx Foods as they were essentially a supplier of wholesale, boutique, high-end products. Today, their product line has expanded and is now available to home chefs who can search by categories or ingredients, season, organic/free range etc. Their mission is to find the finest and freshest products, stay on top of food trends, and connect the customer to the food source (by taking out the warehouse/middleman element). Their "Foodie FAQ" delves into such topics as the spiciness of ghost peppers and freezing live mussels. And they also have a blog where they feature contests and post relevant pieces like "How to Store Fresh Truffles" or great recipes (like this one for chile-coconut crusted shrimp).

Twitter: @marxfoods and check out their flickr stream

Read

I won't even touch on blogs or online food communities because we all have our favorites and really, that'd be an entirely different post. If you want to know what blogs I read and admire, here's my current link list. Moving away from blogs, there are a few sites that stand out in my mind for fresh local content and literary voice.

Life is good for Marcia Gagliardi these days. She's currently hitting up the food scene in India and has a book coming out this spring. While I rarely give out my email and subscribe to newsletters and the like, I look forward to every Tuesday afternoon when the "hopper" arrives in my in-box (online version available on her website). Marcia's voice is light-hearted and humorous. She's sometimes self-deprecating and never takes food too, too seriously. But she's definitely got the inside scoop on the San Francisco dining scene: restaurant closures, changes in ownership, great reviews, and upcoming events. Her rotating "Ten Places to Eat at Now" list contains a few of my very favorite spots, and she provides a great free service called "tip please" that allows you to enter a bit of information and receive a personalized restaurant recommendation (service temporarily on hold while Marcia travels). She's not paid by restaurants to write a review, she doesn't accept ads, and she doesn't believe in writing negative reviews. She's a genuine voice coming out of the San Francisco food scene.

Twitter: @tablehopper

With a tagline like: Read. Chew. Discuss, eGullet has got to be good. There are a few parts to the website. First, they have a popular forum, where folks post questions in topics ranging from the best canned tomato soups to where to get dinner in Morristown, New Jersey. But the reason I come to egullet is for The Daily Gullet, the literary journal of the eGullet Society. Here, food writers and editors post longer, more literary pieces such as "Why Jews Like Chinese Food" and "The Frying of Latke 49." They're not always recipe-driven like many food blog entries tend to be these days, and are always smartly written. In the online world of short snippets and photos, sometimes it's nice to curl up with the laptop and read an actual essay on food. You get that here.

Look

If you’re a food blogger or a fan of "food porn," you already know Tastespotting and Food Gawker well. If these sites are new to you, the idea is simple: anyone can submit a photo and, if you meet the fairly rigid criteria (focus, composition, exposure and lighting), your picture could be chosen and posted for all to see. For bloggers, it's a great way to drive site traffic because viewers can click on your photo and be routed over to your blog or website for the recipe. For everyone, it’s a fun way to spend a few minutes, seeing what people are cooking and posting, and getting visual inspiration for future forays into the kitchen. If you're looking for a particular recipe or dish, you can search by category, popularity, and date to weed through the tempting photos and find what you're after.

Twitter: @tastespotting, @foodgawker

I

I'll admit it. Some of the food blogs I admire and read the most are ones with exceptional photos--sure, people like to read about food, but people really like to look at food. And that, my friends, is where the genius of Foodspotting enters. Instead of reading restaurant reviews to determine where to find a spicy mole or an authentic macaron, you check out the pictures on your own and judge for yourself.

Foodspotting is a new site that's been getting quite a bit of buzz lately for it's relatively genius concept, user-generated content, and clean and use-to-use interface. It's a self-proclaimed "foodie-powered field guide." Essentially, the idea is that when it comes down to it, you don't always care what Michael Bauer said about your favorite restaurant and researching new spots can make eating a bit more scholarly than it needs to be. So not only do users post photos of their favorite dishes, but Foodspotting has built in an important social element to keep the site fresh, interesting--and even competitive. Here's the nitty gritty (in brief) on how it works. Check out their site if you'd like more detailed information.

• You see a picture and like it, you "Want" it. "Wants" are sightings you'd like to try.
• "Noms" are for foods you've tried and loved the best.
• Champions: people who have spotted food at more places than anyone else.
• Follow: a little like twitter, you can opt to follow places, dishes, and other Foodspotters you trust to stay in the know on the latest sightings.

I'm particularly excited about this site. It's social functionality makes sense--it's all geared towards helping you find dishes you want to try from all over, getting to know your local scene better, network with others who have similar food interests, and perhaps freshen up those camera skills. In terms of travel and restaurant recommendations, it's a new and entirely visual way to check out a city you're traveling to and discover what looks good there.

Twitter: @foodspotting

This past Friday, January 15th at 8 p.m., 7 x 7 magazine hosted what they're calling the Friday Flash Mob. They encouraged diners, chefs, wait staff, or anyone involved in a restaurant that evening to take a shot of what was going on. From the guys manning the line at Tacoliscious to Chris Cosentino enjoying a quiet moment, it's a look at the kitchens, chefs, and dishes that were happening at the same moment all over the city. I'm a sucker for this stuff. While it's obviously too late to submit a photo (unless you have one from Friday at 8 p.m.), the Flickr photo stream will be used to help build the magazine's popular February food issue.