Twitter Tasting with @Fresh_and_Easy

We’d like to invite all wine enthusiasts, who are 21 years of age or older, to participate in our upcoming Twitter Tasting! We thought it’d be fun to kick off the Valentine’s Day celebrations by giving you a taste of our fresh&easy wines.

On Tuesday, February 9th at 7pm (PST), we’ll taste three exclusive fresh&easy wines that are perfect for whether you’re celebrating Valentine’s Day with that special someone or with friends. Karen Fletcher, our Fresh & Easy Wine Manager, will be your host and can give you the inside scoop on the uniqueness of our wines. She’s excited to get your feedback and happy to answer your questions.

To join:
1. Sign up at Taste Live using Twitter, Facebook or creating a new account on the top right corner
2. Let us know you’ll be joining us by RSVPing here
3. Pick up a bottle at your local Fresh & Easy store
4. Log in to Taste Live and tweet with us on February 9th at 7:00PM (PT)– Hashtag: #FandEWine

We will be tasting the following Fresh & Easy exclusive wines:

Montcadi Cava Rose – under $6

Boro Hills Sauvignon Blanc – under $11

Matuco Malbec 2007 - under $10

We’re thankful for good friends and good food

In an early celebration of the season of connecting with friends and family, last week the Fresh & Easy team traveled to Phoenix and Las Vegas to reconnect with some of our blogging friends, make some new ones and of course enjoy some great fresh&easy holiday food.



With Chef Cindy’s expert guidance, we all pitched in to help prepare a complete Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings, including some different takes on the classics – such as an easy, healthy and very tasty sweet-potato-spinach-salad.



(For the full recipe check out Noshtopia’s post)

Chef Cindy also wowed us with her simple tips to make fresh&easy readymade meals unique, such as the mashed potatoes, by adding your own spin to them. She incorporated garlic and parmesan cheese into her recipe and someone mentioned even adding bacon or chives to the potatoes. Not only is it simple and time saving, but because our fresh&easy prepared meals only use ingredients you can pronounce, the potatoes tasted just like homemade.



The no fuss fresh&easy dip trays and vegetable platters make a delicious and simple starter that will keep your dinner guests at bay and out of the kitchen until the turkey is done. And you won’t have to deal with prep or cleanup. As for the desserts and wines, well all I can say is they were a hit!



We had a great time with all of our lovely friends in Phoenix and Las Vegas. By the end there were full stomachs, empty glasses and lots of laughter.


For more pics of the event check out our Flickr page.

Very special thanks to our friends who joined us :
Loosing It in AZ
Noshtopia
Mom Memos
The Crepes of Wrath
Vivian Nelson Melle
Tim Swearingen
The Traveling Rose
Megan
Concoctions of a Wanna be Chef
Fresh & Easy Wine Review Blog
Chef Mona
Steve, Sam, Steve and Andy from UKLV.org
Carlo and Alex from Recession Recipes
Sparkle Power
The Deal Fanatic
Coupon Chic

From our team, to you – we wish you a happy Thanksgiving full of great food and great friends!

Cheers!
~SallieB

Wining & Dining with Chef Mike

Last Thursday night we had a great time cooking, eating, drinking and laughing (a lot) with a few blogger friends. Our own Chef Mike cooked for us and even taught us a thing or two about making great food.



LA bloggers gathered to taste our exclusive wines and try out the delicious, fast and easy meals that Chef Mike put together using all fresh&easy ingredients which never contain artificial colors, flavors or added trans fats and only use preservatives when absolutely necessary. The group even donned aprons to make homemade margarita pizzas and prepped the ingredients for apricot chicken tenders, salmon with peanut sauce and veggies, and beef fajitas.

Here are some pictures and a video of the event, the food and the fun. (Special thanks to Oakley for the permission to use some of her pictures.)


These easy Beef Fajitas were a hit and serve four for less than $5 each


Ana, Melissa and Silvia roll out dough for the pizzas


Cynthia, Amy, and Lee tweet and share some laughs


Handmade margarita pizzas made with love by Lupe, Annette, Bernadette and Marsha


Ready to cook in less than 10 minutes and serves 4 for less than $8



And who could forget dessert? A delectable sampling of fresh&easy banana cream pie, tiramisu cake, and gourmet chocolate cupcakes was definitely a hit!

For more pictures of the event, visit our Flickr page and the Flickr pages of bloggers Annette and Oakley. We hope everyone had as much fun as we did!

Award winning wine at Fresh & Easy

Last month, our Fresh & Easy exclusive wines won 29 awards from the Los Angeles International Wine & Spirits Competition and the San Francisco International Wine Competition. We have now won over 80 awards for our exclusive wines, which are blended with the help of Master of Wine Phil Reedman. (there are less than 300 Masters of Wine in the world)

Nearly 60 of the 170 wines offered at our stores are exclusive to Fresh & Easy – and most of our wine sells for less than $10 a bottle. We’ve worked hard to simplify the wine selection process for our customers by arranging them by varietal instead of region and by putting tasting notes, food pairing suggestions and storage tips on the back label of our exclusive wine bottles. We don’t think wine should be complicated for customers and we believe great wine doesn’t have to be expensive to be…well, great.

Even more good news for wine lovers: we are introducing 25 new wines this summer!

To show off some of our wines and meet a few neighbors, we had a party at the very hip Roosevelt Hotel in – right across the street from our Hollywood & Sycamore store. Chef Mike prepared the food and Karen, our wine and beer manager, picked the wines. It just shows you, you don’t have to spend a lot of money on food and wine to throw a great party!

Exclusive peek into the F&E wine tasting room

Every wonder how we select our award winning wines at Fresh & Easy?

Meet our wine buyer, Karen, and our master of wine, Phil. They have the lucky job of sorting through vintages, and working with wine makers from all over the world to bring fantastic quality wines at great prices to our shelves.

Here is a sneak peek into their tasting room, where Karen takes us through some of her favorite wines.



(You heard correctly -- new wines to be introduced on the shelves in April!)

Here is a list of our recent award winning wines.