I Went to the International Home + Housewares Show in Chicago!

Last weekend, I was thrilled to be invited to attend the International Home + Housewares Show held at McCormick Place in Chicago. I drove down to Illinois on Saturday, spent the night at my friend Lisa’s house, then Sunday morning, we drove into Chicago for Day One of the show.

I have never seen anything like it, ever. It was over 700,000 square feet, over 2,000 exhibitors, and a total of 13 MILES of booths. My poor aching feet!   McCormick Place has three buildings, and each one featured a different type of product. There was the Wired + Well building, with electronics and home healthcare, Clean + Contain with cleaning and storage, and Dine + Design with tabletop and kitchen essentials.

There was also a cooking theater and cooking demos by chefs like Mario Batali, Todd English, Ellie Krieger, and Paula Deen. I happened to be near the area when Paula Deen was taking questions from the crowd, so I took some pictures:

Here’s Paula, you can see her husband in the background under the Kitchen Aid sign. The man on the left is John McLemore, he’s the CEO of Masterbuilt Mfg. and was at the show introducing Masterbuilt’s new Indoor Electric Turkey Fryer (it makes the juiciest turkey I’ve ever had!)-

Speaking of John McLemore, I have to tell you this funny story – when Lisa and I walked up to his booth, he had just pulled a turkey out of the fryer and was cutting the breast meat into little bites for people to sample. I took one, popped it in my mouth, and said something like “oh my gosh this is the best turkey I’ve ever had!”  Now, at the time, I didn’t realize John was the CEO of Masterbuilt, and I didn’t see the person behind him with the video camera. John is from the South, Georgia I think, and his catchphrase is “Dadgum, That’s Good!”. So he says to me, would I look right at the video camera and say “Dadgum, That’s Good!”. So, I do.

Then, Lisa and I walk around the booth some more, we’re looking at all the different turkey fryers (one uses no oil!), and John comes up to me again, asks me to look right at his camera, take another bite of turkey, and then say “Dadgum, That’s Good!” AGAIN. I really, really hope that it isn’t going to end up on some blooper reel at the Masterbuilt end of the year party or something 🙂  He was really very nice about it. How could I resist such charming manners and that great accent? 🙂

I saw so much at the Home Show that really, the only way to do it justice is to split it up into a few posts. I have so much I want you to see!