Giada de Laurentiis Book Signing

This past Saturday, I got to meet Giada de Laurentiis at the Metro Cooking and Entertaining show in Washington DC at the Convention Center.

My husband and both kids were supposed to join me but my husband decided to go home at the last moment with my daughter because she was getting cranky and really needed a nap. It was a good thing too because this was definitely a grown up event. They had advertised a kid's area but it was really lame and I found myself soon wishing my son had gone home too.

He did do OK for most of it. He walked around, sampled a bunch of food and enjoyed a ridiculously expensive smoothie. After about an hour and a half of this we needed something else to do. So, I decided to get our book signing wristbands and wait for Giada. Amazingly, he occupied himself with a small book for the next 45 minutes. Then, Giada showed up and we only had a short (10-15 min) wait for our turn to meet her. However, by this time, my son had had it! He was tired of waiting and bored. He started really acting up....I was so close but now had an impeding melt down on my hands...damn!

When it was our turn, amazingly my son did a complete 360. He ran right up and started shouting "Giada! Giada!"...it was pretty funny and everyone in the room, Giada included, started laughing. She chatted with him a bit and as we were leaving my son turns to her and says "ciao bella!" (he learned that from our sitter who knows some Italian)...Giada quickly said "ciao bello" back. It was such a great little moment and for that reason alone, I was happy my son stayed with me for the show.

Here are some more pictures from our day.

Isn't she lovely...

Chatting it up with Giada.

Not the most flattering picture of us but we were all laughing at my son.

A view of the DC Convention Center. This was taken at 4:30PM and it had cleared out quite a bit.Earlier in the day it was packed!!
So, I think that is the end of my celebrity chef stalking opportunities for the time being. However, I would love to meet Ina and Emeril some day. How about you? What celeb chef would you like to meet?