Adventures at a Food Blogging Conference – BlogHerFood Part 1

Time to wake back up after the food coma I got in Seattle!

In case you didn’t follow my numerous Twitter posts, I spent the weekend up in Seattle at the BlogHerFood conference (turns out being on Twitter 24/7 is a sign that you are part of the in-crowd at a blogger conference. Shocking, right?).

It was so much fun. I wasn’t really sure what to expect from a blogger conference when I first walked in as this was my first blogging event. Were people going to be friendly? Would I learn anything or would everything be over my head as a still semi-newbie blogger? Who would be attending? Would they all be professional bloggers who had been to plenty of these events before?

Well first and foremost, everyone was so friendly. And not even fake friendly, but really truly genuinely friendly, outgoing, nice people. I think it has something to do with the whole blogger mindset, like if you are willing to share personal details of your life to thousands of strangers via the internet, you’re probably willing to say hi to a fellow blogger in the same room. 

I made an awesome new friend, Janae while standing around at the registration booth, looking somewhat clueless.  She didn’t really know what was going on either so we buddied up.  She has a beautiful blog about family, fitness and (gluten-free and vegan) food.  Even if you are a grain and dairy eater, you should check it out at Bring-Joy.com (make sure you add the hyphen in there! 🙂 ).  She has been blogging for three years and has a great readership, so even if she says she’s also a newbie to blogging, she was a wealth of knowledge to me. Plus through playing with her own camera, she unintentionally convinced me to get a “real” camera – a DSLR. So when my tech-incompetence leads to not knowing how to use a fancy camera with tons of manual settings, I’m going to bug you with tons of questions, Janae 🙂 [Update: Still trying to convince my husband this is a good idea…]

Day 1 was filled with learning about food photography, getting a tutorial on blog details like HTML and Javascript and meeting lots and lots of fun people.  Just check out how many business cards I picked up?  So great!

Throughout the day, you could meander through the sponsor booths, which was surprisingly fun. Not to brag too much, but it was crazy how much swag they gave out. And good stuff too, like items from Bob’s Red Mill, Starbucks and Lundberg Brown Rice.

Chobani had an awesome set up where you could make your own Greek yogurt concoction in a mason jar.  Mine didn’t turn out pretty enough for a photo but it was delicious: plain 0% yogurt layered with fresh strawberries, granola, more yogurt, raspberries and then cocoa nibs.  Who would have ever thought to add cocoa nibs to yogurt?  Food bloggers, of course.  And it was awesome. Go to the store, pick up some chocolate pieces and try it. Seriously, weirdly good.

Janae and I ended Friday with dinner out in Capital Hill at a delicious Asian-inspired restaurant called Boom Noodle. For starters, we got salad rolls with a slightly too-spicy-for-Erin-but-good-for-normal-people chili lime dipping sauce and edamame puree served with sweet potato crisps and cucumbers. It was super good.  

 

For entrees, Janae got vegan pho with tofu and I got this delicious salad with mizuno greens (which are kind of like arugula), bell peppers and kabocha squash. It was really fresh and a healthy necessity after a day of splurging on sweets! 

Case in point, this was pretty much my lunch on Friday (not that I am complaining too much):

All in all, it was a wonderful first day of my first blogging experience. More on Day 2 plus an awesome giveaway to come later this week!