Oh, how I love the South. The people and the stories that come with the food is what I am really in love with.

Jennifer Cole, editor at Southern Living, said it best during her opening speech at FoodBlogSouth: “Southern food has a soul and a story.”

FoodBlogSouth was my very first blogging conference when I attended last January. I had such a great time and met so many wonderful people, I knew I had to go again this year.

So back to Birmingham I went, this time to Old Car Heaven – one very cool event facility.

What other event space includes old cars?

Instead of trying to summarize the conference – I barely has the chance to pull my camera out! I was having too much fun chatting with fellow bloggers and event sponsors (Quick shout-out to our Atlanta favorite: High Road Craft. Everyone, and I mean everyone was gushing about the ice cream at the conference)

Here are a few takeaways from FoodBlogSouth (I learned so much, I hope this helps/inspires/intrigues you too)

On Recipe Development:
- Be consistent with the style of your recipes.
- Use an encouraging and approachable voice. But also be authoritative and an expert.
- Use titles that are straightforward and practical for SEO purposes
- We were crazy lucky to learn from an accomplished chef & author.

On Monetizing Your Blog:
- Focus on your passion and eliminate the noise. What are your goals as a blogger?
- Produce quality content with clear & concise writing, photos and video.
- Build brand awareness and traffic by posting frequently (3 to 5 times/week)

On Marketing Your Brand:
- Brand = Value + Perception
- A brand is a promise.
- A tagline is as much for you as it is for your customers/readers. It will help you stay focused.

Additional Thoughts:
- The most talented people are also the friendliest and most humble.
- FoodBlogSouth consistently has some of the best conference food I’ve ever had, hands down.
- If giving presentations that include video, don’t rely on streaming from the internet. The internet will let you down 99% of the time.
- Vibram five finger shoes make for great ice breakers.

The Field of Greens Festival is one of my very favorite festivals in the Atlanta area. It is a festival that celebrates local food, and it takes place at Whippoorwill Hollow Farm out in Covington, Georgia.

What better way to celebrate local food, than at a local, organic farm?

Of course, you would find me snapping photo after photo of the animals at the farm.

This sheep was my favorite. She was such a sweetheart, while the others ran away from people at the fence, this little lady came right up and started licking our hands.

And of course, knowing us… we then found our way over to the kids area and milked a goat. Since we don’t have kids, I felt that we were allowed to play instead.

Aside from the animals, the farm grows some amazingly beautiful produce.

The highlight of the festival: The Chef’s Tent. Where some of the top restaurants in Atlanta came together under one big, white tent and created some amazing tastings from local produce.

This was the most memorable dish for me: Huitlacoche Quesadilla by Taqueria del Sol.

Huitlacoche, also known as Corn Smut, is a fungus that grows on corn. Only one farm in Georgia sells huitlacoche. The lady who grows it wasn’t even trying to grow huitlacoche, it just happened.

And this stuff… it tastes very similar to truffles. And… it’s expensive. Three ears of it costs about $15. You learn something new everyday.

There were very few vegetarian/pescetarian options (as expected), so I spent most of the time pushing my way through the throngs of people and snapping photos when I got the chance.

It’s just so great to get away and be outside for a few hours on the weekend. I’m already looking forward to next year’s Field of Greens festival!

I usually don’t get to celebrate my birthday… in the sense that in recent years my birthday has usually consisted of dinner out with the husband and his parents.

When my dear friend, Patricia decided to put together a collaborative birthday shindig for all of her fellow Leo friends, I was ecstatic. Because Patricia knows how to throw a party, and this one may have been one of the best.

The location at Guy T Gunter Appliances was gorgeous, and that may be an understatement. It was the perfect place to host a party for a big group of foodies, complete with a kitchen stadium. Iron Chef demo, anyone?

So what kind of food blogger would I be if I didn’t agree to do a demo at the birthday shindig. Besides, I thought “hey, what better way to do my first demo than to cook for 50 people.” Go big or go home, right people?

We decided on sticky rice with mango. Which was pretty perfect. It’s a very simple recipe that seems fancy, and it just so happens that mangoes are my favorite fruit.

I will go ahead and apologize for the lack of and scatterbrained nature of these photos. I’m kicking myself for not getting a great shot of the space that we were in, more glamorous shots of all the incredible food and photos with new and old friends at the event.

Doing my first demo had clearly turned me into a big ball of nervousness.

Thank goodness Paul was there to lend a helping hand. Note to self: Make him help out more with the cooking at home.

Once I got over my obsession with trying to perfectly style about 50 of these little cups of mango sticky rice, production of them went fairly quickly. A few people asked if I was a professional chef. I’m guess I didn’t look as clueless and nervous as I was feeling – ha!

Recipe for the sticky rice with mango can be found here. Slight changes to the garnish: Instead of garnishing with mint leaves, toast some black sesame seeds and sprinkle on top.

Professional guest chefs working away in the kitchen. I was preoccupied with stuffing my face full of delicious food and wine, but took a break to catch a quick shot of the steam in action in the kitchen area.

Chef Joe Truex gave us a preview taste of a new menu item for Watershed, Shrimp Ragu with Benton’s Bacon. If this is any indication of what the menu will be like at the new Watershed location later this year, I’ll be the first in line.

Look at that shrimp, pulled less than 48 hours ago out of the Gulf, driven up to Atlanta from Mississippi and served in this amazing dish.

That being said, I had the pleasure of meeting Alan and Thomas, owners of new Atlanta company, Sea Candy, they will be sourcing and providing the freshest of fresh quality seafood from the Gulf of Mexico to restaurants in Atlanta.

Patricia didn’t forget about entertainment for this birthday celebration. Joel from Lethal Rhythms was on hand providing music for the evening, best DJ in Atlanta and maybe the region. I would know, he was the DJ at our wedding two years ago.

Here he is with fabulous Suchita Vadlamani.

Aside from the fabulous food, beautiful location and awesome music it was great seeing friends again: Jay, Patti (check out Patti’s writeup on the event, she got shots of the beautiful space), Brandon, Shyni, Cara and I’m sure more that I can’t quite remember due to the five glasses of wine that I had that night.

What an absolutely incredible event! You’ve outdone yourself again, Patricia!

Grits, pie and lots of incredible foodies: a few things that made up FoodBlogSouth – a Southern food blogging conference in Birmingham, Alabama.

I made the decision not to head to Birmingham on Friday afternoon, mostly due to a busy day of work on Friday, procrastination and some laziness.  Which meant that I needed to pry myself out of bed at 4:45am on Saturday morning, make myself look presentable, hop in the car and make the 3 hour drive to Birmingham. The drive itself actually turned out to be not that bad… just me, my latte and my Glee soundtrack.

Thanks to my paranoia of getting stuck in Atlanta traffic (even before sunrise on a Saturday morning), I left the house at 5:30am and arrived at historic Woodrow Hall at 7:32am, just in time for the beginning of registration. And to my surprise and delight, I won a door prize thanks to my Atlanta-traffic-paranoia (it went to the person who checked in first at registration in the morning). A beautiful cast iron skillet, isn’t she a beauty?

FoodBlogSouth was filled to the brim with wonderful sessions, fantastic speakers and great information.  The sessions included Marketing Your Blog, Social Media, Recipe Development, Blog to Book, Blogging for Business and Food Styling & Photography – pretty awesome stuff.

Christy Jordan of Southern Plate offered up some practical tips for marketing your blog. Christy was such a genuine, lovely person.  Adore her!  And I learned some recipe developing and testing techniques from Alison Lewis of Ingredients, Inc. and Virginia Willis. Who knew it that so much went into developing and writing every recipe?  Even something as simple as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!

The session right before our lunch break was about “Southern Seafood after the Oil Spill.” I was very excited to hear what the panelists had to say about this topic, especially since this was something that I felt very strongly about (it’s the scuba diver/marine life lover in me).  A few interesting tidbits that I took away from the session:

- The species most affected by the spill were mollusks, oysters and shrimp.
- Much of the oil was cleaned up and bacteria in the gulf are processing the oil remaining in the gulf and turning it into natural waste, so seafood is safe
- In the Exxon oil spill, this type of bacteria didn’t exist in the cold climate.
- Exxon oil spill was refined oil. The BP oil was raw.

(Note: I’ll be writing more about this topic. My interest was (re)piqued during this session and I’m going to do some research with my friends at the Georgia Aquarium)

Lunch was a grits bar by Dyon’s Low Country. It was delicious! Thank you for having a vegetarian grits topping option!

Wade Kwon did a great session about Blogging for your Business.

Aside from that addictive cat video that he showed during the session (to make a point about making your blog posts more interesting than distractingly adorable animal videos), the thing that really stuck with me was the fact that many people are intimidated of going to a restaurant that they are not familiar with. My husband and I are the type of people who love trying new places, so it’s hard for us to imagine being weary of new restaurants.

The last break out session of the day was Food Styling & Photography with Jennifer Davick and Marian Cooper Cairns.  This was the session that I was looking forward to all day.  As a hoping-to-become-professional food photographer, it was a dream come true to learn from these ladies.  They went through a demo of an entire food photo shoot; it was really great to watch them in action.  Marian gave great tips for styling food, the details and thought process.  And Jennifer talked about seeing light and using different tools to manipulate that light.

What a great conference and gathering of foodies.  I loved being there, meeting people and just soaking it all in.  I came home both overwhelmed and inspired!  And, I can’t wait till next year!

Finished my first half marathon: the Atlanta Half Marathon on Thanksgiving Morning. The fact that I actually accomplished this goal still hasn’t quite sunk in yet. The pain and soreness in my legs is finally starting to fade, and fleeting thoughts of when to go on my next training run are starting to re-enter my mind.

Yet, I still can’t quite believe that I actually finished the entire 13.1 mile race. My time wasn’t quite what I was hoping for (sub 2:45 – I ended up finishing in 3:13), but my goal for this race was simply to finish. So, goal accomplished!

The thing about running is that when you’re doing a long run, it’s just you, the road and your thoughts.

What I learning during my first half marathon:
1. Be prepared
I trained for the race, oh I trained. But I didn’t train hard enough. My longest run was a 9 miler. And since I’m not naturally a runner, my longest runs should have been closer to 12 miles. I was hoping that during race day I would just be able to tell myself “just keep running, just keep running.” It didn’t work out so well.

2. A reason to the madness
Running is not my idea of fun. Running is a very revealing sport. It’s only you, the road and your thoughts. When things start getting tough, sometimes your mind will start making you doubt yourself and your abilities. It helps to have a greater reason to be running, whether it is a personal goal, health reasons, charity, etc.

3. Do not do anything on or near race day that is not the norm.
I made an apple pie the day before my half marathon. If you’ve ever made an apple pie, you know how labor intensive it is. I’m referring to the peeling and cutting of the apples. I ended up standing in the kitchen for about 2 hours putting together that blasted pie. My feet hurt like hell afterwards.

4. Check the weather
The weather on race day was very warm for this time of year. I was so glad that I ended up wearing a t-shirt and shorts, instead of a long sleeve and running tights. I like to stay on the cooler side when running, so my worst nightmare would be to have dressed too warmly for a race. Even if you’re feeling pretty chilly at the beginning of the race, remember that you will warm up about a mile into the run.

5. Get ready to eat your weight in food afterwards.
Okay, not really. But I was very thankful that my first race was on Thanksgiving.
My husband, Paul, was sweet enough to bring his bike along to the race so that he could ride along, take photos and cheer me on. I’m so grateful for him.

We dropped by the Brook Run Dog Festival this afternoon to visit our dear friends, Yesenia and John, of Doggy Baby.

My Aubie taking a water break at the Doggy Baby booth.

Yesenia’s pup Snoopy!

This was our first visit to the Brook Run Park in Dunwoody.  The dog park there is amazing… it’s a fenced in wooded area, so there’s plenty of shade from the sun even in the middle of the day.

The only drawback is that there is only one big, huge area for the dogs to play in, so there’s no small-dog area.  But, that didn’t bother us since we have one pup that’s 40lbs and one that’s 70 lbs.  We love our big(ger) dogs *grin*

I love going to dog parks, you can always see a lovely mix of different types of dogs.  I have a special place in my heart for mutts, they’re always my favorite.

Therapy dog getting a drink of water at the Doggy Baby booth.

Love this dog’s eyes.

Although we live 45 minutes outside the middle of Atlanta, it took us over an hour to drive out to Whippoorwill Hollow Farm for the Field of Greens festival.  It was a long drive, but it was well worth it.

When I heard about this sustainable farming fair, I thought to myself: Organic farming, farm animals, restaurant tastings and King of Pops? Hell yeah, I’m in!

Some of the sheep and goats that live at the farm:

Thanking the little goats for their milk… that makes the delicious goat cheese that I adore so much.

View of the vendors that were set up at the Field of Greens festival.  I absolutely love seeing and visiting with the  businesses that care so much about organic food and sustainable living.

Beautiful spread of donuts!  Paul got a blueberry scone that was super yummy.

The restaurant tent was filled to the brim with some of the top restaurants in Atlanta.  The tent didn’t open till Noon, so when we walked by when we first arrived at the festival at 11:30am, the smells were so ridiculously deliciously overwhelming… my tummy started hurting from wanting to eat everything inside (skipped breakfast, so I was starving!).

We scurried inside as soon as they opened the tent to visitors, and made our way to about a third of the restaurants before the crowd really got there.  Man, that tent was super crowded when we left, and I don’t blame those people for wanting to get in… just look at some of the food that was being served.

Tuna spring rollDeviled eggs

Bruschetta with Wild Squash

Pan-seared Scallop on top of Vegetables

Pork Lollipops with Watermelon Radish and more delish bruschettas.

That was only a percentage of all the delicious food that all the restaurants were serving… some of the food was eaten too quickly to photograph   We can’t wait for next year!  All these awesome food is well worth the long drive out here.