The Nifty Foodie

Tomorrow, I’ll be on a plane en route to Orlando, Florida for my first Food Blog Forum. Last year, I stalked Twitter and Instagram the whole weekend of the conference, and it sounded like everyone had a fantastic time. You really can’t go wrong with food bloggers and Disney. After reading blog recaps last year, I just knew that I had to go to the one this year. I was so happy to see the dates, because there were no conflicts. You see, this weekend is sandwiched between my husband’s birthday and our wedding anniversary. It was the perfect date to go without feeling insanely guilty for missing a personal holiday.

I’m sort of obsessed with all things Disney. There’s videos of me from a family trip when I was 3 years old at Disney World. I could see that while I was petrified of the characters (my reaction was OMG…Mickey is HUGE?! WAHHH!!), while at the parades and on the rides, I was beaming. Absolutely BEAMING. Even at home, Disney was the best! I was obsessed with the animated movies, Sing Along Song tapes & the books. Also, for the first few years of my life, my Uncle Brian had a picture of the infamous “Epcot ball” (as we called it) in the living room. He would point to it, and ask us “What’s that?” We knew that if we said “Epcot”, it would be a tickle war. So, I quickly learned other words…simply calling it a ball, a circle…ANYTHING but EPCOT! LOL! It’s one of the few memories I have of my uncle. He went to Disney World multiple times a year and had a killer pin collection. Disney was his thing. Sadly, cancer took my uncle when I was 5 years old, so I always tear up a little when I see the “Epcot Ball”…even as an adult. (Whew…I’m wiping tears writing this post. This is supposed to be a happy post, right?)

Anyway, it just goes to show you that Disney will always have a special place in my heart. Always. And while being at Disney World this weekend is a definite perk, I’m really looking forward to meeting so many bloggers that I consider my friends. While I’ve never met many bloggers in real life, I feel like I have a great friendship with so many of you. So, I’m very excited to finally meet and talk to those who are attending.

I thought it would be fun to psych myself up for the weekend by decorating some sugar cookies with a cookie cutter from Disney World. While decorated sugar cookies are usually very time consuming, I saw this post which made me think otherwise. This royal icing (originally by Sweetopia) eliminates the need for using both an outline and flood icing. It’s all in one. The consistency reminds me of a super thick flood icing, so while you can’t pipe many details, you can do a good basic cookie with this recipe. It took me three hours to go from cookie dough to decorated cookies. Crazy, right? I think I’m going to use this from now on for when I make multiple decorated cookies (especially for the holiday season). I’m so glad I found this! Make sure you follow this recipe perfectly, though (note: when the hand whisk vs. when to use your mixer).

Quick(er) Royal Icing
Source: The Way to His Heart, originally from Sweetopia

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup warm water
• 5 tbsp. meringue powder
• 1 tsp. cream of tartar
• 2 1/4 lbs. confectioners’ sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla or almond extract

Directions:

1. In the bowl of a mixer, add the water and meringue powder. Hand whisk the mixture for 30 seconds.
2. Add the cream of tartar, and hand whisk again for 30 seconds.
3. Add the confectioners’ sugar & extract, and mix with the paddle attachment of a stand mixer on low for 10 minutes.
4. Optional: add gel food coloring to tint the icing to the color(s) of your liking.
5. To decorate your cookies, add the icing to a squeeze bottle and pipe/fill the cookies with the icing. Allow the cookies to dry for a full 24 hours before serving.

I woke up early on Sunday to attend day three of IFBC. The final day. I just couldn’t believe that this conference was coming to an end!

The first seminar was on time management, presented by Merry-Jennifer of Merry Gourmet and Marissa of http://marissabrassfield.com/. Both of these women lead very different lives, but seemed to really manage their time wisely. It was refreshing to hear both of their ideas.

(I’m sorry about the overexposed pictures…I really didn’t check my camera’s settings that well after the evening before, when I took pictures of dinner in a dark room.)

One big tip I learned is that you don’t need to immediately respond to emails. Responding to emails, while it seems efficient, can actually take you away from what you were working on and then you have to take time to get back into that task. That is huge for me…I check my email far too often!

The second seminar that I attended was about food science, presented by Scott of Seattle Food Geek. I was excited to hear about sous vide and molecular gastronomy. While I’ve never dabbled into them, it was really neat to hear how it all works.

He also spoke about the history of innovators in the food world, most recently the Modernist Cuisine books. By the way, don’t fall in love with that book unless you have some major moolah to spend on cookbooks, y’all.

Sadly, after session 2, IFBC was over. It felt really weird knowing that I was walking to my car, no longer returning to Hotel Monteleone to meet with everyone for more sessions, meals or presentations.

I have to say that I walked into IFBC fairly intimidated. I’m normally very shy when it comes to meeting a bunch of new people at once, but this conference wasn’t that at all. AT ALL.

This is me with Merry-Jennifer of Merry Gourmet and Andie of Can You Stay for Dinner? (also one of the fabulous coordinators of IFBC). They were both super nice and eager to talk to me! It was so great to meet and talk to these gals, even if Merry-Jennifer roots for the Gators. (sorry girl…it’s football season now)

Another example? Dianne Jacob sat down for lunch with me and a few bloggers who quickly became my conference buddies (since we happened to attend the same seminars). She was just so approachable and nice, and even offered a few tips to us to become better bloggers!

Wait, did I say I made friends at IFBC? Yes, I sure did! Shyness…what’s that?

Oh, and you guys already saw that I spoke with Deb of Smitten Kitchen. Super sweet blogger!

All in all, I’m super glad that I was given the opportunity to attend this conference. I’ve walked away with a plethora of knowledge and inspiration for my blogs, and I also walked away meeting people I definitely consider to be my friends! If you ever have the opportunity to attend an IFBC, I would most definitely encourage it.

After a seemingly long, yet absolutely awesome day one at IFBC, I was super excited about what day 2 had in store!

I got there just in time to grab a quick breakfast before the first session about Recipe Development. The panel was made up of extremely accomplished women.

From left: Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen, Kate McDermott of Art of the Pie and Dianne Jacob of Will Write for Food.

This was an extremely informative session to me. I learned so much about recipe testing, development and writing. I mean, they even fancied up the title of a simple PB&J sandwich as a Fruit Preserves and Nut Butter Sandwich. Fancy, right?? The session absolutely got our creative juices flowing!

After the session, I just had to meet Deb. Had to. I’m such a fan of her fabulous blog, and can I tell y’all? She’s just super sweet and down to earth!

After the first session, I rushed over to session 2: Writing about Food and Culture.

From left: Dianne Jacob, Jamie Schler of Life’s a Feast and Jay Ducote of Bite & Booze.

I really enjoyed this session. All of the panelists had very different perspectives, pertaining to their culture. I usually don’t think about where a recipe comes from when I’m cooking, but it’s just a really cool thing to look into and think about once in a while. Being from New Orleans, I truly take some of the traditional foods that I enjoy for granted.

After this session, it was off to lunch.

Can I say WHOA? This lunch was absolutely fabulous. Fabulous. One dish that I must recreate is jambalaya grits with BBQ shrimp. Yum!

After lunch, I hung out with Cara of The Boys Made Me Do It. We definitely made it a priority to cool down with a snowball.

This particular one was Bananas Foster. It was pretty darn awesome, and well worth the walk! We also ventured out to Southern Candymakers to obtain some NOLA famous pralines. Always a favorite in my family’s house, so I grabbed up a few for them to share.

After a walk in the Quarter, I headed back to the hotel for the cooking demonstration by John Folse, which was super awesome to experience. He’s a very talented chef, and shared with the group a sample of a delicious soup that made (almost) forget about how much heavy cream was included in the recipe!

After the session, we had a good break to explore the city. However, after my post lunch excursion around the quarter, I was done with sweating, so I lounged in the hotel. Hello, A/C!

The last part of day two was the dinner that evening. Once we found our seats up front (“B-line for the Besh!”, as some of us said), I couldn’t help but drool over the menu. The dinner sounded incredible!

My favorite part of the dinner was the dessert! White chocolate creme brulee…holy cow! I wanted to take 4 or 5 of those to-go!

After we all enjoyed an amazing dinner, it was time for John Besh to speak. He spoke about so many great things involving the city, including how the restaurant industry came back after Katrina.

One thing that was great to hear about is that he (along with some other Food Network chefs) offers culinary scholarships to inner city youth in New Orleans. It’s wonderful to give our youth opportunities like that, and even more wonderful is that he requires them to come back to NOLA to work after completing culinary school in NYC. Just a really wonderful program, that probably wouldn’t be accessible otherwise, to some of the youth in the New Orleans area.

As I was walking back to my car from the hotel, I couldn’t believe how amazing day 2 was. Such a whirlwind of inspiring sessions, wonderful food and great (new) blogger friends! I have to admit, though,  I was sad that day 3 was coming up. I didn’t want this conference to end!

As you may already know, I got the amazing opportunity to attend IFBC (International Food Bloggers Conference) this past weekend in New Orleans. It was such an amazing conference, and I realized that since I took so many pictures, I’m going to have to split this up into 3 separate posts for each day of the conference!

Day one was an absolute whirlwind. I met my sister in the FQ (French Quarter) for lunch, and we enjoyed some fabulous mexican fare at Felipe’s. If you know me, you know I end up wearing my food half of the time, since I’m an absolute slob when it comes to eating. The result of my usual classiness? A big dollop of pico de gallo on my shirt. There was no stain, but I smelled like onions all day. So, if you met me at IFBC and smelled onions on me…sorry….I’m messy.

I ended up arriving at registration really early, and took in the views of the conference room.

Yup, I took a picture of the chandeliers there.

Since I arrived so early, I sat close to the front and set up my iPad and started using up the free Wifi. Of course, I had to look at a pretty familiar blog first.

The first session was about blogging your values.

I will say that the speakers presented some pretty good material, and I happily typed notes until one slide. The title had something to do with asking your readers for donations.

Uhh….what? Is this a new thing or something? (don’t worry…I’m not asking you guys for donations.) Would you, as a reader, even consider donating to bloggers who had a donate button on their blog? I’d really love to hear your opinions on this one. Personally, I don’t think I’d ever donate money to a blogger. I’d rather donate extra money to dogs in a shelter or something.  Sorry..

The second session was one of my favorites of the whole conference. Food photography….the amazingly talented Andrew Scrivani presented, and it was so cool to hear him talk about making everything food-related (and I mean everything) photogenic! One of the most interesting tricks he shared was to buy a t-shirt and use the white cardboard from the shirt packaging to bounce light onto your food. Can’t wait to try this trick!

After those two sessions, there was a wine social with appetizers. You guys probably already know that I’m not a wine drinker, but I did have two glasses, which were essentially chugged down since red wine is just way too bitter to me….I’m so classy. I really enjoyed the various foods that were offered though!

After the wine social, we had a pretty awesome dinner where many local restaurants, as well as sponsors, made small tasting plates for attendees.

You think the food is gorgeous?? Look at the display booths! I was amazed at how awesome the booths were!

After our bellies were full from dinner, day 1 of the conference was over. Some people went out to explore NOLA afterwards, while my tired self headed to my parents’ home to fall asleep at a decent hour. It was a pretty long day for me, so there was just no way I could go out afterwards!

Hilariously, I thought I was tired after day 1? Wait until you see how eventful day 2 was!