I had a wonderful time in Austin Texas for the 2013 BlogHer Food conference. There were a hundreds upon hundreds of foodies there to share and gain knowledge, network and have a great time.
I met so many fabulous bloggers and really enjoyed the talks. From how to make better online videos to knife techniques, there was so much to learn and so much delicious food to eat!
If I had to choose three talks as my favorites they’d have to be the knife skills class by Hank Shaw, the mobile food photography talk by Diane Cu and Todd Porter of White On Rice Couple blog and the “How to Fake Great Photos” course by Colette Martin, Floridian Katie Jasiewicz, and Melissa Skorpil. Here are some of the tips I picked up from Hank’s course.
Hank Shaw Knife Skills Course
- Focus! A sharp knife means not as serious of a cut if you mess up!
- New way to separate garlic. Break it, shake it, and smash and drag it!
- Fish 101 fishy smell…not good!
- Take out the gills for fish stock otherwise it will ruin it by making your stock cloudy and bitter.
- Always buy fresh and cut it yourself. You will know it is fresh by looking at it before you buy. There are too many ways a bad filet can be covered up. Grocery stores know the tricks to covering up bad cuts.
When we weren’t in one of the educational sessions we were likely testing out products, dining on delicious food or chatting over coffee in the conference hall lobby. There were nearly 30 exhibitors at the conference. The gals from Baileys Coffee Creamers provided us with iced coffee with their creamers.
Ninja showed off their impressive blender, steamer and deep fryer. Their triple-blade blender was awesome and it looks like they might be hooking us up with their Ninja Mega Kitchen System for the kitchen we’re building out for future Strawberry Sue video shoots.
I was amazed by the soft-baked, gluten free cookies from Udi’s. We also got a taste of Dannon’s Oikos Greek Yogurt, some Kozy Shack tapioca and these Kikkoman savory chocolates. Blurb books was there with some inspiring ideas for a future Florida Strawberry Growers Association cookbook and the farm gals from Common Ground shared their agriculture knowledge over tiny cupcakes.
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- Kozy Shack included some delicious looking strawberries at their booth!
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- Common Ground Organization’s adorably tiny cupcakes.
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- BlogHer Food “The Business Case for Video” talk with Catherine McCord and Hetal Jannu; Moderator: Stacy Morrison
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- Goat cheese and watermelon amuse-bouche.
On the second day of the conference we went on an Austin-style food truck excursion and photo walk at Lake Town Park.I had a tasty empanada from mmmpanadas and the views of the lake and park were beautiful.
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- BlogHer Food Truck Excursion
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- BlogHer Food Truck Excursion brought to us by the Pork Board
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- BlogHer Food Austin Photo Walk with Lotus Carroll, Irvin Lin, Adam Shapiro and others.
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- BlogHer Food Photo walk at Town Lake Park
The conference ended with a big party with Texas style barbecue at Stubbs BBQ and an outdoor concert by The Grooves! The next day I headed to Horseshoe Bay Texas for a delicious brunch (we made beignets!) and ended my time in Texas with a dinner at The Oasis at Lake Travis where we caught a gorgeous sunset.
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- Closing BlogHer Food 2013 party with live music from The Grooves at Stubbs BBQ
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- The Oasis at Lake Travis is extremely popular for it’s views of the beautiful Texas sunsets.
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- The Oasis at Lake Travis sunset
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- The Oasis at Lake Travis sunset
Now I just can’t wait for the next BlogHer Food conference, or any blogging conference for that matter. Who knew learning and networking could be so fun! I cannot wait to see what comes from this conference and hope to build a community of Floridian Foodies through conferences like this to help spread the word on our delicious winter strawberries.