Blog Her Food, A new look and looking forward

How do I tell you all that has happened to me?

How do I convey all of the learning that occurred at Blog Her Food?

Part of it, you can see for yourself. A new lighter face to the blog, better colors, better text.

And lots of back of house details are in the works. In fact I might even be porting all of this over to wordpress. But that is for later.

For now, I am keeping it here and real.

Blog Her Food was an experience unlike any other conference I have ever attended. I know that Naturopaths know how to party but a bunch of relaxed Food Bloggers are really a fun crowd! And the swag, oh how I love swag. Thank you Jaden, Ree and Elise for hosting such a fun party. And a big shout out to Chefs Catalog, Scharffen Berger, Starbucks and HP for your generous additions to the bags.

I got to meet and touch and share food with some of the most eloquent wordsmiths of our day, including the fabulous bunch of gluten free bloggers you see at the top. Even got to meet SeaMaiden's other half and new baby! Better yet, got to chase Lucy, Shauna's baby around during breakfast.

Was able to be the fly on the wall and watch true artists pose and picture even mediocre food and make it look tasty. Want to see some? Check out their blogs- Matt Armendariz, The Amazing White on Rice couple- Todd and Diane and Jen from UseRealButter.

Here are a couple of pictures I took at our lunch sponsored by Bertolli. It was one time I was grateful that I was gluten-free. The food served to the general group was Bertolli frozen pasta (from a bag). You can imagine how folks like David Lebovitz and Jaden Hair thought of that.

At least our gluten free lunch of risotto was just over-salted and mushy. But why did the organizers team up the gluten-free with the vegan for meals?

It meant that the best dish of the meal- The Salad- as described by pitchman Rocco DiSpirito as a deconstructed Nicoise- bagged salad greens, tuna and hard boiled eggs with anchovies was taken away to be replaced by an underdressed salad with little in the way of interest. At least I managed to hear Rocco describe the dressing and could tell our table the salad was ok for Gluten-free folk. Several of us dove for pieces of the tuna.

But we missed out on the dessert of panna cotta and got berries instead. At least mine came with out any coulis so they were edible. Others on the table weren't so fortunate, the coulis was oversweetened and drenched each berry rendering it cloying.

Learned so much about the back end of the blogging world. There are so many aspects to consider to have a healthy blog, so many that I was unaware of before. So I am on a learning curve and will be bringing this blog "up to snuff" as my Dad would say.

One thing that touched my heart while I was in San Francisco was hearing about a blogger who attempted to eat based on a food stamp diet. It was brought into high focus by the number of street people I encountered walking to the St. Regis for the conference.

I stayed at a small hotel on 4th street so I had a city block walk to see the sites. And one regular sight was people sleeping on the streets. I happily gave some of the food from our conference bags to the first man who approached me asking for food. I hope he loved granola bars and cereal, I didn't think he could open a can of soup. We are generous, us food bloggers. There was a place at the conference site to donate food to the food bank. In total, we donated 675 pounds of food!

Did you know that the typical American who uses food stamps gets $4 per day for food? Or that one in 10 Americans is now using food stamps? Ever wonder if you might be eligible? Here is a calculator to see if you would qualify. Check it out, you might be surprised.

So I decided to see if my typical family of 4 could eat healthy preferably organic/locally sourced gluten-free food for $4 per person, per day for the month. We start tomorrow since I wanted to get my typically stocked larder depleted a bit for the experiment.

It will mean a lot of forethought in planning meals, a lot of leftovers for lunches and a lot of vegetarian foods.

I wonder whether I should be able to shop at Costco? Since they don't take food stamps in payment, would you think it is cheating?

Let me know, I would love to go and get some basics there over the weekend.