Saturday September 21, 2013 7:00 – 9:30 Breakfast hosted by Pastry Smart & WordPress Happiness bar Seven o’clock am doesn’t register in my vocabulary, no matter what food is served so I headed over to join the festivities around 9am and was greeted by one of the most lovely european style charcuterie breakfast spreads I’ve seen in- well maybe since I was actually IN Europe! Pastry Smart prepared the breakfast, with a special mention that the wonderful staff at the W Hotel allowed them to use the in-house kitchen! Between the build your own parfait bar to the fresh biscuits, hard boiled eggs, cheeses, and meats there was no chance anyone would be going hungry! On a side note, I vividly remember the prosciutto and paprika biscuit and will be attempting a replica VERY soon!
10:00 – 12:00 Live Cooking Demo& Food Photography
There was a fantastic live cooking demonstration from Chef John Mitzewich of Food Wishes and Blue C Sushi’s vice president of culinary, Jeffrey Lunak. Just to make things a bit more lively, not that it was needed, renowned The New York Times food photographer Andrew Scrivani (@AndrewScrivani) MC’d the live demonstration and participated in some very tongue in check banter. Immediately after the Cooking Demon was a “Food Photography: A-Zs of Digital Food Photography” course presented by Andrew.
12:00 – 2:00 Discovery Expo I wish I had better pictures and explanation from the Discover Expo- but I don’t! I tasted some delicious cheese and crackers from Rogue Creamery and my already favorite La Panzanella Artisan Crackers . There were FANTASTIC strawberries and dips from California Strawberry and a unique tasting plate from Veggie Grill! One thing I have to note, the french toast Marshmallow from mallow Artisan Marshmallows was VERY tasty!!!
2:15 – 3:45 Session 2 Wine & Writing: Live Blogging: An Exercise in Writing with @BordeauxWines Besides the fact that our table were the CHAMPIONS of the session, correctly answering ALL of the trivia questions and winning a delicious bottle of Bordeaux wine each, this session was a wonderful way to practice and learn about how to taste and review wines. Our fearless and experienced Wine Buff leaders, Ward Kadel and Sam Klingberg, reminded us that wines should be fun and NOT pretentious! Have fun and explore!
4:00 – 5:30 Session 1 Food & Wine Chateau Ste. Michelle Culinary Director John Sarich tasted us through some amazing wine and food parings. There were a few classic and quite a few unexpected surprises in our tasting! 7:00 – 10:00 Urbanspoon Dine-Around Dinner UrbanSpoon graciously, and bravely, set up hosted dinners across the city for all of the food bloggers and we were luckily enough to attend the RN74 dinner, which was just a few blocks from where the conference was hosted. We were served an IMPECCABLE 10 course dinner! I wish I had better photos to document the event but between the dark lighting, amazing food coma that was impending from the amazing food and the wine parings after an afternoon of wine tasting, all I have to report is that it was one of the most amazing tasting dinners I’ve experienced in a LONG white! mushroom tempura was INCREDIBLE, and 45-day dry-aged beef with duck fat fries were just to die for. I was whisked into the kitchen for some exclusive shots of the chef preparing our dinner and I’ve included them below!
Sunday September 22, 2013 There was an optional 6am “Wake up With Pike Place Market” tour provided, but as I said before, I don’t have 7am in my vocabulary. I REALLY don’t have it in my vocabulary after an afternoon of wine tasting classes, each with wine, followed buy a deliciously decadent dinner complete with it’s own wine paring. No, I opted to join a few other bloggers for coffee and breakfast at Storyville in Pike Place market.In attendance were some great bloggers, @OnePunkArmy a California blogger who mixes punk rock and gourmet food, @mwangbickler another California blogger who focuses on food and wine writing, our local Bellingham Gluten-Free Doctor herself Jean Layton and the lovely Erica Dermer who is the founder of @CeliacBeast. Quite a wonderful found up of people! After we finished our coffee and walked through the market, we headed back to the conference for the last session and the conference closing.
9:45 – 11:15 Session 3 Tech: Google Plus, AuthorRank, and Where Search Is Going? I’ll try to post another update on this session- it was QUITE technical and I’m STILL working through my notes!
11:15 – 11:45 Conference Closing Chipotle lunch to book end a wonderful weekend Now excuse me while I drag myself to the gym to work off a few of these happily added pounds! Note: In order to received the discounted active blogger rate at IFBC, all participating bloggers were required to write three posts about their experience at the conference. I would also like to note that I was THRILLED to join the conference and would have written these posts regardless- but I prefer full disclosure! 🙂