IFBC Archives - A Byte of Life

Kombucha, Som, Pok Pok and a new Kitchen

Dear friends! As you can tell, I’ve been on a bit of a writing hiatus the past few… months! Works been busy, personal life has been busy, there’s been travel and apparently it’s important to sleep every now and then?! What a cramp on a busy gals schedule hey? But i’ve dearly miss and you and even though I haven’t been posting, I have still been cooking up a storm and gathering new recipes to share! We had the weekly staples- batches of kombucha,and almond butter.We traveled to visit our family and threw in a few beer soaked grilled bratwurst, paleo chocolate chip banana bread and Pecan Pies with fresh homemade crust (of course!). I can’t visit without baking a few pies! One of my favorite parts about visiting family is playing the role of both ‘imported resident chef’ and ‘kitchen instructor’. I have So much fun teaching the niece and nephews to cook! We had a ball in the kitchen and they do great!

But, as I was saying. This entire summer has been booked SOLID with both work and play. And just when I thought things would calm down in the fall, our landlord decided to sell the condo after four years of renting so we had to find a new place. Luckily, we found a place that we just LOVE and we move this weekend. THIS WEEKEND! A matter of hours away! I’m so excited I can barely handle it! I can’t wait to unpack and organize the new kitchen! With the fast pace of the last 3 months, cooking as been more of a chore than it usually is. I’ve really leaned on simple recipes, the local pho restaurant, and cereal for dinner. But with a new kitchen comes new recipes and excitement to cook! Which brings me to my fall and winter sports.

I HATE to, and won’t, drive in snow and/or ice… so my fall/winter sports consist of cooking, baking, menu planning from the ridiculous amount of time I spend on Pinterest (A Byte of Life boards here), testing out my wine cellar, catching up on all the shows that everyones been raving about and listening to the rain falling outside. Oh, and pumpkins! I LOVE PUMPKIN! I’ll eat slow roasted pumpkin right off the baking sheet! And Gingerbread. I LOVE gingerbread! But back to the point- my winter sports are gingerbread and/or pumpkin flavored, with a side of wine, and a good show in the background.

This year, I have a new hobby to add to the list. Pok Pok. If you’ve NEVER been to Pok Pok, you HAVE to go to either Portland or New York and experience their wings and one of their drinks with their drinking vinegar called som. Som is a drinking vinegar that has been an age old practice in many cultures around the world for it’s health benefits. Pok Pok has been serving their drinking vinegars since 2005, both as a cocktail mixer and diluted with soda as a soft drink. They use organic cane sugar for sweetener and let me tell you, while I’m not a soft drink person in the slightest, this stuff is downright addicting! You can purchase the Pok Pok Som online form both Pok Pok and ChefShop.com. A girlfriend and I just took an amazing cooking class at ChefShop.com so you can expect future blog post about them too!

Well, their chicken wings are known nation wide, and their cocktails are red-eye flight worthy. This, coming from a confirmed wine and anti-chicken wing girl. Let’s just keep this short and say that Pok Pok changed my life, as evidenced by the fact that after the first bite I waived down the waiter and asked if I could PLEASE purchase their cookbook but only if the amazing chicken wings were included. He handed me a copy to review. Each page coated in plastic which was an amazing idea because I was pouring over it as I was elbow deep in eating amazing chicken wings,The Pok Pok cookbook holds a special spot on my shelf , I personally confirmed that the chicken wing recipe is included, and it has been added to the list of fall and winter hobbies.

Tune in for more amazing thai inspired recipes from the Pok Pok cookbook, updates from this years International Food Bloggers conference (last years post) and to see how the Som Kombucha turns out! I had a bit of Som leftover and had a batch of kombucha ready tonight so I figured I’d do a little variation on my blueberry ginger kombucha and try some ginger som kombucha. I’ll let you know how it goes!

IFBC: Day 2 Extravaganza & Day 3 Wrap Up

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! 🙂

IFBC: Day 1

When I wrote my first post about the International Food Bloggers Conference (IFBC), I wasn’t sure what to expect. This would be my first food blogger conference and had I know what was in store for the weekend, I’m not sure I could have been as patient for the Friday kickoff to arrive. One point I need to touch on and then I promise to get off the soapbox and get back to recapping the AMAZINGNESS that is IFBC- the new ios7 update on my iphone and I are not getting along.

I decided to leave the DLSR at home and just take my iphone as my camera for the weekend. While I usually snap a thousand pictures a second and then dread the daunting task of editing through 25 versions of the same shot, I didn’t have that problem this weekend because my phone decided to be blurry and quite honestly, I was so wrapped up in the moment most of the time that I completely forgot to whip out my camera and “get the shot”!! So, I’ll be featuring and linking to some of the wonderful photos from other food bloggers that were at the conference, which also means that you get some links to read OTHER accounts of IFBC! Win win for you!

Over the weekend there were times for “sessions” and for each these parts of the conference, there were three different”sessions” to choose from. As the weekend progressed it grew increasingly harder to choose which one to attend! In my recap I list only the session that I attended. The conference was only two full days, starting at noon on Friday with lunch from Chipotle and wrapping up around noon on Sunday, with a trip past the downtown Chipotle. A weekend started and ended with Chipotle is pretty tough to beat in my book! With all of the food, meeting and greeting, sessions, more food, and learning it felt MUCH longer than two days, but in that happy way that you wish it would end. Also in the way that you want a nap but refuse to take one because so much fun is happening that you don’t want to miss it! Let’s start with outlining what the weekend had in store.

Friday September 20, 2013 12:00 -1:30 Registration & Lunch provided by Chipotle Mexican Grill w/ Dessert scooped by Cupcake Royale

As I walked into my first blogging conference I realized two things, first, there are a LOT of people who blog and second, it was time to put on the meet and greet hat! Luckily, happenstance placed Torie, of TorieandTristan.com, in front of me in line and after she turned around and introduced herself, we became the book ends of the conference! Event before my first bite of delicious Gluten Free Carnitas I’d already made a friend! She’s another local gal so you’ll see a few joint posts pop up in the coming months! This was the kick off to a wonderful weekend of food, friends and learning! The learning part started with lunch; I always thought I didn’t like pork, but those Carnitas started to change my mind! They were delicious! On our way into the “Conference Welcome” there was a Cupcake Royale station strategically placed which is where we immediately went after we secured our spots at a table. They were serving up the CUTEST little cones- in addition to real scoops as well. You can see the pictures below!

My own photography of my Cupcake Royale Ice Cream: A scoop of Stumptown Espresso and a scoop of the Red Velvet Cupcake ice cream

Friday Lunch from Chipotle (Picture from OnePunkArmy)

Torie’s Instagram of the Mini Scoop of Cupcake Royale Ice Cream

1:40-2:45 Conference Welcome & Keynote Speaker: Dorie Greenspan
There is SO much that could be said about the AMAING Dorie Greenspan, and I wish that at this moment I could remember all the amazing and wonderful one liners that she said but there were two things that I remember WEEKS after this IFBC session:
1- She followed her passion and was SO incredibly humble inspiring!!
2- Say YES and see what happens!!! Give “trying things” a try!!!

2:45 – 4:15 Live Food Blogging with Amazon.com Grocery There were 15 brands represented, and each of them had three minutes, yes that’s 180 seconds, to pitch their brand to a room full of food bloggers and answer any questions. When we sat down at the tables for the conference welcome, each of us found a bag filled with full size packages of the dry goods were going to taste. When the live food blogging started, conference volunteers brought out brown paper grocery bags FILLED with bottles of the juices, coconut waters and other liquid items we were going to sample. It was QUITE a spread!

4:30 – 5:45 (Sessions) Session 2 Writing: Entrepreneurial Journalism: Building Your Food Blog Media Business [Mark Briggs, Director of Digital Media at KING] Broadcasting, in exploring how food bloggers can thrive and grow in the competitive digital writing space. Learn the business dynamics and skills required to turn your blog into a successful media business.

7:00 – 9:00 “The Guest Suite” and & A Taste of Seattle Gourmet Fair During the Amazon.com live blogging session, the vendors were mentioning that we could sample other flavors of their treats and such in the “guest suite” later that night. Now, I don’t know about you but the words “guest suite” just sound like one big gold lettered, hand written invitation to a world of glittery fun if you ask me! All afternoon I kept envisioning and wondering what the guest suite was, and let me tell you, it did NOT disappoint! With reusable bags provided by AllRecipes.com, we were welcomed into a large conference room with tables set up, and on those tables were STACKS and PILES of delicious treats and snacks! There were additional flavors of treats we had sampled earlier that day, wooden spoons and whisks, full size boxes of cereal, cans of Dry Soda (a household favorite so I was thrilled!)… my bag overflowith by the time I made it to the end of that tasty treat trail! We stashed our bags and headed into “A Taste of Seattle Gourmet Fair” where we sampled various bites prepared by some of Seattle’s best chefs and restaurants and sipped on some specially selected wines! I was pleasantly surprised by how good the sorghum salad with curry-roasted winter squash and crispy chickpeas was! Had Garrett, of the blog Vanilla Garlic, not beckoned to use from behind the Bob’s Red Mill booth I wouldn’t have picked up that tasty little bit and experienced sorghum for what I believe is the first time. Thanks Garret, I owe you one!

My buddy One Punk Army posted some AWESOME pics of the Gourmet Fair HERE. Be sure to check em out!

I had two favorites from the tasting fair. First was the amazing Chianti tasting table and Franciacorta bubbly from Balzac. They had a line up of Chiantis and secret bottles of bubbly, can we say love at first sight! The other hightlight was the italian antipasti spread from Ethan Stowell’s Rhone XIII. Ever since I heard rumors of a roving antipasti cart, I knew that there was a place for me there! The Rhone XIII spread was- delicious! Due to my ios7 update resulting in a blury camera AND quite a few happy sips from the Chianti table I didn’t get many pictures but one of the gals I met at the end of the conference, Colleen’s Kitchen, has some GREAT pictures from the gourmet fair on her blog <href=”http://www.colleens-kitchen.com/2013/09/ifbc-day-1.html” target=”_blank”>here.

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! 🙂

IFBC: International Food Bloggers Conference this weekend!

Do you know what’s start tomorrow and goes through the weekend in Seattle? None other than the 5th Annual International Food Bloggers Conference (IFBC). IFBC is organized by Foodista.com and Zephyr Adventures, and was the first conference created specifically FOR food bloggers! IFBC focuses on three themes: Food, Writing, and Technology and gives opportunities for networking, live blogging, and educational classes!

They have a few activities this evening, but the fun officially starts on tomorrow, when we get to enjoy Gluten Free Carnitas & Tofu Sofritas Bowls provided by Chipotle Mexican Grill. Then we jump into a keynote delivered by the amazing Dorie Greenspan followed by Live Food Blogging with Amazon.com Grocery. Saturday night is a surprise “Dine-Around Dinner” sponsored by Urbanspoon where there are various dinners scheduled at secret locations around Seattle and I can’t WAIT to see where they take us!

What I’m REALLY looking forward to the working session that they have lined up for us over the weekend! With experts from All Recipes, King 5 Broadcasting, Andrew Scrivani, Chateau Ste. Michelle Culinary Director John Sarich and MANY others it’s going to be so hard to choose which sessions to attend since they’re offered at the same times.

Oh, did I mention that they have a Wordpress Happiness bar where I can get one-on-one help from a WordPress Engineers? That’s worth the price of admission right there! Between the networking, food sampling, educational courses, secret dinners and WordPress happiness bar this promises to be an amazing conference!! This year they also rolled out an IFBC app! It includes a conference schedule with locations, AND social media included right in the app! I can’t wait to give that a try for my live Tweeting this weekend!

Needless to say, I’m getting pretty excite about my first IFBC and can’t wait to meet the other local bloggers and those traveling for this conference! I’ll be live tweeting from the conference so be sure to follow on Twitter HERE and will be posting a conference wrap up so check back next week!