The Apron Gal

Monday, June 17, 2013

BlogHer Food 2013-Part 2

After a great evening Thursday and lot of learning on Friday I was ready for more food! Some fellow bloggers and I were lucky enough to go to a little happy hour gathering at Swift's Attic, hosted by the National Mango Board. We had a delicious little menu of mango drinks and appetizers. I loved seeing new food combinations that I had never thought of and of course, great company and a beautiful locale never hurt either. Thanks for having me, Mango Board!

My favorite ladies! Janssen from Everyday Reading and Kristin from The Fresh Find

Amazing brussel sprout, mango and bacon salad.
So excited to share this recipe with you soon!

These little sausage sliders with mango relish were so good! Sweet and tangy.

Virgin spicy mango margaritas for us!

Saturday was the last day of the conference and had
all kinds of fun treats as well as great workshops.

Who wouldn't love a cotton candy break???

This was a great photography workshop hosted by Sabrina of The Tomato Tart and Irvin of Eat the Love. They were hilarious and I learned a lot!

More delicious snacks...all kinds of whoopie pie flavors

Lunch on Saturday was provided by The Pork Board and made by East Side King at the Grackle. I had the fried pork buns with Asian potato salad and pickled cucumbers
and everything was delicious!

(even in the 100 degree heat!)

Pork Ribeye with collard greens

Pork skewers

All my cute bloggy friends!

It was so wonderful to meet a follower of my blog and another wonderful food blogger- Meagan from the Baker Mama. She is fabulous so definitely check out her blog.

Kristin and Katie again :)

Have I mentioned how great Amee from Rabbit Food Rocks is?

We had so much fun exploring our blogs, metrics, social media and bouncing ideas off of each other!

After the conference was over we started our night by visiting the famous

Easy Tiger Bake Shop & Beer Garden

I can't vouch for the traditional beer but I had a nice refreshing root beer on their gorgeous patio.

They are known for their big pretzels and homemade jerkies. Yum!

Hanging with Shef from Shef's Kitchen and Ben from You Fed a Baby Chili?

And although I had a fabulous weekend meeting new blogger friends and learning how to do social media etc. I haev to admit I was giddy as a school girl to meet these ladies!!!

After Easy Tiger we headed to the BlogHer Food closing party held at Stubbs BBQ

for dinner, music and saying goodbyes :(

It was hosted by:

Jaden Hair from Steamy Kitchen

AND

Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman

Who I was lucky enough to meet below!

Can you tell I was super excited? hehe. They were super sweet too!

Thanks for hosting ladies and it was great to meet you!

Amazing ribs and good brisket, beans, and mac & cheese

Janssen and I were loving the 70's cover band :)

Bing provided delicious ice cream sandwiches from Cool Haus. I had chcoolate chip cookies with strawberry mint ice cream and they were fabulous!

The famous hostesess: Elise from Simply Recipes, Ree-The Pioneer Woman and Jaden from Steamy Kitchen. They were pretty funny too.

Ninja also had an awesome photo booth that I forgot to show photos from!

My new friends! My new friends (from left to right): Shef @ Shefs Kitchen, Kristin @ The Fresh Find, Me- Kasee @ The Apron Gal, Katie @ Butterlust , Amee @ Rabbit Food Rocks, Janssen @ Everyday Reading

I had a great weekend! Thanks to BlogHer and all my new friends for making it fabulous!!

Thursday, June 13, 2013

BlogHer Food 2013- Part 1

When I heard BlogHer Food was going to be held in Austin this year I was really excited that it was going to be in my own city! I've never been to a blogging conference before and I wasn't sure if it was for me or if it would be worth it. I finally made the leap and I'm so glad I did!

The weekend was filled with tons of food, new blogger friends, and lots of learning.

We started the weekend off right with an event hosted by the Austin Food Blog Alliance with Whole Foods Market called Bites & Bloggers to welcome our blogger friends to Austin! It had female chefs from all around Austin making delicious bites for us and was a delicious night!

Prepare for picture overload-sorry!

This was by far my favorite dish- a clam and corn fritter with mango salsa

from Max's Wine Dive.

Beautiful local tomatoes.

Farm tomatoes with goat cream, sugo and radish sprouts from Hillside Farmacy

Ensalada Callejera from El Alma Cafe.

I loved their adorable presentation with the mason jars and rice.

Guajillo Barbacoa Shrimp from el Alma Cafe

Seriously these cookies melted in my mouth and I'm not a big sugar cookie fan.

This prickly pear sorbet was also delicious. So flavorful.

Texas Sweet Corn Pudding with Poteet Blackberry, Saffron, Caramel Corn. I loved the little blackberry caviar and the caramel corn was this perfect contrast of texture from

Sway in Austin.

Sweet Corn Bread, zucchini, tomato, eggplant slaw, with Goat Gouda from epicerie in Austin.

Hamachie crudo from Congress

Peach, honey, thyme, and graham cracker parfait from Foreign & Domestic

I had such a great time getting to meet these lovely ladies!

Definitely check out their blogs, they are all fabulous!

Kristin from The Fresh Find and Amee from Rabbit Food Rocks

Janssen from Everyday Reading and Me!

Shefaly from Shef's Kitchen and Cheryl from Freedible

The next day was filled with workshops, meeting lots of bloggers

and trying to absorb everything I learned!

Kristin, Me, and Katie from Butterlust Blog

There were all kinds of food exhibitors that kept us fed all day long! It was so fun trying foods and becoming more educated about different kinds of foods.