The Art of Cheesemaking {FCP Culinary Workshop in Napa Valley}

Explore the process of cheesemaking including the six steps to making cheese and how the flavors are created!

Happy Monday, friends! I hope you all had a relaxing weekend filled with lots of good food, family, and beautiful weather. For those of us here in Michigan, we got teased with spring on Friday with near 70 degree temperatures and plenty of sunshine. Then Saturday came. It rained most of the day and was somewhere in the 40's. What can I say? That's #pureMichigan for you!

If you follow me on social media, which I know a lot of you do, then you may have caught a glimpse of my trip to Napa Valley, California a few weeks ago. I traveled there with my client, the Dairy Industry of Michigan, and a couple of my favorite blogger friends to the Food & Culinary Professionals 2017 Culinary Workshop. The theme was Learn ~ Experience ~ Master. We had sessions about the art of cheesemaking; we learned about the art and science of food from the dairy farm to table; and we heard about 2017 food trends. 

Getting Inspired at Food Wine Conference 2016 #FWCon

If you follow me on on social media at all, then you know I was at the Rosen Shingle Creek in Orlando a couple of weeks ago for the Food Wine Conference. I know you know this because I was blowing up your feed with pictures of food, friends, and fun! This was my first year attending the conference and I was lucky enough to also be a Brand Ambassador for Certified Angus Beef. 

Words can't express how much I loved this conference. I've only been to a few food blogging conferences, so going to Food Wine was eye opening. It was amazing to connect in person with bloggers that I'd only met online, meet new bloggers, and learn a wealth of information about how to grow my blogging business. And, of course, there was food. The food was glorious my friends! And there was so much of it. And we had wine, too! We didn't go hungry, or thirsty, that's for sure.

SLATE Orlando Restaurant Review

 If you're planning a trip to Orlando, Florida anytime soon, be sure to add SLATE Restaurant to your must visit list! 

It's a classic modern American restaurant boasting wood grilled cuisine and open air dining in the heart of the Dr. Phillips Neighborhood. 

Just two short weeks ago I landed in sunny Orlando, Florida for the Food Wine Conference. Arriving a day ahead of the event, I was excited to spend time with some of my blogger friends. Face to face time, rather than screen time, which was simply amazing. You see, in the blogging world I have a lot of friends that I've grown quite close to but never had the opportunity to meet in person. We are like penpals in a way. So when I had the opportunity to meet up with some of them pre-conference for dinner, I jumped at the chance.

Shelby from Grumpy’s Honeybunch, Renee from Renee’s Kitchen Adventures, and Michele from Flavor Mosaic and I all headed to SLATE Orlando on Thursday for dinner. The restaurant is absolutely gorgeous. From the beautiful entrance to the restaurant to the open kitchen and stunning bar, it had such a warm and comforting feel to it.

Beef & Two Bean Chili {+ Red Gold Family Farm Tour Recap}

Cook a pot of this comforting and hearty beef and two bean chili in just 30 minutes! 

It's a perfect weeknight meal that the whole family will love.

A few weeks ago I had a wonderful opportunity to go on a Family Farm Tour with Red Gold Tomatoes in Indiana. Between visiting their headquarters, a tomato farm, and two of their processing plants, it was an exciting and busy few days! I learned so much about tomatoes, the Red Gold company, and the family that started it in 1942, and who continues to run the company today. They are amazing people and are truly passionate about their mission: "To Produce the Freshest, Best Tasting, Tomato Products in the World.”

Our first adventure of the trip was to visit Triple "S" Farms. They were harvesting tomatoes that day, so we were able to sneak a peek of how everything works! Back in the day they used to pick the tomatoes by hand, but now everything is done by a machine. You can see in the picture below they use a tractor with large "claws" that dig up the tomato plant and feed it onto a conveyor belt.  The tractor shakes the vines to remove the dirt, then sends the tomatoes out of a chute at the top of truck, into another truck that is driving along side the tractor.  It was such an interesting process! 

Eat Write Retreat Recap

Inspire - Dream - Create - this is my new motto after attending the amazing Eat Write Retreat conference! 

Check out all the conference details in my recap!

A few weeks ago, on my birthday to be exact, I had the most wonderful opportunity to attend my first ever Eat Write Retreat bloggers conference. Other than a couple of smaller, Michigan based conferences, I had never been to a big blogger conference. I was only able to attend with the help of my amazing sponsor, Stonyfield! So I'm sending a big, huge, fantastic THANK YOU to them for sponsoring me to go the conference. It was a fantastic experience, one that I won't soon forget, and I deeply appreciate all that they did for me. 

Eat, Write, Retreat was developed by a couple of pretty fabulous ladies - Robyn Webb and Casey Benedict - as a way to connect people in the food blogging community through cooking, writing and photography. Lucky for my I got to meet them both at the conference! During my weekend at Eat Write Retreat I became friends with some pretty amazing bloggers, interacted with some fantastic brands, and listened to a lot of awesome speakers! I took pages and pages of notes and now have tons of ideas to implement. The whole weekend really rejuvenated me! And with that, I'm going to share a little recap of that weekend and some of the things we did.