By having to wait until Wednesday to remark on this, I am definitely one of the latest people to comment on the conference. I may, in fact, be the latest. In any event, I still wanted to share some thoughts here.

I especially wanted to see Dr. Joan Gussow’s keynote speech and Dr. Gary Nabhan’s closing remarks of the first day. I figured I’d learn a lot from everything in between and everything the next day, but I was looking forward to those two as highlights.

Dr. Gussow’s speech was quite good. She touched on her experience with becoming a nutritionist, and being the only one in her field that focused more on how food was being produced than what was in it. That didn’t win her a lot of friends, as you can imagine.… Continue reading →

As you all know, I spent the weekend in Santa Barbara for the food conference. I then traveled on to San Francisco to visit a friend. I was supposed to fly back to Chicago this morning. But, as you can imagine, I’ve been delayed. The hope is that I will end up back in Chicago tomorrow. I certainly hope so, as I miss my kitchen!

I haven’t, however, had internet access beyond my phone until today. Which is good for my 140 characters or less twittering, but it doesn’t really lend itself to navigating the blog or posting.

Expect to see a few more posts coming down the line soon, now that I’m more connected again. Thanks for your patience.… Continue reading →

Note: Some of the photos in and associated on flickr with this post are being entered into a photo contest being run by Chicago’s Green City Market and by The Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. I will be entering to win a 1 year membership at the “Seedling” level to GCM and a 1 year membership to the museum. You can check out the other entries, if you’re interested! There’s some truly amazing photos over there. You will likely drool, so I suggest laying a towel over your keyboard before clicking that last link.

I love a lot of things in this world, but some of the things I love the most are combined in this entry: pizza, farmers markets (Green City Market in particular, I must admit), trying new recipes (Pioneer Woman’s recipes in particular, I must admit) and photography.… Continue reading →

Where “recently” is “in the last 24 hours”. I spent most of yesterday uploading photos, so that I could work during my time in California. And I realized, what the heck, I should share it with you guys even before I type it all up.

So now you can look to the right and see a list of upcoming recipes AND you can go to flickr and see what they looked like in our kitchen. Some photos make me drool all over again and some make me wonder why I ever thought I could use a camera.

Check it out! “http://www.flickr.com/photos/metacookbook/”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/metacookbook/

Also, this bus I’m on? Passing what’s clearly a vineyard. It makes me wonder what the grapes taste like straight off the vine.… Continue reading →

Which, of course, means I’m all smiles. 😀 See?

Okay, even if Santa Barbara looked just as bone-chillingly cold as Chicago, I’d still be all smiles. I’m really looking forward to the “Edible Institute” (as I mentioned here). I’m still wondering what I’ll learn and how. Basically, I can’t wait.

I leave tomorrow, since the conference starts at super-duper early on Saturday. It looks like it will go fairly late as well, so I’m contemplating snacks to take. I’m also hoping it’s not too much of a challenge to get from the conference hotel to the “food and drink gala” at the Maritime Museum, since I didn’t rent a car. I will see (but I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t be disappointed to miss that).… Continue reading →