FBC09 - When the Food Bloggers Connected

We will resume our regularly scheduled programming of food and other posts in a couple of days, but before that...

There isn't much I can say that hasn't already been said about Food Blogger Connect this past weekend, but here's what my checklist looks like:

• Have fun! -check
• Finally meet a lot of great people face to face -check
• Try to take a lot of pictures -well not so check but I also knew everyone else would be clicking away (there are many posts and many other pictures to see besides my very few)
  
• Have fun! -check
• Make lifelong friendships established online concrete -check
• Eat a lot of good food -check
• And HAVE FUN! -check

I don't think I could have imagined in my wildest dreams that all those tweets and emails and chats would turn into this little group that is my blog family. Some photos courtesy of Deeba of some us meeting for dinner on Friday night:

 The Twins: Deeba and Jamie

The Boys: Mowie and Alessio

More of the gals: Jamie, me, Pam and Beth

Slightly over two years ago, I read a post on What's for Lunch Honey? where Meeta talked about how difficult it was to find pecans at affordable prices and in reasonable rather than micro quantities in Germany. Having just brought back a couple of pounds of pecans from the U.S., I emailed her and offered to send her a big bag of them just for the pleasure of seeing what she would make with them. She replied back insisting that she would have to send me something in exchange, and thus a blog friendship was born over email. Occasionally we'd write each other and do Daring Bakers' Challenges together, and then with the Twitterization of the universe, we started talking to each other one way or another almost every day.

The awesome Presenting Triplets: Jeanne, Jamie and Meeta

Jamie of Life's a Feast emailed me almost exactly one year ago now because she was intrigued that our backgrounds were both so multicultural and multilingual and we started leaving comments on each others' blogs, and Deeba I had known through her blog although we hadn't actually spoken directly to each other until we did so on Twitter. It is still amazing to me that meeting all these people face to face just felt like seeing friends I'd known all my life who'd simply been far away for a while, but not like meeting new people at all.

Lebanese Mezze and conversation: Sarah (Simply Cooked) and Alessio

There are more stories like this, with Mowie of the beautiful blog Mowielicious being a discovery on Twitter and Beth of Dirty Kitchen Secrets coming quickly on the heels of my discovery of Mowie's blog, she who was the point of inception and the engine that powered Food Blogger Connect to its culmination this weekend. With so many other bloggers, Claire, my most favorite fennel-head and possibly the funniest person in the room even with such comedic stars as Jeanne, and then Sunita, Pam, Alessio, Kang, Kerrin, Davina, Sarka and on it goes. New faces, new blogs, new friends at every subsequent event. Thank you all for making this so much fun! And now for a bunch of pictures from Saturday:

Jeanne speaking about BloggerAid: Buy a Cookbook!

Meeta giving practical tips on beautiful Food Photography

Kang getting into it: The Photography & later Social Media as a Fish Tank

Jeanne telling it like it is when speaking about Writing & Voice

Jamie amused by Jeanne's quips during their Team Presentation

Meeta sharing Jamie's amusement and Kang twittering away

Jeanne and Jamie demonstrating Team work brilliantly

The cutest MC ever: Beth

Jamie and Meeta enjoying Beth's final words

The most loveable Fennel-head ever: Claire

Thank you to Beth, Mowie and Jamie for being the little FBC train that could and my friends each with your own special links -cultural and personal- to me, to Meeta for being my long-lost twin, to Jeanne for being the Queen of comedy, to Kang for his infectious enthusiasm, to Deeba, my older sister, for coming from so far away (India!) loaded with goodies, to Pam, Alessio, Sunita for the sweets, the laughs and the friendship, and thank you to everyone I just met and the ones I didn't meet as well for joining us and participating, here's to new friendships and to the next Food Blogger Connect in June of 2010.

I think Kang may have actually gotten everyone else's write-ups listed on his blog, he definitely has everyone who was there listed with links to their blogs, but you can go see write-ups at Jamie's, Beth's, Mowie's, Jeanne's, Sarah's (Maison Cupcake), Sunita's, Davina's, Sarka's and there must clearly be more out there.
You can also go to "the" FBC website for a recap on the events and more coming soon...