"A Virtual Potluck" - back in April 2006, I embarked on a journey to host a monthly virtual potluck on my blog. We might have been spread out all over the world, but the few food bloggers we were found a wonderful way to come together and share the warmth of our friendships.
It really has been quite some time since I did a proper recap of a photography workshop here. Not due to the fact that there weren’t any last year but more due to the fact that things were on a constant move in 2017. I was chasing and realizing goals, dreams and basically reassessing many things in my life. Not to say that my photography and styling workshops and retreats aren’t part of my goals. They most certainly are. Nowhere else am I challenged to think out of the box and to be creative while planning such a workshop or retreat. Nowhere else do I meet incredibly talented and creative people who strive to go after their own goals and find inspiration when they sign up for these events. Nowhere else do I get to work and partner with brilliant and extraordinary people who fall in step with me to provide the best possible experience for all who take part.
Earlier this year in May, I flew south towards Rome for my first workshop this year. Together with one of my most cherished friends and workshop partners Jeanne Horak-Druiff we were going to host and instruct a signature food photography and styling retreat just a stone’s throw away from Rome in the serenity of the Sabina Hills. Sabina's landscape is a tapestry of olive groves, vineyards and ancient hilltop villages, rich in medieval architecture and tradition. The images in this post will envelop you and capture you in the charm this region offers.
Dubai this time had a very different aura to it, compared to the past years. For the first time I felt as if the city had a flow, it seemed to groove to a distinct vibe – almost as if after years of searching Dubai had found its character. The city proudly projected a balance it has seemed to have found and this balance and groove was also characterized in the workshop I recently held in Dubai.
London, always such a bustling and hip place, was the location for my second workshop this year. I always love coming here for short visits – perfect to soak up the energy of the city. While London is very much about urban dynamism, I also love the open-wide spaces, leafy escapes and the riverside hideouts this city offers. The perfect place to give just the right beat to one of my workshops.
Dubai is forever changing! Evolving, progressing, growing – if it’s always for the better is debatable but often there are changes and concepts emerging that really excel. In a city where superlatives are found at almost every corner finding something that really carries that WOW-effect can be hard. Often, for me it is not the mega glitzy or glamorous that stuns in Dubai – it is the passion, the professionalism and the honesty of the people involved in projects and ideas that carries a valuable seal.
[Stunning Valdobbiadene]
There is a time and place for everything and those are the times when everything falls into place just perfectly. It did not take very long after our collaboration in the London workshop last year for Jeanne and me to get back in the saddle to plan the next one together. We are a well functioning team and we had a very clear idea of how and where the next workshop would be.
With the gracious team of Nino Franco supporting us things glided off to a smooth start.
Barbara Harris was a strong and very loved member of the food blogging community. She will be sorely missed and I cannot help but feel that there will be a gap in the community which cannot be filled. The few hours I spent in the poppy fields thinking about Barbara, I was wondering about how one could honor such a person.
A person who lived life vivaciously even though it was not all easy going. She was there for everyone with a cheerful tweet, a thoughtful comment or a touching email. She loved the blogging community so much and for many became a pillar to lean on.
It was Barbara who created the Hay Hay It’s Donna Hay event that has become so popular and it was Barbara who supported the Lance Armstrong Foundation and LiveSTRONG Day with a passion, creating Taste of Yellow for the food blogging community to show their own support for cancer. Cancer was the reason she started her blog and she boldly fought the battle against it all these years.
I met her through A Taste of Yellow in 2007 where I heard of the event and the courageous, brassy lady behind it. I submitted my humble Sauce Hollandaise and ever since then have been a part of Taste of Yellow and Barbara has been a part of my life since then.
It seems therefore appropriate to me that we remember her with an event that was so dear and close to her. It’s fitting to get the food blogging community together to share their memories, thoughts and stories about Barbara in one more A Taste of Yellow - but this ray of yellow is for Barbara.
When Gillian emailed me on Thursday sharing her thoughts on Barbara, her ideas were along the same lines. It was all decided quickly and I did not have to twist my dearest Jeanne’s arm, who is the current hostess of the July Monthly Mingle. She loved the idea and here we are … doing a very special mingle just for you Barbara.
Cin cin!
I’ll allow Barbara to explain how A Taste of Yellow works:
“I'm asking all bloggers to participate in the blog event A TASTE OF YELLOW by making a dish containing some type of yellow food. This can be anything you like as long it features a yellow food. Some ideas to get you started are lemon, banana, saffron, corn, eggs, cheese.”´
Barbara Harris from A Taste of Yellow, April 13, 2007
If you would like to enter A Taste of Yellow Monthly Mingle please head on over to Jeanne’s blog, Cook Sister! for further details on how you can submit your entry. The roundup will go up on August 11th, 2012 so you have plenty of time to join.
Let’s paint the food blogs yellow this July for Barbara! Hope to see you there!
All photographs and written content on What's For Lunch, Honey? © 2006-2012 Meeta Khurana Wolff unless otherwise indicated. | All rights reserved | Please Ask First
We’ll always have Weimar. It was surreal and I am still collecting and ordering my thoughts for the weekend gone. Plate to Page came and with a click of the camera button and a stroke of a pen it disappeared. The four of us - Ilva, Jeanne, Jamie and I, had had this vision for a long time and after almost a year in planning, organizing, fretting and frustrations, I think it would be safe to say the first Plate to Page Workshop in Weimar was an amazing event.
I am really excited to announce the next Monthly Mingle, because not only do I have the perfect recipe in my head for the event but mostly because one of my most dearest friends is guest hosting this time. Deeba of Passionate About Baking is a true inspiration with all her exquisite recipes and creations and her passion shows in everything she does. She needs to introduction I am sure of it.
Deeba’s passion is baking with seasonal fruit and therefore it was no surprise that she chose to incorporate this into the Monthly Mingle theme this month. She says:
“Trying to include fruit in bakes, keeping it seasonal as far as possible, continues to be a passion with me. I enjoy following fruits in season, and discovering what more I can do with them.”
So I hope you will join Deeba and myself as we lay out the table for a fruity mingle this month with Fruit in Baking. Please visit Deeba’s blog for more details.
Here’s how it works:
- Create a dish that fits the Fruit in Baking theme as described above.
- Post about it on your blog from now till 22 November 2010 {Entries must be in English, please}.
- Your creation should be prepared for the current Monthly Mingle theme and only shared with a maximum of 2 other blog events. Let’s try and keep the creations as fresh as the ingredients you use.
- You must provide a link to Deeba’s post and/or the official Monthly Mingle page.
- Once you’ve posted your dish, please send your entries to Deeba: vindee{at}gmail{dot}com with your name, location, post link and a 300px wide picture {not bigger than 1 MB}
Hope to see you all there.
Have a great Sunday!
All photographs and written content on What's For Lunch, Honey? © 2006-2010 Meeta Khurana Wolff unless otherwise indicated. | All rights reserved | Please Ask First
I am sure many of you have heard about Ilva of Lucullian Delights’ outstanding Prop Series. If you haven’t and you are an aspiring food photographer then I really suggest you make your way over and browse through the posts.
Ilva invited me a few weeks ago to share a few of my secrets and tricks for getting my perfect shot. I was extremely honored and enjoyed writing the post for the series. So, come on over to Ilva’s and find out what I use for props, how I go about using props for my images and get a peak into my prop shelf in Part 8 of Food Props on Sunday.
All photographs and written content on What's For Lunch, Honey? © 2006-2010 Meeta Khurana unless otherwise indicated. | All rights reserved | Please Ask First
“Zesty has landed and in need of a very STIFF drink!” was what I texted as soon as I got out of the plane. London: sun shining, blue skies and gorgeous warm weather. My nerves were still shaken after my wild autobahn fiasco on the way to Frankfurt airport, but it was paired with an excitement that had been building up for months.
I was looking towards this Food Blogger Connect with mixed feelings. There were many hopes and after the simple success FBC 2009 there was a standard to be set for FBC 2010. What excited me was that I was asked to speak again and this time I was teaming up with Mowie. Then I was also going to be seeing some good friends again and the excitement was reaching the summit of my emotions.
Back from London and I am coming down hard. This time the trip to London was a lot more than the Food Blogger Connect. It was a reunion of the explosive kind. There are many stories to tell and emotions to be sorted out.
As I sit here, back in Weimar, going through the multitude of impressions and photographs of the incredible weekend, I thought I’d give you a sneak peak of what a girl comes back with when she goes to London to meet up with her friends, speak at a conference and then shops her way through London. This is just half of the loot, I got.
There were gifts and goodie bags, shopping sprees at Laduree and Fortnum & Mason’s. Curry cooking and wine drinking, Macaron testing and rugby men watching, chatting till the wee hours and waking up to giggles and more chatter. And all this was not even part of the official conference.
So give me a bit till I get all this sorted and I’ll be back with those studmuffins macarons, more scoop on the Food Blogger Connect and the Spice Girls!
All photographs and written content on What's For Lunch, Honey? © 2006-2010 Meeta Khurana unless otherwise indicated. | All rights reserved | Please Ask First
It's Food Blogger Connect time again and this year it's going to be a really phenomenal weekend! Two and half days jam-packed with food, fun, roundtables and hands-on workshops, networking, awards and some really cool prizes.
Food Blogger Connect 2010 will take place on June 4th, 5th & 6th in London.
You don't want to miss it!
Discover who will be speaking, the gorgeous venues, the itinerary and other relevant information.
There will be prop swaps, awards and many prizes like cupcake decorating classes from Bea's of Bloomsbury worth over £100 each! And if you thought last year's goodie bags were out of this world, then you've seen nothing yet! Spreading FBC out over Friday, Saturday and Sunday allows you all the chance to actively participate in ways we couldn't last year - not only hands-on workshops, but Q & A during and after each discussion. We will all have loads of time over the three days to meet, get to know each other, exchange, share, network.
On the topic of food photography and styling, this year I am glad I won’t be standing up there all alone presenting, this time I have the honor to team up with the brilliant Mowie of Mowielicious and talented Bea of La Tartine Gourmande to provide you with a hands-on look into all the different aspects of food styling and photography. We are currently planning as I write this, but I can promise you we’ll have a lot of interesting topics that we want to cover with you. So bring lots of paper and pencils to take notes. ;o)
You will notice that the cost has gone up from last year as you will also notice there is so much more on offer. The price includes dinner, breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, BBQ, blind folded wine tasting (definitely looking forward to this one), cocktails and brunch are all offered before, after and in between the information-packed workshops and roundtables.
For everyone's convenience we have been able to break down the event into three days so you can attend what and when you like - just one day or two or the whole weekend. For some of you who attended last year's event, you'll know first hand how, even in one short day, we all learned so much and how much fun we had meeting and getting to know each other. Now just think of that but times three! Don’t take my word for it just see what we got up to last November.
You don't need to look twice at the itinerary to know that you are going to come out more prepared and inspired than ever to turn your blog into an even bigger success, whatever your vision!
You'll need to hurry as registration is open and tickets are selling fast! Space is limited (we want to keep it intimate) so make that decision quick! Got a question? Drop us a line on the FBC blog or email info@foodbloggerconnect.com. Let the good times roll!
All photographs and written content on What's For Lunch, Honey? © 2006-2010 Meeta Khurana unless otherwise indicated. | All rights reserved | Please Ask First
And the euphoria reached it's final peak.
On Saturday 28th November as my flight circled for the third time over London, I felt queasy. Not because of the flight. Moreover because all the bundled elation and frenzy that had conglomerated over the past weeks, was going to burst right at that moment - over London!
Last week, when I received a call from the Chief Editor of our regional newspaper, the TLZ, I was fairly stumped to say the least. Stumped but also very pleased. My blog has been picking up a bit of attention in the German news lately and it’s helped me land quite a few contract jobs and other interesting projects which are in the pipeline. However, a face to face interview is a first for me.
It's time for a fiesta and everyone is invited. While Nags gets her roundup for Ravishing Rice ready, it's time to announce the next mingle. My gracious guest hostess is the absolutely wonderful Jenny from All Things Edible and I love the theme she picked for this month. Jenny wants us all to come party with her in her Mexican Fiesta.
Who does not love Mexican food? It's full of flavor, fresh, spicy and perfect for parties. This cuisine offers something for everyone - vegetarians benefit from the large variety of fresh vegetables and legumes, for the more carnivorous folks amongst us there are great and aromatic meat and poultry dishes to choose from and I do not know a kid you does not enjoy a taco, quesadilla or a burrito for lunch!
Dig into your recipe books, browse the Internet or share your favorite Mexican dish with us. To help you get started you might like my Black Bean Chili with Saffron Rice and Papaya Guacamole or how about these Cheese Quesadillas with Two Salsas.
If you now can't wait to join us here's what you need to do:
All further details for the grand Mexican Fiesta can be viewed on Jenny's announcement post.
See you there!
All photographs and written content on What's For Lunch, Honey? © 2006-2008 Meeta Khurana unless otherwise indicated. | All rights reserved | Please Ask First
I am clapping my hands in absolute pleasure. Although it was a slow start, things picked up along the way and each one of you rose up to the challenge I presented, with perfection. The result: an awesome, colorful buffet of delicious Caribbean cooking spread out for all to indulge in. Cynthia you can be proud of us!
I got entries from all over the world and was excited to see so much variety and for me I personally was excited to see a few come out of their box and cook something they generally would not. That is what I love about these mingles.
![MonthlyMingleBanner July2012[9]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nZjGU9KcC3peV_rWzqKmX6PHMlpXAlZYCTh5oBhu9hykA3iaZBwbbhawEvyQu9wgI8gDvclFOJTiJz0u6da1MmaOjxRQfBwvhaFWI6r6qCvAHtpX0_uqVQ4ytGjWN59qkYIFXw/s1600-h/MonthlyMingleBanner%252520July2012%25255B9%25255D%25255B9%25255D.jpg "MonthlyMingleBanner July2012[9]")