Food Bloggers Picnic, Our 2nd Annual!

After months and months of planning with various wonderful people I know, love and appreciate, we set a date and produced The Second Annual Food Bloggers Picnic!

Many many a person new and veteran came with husbands, wives, ex wives, partners, children, mothers and friends! A satiating time was had by all. It's always a trip to put a face, a personality, an outfit and a dish to someone you have been reading for ages.

Cold and dreary in SF and the East Bay, some of us were smart
enough to check the weather and don shorts, skirts and #30 sunscreen as Lafayette was hot by 11am, leaving the wall of fog behind on the West side of the Caldecott Tunnel.

It was delicious to meet and see the other two out queer bloggers, finally meet Marc, the quiet man behind Mental Masala, eat and take home the leftovers of Pim's crunchy rice squares, find the hidden sauteed gnocchi amidst purple, green and spotted beans made by the smiley Heidi of 101 Cookbooks, prep watermelon next to Spanish canape making Brett,

 swim in the pool with none other than Elise of Simply Recipes and Movable Type Tutorial fame, be the first in the hidden hammock with my future ex-girlfriend Amanda Berne, finally set eyes upon the prolific (and very cute!!) Sean over at Hedonia, meet the lanky Garrett and impress his husband with my dessert-experiment, both who came down all the way from Sacramento to represent yo, 

talk to the smart, charming and humorous children of our tall and meat-making, flat bread grilling host, Owen, ride in a big truck with my very own personal Meat Angel Guy "Dr. Biggles" Prince, eat as many pieces of the rare-and-newly-revived-from-extinction Bakewell Tart as I liked, brilliantly crafted by none other than England's own baking heroine/god-dess, Sam "Sixy Beast" Breach, dive whole body first into the bowl of lightly ginger syruped gems that were fresh summer berries

and julienned mint made by my favorite ho, and get-around-gal, Joy "the motherfuckin' bomb" and her devilishly handsome and superbly dressed husband Jon,

dish with the all-knowing veteran food blogger Amy about Bay Area food news, a recent Seattle visit and her husband Lee's enviable footwear, flatter the hot rock-and-roll black clad wearing Chubby of not-to-be-messed-with Bunrabs, answer hazelnut skinning questions inquired by Anita of Dessert First,

 

accepted praise on the upwards slope on the craftiness and singularly unique voice my writing is carrying more and more as time goes on: real compliments indeed coming from a long term veteran of newspaper writing Cookiecrumb, her dish was soaked in vodka so I could not eat it but Heidi did it justice with her uncanny photo skills; we both loved its "aesthetic palette" being the arty geeks that we are,

re-connecting with Sandy of Tasty Bytes after long last, ate an innovative mango and quinoa dish, rejoiced in cold peanut noodles with perfectly diced cucumbers, loved a flat bread made that day and grilled over hot coals,  gave shit to Tea for leaving early with her empty plate of big and juicy pan bagna offering, (she and I stayed up until 1:30 am the night before talking books, exes, the literary scene, cookbooks, what to do when we don't like our friend's partners, and eating pretty Pink Pearl apples),

setting-up the great outdoor space with secret Karaoke Shark Alder and his serious, pretty hat- wearing wife, giving Wendy the tour of food on the table, saying happy hellos to anyone who bumped into me as I chatted and chatted away giddily, so incredibly happy to amongst all of you cute and handsome critters!

Thank you fellow planning committee members present and absent, from near and far. We did indeed do it! Pat us on the back, we deserve it.

The Northern California Food Blogging Community is just that, a community.

And we Rock!!

Other places to find the overview and more extensive photos: Becks and Posh, Dessert First, Confessions of a Restaurant Whore, Bunrabs Daily Feed, I'm Mad and I Eat, Vanilla Garlic, Cooking With Amy, 101 Cookbooks, Pengrin's photos of (almost) all the food!, Hedonia's photos, Garrett's photos, KQED's Bay Area Bites, Jennifer Jeffrey, Life's A Picnic, and Pengrin Eats.

Comments

[sam]

hey you!
you dissected my tart and photographed it.
I hope you ate it after that.

shuna - i think you were truly the spirit of the picnic as this post, giddy as its writer, will attest.

xxx

[Cookiecrumb]

Yes.

[Tea]

Yes, indeed!

Not only were you the spirit of the party, but you've captured it perfectly here (which doesn't surprise me at all). Right/write on!

[Sean]

Aw garsh ... I've always aspired to being both cute and prolific. But I can never be as spirited and unabashedly joyful as you, sweets. So great to meet you (and everyone else) at long last!

[Owen]

Shuna - thank you so much for everything you did. And everyone was so careful and nice and clean and all that stuff. Xena thanks you for her picture too - I bet only two other attendees even know what I'm talking about!

And really nice photos...

[sam]

owen? the doglette?

[Garrett]

I'm not lanky, I'm excessively tall and slim for a food whore.
*HUG* So shibby to finally meet you Shuna! Please give us any and every excuse to come do so again and maybe go grab a bite to eat, or if you venture north to Sacramento we would be more than happy to play with you!

[Elise]

Shuna Fish Lydon - sprite-ly muse of the No Cal food blog community - you've done it again. You've truly captured the spirit of the day. And that pool was WAY fun. :-)

[Jennifer]

Shuna, I didn't actually meet you at the picnic. I saw you... across the table, across the yard... and wanted to rush up and tell you how much I love your blog, and your poetry, but you were always deep in conversation, so I never made the move. Wish I would have.

[Mary Ladd]

It was only at the end of the picnic that we met but I've heard so much about you from Tea and you are as witty and funny as I expected.

[shuna fish lydon]

Xena is he doglette indeed. More like Dog Warrior as Owen told us earlier Xena eats rocks and wood and she's a ferocious watch-dog as well.

Witty and funny? Giddy and Shibby? Poetic and handsome?

ok, well I added in the handsome part myself. thanks for all the words. we are indeed a bunch of damn fine eggs, if I do say so myself.

[drbiggles]

Ah, mang. That was such a great day that offered up the best from dawn to dusk.
We need to do a Holiday Food Bloggers Dinner.

Who's up for it?

[Kat]

mmmm...sleepy, home, missed this, but got to sleep under the stars instead. i'll be there next time!