Julie's strawberry cream pie

When I started my never-ending masters program, I had a professor sit us down and read through a list of student quirks that drive professors batshit crazy. The usual suspects were on there:

• Texting in class with your phone in your lap and thinking no one can see you staring at your crotch
• Missing class and emailing to see if you missed “anything important” (hint: professors think everything they say is important)
• Missing class and expecting a private tutorial to get caught up
• Missing class in general

The one that really struck a chord with me, though, was this (in my own words): Don’t complain. Don’t complain about your work load, your test questions, your class times or anything else you can think of to complain about (and you’ll think of a lot). When it’s all said and done, you picked the classes and times, you picked the field of study, you picked the school. What did you think, they’d hand a diploma for watching Food Network and reading blogs? (I kinda did.)

The point of this rant is simply to say that we all have things to complain about–bills, in-laws, homework, work work, working out, sickness, gas prices, taxes, weather. The list goes on an on. Sometimes when I feel the heavy weight of such burdens bearing down on my life, I step back and remind myself that I’m the one who put myself here. It’s easy to blame my professors, my bosses, my family, friends and enemies. But, truly, I chose this. All of it.

There are other more pleasant times when I think of this, too. Like today at the second Charlotte Food Bloggers monthly meeting. Sitting around a picnic table filled with like-minded food lovers and their vegetarian-friendly potluck creations, I felt very happy to be where I am.

Happy feast

Often times I think it’s so easy to look at the bad things in our lives and blame ourselves for messing up, giving up or otherwise failing our way to that point. We blame ourselves for creating that miserable life. But when it comes to the great times–the picnics with friends, the perfect 15-minute nap at the end of a brutal hot yoga class, the sense of accomplishment at the end of the semester–we tend to forgot that we created that life too.

I’m working hard to enjoy every day, to really celebrate this life. There’s no reason not do. I’ve done the negative/pessimistic/realist thing for long enough. I think I’m ready to just be blissfully content.

My (first) plate

Our meeting today was awesome. The food was out of control. I was going to start a “Highlights for me included” sentence but then I realized I just loved every single thing that was there.

Especially this pie.

And this cupcake.

Knowing I was heading to yoga within the hour, I did my best to keep my food intake in check. But when Emma the Southern Cake Queen showed up with her cupcakes, all bets were off. I told myself I’d only eat half and be on my way and, as I’m sure you expected, it was gone before I could say “downward dog.”

I’d like to report that I did not vomit in class despite devouring that cupcakes not 15 minutes before starting. Just another cherry atop a perfect little day.

[Bloggers in attendance that you will love: Taylor, Julie, Kelly, Diana, Julia, Alison, Ensley and Crosby whose blog, we are told, is forthcoming.]

Perfect little berry

Today was a beautiful day for picking strawberries so the Charlotte Food Bloggers did just that. It was warm with a light breeze and overcast with big fat cumulus clouds that almost (almost) rivaled my favorite Illinois sky.

Perfect.

We met up at Miller’s Farm in Fort Mill, SC and, although I was late, the group wasn’t tough to spot.

They're the ones with the tripods.

Standard.

Normal.

Naturally, I came without cash and was digging up quarters in my cupholders when Diana swooped in and saved the day buying me my very own 5-pound basket.

I filled that sucker to the brim.

My mom always took us berry picking in the summer. I feel like the season is much later in Illinois and, therefore, much hotter. We lucked out with perfect weather but I still got sunburned despite my sunblock. My dermatologist will love that on Wednesday. :[

Last weekend Stew and I actually dropped in at the South Carolina Strawberry Festival.

"Strawberry" Festival

But after finding THIS GUY to be the only strawberry in sight, we were in and out in about 15 minutes flat.

You I cannot eat.

Needless to say, the bountiful harvest of real strawberries that I picked today was much appreciated indeed.

I will eat you.

Next week we’re meeting up again with strawberry-based food items. I’m thinking I’ll make Poptarts…

Oh but wait… the best part of the day… ANIMALS.

Juicy the pig

Aggressive donkey

I trust you like strawberries. (Stolen from Julie)

I’ve washed, prepped, stored and frozen my berries. Oh, and I ate my weight in them, too. I’m just hoping some remain for my Poptart project. All in all, a lovely little Sunday.

Julie's banana cupcake chicks

What a glorious day it has been. It started with yoga followed by the Charlotte Clean Green Festival followed by the first meeting of the Charlotte Food Bloggers. Julie and Taylor (two bloggers who receive sufficient stalking from me on a daily basis) put the event together and I was damn near giddy to get an invite. I love food, you see.

We met up at Park Road Park for a little nerdy blog talk and a lot of food.

Feast.

Bliggidy bloggers

If you are a friend/spouse/parent/boyfriend/etc. of a food blogger and can’t figure out why we constantly want to hang out with other food bloggers, consider this: You know how people with kids start hanging out exclusively with other people with kids? It’s because that’s all they talk about. There’s nothing wrong with that. After all, they face the same challenges. They can pool their knowledge together. They learn from each other. They challenge each other. And they can talk about poop.

It’s almost the same with food bloggers (minus the poop… sometimes?) because our blogs are our babies. You see? We want to help them thrive, make them the best they can be and (sometimes) brag about them too. So the next time your eyes glaze over as that special food blogger in your life rambles on about lighting and aperture and salt varieties, buy them a ticket to the nearest food conference. You’ll be glad you did.

You know how we do.

As is to be expected, the food was insane. As was not to be expected (down here in the dirty South and all), a lot of the food was vegetarian/vegan. Win!

Oh happy day.

I’m pretty sure that: Brooke made the pizza bread, Julia made the vegan quiches, Diana made the quinoa salad… but who made the panzanella?? It was awesome.

In addition, I ate a chocolate cookie from Lindsay, my own chocolate banana sunflower butter blondies (don’t judge me) and (AND) a little chick cupcake from Julie.

It doesn’t end there. The Southern Cake Queen cupcake truck was there.

Cupcake truck!

Apparently everyone else already knew this existed or something because I was the only one who flew off the picnic table like a kid chasing down the icecream man. Oops.

I love today.