Look Ma, I'm a "Foodie Blogger"!

Last week I was sitting around, minding my own business, when my wife sent me some information about a "Foodie Blogger" get together which was taking place just around the corner from our house at the posh Urban Element cooking school. While I have fully embraced the term "foodie", and am active on the popular Ottawa Foodies website, I have definitely not warmed up so much to the term "blogger". I dunno what it is about it, really, that irks me, but it just does. Maybe in part due to the fact that I've been "blogging" for some 14 years now, since long before that term was ever used. I guess maybe I'm old-school or something.

In any case, it was not until my wife sent this invitation to me that I actually realised that even if I did not agree with the terminology, I am in fact a "foodie blogger"! I write about food all the time - usually simple, wholesome, back-to-earth food. With simple, wholesome, back-to-earth methods. And since I'd only been to the Urban Element once before, and really enjoyed the atmosphere, I decided to head over. Especially since it was free!

The event was being sponsored by the Chicken Farmers of Canada, with guest speaker Ron Eades, the food writer for the Ottawa Citizen. You can click that link to see their short article on the event, and to get a full list of people who were there. The basic gist of it was that the Chicken Farmers Association is in the process of trying to figure out the whole Social Media thing, and so they are holding events like this to get together with those of us who supposedly have it all figured out.

In general it was a fun evening with good food. I certainly gained a whole new respect for Mr Eades, who while giving his talk sort of meandered from one topic to another until he got onto the topic of ethical practices in chicken farming, and how the way chicken is packaged and marketed distances people from the fact that the stuff in the package had given its life for our dinner tables. Wow! The looks on the faces of the two wonderful ladies from the Chicken Producers was priceless! Due to the way in which his talk was meandering, I don't think Mr Eades at first actually realised where he'd ended up with it, but once he did he stayed the course and held fast to what he was saying. He did manage to wrap it up nicely to turn what he was saying into something positive - I don't recall exactly what it was he tied it up with, but it did make it all good and the Chicken Producers sighed a very visible sigh of relief.

It was good to see that so many of these writers do not take themselves too seriously. The only person I spoke with who actually seemed to be somewhat full of themself was a chef from a local caterer. At first he seemed very down-to-earth and approachable, but man, did he love to talk! And did he dislike it if anyone tried to interject anything into the conversation. Oh well, c'est la vie. Even he was perfectly pleasant for the most part - and everyone else seemed absolutely delightful.

One site that I will give special mention to is Daily Dinner, simply because I want to send kudos to someone who I think has a good formula to make a living at what he is doing. Just talking to him you could really sense the passion he had for his website. I wish him all the best with it and hope that he really does manage to make a go of it.