My First Bogger Event!

No new recipe today, I just have to brag that I am attending my first-ever food blogger event today.  Several months ago I got an email from Rachel at Rachel Cooks, asking if I would be interested in getting together with a few other Michigan food bloggers for an informal meeting in Grand Rapids.  Of course, I was.  I live about half an hour from Grand Rapids, and I have never met any other food bloggers in person before, so I was excited.  Rachel started planning the event with Liz of The Lemon Bowl, and over the months it completely morphed into something much bigger than a few bloggers meeting for coffee or lunch.  They created an event called Taste of Michigan. It's a blogger event that highlights local Michigan products and restaurants.  This event quickly acquired its own website and a Facebook page.  Attendance was limited to 20 bloggers.

Rachel and Liz have been busy busy busy planning this event and filling up huge swag bags.  Here is a run-down of our activities for the day:

• Farmer's market shopping at Fulton Street Farmer's Market and breakfast at The Silver Spork gourmet food truck.  (My first time eating at a food truck.)
• Prop shopping at small shops in the downtown area, including Art of the Table.
• Private lunch at Bistro Bella Vita.  
• Kitchenaid demonstration and giveaway.  Did you know Kitchenaid is a Michigan company?  I didn't!  One of us will win a brand new stand mixer (that means I have a 1 in 20 chance of winning; that's pretty good!).
• Tour and tasting at Reserve Wine and Food.
• Free time in which to check out Artprize, or hang out in a cool coffee shop.
• Cocktails and dinner at the super swanky Six.One.Six.  After dinner we get to meet and chat with the chefs!

And if all of this weren't enough (and trust me, it is!), Liz and Rachel have put together swag bags full of local Michigan products worth more than $500! And by that I mean that EACH bag has over $500 worth of stuff in it.  Holy cow!

This event got a write-up on Mlive.com a few weeks back, and it was mentioned on WOOD radio yesterday morning.

I'm sure there's more I could say about this, but I'm just too excited for words!  Sometime in the next couple of weeks, I will write a post about how it went.