BlogHer Food: I Want To Go Back To There.

It hardly seems possible that BlogHer Food 2014 in Miami was nearly two weeks ago. Time flies when you’re having fun! Truth be told, I wish I could step into a time machine and go back to do it all over again.

Don’t get me wrong: it was HARD WORK. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: the amount of work involved in putting on these conferences doesn’t seem possible when you consider the size of the team that’s doing it all. (I also submit that everyone who attends a major event like this should have to produce one, just once, so they can see what goes into it.)

The result of having a small team doing lots of work is what you would expect: it’s all hands on deck, everyone working their booties off for the better part of their waking hours. My experience was greatly enhanced by the fact that two of my very, very, VERY favorite people in the world were at my side the majority of the time. Working with Liz and Momo made an already fun job seem even more so, and being able to sneak out of our basement workroom/”cave” for an hour or two here and there with them was awesome.

The nice thing about working really hard all day long is that you develop a high level of appreciation for the times when you can cut loose a little bit.

Like the time when, even though we were surrounded by wonderful food for the duration of the conference, Liz was just plain jonesing for a hot dog. She and I snuck out of the hotel to run across the street where there happened to be a fast food place that served hot dogs. And then we went back for drinks and appetizers at the welcome reception. It’s how we roll.

Or the time when we were on a bus for the Saturday lunch excursion and, as we disembarked, intentionally went in the opposite direction of everyone else and subsequently enjoyed one of the very best hours of the whole weekend in a lovely little cafe with this (and an amazingly personable server) as our backdrop:

Or the time when we thoroughly enjoyed a fourteen minute walk (YES IT WAS, MOMO) to a rooftop party put on by a conference sponsor. Okay, by “we” I mean Liz and me. Momo was not a fan of the walk. Or the neighborhood in which the party was located. Or the seemingly suspicious characters walking around on the surrounding streets, which caused her to, shall we say, get a little antsy:

OH! Or the time when we FINALLY made it to South Beach. It was only for about ninety minutes, but we MADE IT and that’s all that matters. That, and the drinks that were literally the size of our heads.

So you see, it’s all about a work/play balance. There were so many great memories made during BlogHer Food weekend that I will be smiling about all of it for a very, very long time.