Houzz.com Interview

I promise I did not plan this. CafeMom approached me about an interview early in August and then right about the time that article was supposed to be released, my friend Jill Asher asked me about doing an interview for Houzz.com to kick off a series they are doing on food bloggers’ kitchens.

I must say after my first visit to the site I was sucked in. It’s a home design site where you can save photos of rooms, landscapes, and home design ideas. Anyone can use it and you can upload your own photos, plus the site has almost 4,000 professional designers and architects who upload photos of their work for you to browse. Photos are grouped by design style, living space, and metro region, and you can add design element keywords. You can even tag individual items in photos and add a URL, brand name, or other descriptive information. You can create ideabooks, which allow you to group ideas for a room, backyard, color schemes, anything you can think of. If you used to keep a scrapbook with pictures of designs you liked, now you can do it online and share your ideabooks.

This interview focused on the design of the house, so there’s photos of the dining room and living room as well as the kitchen. I hope you enjoy it! Also, Houzz.com is offering a giveaway with the interview, three copies of the Weight Watchers Momentum Cookbook, so enter for a chance to win.

Houzz.com – Interview with Food Blogger Andrea Meyers

Welcome to Our Kitchen

CafeMom posted an article today about me and our kitchen, complete with photos of course. I can’t believe how much work it took to get the kitchen ready for this piece! It’s summer and the boys are home (but school starts next week!) and the house has that “really lived in” look most days. Welcome to our kitchen and I hope you enjoy it!

CafeMom: In the Kitchen With Andrea Meyers

Taking Chances

Being a Type A planner, I tend to map out what I want to do and how I want to get there, taking fairly predictable steps along the way to my goal. When I decided to leave my K-12 teaching career and transition to instructional design and information technology, I set a plan for myself and followed the plan.

Food blogging and food photography have been the total opposite for me. I started this site on a lark three and a half years ago and had no idea what I was doing when I picked up our little point and shoot camera and snapped my first food photo. I didn’t sit down with a photography book in an attempt to cram all the knowledge I could into my brain, I just experimented with mixed success. It was a hobby, after all, just something fun I did for a creative outlet without any professional aspirations. Never in my wildest dreams did I think someday I would have food photos published in a cookbook, so I now find myself at a loss for words to express my delight that some of my food photos were chosen to grace the pages of the newly released The Gilded Fork Entertaining At Home: A Year of Dinner Parties by Jennifer Iannolo and Chef Mark Tafoya.

When Chef Mark tweeted about looking for recipe testers for the book, I threw my name in the hat. Over the course of a month I tested four recipes and sent in my feedback as well as photos of the food, all the while thinking how much fun I had doing the testing (and tasting) and wondering if any of my photos were good enough for the book. You can imagine my surprise when Jennifer and Mark said they wanted to use three of my photos! When I received the published book in the mail yesterday and saw the kind notes Jennifer and Mark had written inside the cover and my three photos in the book as well as one on the back cover, I got a little lump in my throat.

None of this was planned, I just jumped in for the fun of working on a cookbook, and for taking a chance I got a lot of personal satisfaction and a little recognition. The project boosted my confidence and motivated me to continue improving my photography and writing. To Chef Mark and Jennifer, hugs and thanks for opening this project up to bloggers and for giving this amateur a chance.

Grow Your Own #31

Our summer garden is off and running with zucchini blossoming, beans growing, tomatoes hanging on the vines, peppers sprouting, little eggplants budding, herbs getting taller, as well as bunnies, squirrels, and chipmunks trying trying to eat it all before we do. While we only have herbs to cook with so far, the rest of it is doing well and we’re getting excited about the coming harvest.

It’s time for the next round of Grow Your Own, the blogging event that celebrates the foods we grow or raise ourselves and the dishes we make using our homegrown products. Many thanks to Graziana of Erbe in Cucina for hosting our last round, Grow Your Own #30. Read more

Recipe Testing for The Gilded Fork Cookbook

In the last few weeks I’ve been busy testing recipes for The Gilded Fork Cookbook, the upcoming book from Chef Mark Tafoya and the folks at The Culinary Media Network. After perusing the cookbook contents I sent in a list of about eight different recipes I wanted to test, and believe me it was hard to narrow it down to eight. Mark asked me to tackle the first four on my list, which you see below.

Milk and Honey Lavender Sorbet. I like using lavender in desserts, and this sorbet is delicious. Very refreshing, a perfect after dinner lift. Read more

2008 Food Blog Awards, Go and Vote!

I have some very happy news to share. Today the Well Fed Network announced the finalists in the annual Food Blog Awards, and Andrea’s Recipes made the finals in the Family/Kids category! I’m surprised, delighted, and honored to be nominated by Karina (one of my blogging heroes) and selected by the judges panel.

Congratulations to my fellow nominees in the Family/Kids category: Foodie Tots, Picky Palate, Under the High Chair, and The Barefoot Kitchen Witch. Please stop by their blogs and offer some hearty congratulations.

Voting is open from now until January 24th 8 pm EST, and the winners will be announced on Monday January 26. There are 14 categories of wonderful food blogs, and if some of your favorites received nominations, I know they would appreciate your vote.

Thanks especially to my readers. Your comments and emails never fail to bring a smile to my face and you’ve made the last three years of blogging even more enjoyable.

« Previous Page — Next Page »