BlogHer Food Conference Weekend Where Vegans Came Together

Hi everyone! Last weekend I had the pleasure of speaking at the BlogHer Food Conference, which happened to be in Austin. I invited Heather from Healthy Eating Starts Here to co-teach the Video Bootcamp #1: Equipment and Gear session with me because she is a vlogging expert! Heather and I have “known” each other for years online but met for the very first time in person at Vida Vegan Con. If you are a blogger you totally understand how you can become intimate friends with someone online that you’ve never met. Those of you who aren’t might think it’s weird.

In addition to Heather I had the pleasure of hanging out with my vegan friends: Whitney from Eco-Vegan Gal, JL from JL Goes Vegan, Marly from Namely Marly, Ayinde from I Eat Grass, and got to make some new vegan friends (Hi Kat and Elisa and other attendees that joined us on the excursion!). It was a really great two days. The food and the swag wasn’t as exciting as it was at Vida Vegan Con but I didn’t go hungry. It was nice to see a few natural food companies (Wholesome Sweeteners, Lundberg’s and Bob’s Red Mill) represented there, but it would have been nice to spotlight more vegan companies doing amazing things in the food world. Just like with restaurants, these points apply to conferences as well.

I will give you a recap of all the classes I went to in the next post, but let’s talk about the other good times that were had over the weekend! On Thursday evening, Heather and I picked up JL from the airport and headed to La Condesa. I was really bummed to find out that they discontinued the vegan tasting menu and only had ONE thing on the menu that was vegan. A few things could be modified but I didn’t feel like our waiter made us feel at home there. He sort of made it up to me when they brought out vegan desserts on the house!

The next day (Friday) was the start of the conference and Heather and I were teaching at 1pm. We were both excited and nervous! The class went off without a hitch and we got great feedback from the attendees in the class. We covered a TON of content. BlogHer.com will have audio of all the classes available on their site. If you happen to want the PowerPoint presentation to go along with the audio shoot me an email and I will share it with you!

That evening I volunteered to take a group of people (mostly vegetarians and vegans) to ATX Vegan Drinks and to eat at the two vegan food trailers behind Cheer Up Charlie’s. It was packed and such a great time! Then we cruised by the Rudi’s/Go Veggie party but no vegan cheese was to be found 🙁 We went to bed and got prepared for another full day of conferencing where we didn’t have to teach!

Sadly, the lunch food trailer situation that happened on Saturday did not leave us vegans with much to eat. What was included was potato salad and grilled corn and that doth not make a complete meal. A for effort guys. Thankfully, the Whole Foods truck was present and they had a spicy mock chicken wrap and chickpeas fries. Another truck had a tasty lemonade and hibiscus mint tea, which I Arnold Palmered. All was well in the world as we found a shady spot and chowed down.

That evening I took the vegan crew to Beets Cafe for a raw feast. It was nice spending quality time with like-minded friends. We had to say goodbye to Marly and JL, but Whitney and Heather stayed another day. Heather and I made a few cooking videos (coming soon on the blog!) and I went to the gym for 3 hours lol. We met up with Whitney later to have lunch at Casa de Luz (one of my fave places where you can get a signed copy of Blissful Bites!!). After grub we enjoyed visiting In.gredients, which is a low-impact, natural food store with local produce and their own garden.

Then we had to say our goodbyes again. The only bad thing about having friends come in town is them leaving! I so wished all my vegan friends lived right next door! Can we start a commune somewhere already? 😉

Keep an eye out for a recap of the classes I attended at BlogHer Food Conference and a look inside “my process” of making videos. Someone at our class asked us to walk them through our process but we just didn’t have time. Thanks to everyone that came to our class and it was lovely to meet so many cool bloggers across the world!