blogging Archives - 2 Sisters 2 Cities

Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on October 22, 2012

My husband, baby T, and I traveled up to Maine this weekend to visit some family and friends and so that I could attend the Blog Better Boston Food Summit at Stonewall Kitchen. Stonewall Kitchen’s headquarters in York, ME include a food production plant, their corporate offices, a cooking school, and a huge store with SK products. I’ve always driven by their headquarters on many other trips to Maine and have always wanted to check it out. When I found out that the lovely ladies behind Blog Better Boston were organizing a food summit at Stonewall Kitchen, I knew I had to attend!

We started off with a delicious breakfast provided by Au Bon Pain. Next, we toured the Stonewall Kitchen facilities. It was very cool to check out the production line.

Stonewall Kitchen Production Facility

I also loved the office spaces and conference rooms- what a beautiful space to work in!

Stonewall Kitchen Offices

We had four sessions throughout the day: Restaurant Reviews, Food Photography, Recipe Development, and Photo Editing. They were all great sessions and I learned so much information. I was really inspired by the Food Photography session hosted by Stonewall Kitchen’s product photographer, Michael Cabelin. He provided so many great photography tips that I am hoping to implement soon! I was blown away by their props collection- check out all the plates and bowls! They also had an entire tool cabinet of different size spoons and forks. How funny would it be if I took out all my husband’s tools out of his tool chest and put in blogging props instead?

Stonewall Kitchen Props

For our lunch break, we got to attend Stonewall Kitchen’s Cooking School. Culinary instructor Patty Roche walked us through the delicious lunch menu. We started off with a butternut squash soup with ginger. The entrée consisted of prosciutto-wrapped chicken with ricotta and sage topped with a lemon roasted garlic beurre blanc and side of roasted pumpkin & vegetable medley with creamy polenta. We topped off the meal with a pear and fig cobbler dessert. (Check out the 2S2C facebook page for photos of all 3 dishes!) It was a wonderful fall meal and the class itself was very entertaining. It was like being on the set of a cooking show! Patty also shared many great cooking tips throughout the class.

Stonewall Kitchen Cooking School

Before we left, we were treated with a pretty awesome swag bag. Some of my favorite items included the Stonewall Kitchen Holiday Jam, coasters from Chilewich, and the Lake Champlain organic cherry peruvian dark chocolate bar. My favorite item overall has to be the Kitchen Aid 3-Speed Immersion Blender from Wayfair…I can’t wait to try it out on some recipes later this week. Be sure to check in to 2S2C later this week- I am planning a giveaway with some of the swag I received! (And speaking of giveaways, have you entered our Kitchen Aid Mixer Giveaway yet?!?)

blog better boston food summit swag

This was actually the third conference of the year that I have attended (see here and here for recaps from the first two.) I really enjoyed this conference since it solely focused on food blogging. I definitely hope to attend more food blogging conferences in the future!

So tell me, do you have a particular favorite Stonewall Kitchen product? Share in the comments…

sister m signature

Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on August 28, 2012

Sorry for the lack of posts this week…we have been on stay-cation this week and I have been trying to get into a vacation mind set as much as possible. For the past couple of years, we have rented a little cottage in Nantucket (read more on our ACK adventures here and here), but this year we decided to stay home and explore our new town and surrounding areas for the week. I have been catching up on a huge stack of magazines, reading books, hitting up the beach, and finishing up a few projects around the house.

I’ve also decided to take a short hiatus from blogging this week to rejuvenate on that front as well. I’ll be back next week with plenty of posts to kick off September! In the meanwhile, if you need any end-of-summer recipe inspiration, be sure to check out what we are cooking up this week on our stay-cation:

Blackened Fish Tacos– These are the best! If I were to open a fish taco food truck, this would be my go-to recipe!
Spicy Honey-Brushed Chicken Thighs– Best chicken recipe ever (and super-easy too)!
Caramel Corn– So addicting and perfect for vacation.
Tex-Mex Pimiento Cheese Dip– I will join the gym next week just so I can keep eating this dip.
Mediterranean Dip with Toasted Pita Chips– Great way to use summer produce.
Iced Coffee– Tastes just like Starbucks!
Easy Cinnamon Bread– Haven’t made this yet, but it looks really good
Baked French Toast– My favorite breakfast indulgence

Have a great week!

Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on August 2, 2012

I’m writing today’s post aboard the Amtrack Acela heading to NYC. K and I will be attending BlogHer ’12 this weekend, a huge blogging conference with over 4,000 attendees. There are some superstar speakers lined up for the conference including Martha Stewart, Katie Couric, and oh yeah, Barack Obama.

While I’m so thrilled to be attending, I do have some anxiety/sadness about leaving Baby T for the first time ever. As my train pulled out of the station, I watched through the window as he burst into tears in my husband’s arms. Crap- I knew I forgot to pack something…tissues! Anyway, I’m recovering and looking forward to some toddler-free time this weekend. I’m pretty sure he will be on the back of my mind for most of it however.

We can’t wait to report back on our adventure to BlogHer ’12!

Cheers!
m

Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on March 25, 2012

I wanted to follow-up from my earlier post this morning with more details of the Blog Better Boston Conference that was held yesterday. It was held at Boston’s Google headquarters, which was very exciting to check out! The day was broken out into five panels/workshops with breaks in between to get an opportunity to meet with other bloggers and brands.

Here are my key takeaways I took away from each session I attended:

Monetize Your Blog

-This panel seemed more geared for fashion bloggers (and wow, there were a lot of fashion bloggers there yesterday.) However, I did take some notes on a number of things. One of the things Lea from Found with Love said was to set 3-4 goals every few months. The goals you set should be ones you feel you can achieve so that you are actually able to carry them out.
-A few websites that were highlighted during the panel were:

ProBlogger– This website provides tips to help you make money blogging. I am actually in process of reading Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger book right now.
Crazy Egg Web Analytics– shows you a heatmap of your blog to show you were your readers are clicking
RescueTime– A time management tool that tracks your time. May be a good place to see what aspect of your blog is eating away at your time and could be outsourced to someone else.
Blog with Integrity– Covers ethical issues faced by bloggers.

Food Photography

-This panel was hosted by food photographer Kristin Teig. She provided a great handout with tons of helpful tips:

She provided several tips for shooting meals at night (which happens a lot to food bloggers because by the time you finish preparing the food you are about to shoot, it’s dark out!) Consider investing in a Westcott Spiderlites or a Britek light with a fluorescent day light balance bulb. A detailed tutorial for shooting in articial light can be found at Wrightfood.
For natural light, you need to diffuse or reflect the light depending on lighting conditions. You can diffuse light with vellum paper on your window or a wooden frame. Sometimes you can even use a window shade. To reflect light, Kristin showed how she had scored a piece of foam board in half…that’s a great photography trick for very little money!
For photo props, check out the Todd Farm Flea Market in Rowley, MA and the SOWA vintage market.
Kristen recommended checking out Food Photography: From Snapshots to Great Shots by Nicole S. Young for a more detailed tutorial on food photography.

Google Analytics

-This workshop was hosted by Ramesh Kumar from The Papa Post. He posted his whole presentation to his blog and I definitely recommend stopping over and checking it out!

Ramesh’s 5 takeaways were: creativity over keywords, content format matters, metadata (Did you know there is a Google recipe search? If you have a food blog, you should think about installing a recipe SEO plugin), stickiness, and more content leads to more SEO.
Don’t just look at your top 10 keywords in Google Analytics…this rarely changes. Instead, pick 2 date ranges and sort them by absolute change to see what keywords are rising and falling.
Check out blekko to compare your SEO to another site

Traffic & Community

-Lots of great tips at this session:

Engage in an off-line community and interact with other bloggers.
Don’t be afraid to self-promote.
Don’t react to negative comments.
Find the one thing you are passionate about and read everything you can about that specific topic.
Connect with other blogs- leave thoughtful comments, tweet, and be personal and authentic.

Photo Editing

–Kristyn Ulanday led this workshop. She had lots of great editing tips

For composition, always remember the human eye likes three’s (ex: 3 people, 3 depths, rule of thirds, etc.)
To create collages or combine two pictures into one file, use Picasa.
Gimp is another great free photo editing tool.

I loved swapping business cards and finally getting a chance to meet some other bloggers in person. Here are just a few of the bloggers I got a chance to meet:

-Sara from Forever and a Recipe– I have followed Sara’s blog for a while so it was great to meet her in person!
-Kristen from the imperfect home
-Lindsay from Lindsay’s Look
-Emily from What Emily Cooks
-Jen from Losing the Shadow Behind Me
-Emily from so anthro
-Erin from OneTwoSummer

There was also a DIY table to decorate the swag bags. I had so much fun decorating mine with the DecoArt SoSoft fabric paint. Up until this point in my life, I have really only attended Finance & Accounting-related conferences. I touched on this earlier, but I want to reiterate the point that this is not something that typically done at those types of conferences (although maybe they should!) I’ll post more later this week on what was actually in those swag bags, as well as more on the rest of the conference sponsors!

Did you attend the conference? What were some of your key takeaways?

Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on March 25, 2012

Just wanted to post a quick blurb about what an amazing time I had yesterday at the Blog Better Boston conference yesterday. It was so great to meet so many bloggers in person and to get so many fantastic blogging tips. I also enjoyed all the sponsors and swag bag- you definitely don’t get things like that at Finance conferences! My head is still spinning from all the great information and I hope to write a much longer post summarizing it later today.

It was the longest I had ever been away from Baby T, but it sounds like he had a great day with his DaDa. It was very cute to come home and see him get as excited about my return as he normally does for my husband’s arrival home. There is nothing like coming home to a big hug and kiss from the little guy!

Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on January 21, 2012

Hello Readers,

M and I have been trying to update our page lately to help our readers browse and use our recipes easier. Recently we have added a recipe index to help you find our recipes faster.

The Recipe Index has all our recipes we have shared with you over the years listed in categories. To select the recipe you want to view, just click on the recipe title and it will bring you to that recipe.

For example, if you were looking for a breakfast food to make, you would scroll to our “Breakfast” section in the index. There you could see that we have a recipe for Buttermilk Pancakes or a French Omelette (note to self- share more breakfast foods with you, which is perfect because I just made something this morning for breakfast that I am pretty pumped about sharing with you.) To see the recipe for the Buttermilk Pancakes, just click on the words and it will take you to the recipe. Mmmmm, I forgot about the recipe for Buttermilk Pancakes…best pancakes ever! We are working on cross-referencing items like the Cranberry, Banana and Walnut Muffins under both Bread and Breakfast, since technically it could be considered both.

The next addition to our website was actually added this morning. I know when I read blogs, I like to have a link to click on to get to a printer-friendly version of the recipe or post. I like to have paper copy of recipes when I am cooking because I don’t like bringing my computer or phone into the kitchen. So now, you will notice a print friendly button on the bottom of all our postings.
If you find a posting that you would like to print, select the Print Friendly icon at the bottom of the posting. From there it will take you to a page that looks like this:
You can change how the view looks by changing the size of the font, taking out the images, and deleting sections. Lets start by changing the size of the font.
At the top of the print friendly version, there is a green bar. On the bar, there is a text pull-down menu. Click on the down arrow and select the font size you would like the posting to print out with. I like the small font because it will most likely print on to one page (depends on the size of the recipe though).

To get rid of the images just select the “no image” box and the images go away. Not that we want you to get rid of our images, but we understand that color ink can get expensive!

If you want to print just the recipe portion of the post for your files and get rid of the intro to the recipe, hover the mouse pointer over the paragraph you want to delete. It will automatically be highlighted in yellow with a “click to delete” in red at the top. Click on the paragraphs you wish to delete to get rid of them. If you accidentally click off a part you didn’t mean to delete, click the undo button at the top.

When finished with making the changes you desire, select print and your printer dialog box will come up. Print out the recipe and then run to your kitchen and make it!!

M and I hope to have a lot more additions to our site to make it easier to use. Let us know what you would like to see to make your experience at 2 Sisters 2 Cities better.

Thanks for reading!

-K