Storytelling and a Big Summer Potluck

 

 Part of the generous breakfast feast at BSP4

I’ve been trying to find my way into a story about the latest Big Summer Potluck. I had an idea that I would write about storytelling itself; the power and magic that’s inherent in hearing someone share something deeply personal, meaningful, or just plain funny.  The way that a room full of half strangers, half friends, can be woven together over tales of beekeeping, bread, ice cream bars and boyfriends.  About why hunger is more than handouts and how determination and a small idea can grow and help create community.  Or maybe the moment when, with a startled gasp, you recognise yourself in the story being told. 

I’ve been thinking the story would be about wearing green to remind myself to be good to the earth; about the incredible will of a lone woman to win over a powerful tortilla machine; about shortbread cookies and rhubarb shrubs.  

Or maybe it would be about once-a-year friendships that rekindle over pulled pork and coconut cake.  About sponsors who give much more than products and prizes.  About generosity of spirit and a welcoming hospitality that’s as big as the state of Pennsylvania and as intimate as a family gathering.

  

                  The beautiful Anderson home: cool and serene on the outside, 
warm as a bear hug on the inside

As I pour through my too few photos and my fulsome memories, I'm reminded that stories unfold over time and space, that the telling in one place of a singular event might capture the essence, but not the whole.  But that's okay.  Because I know I will be telling stories, as I have already done, about this extraordinary weekend for months to come.
 

 The official kick-off potluck dinner

 

Sabra fed us in the morning and gave us great snacks for the 

journey home

 

 OXO treated all BSP attendees with the tools of their choice and hosted an Instragram contest...

 

 ...which I won in the Bakers' category! Can't wait to pick out my new OXO tools

With special thanks to:

Maggy, Erika and Pam, our amazing hosts

Joe, Jeni, Jessica, Robyn, Coach Mark, Jessamyn, Brian and Abby,
 our inspiring speakers and teachers

OXO, KitchenAid, Gourmet Garden, and the rest of the generous and delicious sponsors

Big Summer Potluck 3 Part One: Water Bugging

This morning I did something rather unusual.  I started my day by not water bugging.

No matter what day of the week, my mornings unfold in more or less the same way.  Make tea, coffee for Richard if he’s not travelling.  Feed Trixie, and whatever neighbourhood cats show up at the front door.  Turn on the radio.  And finally, impatiently, eagerly, sit down at my computer and re-establish my place in the digital world.  What Facebook updates have I missed?  Did anyone repin something from my Pinterest boards? What photos were posted on Instagram? Twitter…ah Twitter, how I love and hate you.  With my two accounts, there are endless conversations to be part of, articles to read and retweet, messages to launch, like so many tiny missiles, into the vast endless Twittersphere universe.  

And then there are work emails.  While I’ve been sleeping, Asia and Europe have been busy as bees, filling my inbox with questions, FYIs, requests and projects.  I’m fully engaged with all neurons firing, even though it’s only 6:30 am.

But here’s the thing. With all that activity, I haven’t had a single live human moment. I’ve been so busy trying just to keep up that I haven’t really tuned in.

So as I’ve been thinking about BSP3 and imagining what I might share about that transformative experience, I keep going back to water bugging.   

Have you heard of water bugging?  It’s the speedy skim, the surface conversation, the lightening quick flitting from one thing to another, all, of seeming very important and making you feel terribly busy.  But water bugging never gets beneath the surface, down into the depths of things: to that scary place underneath the rock in the deepest part of the lake; to the magical beauty that inexplicably survives 30 feet below the water. 

The Big Summer Potluck is all about what lies beneath.  It’s the antithesis of water bugging, made evident in every minute with abundance of real human moments abounding all around us.  It’s about bringing together the natural community that forms around food and amplifying it, shining a megawatt light on all that really should matter.

Unexpected beauty

As so as they have magically done for three years now, Maggy, Erika and Pam bring together people that force us to get our hair wet, to dive deeper into the lake that is our hearts and really connect with not just each other, but ourselves.  I’ll share more about the collective awesomeness of Brooke Burton-Lüttmann, Joy Wilson, Marisa McClellan and Molly O’Neill in a future post, and how, in their very distinctive ways, each of them pulled us into the lake with joyous splashes.

But right now it’s 9:30 am.  I’m in my garden, the cacophony of honey bees burrowing in the anemones impossibly loud and delicious.  The digital world is a click away, but I’m swatting that particular water bug down for the moment.  I have a husband to call who’s far away, and human moments to create.

With heartfelt thanks to Maggy for her water bugging intro to BSP3 and the amazing sponsors who made BSP3 possible, memorable and tasty!

Musselman's Apple Butter

KitchenAid

Kerrygold

Anolon

Green Mountain Coffee

Attune Foods

Tasty Kitchen

Driscoll's 

Big Summer Potluck 2, Part One: On Becoming a Food Blogger

A breakfast feast at BSP2, featuring fresh peaches, gluten-free muffins and homemade jam from Sugarcrafter



I remember the first time I wondered if I was really a bona fide blogger, even a part-time one, which was all I was aspiring to be. I was having that most perfect of Saturday morning indulgences – a pedicure – and as the aesthetician and I chatted, I mentioned I had a food blog. “I have a blog too!” she said. It was a mommy blog, and she had started it a month earlier. We exchanged URLs, and when I got home I looked up her site. I had written nine posts that month – quite an accomplishment, I thought, for my little hobby. Erika had written 80. Not eight – 80. Whoa.

I had dipped a toe in the water of food blogs barely six months before. Ready-made Blogger template; barely a notion of how to tag, let alone what it would do for my Google ranking. Monetize? I had gingerly put two food-related ads on my blog; the cheque must still be in the mail. Every new follower was a triumph and it didn’t matter that the number hardly changed from week to week (well, it did, but this was a hobby, right?). I thought I took decent photos with my little point and shoot.

I was amazed at the size and diversity of the food blogging community. I threw a stone in the pond and I joined Foodbuzz, Cook Eat Share, The Daring Kitchen, Charcutepalooza. With each ripple, I saw the community was legion, and I couldn’t even make out the distant shore. Relationships mattered, and Twitter provided a way to form immediate connections, even if at arm’s length and more like cousins twice removed than siblings.

The beautifully simple table setting at Linden Hill Gardens

And that’s how I heard about Big Summer Potluck. It hardly mattered what it was; what did matter was that it seemed to be a MUST ATTEND event (and if @thepeche said so, I was smart enough to believe it). It seemed a friendly thing – somewhere in the middle of Pennsylvania – and with just the right amount of people; not too big to be overwhelming, not too small to feel out of step with all those who would surely know one another. And so I bought a ticket. With that weird blend of low and massive expectations, I made my way by two planes and an automobile to Ottsville, PA, quinoa and rice salad in tow.

I learned a lot.  Not about SEO, or monetization, or tagging or writing the perfect post.  I learned that a moment can be an idea.  That the hardest part of getting a great photo is getting past yourself.  That you need a point of departure - what, exactly, are you trying to say with those words? That photo? The post?  And that it's okay not to know the answer to those questions when you start.

Chickens at Linden Hill - living in the moment

At BSP2 last weekend I wondered again if I was a bona fide blogger. But for the first time, I finally got permission to be exactly the kind of blogger I can be, with the expectations not formed by some amorphous and invisible host of judges, but by me. That was the life lesson, amongst many, that Shauna James Ahern, the wonderful Gluten-Free Girl, imparted.  Get real and be real, girl (and boy).  Expose your messy self.  It's what matters and what makes a connection count.  Yes, indeed.

The radiant Penny de los Santos.

Perhaps by now you’ve read some of the amazing and moving blog posts written by others who were at BSP2. If you haven’t you should know that Penny de los Santos is a wizard – not just with her camera, but with her ability to spellbind a room and recreate a photograph that all of us could see as clearly as if it were in front of us. [Click here to see the incredible photographs that Penny was describing and the read the beautiful story They Remember Home by Annia Ciezadlo].  I have never been so inspired and felt so connected to a speaker before – but that’s because this was a personal conversation and Penny offering her art (and self) up to us with arms wide open.  And that was her point, really.  As Penny says, photography is a metaphor for life - and that magical moment of making a connection, of drawing people in - is what really matters.

Expectations? Beyond exceeded.  But that's what happens when you think you're going to a food blogger event and you find yourself connected to an instant family of friends.

So am I a bona fide blogger?  If what that means is that I am passionate about what I write, that it matters to me, and that I am being my real self - then I think the answer is yes.  It matters less that I have the requisite photo of ingredients with "easy and delicious recipes that you can make for dinner tonight!" (guilty as charged).  It matters more that I am connected - to myself first of all, and then hopefully to you too.  I hope you stick around to see how it all comes out. 

[With a huge 8 second hug and thanks to Maggy of Three Many Cooks and Erika of The Ivory Hut for an amazing event. Can't wait 'til next year!]