BlogTogether

Thanks to all who participated in the food blogging dinner with Michael Ruhlman at Piedmont Restaurant last night. Wow, did we have a blast. I’ve posted at mistersugar this roundup of the meal, this picture of Bora and Michael (other pics here) and this tribute to Michael the writer. Other links and pics will get added to this post when we learn of them.

9/24/07 UPDATE: No coffee at 3CUPS tomorrow. Michael has to get to the airport. Apologies for any inconveniences.

9/23/07 UPDATE: The Tuesday coffee with chefs is up in the air. Please check back tomorrow for details about this. If you are a chef planning to attend the 3CUPS coffee with Michael, please send Anton a message ASAP,

9/21/07 UPDATE: We’ve filled the seats for the Piedmont dinner, but all are still welcome to attend the Sunday reading at The Regulator. Details below.

BlogTogether, an association of bloggers and podcasters in the Triangle region of North Carolina, will host the Cleveland-based writer Michael Ruhlman for a special food blogging event in Durham in late September.

Ruhlman is the celebrated author of the books Making of a Chef, The Soul of a Chef and The Reach of a Chef, and he writes a blog (he started by guest blogging at megnut.com). He also collaborated with celebrity chef Thomas Keller on The French Laundry Cookbook.

Ruhlman’s visit to the Triangle taps into a surge of interest in the importance of good, local food. Nationally, author Michael Pollan is leading the charge to Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants, while, locally, N.C. State has organized the Farm-to-Fork celebration featuring Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini. The Carrboro Farmers Market and the Durham Farmers Market continue to attract growing crowds. And hot new restaurants are opening every month across the region. The region’s bloggers are getting in on the action and amplifying the call to support our local farmers, chefs and food entreprenurs.

As an umbrella organization of local bloggers, BlogTogether strives to bring online conversation into virtual dialogue and back again — to get bloggers to meet face to face with other bloggers and other members of our community — such as the farmers, market organizers and chefs. This food blogging event will be an opportunity to interact with a local chef, learn about where the ingredients come from, and pick up some pointers from a pro about how to write about all that.

Schedule of Events

9/23 at 4:30pm: Reading and book signing — The Regulator Bookshop in Durham will host chef-author-blogger Michael Ruhlman for a reading from his celebrated books about the lives of American chefs.

9/24 at 7:30pm: A taste of food blogging at Piedmont Restaurant — BlogTogether will partner with Piedmont Restaurant chefs Drew Brown and Andy Magowan to host a five-course prix-fixe dinner based on local ingredients (featuring head-to-tail pig, perhaps). At dinner, chef-author-blogger Michael Ruhlman will share his insights about how to write about food.

When: Monday, September 24th at 7:30pm

Where: Piedmont Restaurant, 401 Foster St., Durham, NC

What: A ticketed five-course prix fixe dinner featuring local ingredients prepared by chef Brown and his kitchen.

How much: $65 prepaid (this will cover dinner, wine, & tip). Who: Anyone who wants to enjoy a fabulous meal and learn about food blogging, a talented writer and a local chef. All dinner guests will be encouraged to write and talk about the meal and what they learn this night.

SEATS ARE LIMITED Get your seat at the table: If you want to attend this dinner, send a message to .

9/25 at 9am: Coffee with the Chefs — Chapel Hill’s 3CUPS coffee shop will host a morning coffee klatch for Michael Ruhlman to meet local chefs. Others are invited to stop by at 10:15am to chat with Michael, the chefs and 3CUPS proprietor Lex Alexander.

Dan Barkin gave BlogTogether some nice kudos in his column today (Bloggers to talk science), and alerted his readers to the second annual NC Science Blogging Conference coming in January. If you are a blogger or blog-reader, please join our mailing list to find out about our other meetups, conferences and special events — like this weekend’s food blogging reading and dinner.

BlogTogether has a mailing list through which we post announcements of our meetups, conferences and special events. If you are a blogger in the Triangle (or farther afield), please subscribe to the list today.

Join us Sunday for a reading by chef-author-blogger Michael Ruhlman, 4pm at The Regulator Bookshop in Durham. The Monday food blogging dinner is filled, and we have a waiting list. If you’re still interested in attending, contact Anton ().

Our first (of many to come) Durham Bloggers Meetup was tonight at Tyler’s Tap Room at the American Tobacco Campus — we had the Triangle Bloggers Bash there last year. Tonight, we grabbed the only empty outside table we could find — the Durham Bulls final game, a playoff match, was tonight — that just happened to be painfully close to a couple of grimy barrels of rancid cooking grease stashed in a corner of the courtyard. Good conversations nonetheless. Bora Zivkovic was there, along with Pam Spaulding, Eric Johnson, bc and Clinton Colmenares (where’s your blog, Clinton?). Pam told us she’s been invited to speak in Birmingham, Alabama at an event of Equality Alabama. She also mentioned she got 65,000 recently when her early post about Idaho Senator Larry Craig got a link from Perez Hilton. Then, a lot of science blogging talk. Eric mentioned that Brian Hare and Vanessa Wood will be moving to Duke in January, and that Vanessa is writing a blog about her research in the Congo, Bonobo Handshake. About that time, Clinton showed up and told us about his initiative to create a consortium of research universities. More on that in a few weeks, once he’s submitted a grant proposal for a cool project. Next blogger meetup is in Carrboro on Wednesday, Sept 26 at 6:30pm at Milltown. Then we’re back in Durham Wed, Oct 10 at 6pm at Tyler’s Tap Room. And don’t miss the food blogging event with Michael Ruhlman on Sept 24!

Our annual BlogTogether Backyard Barbecue Friday night was another successful social event gathering local bloggers. The beer was cold, the grill was hot, and the evening perfect for gabbing on the back deck. In attendance: Abel Pharmboy, Bora Zivkovic, Brian Russell, Eric Johnson, bc and Sonia, Mark Schreiner and Jennifer Gaspar, ae and db, Amy and Michael Tieman, Paul Jones and Sally Greene and Tucker=, Nneka Kelly, Jackson Fox and Erika Tsai, and a few of my neighbors. Bora will post has posted pictures.

The regular BlogTogether meetups for bloggers in Chapel Hill and Raleigh slowed down through the Spring and Summer, but we have a plan for the Fall: * The Durham bloggers meetup will be the second Wednesday of each month at 6pm at Tyler’s Tap Room in the American Tobacco Warehouse District. First meetup will be September 12th. Anton will coordinate. Duke is rapidly taking to blogging, and we’ve discovered some cool food bloggers in Durham — and Pam Spaulding has represented the city well — so we hope this meetup gets good attendance. * The Chapel Hill/Carrboro bloggers meetup will be the fourth Wednesday of each month at 6:30pm at Milltown Restaurant and Bar. First meetup will be September 26th. Bharat and Bora will coordinate. Bloggers have been meeting in Chapel Hill and Carrboro since Rob Zelt and Anton first shared coffee in 2002, so let’s keep the group active. These meetups will continue to be social in nature (read this essay to understand why), but we’ll also try to invite individual bloggers to lead discussions about various perspectives and techniques. Share your ideas with the meetup coordinators. See you at the meetups.

We’ve opened registration for the 2008 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. Click through to the conference wiki to see the agenda for the free 2-day event January 18 & 19, 2008, and add your suggestions for ways we can make this conference bigger and better (donations and sponsors are more than welcome). We’ll continue to post news and updates about the conference on BlogTogether.