The glow of the first Eat Write Retreat weekend still lingers. Sitting in a kind of nasty Hilton Hotel room in Silver Spring, Maryland two days later (to be clear, not the conference hotel, which was the incredibly beautiful and awesome Madison Hotel in downtown Washington, D.C.), surrounded by bags and boxes of insane (in a good way) swag, is a rather stark counterpoint to a brilliant weekend. No, I’m not home yet, nor will I be for another couple of weeks (I have a house-sitter, for anyone out there who might be getting some big ideas – be warned!), so I get to travel around the South with all of these reminders of some very good times.

What you see here doesn’t add up to even half of the goodies we all went home with. Nope. Not even close. And I have twice as much, because Mike decided that he wanted to experience a Food Bloggers Conference. More about that, later. I will say up front, that he received the first shock of an “outworlder”, when we took the swag bags up to the room, and emptied them. “Holy shit! There’s a whole frying pan in here!”, he said upon removing the Calphalon Unison 12″ Griddle Pan, like Arthur pulling the sword from the stone.

And while we did not score one of the coveted Calphalon toasters, panini grills, or 7 quart slow cookers, we did manage to make off with an OXO 14 piece professional knife block set, a couple of their bamboo cutting boards, and one of their new, safer chef’s mandoline slicers (not to mention tongs, measuring cups, vegetable peelers, spice grinders, excellent travel mugs, and on and on). Yes, Calphalon and OXO were very very good to us.

Even Freakin’ Flamingo made a modest appearance in the EWR swag bags, right alongside the big boys like Lindsay Olives, Peanut Butter & Co., Goo Goo Clusters (I just ate one of those while writing this, and oh. my. goodness. oh. We have to get these in Miami. Seriously.), My Spice Sage, and more.

By now, you’re thinking to yourself that Eat Write Retreat was all about the swag. Okay, I’ll admit that the swag is nice. Who’s kidding whom, right? But it was more than that. The organizers (Casey Benedict and Robyn Webb) insisted that the sponsors spend the weekend and attend the conference with the rest of us. We had the unheard of opportunity to spend quality time with the representatives from each of the conference sponsors and panelists, to listen to and learn from each other on a professional level. It was also the opportunity to meet and relate to new friends, and greet Twitter and blog buddies in real life. All of this, not in a hurried couple of minutes while being jostled by a crowd, but in real conversations.

And if all that weren’t enough, there were hands-on learning sessions at CulinAerie, sessions on descriptive writing, food styling and photography, an out of bounds culinary walking – and eating – tour with DC Metro Food Tours, and panel discussions on professional development. We even had the opportunity to sit, one-on-one, with publishers, editors, PR pros, and the sponsors themselves, to pitch ideas and get real, individual, professional advice. Ah-mazing!

I could write for days about everything we learned and everything we did at Eat Write Retreat 2011, but I think you’d get just a little bit jealous. But let me share at least part of our workshop at CulinAerie. We were given valuable instruction in knife skills and other techniques that, frankly, I’ve never seen except on television, and prepared several dishes using that “Queen of Vegetables”, endive, provided by another conference sponsor (and one of our personal faves) California Endive. So, courtesy of Chef/Instructor Susan Holt, here’s the one I prepared with Mike (I’m pretty sure that, since she gave it out to like 80 food bloggers, Chef Susan didn’t mean to keep it a secret):

Salad of Endive, Avocado, Tarragon & Grapefruit
(serves 4)

Ingredients:

8 bulbs of red endive
1 large or 2 small grapefruit (Florida, of course)
1 medium or 2 small avocados, cut in half, pit removed, & scooped from their shell(s)
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 Tbs. chopped tarragon leaves
Finishing salt (like course sea salt, or one of the many smoked or flavored salts) & pepper

Preparation:

Cut the endive on the bias in 1″ pieces, discarding the core. Supreme the grapefruit by removing rind with a sharp knife and reserving the segments (she means separating the segments from between the membranes); juice remaining membrane into a bowl with the segments and set aside.

Slice each avocado in half into two pieces, lengthwise. Leaving the root end uncut, slice lengthwise into thin slices, and fan each half on a plate. Sprinkle the endive pieces and grapefruit segments over the avocado.

Combine the oil with the remaining grapefruit juice, add tarragon, and spoon over the other ingredients. Garnish with finishing salt and pepper, and serve.

Here are Mike and I, butchering grapefruit. Him, more so than I. I only mangled the avocados.

Look, ma! I made an emulsion! So cool!

Isn’t it pretty? Pretty darned delicious, too! Even at 10:00 a.m.

And what was Mike’s verdict after a weekend with a bunch of food bloggers? Two thumbs-up! “You’re always telling me what an incredible community the world of food bloggers is, and I have to say that I’ve never met so many genuinely nice people in one place, before. This has been an eye-opening experience for me, on so many levels. I really didn’t think I, as an outsider, was going to have such a great time.” I guess this means that I’ll never get to go to another food bloggers weekend without him, now. Casey and Robyn, I think maybe you did too good a job. LOL!

*Many thanks for the additional photographs to Olga Berman of MangoTomato and Allie Mak of Live, Laugh, Eat, who were the “expedition photographers” of the weekend. Thanks, ladies, you were completely awesome!