I know it has been a really busy month, which means I appreciate even more all the work and effort that you all have been putting into the cookbook recipes, which are rolling in as the deadline (tomorrow) approaches.

Throughout the past few weeks, I’ve been getting some excellent feedback from the food community at large that indicates we are working on something that is truly ground-breaking. We are going to go ahead and close submissions for now at the end of the day on May 1 [SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW CLOSED], but after we cull through the recipes that we have, we will have another window during which you can submit recipes to help fill in any gaps and — here’s the exciting part — non-recipe food content.

What exactly do I mean by “non-recipe food content”? As I wrote in the post last week, many of the best community cookbooks contain far more than recipes, and we’re going to include a number of essays about thing such as how the Austin food scene has changed in recent years, its iconic dishes, where we shop for ingredients and how our group formed. This will give people who don’t necessarily specialize in recipes a chance to contribute to the book, plus it will give readers a better understanding of our community.

I’ll post a list of essays that we’d like to have when I announce what kind of recipes we need to help round out the book, but feel free to pitch ideas to afbacookbook@gmail.com. I’ll be meeting with the AFBA board and cookbook committees in coming weeks, but I imagine we’ll be collecting the second round of content in June.

Thanks for all your help in putting this cookbook together! You are part of a unique project that I have a feeling is going to make waves even outside our fair city.

Members of the McLennan-Hill Chapter Czech Heritage Society in North Central Texas weren’t messing around when they published the “Czech Reflections” community cookbook in 1994.

The book’s sub-subtitle says it all: “Recipes, Memories, History, Customs, Proverbs, Language, Farm Tasks, Costumes and Dancers.”

What the society couldn’t guarantee were notes like the kind that my neighbor Mary Beth’s mother, who was also named Mary, wrote for her inside the cover. “Hope you enjoy this book as much as I enjoyed giving it go you,” she wrote that Christmas.

This post, which is a helpful reminder that recipes for the AFBA community cookbook are due on May 1 [SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW CLOSED], isn’t really about this particular cookbook or that particular inscription, but before I get to the real heart of the matter, a few things of note from inside its pages:

On the cover, a girl with flowers in her hair and in a traditional dress feeding geese. After the photo shoot, she probably went home to watch “Saved By The Bell” like the rest of us, but in that moment, she represented the many generations’ worth of recipes and cultural traditions that are packed in the 204-page book.

On wells:

“Water for drinking was drawn from the well with a bucket on a chain and pulley. In the summer to keep meat from spoiling, it was placed in the bucket and suspended down halfway into the water to keep it cool. Also to cool beer, the bottles of beer would be placed in the bucket and lowered to half-way in the water.” — Henrietta Cervenka

On making it “in the early twenties,” when food was scare:

“One made the best of what was on hand. There were no supermarkets or gasoline filing stations. Fast food was never thought of nor were Dairy Queen and Long John Silver. Even so, often a peddler would come by. A mule was hitched to a wagon carrying much needed staples like flour, coffee beans and some type of bean stored in wooden barrels.” –Evelina Lenart

Recipes, of course, make up the bulk of the book. Five kolache recipes, plus lesser-known Czech desserts, like meringue kisses and poppy seed cake. Goulashes, stews and sausages, plus slightly more unusual dishes, like fried frog legs:

“Wash frog legs, put in deep bowl. Salt and pour a little oil and lemon juice over them. Sprinkle them with chopped onion and chopped green parsley and leave to marinate about an hour. Then take out and place on a clean napkin, dust with flour, dip in beaten egg and roll in grated bread crumbs, fry in hot melted butter shortly before serving. Arrange on dish lined with green parsley.”

They’ve published Czech translations of many of the standards like cucumber salads, sour potato gravy with dill roux and vanilla cookies, but how often do you think that frog legs recipe, which was also translated, was used in the early 1990s?

But the recipes — like the darker stories that this kind of digging into the past can bring up — are important, even if we don’t particularly like them anymore.

Community cookbooks like this one capture so many things about a society, including aspirational and traditional dishes that people might not actually cook any more but that are important to understanding how we came to eat the way we do now. With ours, we’re not looking to document the entire history of a culture, but merely a glimpse at the kind of food that bloggers who live in Central Texas love to make. Through publishing these stories, we hope to also tell the stories of the people they love and who loved them enough to pass down the art of cooking.

The owner of this copy of “Czech Reflections” doesn’t have any children herself, and I might be the only person in a decade who asked her to point out which recipes were her mother’s and which were from her dad’s mother. This, of course, led us to talking about how her parents met and how her dad’s mom taught her own mom, who couldn’t boil a pot of water when they got married, to be one of the best cooks in the county.

I’ve been talking a lot lately with my maternal and paternal grandmothers, who are 81 and 86, respectively, about our family histories, and sometimes the best way to get them talking is to ask them questions about food and cooking. I’m trying to get them to open up about relatives who died years before I was born in an effort to build an Ancestry.com digital family tree, which is a free and pretty spiffy tool if you haven’t checked it out.

Talking the other day with one of my grandmothers about how she used to bury eggs in a wooden box of salt to preserve them led to both of us in tears, facing a difficult conversation that needed to be had. My other grandmother’s stories got a little more tepid after we touched on the time after her father walked out on her, her mom and her brother when she was just a kid.

Emotions are tied up in the simplest things, but documenting them taps into something deep within us, a reverence for the things we know and the things we wish we knew.

I feel lucky to have started gathering oral histories now before my elders start losing some of those details about who moved where when and what they did when they got there. (My great-great grandfather left Sweden in 1884 to make wagons in Springfield, Missouri. He couldn’t afford to go back to get his wife and children for a decade, and my grandmother still uses the bread knife that her grandmother carried over on that boat.)

Anyway, I’m delving far too much into genealogy and away from cookbook publishing, but as you are thinking about which recipes and stories to submit, consider the recipes that have meaning in your life because the generations that follow ours will hopefully be able to read our book and get a sense of who we are, what is important to us and how we live, including how we incorporate technology into our cooking.

Speaking of technology, over on our Facebook group, AFBA member Ginny Bell asked if we were lacking in any particular category of entries. We are getting lots of desserts, but there are also plenty of appetizers and entrees, too. We have received several very complicated dishes, and we don’t have very many straight-up side dishes, so it would be nice to get a few simple and/or vegetable-heavy dishes in the next week. If you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to email me at broylesa@gmail.com.

Zucchini Ricotta Cheesecake

We’re a week into the submission period for the Austin Food Blogger Alliance cookbook, which is a perfect time to address a few questions that came up in the recipe writing class last week and in the Facebook group. Feel free to leave other questions in the comments or email them to afbacookbook@gmail.com. Don’t forget: The deadline to submit recipes is April 30 [SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW CLOSED].

Margaret Christine Perkins from Notes From Maggie’s Farm: Do the recipes have to be Texan or particularly Austin-y?

No. Austin has longstanding culinary traditions that are as important to the city as our founding families, but that doesn’t mean that the people who live in the area now have to cast off their own food experiences to conform to what Austin food “should” be. People move to Austin from all over the world, and that’s one of the reasons our culinary scene is so unique. We want to honor that diversity by showcasing food that you identify with and that represents who you are. Recipes that have memories associated with them have the most meaning for us personally, and that emotional connection to food is what will make this book really sing.

Tiffany Harelik of Trailer Food Diaries: I’m the type of person that cooks with a pinch of this and a dash of that, and I never make the same recipe twice, especially for things like my fried chicken. How exact do we need to be and which version of my dish should I use?

At the class last week, Michael Chu of Cooking For Engineers recommended using a scale’s tare (or zero-out) feature to calculate how much of each ingredient you are using, even if you don’t use traditional measuring tools. For example, place a bowl on an electric scale and tare it so it’s back at zero. As you add flour and other seasonings for the fried chicken coating, reset the scale after each addition to record the amount, which you can translate to teaspoons, tablespoons or cups later. Establish a base recipe that is the very minimum that someone would need to know to understand your approach to the dish. In the recipe’s headnote, you can include information about the other ways that you like to spiff it up (for Tiffany, it’s soaking the chicken in sweet tea or even hot sauce).

Heather Santos of Midnite Chef asked: Should the bio be in first or third person? I’m thinking the bio should be third but the header should be first, like you are talking to the person about to prepare the recipe (those are fun to read). Thoughts?

We’re asking for bio in third person and headnote in first (“I” and “we”) or second (“you”). Admittedly, it’s hard to write about yourself in third person, but in most cookbooks and magazines, you’ll find short bios  in the front to give you a feel for the people behind the articles and text. These kinds of bios have become popular in the “about me” section of food blogs, too. Talking directly to the cook is common in recipe headnotes, which introduce a recipe and act as a segue from the title to the ingredients. If there’s something tricky about the recipe or a way that you like to adapt it, this is the place to mention it. On the cookbook submission form, we just have a single entry point for “story behind the recipe,” which is where you can give some back story as well as tips that a cook would want to know before starting.

Melissa Joulwan of Clothes Make the Girl: Can we reuse recipes from our blogs, or do you want completely original recipes for the book?

You can definitely reuse recipes from your blog! We’d really like to see original recipes, but some of our best dishes might be ones that were inspired by other bloggers but that we made our own. It’s as easy as substituting ingredients that suit your family’s tastes and adding a twist that the original creator might not have thought of. Just be honest about where your recipes and inspiration come from. We all like to get a pat on the back for our work, and there is no greater compliment than someone taking your work and using it to inspire something else entirely, with credit, of course. (Just ask Austin Kleon, the Austin artist and blogger who recently published “How To Steal Like An Artist.“)

We’ve launched the recipe submission form, which also has a place to upload a photo [SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW CLOSED], and we’ll be accepting recipes through the end of the month. It’s a relatively short window of time, but our goal is to send the final book to the publisher by September 1 in order to have it ready by the holidays.

All Austin Food Blogger Alliance members who have been accepted through the end of the month are invited to contribute, and here are a few guidelines to help you with the submission process.

Recipes

You are allowed to submit up to two recipes, to allow for duplicates of similar recipes. We prefer original recipes—this is your time to shine! Adapted recipes will be accepted as long as you have made at least three significant changes to the recipe and give credit to the original creator.

For formatting, we’ll follow the guidelines in “The Recipe Writer’s Handbook“, an excellent resource for recipe writing and testing.

• Ingredients should be listed in the order they are used and called for in the directions.
• Double check to make sure that all the ingredients are mentioned in the directions, and vice versa.
• Do not use abbreviations for the quantity.
• Generic names are preferred over brand names, unless absolutely necessary.
• As much as we like the metric system, especially for baking, please submit in U.S. measurements
and, if needed for accuracy, add metric in parentheses.

Please test your dish by cooking it at least twice, once to nail down the recipe and again to make sure it works the way you want it to. (And to make sure you have a nice photo of it.) We’ll be retesting recipes as needed. Please understand that we may not be able to publish every recipe that is submitted.

Photos

When you submit your recipe, you may also submit a photo.
• Please send high-resolution photos at 300 dpi, with a total size of at least 1 MB.
• Make sure your photos are not blurry!
• We prefer photos taken without flash.

You may collaborate with a photographer other than yourself to take photos of your dish, but in these cases, we will need you to provide the contact information for the photographer so we can obtain their written permission to publish their photo(s). All photos taken by someone other than the blogger will be given photo credit anywhere that we publish them.

Please note that we might not be able to use all submitted photos—depending on the number of high quality photos we get, we might have to reshoot some of the dishes. If you have more than one photo for a dish, you can email extras to afbacookbook@gmail.com.

Later this year you will have the opportunity to submit photos that exemplify Austin, AFBA, or the Austin food scene.

Blogger bio

Members are as much of this cookbook as are the recipes, so please submit a short bio of yourself when you submit your recipe. We want to know who you are; who you cook for; why or what you blog about; why you love cooking; what makes you, your cooking or your kitchen unique, etc.

Headnote

This is another word for an introduction to a recipe. It explains the who, what, why, when and how of a specific dish. Share what inspired you, why you picked the dish, and/or any tricks that people who cook it would want to know.

Please keep in mind that recipes, bios, and headnotes might be edited for grammar and consistency, but it is our goal to keep your voice in place so you can be fully represented within the cookbook.

We are hoping to have a cookbook with approximately 100 recipes in a variety of categories, from drinks and appetizers to dessert. Feel free to use our members-only Facebook group to throw out ideas and ask questions of one another and the board if you’re not sure about which recipe to submit or if you have a question when you’re ironing out the details of your recipe.

This is a learning process for all of us, and there’s no such thing as a perfect recipe or a perfect cookbook. Thanks for your patience along the way!

Yes, it’s an ambitious project for a group that just celebrated its first birthday, but in honor of the longstanding tradition of community cookbooks, we’re turning to members for the recipes, photos, design, editing and testing of the book, which we hope to release at the end of the year.

For generations, community cookbooks have been not only a source of inspiration in the kitchen, they’ve also been a cultural record of the cooks that make up that community.

In addition to recipes, we’ll be asking members to write a little about themselves, their blog, who they cook for and why. We want this book to be a reflection of Austin in 2012, and we won’t be able to make it happen without you.

The first step is collecting the recipes, which we’ll be doing throughout the month of April.

To help all of us write better recipes, we’re hosting a Recipe Writing 101 class at 7 p.m. on April 3 in a conference room on the Plaza Level at Whole Foods Market global offices, above the store at Sixth Street and Lamar Boulevard. Guests can access the Plaza level via the elevators marked “office” from P1 or P2 parking levels, or via the staircase from the surface parking lot, and through the double glass doors.

Food writers Karen Morgan (founder of Blackbird-bakery.com and author of “Blackbird Bakery Gluten-Free“), Ann Clark (author of  ”Quick Cuisine” and “Ann Clark’s Fabulous Fish,” and founder of Austin’s first cooking school), and Michael Chu (of the award-winning blog, Cooking For Engineers) will walk us through some of the pitfalls that beginning recipe writers often fall into and help navigate some of the more nuanced steps of creating recipes that are clear, concise and easy to follow.

Elizabeth Engelhardt, author of “Republic of Barbecue,” and an American history and women’s studies professor at the University of Texas who specializes in foodways, will kick off the class with brief history of community cookbooks and a reminder of why they still matter today.

The class is free to members and $15 for non-members, who can sign up and pay via EventBrite.

Look for another post next week with a link to the recipe submission page, but start thinking about which recipes you’d like to contribute. Email Addie Broyles if you have questions about the project, broylesa@gmail.com.

-Addie Broyles, Feminist Kitchen

A total of 53 members of the Austin Food Blogger Alliance filled out the 43 category survey, with 45 members pitching in to write over 65 posts for the Austin City Guide. As of this blog post writing, there are currently 107 members of the Alliance. If you are interested in learning more about how to become a member, click here.

The following businesses placed in the top four in multiple categories:

• Contigo and Uchiko — six categories
• Foreign & Domestic, La Condesa, and Uchi — four categories
• Asti, Hopfields, Fonda San Miguel, Justine’s, The Peached Tortilla, Polvos, and Second Bar & Kitchen — three categories
• 24 Diner, Apothecary, Bar Congress, Blue Dahlia, Carillon, Casa de Luz, Counter Cafe, Curra’s, East Side King, Elizabeth Street Cafe, Hai Ky, Jack Allen’s, Kerbey Lane, Kome, Lamberts, Perla’s, The Tigress, Trudy’s, Veggie Heaven, Vino Vino, Vivo, Wasota African Cuisine, Whip in and Wink —  two categories

And without further ado, here are the 2012 Austin Food Blogger Favorites:

New Bar/Lounge

1. Bar Congress
2. Hopfields
3. TIE: Contigo, Dive Bar, The Living Room at the W, and The Tigress

New Food Trailer

1. Peached Tortilla
2. TIE: Three Little Pigs, The Seedling Truck, and Wasota African Cuisine

New Restaurant

1. TIE: Contigo and Kome

Asian Fusion

1. TIE: East Side King and Uchiko
2. TIE: Chi’Lantro and Uchi
3. TIE: Hai Ky and The Peached Tortilla

Cajun

1. Evangeline
2. Nubian Queen Lola’s Cajun Soul Food Cafe
3. Gumbo’s
4. Sambets (Closed due to fire)

Chinese

1. Din Ho Chinese BBQ
2. Asia Cafe
3. A+A Sichuan
4. TIE: Ho Ho Chinese BBQ and Rice Bowl Cafe

French

1. Justine’s
2. Chez Nous

Indian

1. Clay Pit
2. G’raj Mahal
3. TIE: Tarka and Whip in
4. Bombay Bistro

Italian

1. Asti
2. TIE: Mandola’s and Vespaio
3. TIE: Enoteca Vespaio and La Traviata
4. Cipollina

Japanese

1. Kome
2. Uchiko
3. Uchi

Korean

1. Korea House
2. TIE: Coreanos and Koriente

Mexican

1. Fonda San Miguel
2. La Condesa
3. TIE: Polvos and Sazon
4. TIE: El Naranjo and El Taquito

Tex-Mex

1. Maudie’s
2. TIE: Curra’s, Matt’s El Rancho, Polvos, Trudy’s
3. TIE: Chuy’s, Enchiladas Y Mas, Guero’s, Habanero

Thai

1. Titaya’s
2. Madam Mam’s
3. Thai Fresh

Vietnamese

1. Sunflower
2. Tam Deli
3. TIE: Elizabeth Street Cafe, Hai Ky, Pho Dan
4. Baguette House

BBQ in Austin

1. Franklin Barbecue
2. TIE: Lamberts, Ruby’s, Rudy’s, and JMueller

BBQ Outside of Austin

1. Salt Lick
2. Louis Mueller
3. Smitty’s
4. TIE: Kreuz and Luling City Market

Burger

1. Hopdoddy
2. P. Terry’s
3. Mighty Fine
4. TIE: Burger Tex, Casino el Camino, Counter Cafe, and Hopfields

Dessert

1. Uchiko
2. TIE: Carillon, La Condesa, and Second Bar & Kitchen

Frozen Treat

1. Amy’s
2. Lick
3. Teo
4. TIE: Bananarchy, Central Market, Coolhaus, and Sweet Ritual

Breakfast Taco

1. Tacodeli
2. Torchy’s
3. TIE: Tamale House and Whole Foods

Pizza

1. Home Slice
2. Salvation
3. TIE: Backspace, Bola, and House Pizza

Sandwich

1. Noble Pig
2. Food Heads
3. Fricanos

Seafood

1. Perla’s
2. Quality Seafood
3. Eddie V’s
4. TIE: Deckhand Oyster Bar and Wink

Gluten-Free Friendly

1. TIE: Snap Kitchen and Z’Tejas

Salad

1. Leaf
2. Alamo Drafthouse
3. TIE: Blue Dahlia and Fogo de Chao

Vegan Dishes

1. TIE: Casa de Luz and Counter Culture
2. TIE: Beets Cafe and Veggie Heaven

Vegetarian

1. Casa de Luz
2. TIE: Bouldin Creek Coffeehouse and Eastside Cafe
3. TIE: Mother’s, Swad, Veggie Heaven

Brunch

1. Foreign & Domestic
2. Olivia
3. South Congress Cafe
4. TIE: Bouldin Creek Coffeehouse, Contigo, Fonda San Miguel, Jack Allen’s, Lamberts

Date Spot

1. TIE: Foreign & Domestic and Justine’s
2. TIE: Asti and Uchiko
3. TIE: Parkside and Uchi

Diner

1. 24 Diner
2. Counter Cafe
3. TIE: Foreign & Domestic and Kerbey Lane

Fine Dining

1. TIE: Congress and Uchiko
2. Uchi
3. Carillon
4. FINO

Neighborhood Bistro

1. Foreign & Domestic (North Loop)
2. TIE: Blue Dahlia(East Austin) and Asti (Hyde Park)
3. TIE: Apothecary (Central Austin), Bess (Downtown), Cipollina (Clarksville) and Elizabeth Street Cafe (South Austin)
4. Vino Vino (Central Austin)

Patio

1. Contigo
2. Vivo
3. Perla’s
4. TIE: Paggi House and Red’s Porch

Trailers….

Downtown Austin Food Trailer

1. The Peached Tortilla
2. TIE: Jalopy, Kebabilicious, and Lucky’s Puccias

East Austin Food Trailer

1. East Side King
2. Bits and Druthers
3. Love Balls
4. TIE: Arlo’s and Three Little Pigs

South Austin Food Trailer

1. TIE: Gourdough’s and Luke’s Inside Out
2. TIE: La Boite, Lulu B’s, The Mighty Cone, Wasota African Cuisine

Beer

1. The Draughthouse
2. Hopfields
3. Whip in
4. TIE: Black Star Coop, The Ginger Man

Cocktails

1. Peche
2. The Tigress
3. TIE: Bar Congress and Second Bar & Kitchen
4. TIE: Contigo and East Side Show Room

Coffee

1. Caffe Medici
2. Houndstooth
3. jo’s
4. TIE: Summermoon, Thunderbird

Happy Hour

1. La Condesa
2. TIE: Parkside, TRIO, Uchiko
3. TIE: Contigo, Paggi House

Margarita

1. La Condesa
2. TIE: Curra’s and Polvos
3. TIE: Fonda San Miguel, Jack Allen’s, Trudy’s, Vivo

Non-Alcoholic Drinks

1. Juiceland
2. TIE: Austin Java and Daily Juice

Wine

1. Vino Vino
2. Apothecary
3. House Wine
4. TIE: Second Bar & Kitchen, Uncorked, and Wink

24-hour or Late-Night Restaurant

1. 24 Diner
2. Kerbey Lane
3. TIE: Justine’s and Magnolia
4. Max’s Wine Dive

Which of the groups picks to you agree with? Where do you think we got it wrong? Please do keep in mind that 53 people participated in the survey, and we by no means represent all of Austin, nor is our opinion the last word on the best eats and drinks in town. Feel free to comment here, on our Facebook page, or on Twitter — use the #atxfoodguide hashtag and/or mention us @atxfoodblogs.

CAFB welcomed AFBA volunteers for an evening of giving back through service

With work clothes on and following an orientation from Bethany and Lea (part of the Food Bank’s dedicated team), AFBA members got down to business, preparing nearly 10,000 pounds of food for distribution to people in need in the Austin area. That’s equivalent to almost 8,000 meals for Austin’s hungry!

Photo by Michelle Fandrich, The Kid Can Cook

If you visited your local grocery store in January and early February, you probably saw some of these bags full of canned goods for donation to Food Bank. Maybe you even donated one. If you’ve ever wondered what happens to the food you donate to the Food Bank, it’s simple.

Trailers deliver donations to the Food Bank. Photo by Michelle Fandrich, The Kid Can Cook

Your donations are delivered to the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas on one of these semi-trailers. All told, Souper Bowl of Caring donations filled five trailers – that’s over 835,000 pounds of food!

Photo by Tiffany Harelik, The Trailer Food Diaries

Volunteers and staff unpack the donated goods and sort them into different categories.

Photo by Michelle Fandrich, The Kid Can Cook

Sorted donations travel down the Food Bank’s conveyor belt to be packaged for short-term storage in the warehouse before they are distributed to those in need via service organizations, food pantries in the area and CAFB’s mobile food pantry.

One of about nine pallets of canned goods processed by AFBA volunteers. Photo by Michelle Fandrich, The Kid Can Cook

At the end of the night, our volunteers got to add their name badges to CAFB’s super “ball” of caring.

Photo by Kathryn Hutchison, The Austin Gastronomist

But the Food Bank is still in need of assistance. Now is the time to lend a hand and help CAFB get Souper Bowl of Caring donations out the door and into the bellies of Austin’s hungry. You can help by volunteering – just visit CAFB’s volunteer page and register for a work day or evening.

- Michelle Fandrich, The Kid Can Cook

Further reading:

Austin Yankee

Beyond Picket Fences

Girl Eats World

The Kid Can Cook

Notes from Maggie’s Farm

Those who fill out the survey will be entered into a drawing to win the opportunity to be a judge at The Taco Experiment contest during SXSW. The other judges are Claudia Alarcon, Addie Broyles, Virginia Wood, and one of the Franklins.

Each member of AFBA may fill out the survey once. We suggest that you copy and paste the survey questions into a separate document to give you time to think about your answers before submitting. No need to answer every question if you don’t have an opinion, but please do your best.

The survey results will be used to create an Austin Food Blogger Favorites – 2012, to be made public in early March on our website. We are also looking for volunteers to write a blog post about each of the categories, sharing the top votes for each category, along with personal recommendations geared to Austin visitors (particularly during SXSW).

Priority in blogging about the Austin Food Blogger Favorites will be given to those who submit their survey early and have made an effort to answer as many questions as they can.

Click here to fill out the survey. If you have any questions, send an email to media@austinfoodbloggers.org.

AUSTIN

• @atxfoodnews
• Austin Gastronomist, @atxgastronomist
• Bake Me Away, @bakemeaway
• Bite of Austin, @biteofaustin
• Blinded by the Bite, @blindedbite
• Boxing Octopus, @boxingoctopus
• The Clothes Make the Girl, @melicious11
• Epicuriosities, @christy111luv
• Food Good Laundry Bad, @evinschmevin
• Forgiving Martha, @forgivingmartha
• From Maggie’s Farm, @frommaggiesfarm
• Girl Eats World, @lindaeatsworld
• Girl Gone Grits, @girlgonegrits
• Grubbus, @GrubbusAllOver
• Home with Mandy, @homewithmandy
• The Kid Can Cook, @thekidcancook
• Kitschn Calamities, @jkru
• Lonely Gourmet, @lonelygourmet
• Luvs2Eat, @Luvs2EatBlog
• Mike Galante, @mikegalante
• Rebeccamendations, @Rbcammendations
• Relish Austin and The Feminist Kitchen, @broylesa
• Shoestring Austin, @shoestringatx
• Slow Down and Savor, @slowdownsavor
• Tasty Touring, @tastytouring
• Trailer Food Diaries, @trailerfood or @tiffanyharelik
• You Stay Hoppy Austin, @stayhoppyaustin

BOSTON

• Bakeaholic Mama, @BakeaholicMama
• Battlemouth, @battlemouth
• Bite Me New England, @Janis_Tester
• Blunder Construction, @blunderblog
• Boston Food Swap, @bosswappers
• Cave Cibum, @cavecibum
• Creative Soul in Motion, @IamCre8tiveSoul
• Eat Live Blog, @renh77
• Eating the Week, @eatingtheweek
• Farm Share Stories, @teresaelsey
• Fork it Over Boston, @blumie
• From Seed to Stomach, @frseed2stomach
• Grown Away, @frekky
• Healthy Food for Living, @foodforliving
• The Hungry Crafter, @hungrycrafter
• Kathy Can Cook, @kathycancook
• Kiss My Glass Boston, @kissmyglasswine
• Kitchen Misfit, @kitchenmisfit
• Lena on the Beach, @lenaonthebeach
• Made by Frances, @lindsfrances
• The Mighty Rib, @themightyrib
• Pickles ‘n Honey, @picklesnhoney
• Pop Bop Shop, @mollygaller
• Savory Flavors, @michellet11
• That Really Frosts Me
• This is Not a Martini, @Thsisntamartini
• Wine Me a River, @winemeariver

Looking forward to the next swap!

-Jodi Bart, Tasty Touring

In mid-November, 2010, Natanya Anderson, Jodi Bart, Addie Broyles, Michelle Cheng, Adam Holzband, Mando Rayo, Kristi Willis, and Marshall Wright first met in a semi-formal way to discuss the idea.

In January and February 2011, a larger group met to cement the many details involved in starting this group including the name, logo, website, bylaws, membership guidelines, roles, etc. Natanya Anderson, Jodi Bart, Addie Broyles, Jennie Chen, Michelle Cheng, Adam Holzband, Rachelle King, Mike Krell, Rebecca Otis, Mariam Parker, Mando Rayo, Kristi Willis, Kristina Wolter, and Marshall Wright attended at least one of these meetings.

Our goal was to launch in March before SXSW, where a group of us had begun the tradition of writing a group of blog posts that became the “Austin City Guide” to offer restaurant recommendations to SXSW-goers.

On March 8, the Austin Food Blogger Alliance launched with a website, a press release, and a Twitter account.

On March 27, the Austin Food Blogger Alliance Facebook page launched.

On March 29, we hosted an informational happy hour to recruit members at Takoba. Close to 100 people attended, including the founding AFBA board members: Natanya Anderson, Jodi Bart, Addie Broyles, Jennie Chen, Michelle Cheng, Rachelle King, Mike Krell, Rebecca Otis, Mariam Parker, Kristi Willis, and Kristina Wolter .

On March 30, we posted the code of ethics, application form, and a FAQ. At this point, we had our board members, made up of volunteers, and our advisory board, made up of people we respected in the food community.

By April 7, AFBA had 80 total members.

April 20 was the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas event kicking off the SNAP recipe blogging project.  A total of 19 members participated by providing recipes and publicizing the program on their blogs.

May 15 was a Farmer’s Market Potluck Lunch social event.

By June 7, AFBA had 101 members.

On June 8, we held an education event an Copyright Laws and Blogging at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center. That day, we also created a Twitter list of our members.

June 9, we launched our blog (note: any member can submit an idea for a post).

On July 30, we held a Pie-luck contest and pie social. Each pie was judged by a panel of experts, and Michael Chu’s pecan pie was the winner.

On August 21, AFBA teamed up with the Alamo Drafthouse to show the movie Waitress, and hold a pie sale benefitting SafePlace, that helped raise over $2,000 for the non-profit.

On Sept. 21, we created a members-only AFBA membership group on Facebook as a place for non-public, non-promotional discussions between members.

On Oct. 9, AFBA held a hands-on food photography workshop.

On Nov. 1, the Austin to Boston Food Swap was announced. Almost 30 AFBA members participated. Check out the blog posts about the swap here.

On Nov. 11, the AFBA membership list was posted on our website.

On Dec. 2, bios on our current board of directors was posted to the web. This includes Natanya Anderson (President), Kathryn Hutchison (Vice President), Rachelle King (Treasurer), Michelle Cheng (Secretary), Jodi Bart (Communications), Addie Broyles (Advisory Council), Jennie Chen (Education), Michelle Fandrich (Philanthropy), Mike Krell (Technology), Megan Myers (Membership), and Rebecca Otis (Social).

On Dec. 11, we held our Winter Social and White Elephant Kitchen Gadget Swap.

On Dec. 21, we began collecting a list of AFBA members who would like to be part of our official Volunteer Corps.

As of this writing on Jan. 1, there are 123 members according to our online blog roll.

We have many plans for AFBA in 2012, including a volunteer event at the Capital Area Food Bank on Feb. 9, 2012. We’re so grateful to every board member, member, and volunteer in this special group. If you would like to get involved, please get in touch with one or more of our board members. Our programming and content is really only as good as our volunteers.

-Jodi Bart, Tasty Touring